Lewisham or Queen Elizabeth Hospital for midwives

[NattyPlus2andAHalf]

ive recently moved areas, am currently booked into kings hospital, but been told as im now out of area i have to change to a local one to get my homebirth.
does anyone have experiance of homebirths with either of these hospitals? were the midwives supportive during your labour? how was the transfere if anything went wrong?

mixed reviews online, and cant find alot of solid information.
so i want all stories good and bad please

thanks guys

bump?

anyone?

hi natty, I am local to both and afaik from friend's experiences they are both reasonably supportive of homebirth, however of the people I know very few actually had their first dc as a homebirth, mostly due to labouring for longer than the length of a shift.

Both are busy hospitals (like Kings), QEH in particular has had to close to admissions pretty often due to capacity issues.

hope this helps

I gave birth at QEH and had a pretty horrendous experience but mostly to do with the fact that none of the midwives in my team was on duty (you are meant to see this particular team of midwives through your pregnancy, the idea being that at least one of them would be at the birth... Didn't happen for me!) and the midwives on duty were very dismissive of my pain and by the time they got me into a delivery room (they were busy fro what I could tell as well), I was 5cm dilated and unable to have pain relief of any sort.

BUT to be fair to them, once they realised my DS's heart rate was dropping with each contraction I had (cos of the fast labour I guess), they got the locum, the paediatrician team in very quick and delivered DS safely. I have also heard they have one of the better premature babies unit around the area and when we did the tour, the special care unit did seem very good.

I think they are very supportive of homebirths (they seem to indicate they are trying to increase home birth rates in the area during my antenatal classes). Good luck!

I'm 20w pregnant with #1, living in Greenwich and assigned to a team of MWs based at QEH.

I discussed birthplans briefly with the first MW at my 10w appt; she was very in favour of homebirths, and is planning one herself (2 weeks ahead of me, so she won't be attending mine!).

At my 16w appt, I said I wanted a homebirth; the MW said I didn't need to decide yet, but that she'd make a note of it now and we would discuss the details at the home appt later in pregnancy. I got the impression that she was fully supportive and it wouldn't be an issue in theory (she asked a couple of questions about where we lived and what kind of accommodation, but nothing other than that).

I had an ob appt at QEH the week before last, as I have a heart condition, and she was also fully supportive of the plan for a home birth - in fact, said it would probably be better, in light of the heart condition.

So - I don't know what happens in practice, but certainly so far I haven't been made to feel that it will be an issue at all. I also got the impression that the midwives rather like planned homebirths, as they're less hectic than the overcrowded hospital! I had raised a couple of potential objections, which were quickly overruled - e.g. terraced house (response: you won't give a monkey's about the neighbours hearing when you're giving birth), possible mess (response: we throw a plastic sheet over everything, tape it halfway up the walls if you're worried, roll it all up at the end, no problem); issues with transferring (response: we'd call an ambulance at the first sign that anything was wrong, it would be with us within 10 mins, you'd be in the operating theatre within 20. We're trained to spot problems before you have them). I really didn't get the 'hmmm... well, it's your choice, but...' that I had been expecting.

So far I've had a crap experience of the hospital itself (failed D&C in Oct (retained products, necessitating a private D&C), 6 hours in A&E at 14w with this pregnancy, filthy loos in both areas) and I'm reluctant to go back. The MWs seem to fully understand my reluctance - the last one even wrote about the A&E experience in my notes, with the extra note: 'care received was substandard. Apologised!' I've not seen the antenatal or L&D rooms so can't talk about those.