Birth Centre
St. Mary's Hospital- London

Active Birth Pools Supplied:
2 Deluxe Water Birth Pools

Construction work on a £1.2 million state-of-the-art Birth Centre at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington will begin this Monday (3 September 2007).

The unit, due to open next spring, will provide a comfortable, safe and homely environment in which women with straightforward pregnancies can give birth naturally and drug-free, with support from midwives but in a less clinical atmosphere than a traditional labour ward.

Each woman will have her own bedroom with en-suite bathroom, a double bed, mats, beanbags and hammocks, as well as a TV and CD player. It means that, after the birth, the whole family can relax together in privacy and welcome the new arrival. The Birth Centre will be equipped to the highest design standards and two of the rooms will also have birth pools so that women can enjoy the pain-relieving aspects of warm water.

The new unit will be located in a converted ward on the ground floor of the hospital’s Cambridge Wing –just one floor below the main maternity ward –so that women using the Birth Centre will have rapid access to medical care if problems arise during delivery.

The Birth Centre will give local women more choice about how and where to have their babies. It will be suitable for up to 30 per cent of deliveries at St Mary’s, although women will be able to choose whether to have their babies in the Birth Centre or on the maternity ward. Over time, it is expected that up to 1,000 women a year will have their babies in the new Birth Centre.

The centre will also enable more women to give birth at St Mary’s, the first maternity unit in London to be awarded Level 3 CNST (Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts) accreditation for safe practices and effective risk management in maternity services. In 2005/6, more than 3,600 women gave birth at St Mary’s; another 200 who had hoped to have their babies there had to be referred to other maternity units because of insufficient capacity.

Head of Midwifery Lynne Pacanowski said: “The concept of a midwife-led unit, which has the full support of the obstetricians, is such an exciting development for our maternity services. It will be a wonderful place where midwives will be able to offer women the full benefit of their expertise, and support them to experience birth as a joyful, family occasion.”