"The perfect water birth"

Anything else?

My wife went into labour very quickly from first calling triage at 3am to arriving at the delivery suite at 8.30am and being 8cm dilated. We were able to have a water birth in the room with a fixed pool so this was fantastic. Our midwife did a fantastic job throughout by being totally in control of the birth whilst standing back and making it feel like a very natural and private birth. Advice and support was excellent with a lot of information from the midwife on progress of the baby, while i supported my wife. My wife delivered the baby in the water as everything went perfectly and she was able to spend a lot of time skin to skin with our new baby. My wife had two birthing partners, myself and her mother. It was great that we were all very included in the process with the midwife giving us all a lot of guidance throughout and allowing us a lot of time together after the birth and before going through to postnatal. It was also very refreshing for the staff to be laid back about visiting hours and having both birthing partners in the postnatal ward. It's great to see common sense applied to our situation. We were luckily to have a private room in postnatal so we could stay until the following day to give my wife as much support as possible with breast feeding. All staff were very accommodating and in no rush at all for us to leave as they wanted to ensure we were both confident and that my wife was comfortable breast feeding. The support was fantastic with all of the midwife's being very knowledgable and supportive. The team on the postnatal ward even came round dressed as santa at 12.30 on Christmas morning with presents for baby and mum and there was a brass band playing Christmas carols in the hall way. We chose Worcestershire Royal because it's facilities are to a high standard, it is spotlessly clean and the fact there is a lot of support available should anything go wrong during the birth. We were also very impressed at how nice all staff have been since our first scan, having a lot of time for all the questions we had, right through to waving goodbye to them as we left the hospital with our new baby. The staff certainly take a natural and modern approach to child birth and it was absolutely perfect for us.