"Such an amazing maternity service!"

Having had a pretty intrusive and unnecessarily interventionist experience at another hospital in the North West with my first baby and similar poor care at the same hospital throughout my second pregnancy I was utterly delighted with the service at Stepping Hill.

We moved into the area only 1 week before my due date leaving behind threats of early induction from my previous consultant (which I was convinced wasn't needed). Everyone we dealt with at Stepping Hill was calm, reassuring and most importantly willing to listen to and consider my own feelings about my pregnancy and birth.

The consultant we saw applied a wonderful common sense approach and was frankly incredulous about the care we had previously experienced. When I did finally concede to induction at 14 days over (not 38 weeks as insisted upon elsewhere) the care was amazing, the staff were attentive, reassuring, caring and clearly open and happy to reduce intervention wherever possible. This played a huge part in my labour being calm, short and relatively pain free (unlike my previous experience).

I was allowed a water birth, unheard of in most hospitals when you're being induced, and this resulted in an incredibly fast delivery (I pushed for only 8 minutes). The aftercare was great and, on my own wishes, we were home within 18 hours of delivery. However, it was made very clear that if we wanted to stay in longer we were very welcome.

One thing to remember though, maternity departments can be busy and stretched. This is clearly a very busy department but the staff were still kind, helpful and attentive!

Clearly the whole ethic of the department is one of calmness, common sense and making sure the woman (and Partner's) experience is a positive one.