"Maternity - Dacre, CLU and Gloucester Ward July..."

We spent much of Saturday and Sunday 23rd/24th July on Dacre Ward, delivered in the Consultant Led Unit and then spent two nights on Gloucester Ward. Overall the quality of care was very good indeed, upheld by the consistently excellent quality of the midwives, particularly on CLU and Gloucester, who provide far more value than their pay-grade. We were moved to CLU as induction by drip was required, but we were very lucky to get an absolutely outstanding midwife who made a huge difference to our experience during a challenging delivery. The midwife genuinely cared about our wishes for as natural a birth as possible in addition to managing the safety of the process, and we think did an excellent job of balancing the two. The midwife made the effort to move us to the pool room when it became available after a few hours and despite a very long pushing phase gave us the best chance of successful delivery without intervention, for which we were very grateful. The midwife gave their entire 12-hour night shift and an extra 2 hours absolutely non-stop to achieve this with us and make sure we were OK afterwards. Staff such as these midwives who clearly genuinely care a great deal about doing their job well and about the people they are caring for are an absolute credit to the NHS and the main reason why it's an institution to be proud of (they certainly don't do it for the money!). Please give the midwife a medal, they deserve it! The doctor's occasional presence during delivery was also kept discreet but it was reassuring. The only negative parts of our whole experience were those typical of inevitable resource limitations in the NHS - limited access to doctors/consultants on a busy weekend (e.g. arrive for induction at 8am, finally go for induction at 8pm) and ageing facilities on Dacre & Gloucester (no air-con on hot sunny days makes it quite uncomfortable), and a lack of explaining patient choice regarding induction timing after PROM to us in triage and on Dacre. However the positives really outweighed the negatives primarily because of the outstanding care provided by our midwife during delivery and by those who subsequently helped us through feeding difficulties on Gloucester Ward.