These midwives were superb! (From Andover Advertiser)

These midwives were superb!

4:14pm Thursday 28th January 2010

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I WRITE with reference to your headline in last Friday’s Advertiser.At first glance I thought you were talking about the experience of my wife and I, especially as we too had a birth pool set up and ready to be used in a home birth before coming up against Winchester Hos-pital’s bureaucracy.

My daughter was born on 3 January and my wife was in labour through the night.

I called the number around 4am which was diverted to Winchester where I was told by a rather officious person that all home births in Andover had been cancelled and we would have to go to Winchester.I respectfully pointed out that I was not asking for her permission merely keeping them informed of my wife's progress and, if that was the case, as we had booked a home birth from the very beginning, it would have been courteous to inform those people affected.

Her response was to tell me that they deal with 3,000 births a year and could not be expected to call them all!

If I had not been sleep deprived and stressed I would have had the wherewithal to point out there can't have been more than about 10 people wanting a home birth in Andover who would have been due two weeks either side of that weekend.

In any case my eldest daughter was asleep upstairs and we had no intention of coming in to Winchester.

My wife's waters broke at 7:55 am and it became apparent that things were suddenly speeding up so I called again, this time emphasizing that I would like some assistance sooner rather than later.

Despite the earlier call insisting that nobody would be available to come out until Monday 4 January two fabulous midwives were with us within 20 minutes.

In fairness to Winchester a midwife did stay on the line until they arrived.

My daughter was born within seconds of them arriving (they didn't even get time to remove their coats!) On talking to the midwives after the birth it became apparent that although their shift did not start until 8am they had given their mobile numbers to WInchester so that if a situation such as ours happened they would come in early (See I told you they were fabulous).

I guess Winchester does not want to pay the overtime if they call them out early though!

I would like to make it clear that throughout the births of both my daughters, Andover Birth Centre and the midwives working there have been nothing short of fantastic.

Perhaps the reason that Winchester seems so intent on trying to close it down is because the level of service shown to expectant and new mothers sets expectations high and in the unfortunate circumstance that somebody from Andover ends up being dealt with by Winchester they are left sorely disappointed with the experience.

The sooner Winchester stops stealing Andover's midwives and lets them get back to working at our fantastic birth centre the better it will be for expectant mothers.

Ben Parsons, Weyhill Road, Andover.

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