Temporary change to home birthing service at UHDB
Due to current pressures affecting all areas within maternity services, we’ve made the difficult decision to suspend our home birthing service across Derbyshire and Staffordshire.
The safety of mothers and babies remains our priority and we need to base midwives across our hospital sites to ensure we provide safe services to all women in our care.
We recognise that this will be upsetting for women who have chosen to birth at home as their preferred option. Our midwives are contacting those women to discuss the other birthing options we have available.
Patti Paine, Director of Midwifery at UHDB, said: “Whilst Covid-19 restrictions are easing for the public, this is not the same for hospitals and we need to bring our skilled midwives together to continue to deliver safe care for our women at every step of their journey.
“Suspending the service is a difficult decision for us because birth place choice is really important to women and we want to facilitate that choice wherever possible. However, safety is our number one priority and on that basis we have made this difficult decision. We will continue to monitor the situation and will reopen our home birth service when it’s safe to do so.’’