Nottingham mums frustrated over suspension of home birth service

The Queen’s Medical Centre and City Hospital – both part of the Nottingham University Hospitals Trust (NUH) – both cut the home birth service in 2020 during the pandemic.

The service was then suspended in January this year.

The hospitals says recruitment is under way for a full home birth team who will provide support 24 hours a day.

The home birth group in Nottingham started in 2007 and its members say they want the full service reinstated as a “priority”.

The charity Birthrights says all NHS Trusts are expected to run a home birth service, but this is not guaranteed in law.

Maternity services at NUH are currently rated as ‘requires improvement’ by the healthcare watchdog.

At a hospital board meeting on March 14, Sharon Waliis, director of midwifery, said the trust is ‘confident that very soon we will be able to reopen the service again’.

Mum-of-three Jess Maguire has been a part of the home birth group since 2020.

She set up a petition in 2022 to bring back a full home birth service.

She said: “Women aren’t getting that choice at the moment and that is really frustrating.

“We’re in the dark all the time, we don’t get any communication.

"We’d just like to know that it’s a priority.

“I do understand and I don’t want women to be put into a position which isn’t safe.

“Any service would be better than none.”

Ms Maguire said getting a home birth is a ‘postcode lottery’ – with women in Leicestershire, for example, having access to a full service.

Sophie Fletcher, a clinical hypnotherapist and doula, said: “I find it so sad that this is probably one of the longest-running home birth groups and we haven’t got a home birth service.

“There is so much support for the service.

“A lot of the women I work with have had trauma and they don’t want to go back into hospitals.

“By having a home birth they are opting out of that. It’s a very courageous decision to make.”

Alison Stibbard, a mum of two, said she wanted a home birth for her oldest child.

She said: “I had a lot of birth fear so my way to counteract that was to to research as much as possible.

“It felt to me a home birth was the most logical way to birth, to dispel fear and stress.

“I wanted a home birth but it didn’t happen because there weren’t enough midwives to come out to me.”

Ms Wallis, added: “We’ve not been able to provide a full service for some time.

“We made a decision to suspend the service for now while we look at our staffing.

“We’ve got some positive news around that.

"We have a team leader specifically for the home birth team who has done a fantastic job in rallying the troops.

“There are a couple of things we want to do in terms of supporting staff and women to have a safe experience.”