Meet our new homebirth team at Whipps Cross
Women who have a low-risk pregnancy are now able to be referred to our homebirth team if birthing at home is something they prefer.
The service was re-introduced at Whipps Cross Hospital at the beginning of 2023 hoping to support those women who are keen to go for this option when giving birth.
“We decided to re-launch the homebirth service as our previous team, which was very similar but facilitated all types of births not just homebirths, was no longer sustainable, so this was a way to keep providing continuity of care service for pregnant women who want to birth at home”, explains Tara O'Sullivan, homebirth team leader.
Amongst some of the things the homebirth team support pregnant with, these include providing antenatal and postnatal appointments at home, process new referrals as well as being on-call for women who go into labour.
The team, who is currently Tara and her colleague Laura, is also planning to launch homebirth set-up classes and a new ‘Meet the midwife’ zoom sessions later this month. They are also planning to recruit two more midwives to help with the delivery of the service.
Tara advises that any pregnant women can get referred to the homebirth team.
“Homebirths are particularly suitable for women that are low risk, so if there are high-risk women wanting to birth at home, they will need to have a discussion with the obstetric team and the consultant midwife before referring to our service.”
Since the launch of the service, the team have had 27 referrals, and out of the nine women that have been due since January, they have had two homebirths where the team was present and three births where the babies decided to arrive before we could get there/the mum decided to birth at home without a midwife. Four births took place in the maternity unit from either staff shortages or a change in risk factor where a homebirth was no longer recommended.
If a patient is interested in home birthing as an option to give birth, they can speak to their midwife if they want to refer to the service, or they can get in touch with the home birthing team directly via email at: bartshealth.wxhomebirth@nhs.net