Kings vs Lewisham for having a baby

[malumbu]

I haven't had time to wade through the decent discussion on the site about the threatened closure of at least parts of Lewisham. I was at the march on Saturday and my instinct is that it is all wrong. I also had the pleasure of working for DH (in another field) and there has been no example in recent history of a whole ministerial team being sacked. Burstowe for letting the cock up of public health and NHS reform happening on his Lib Dem patch, and Lansley for the "no top down reorganisation of the NHS" about turn. So then they get the evil enforcer in Hunt.

Anyway rant over. Back to instinct. We had child number one at a relatively new Lewisham maternity ward. The NCT told us that the NHS would tie the mother into some archaic birthing position and fill her full of drugs before relenting to the scapel. They were actually pleased we had a birthing plan. Sadly the radio wasn't working so the father could not listen to TMS. The public maternity ward was madness with TVs blaring and even a church service at one point. But we have erased this from the collective memories.

Fast forward three years and a move of house and Kings was now the selected maternity ward. No thanks we will have him/her at home. Southwark NHS were fine, and there were no complications (or we would have been down to the hospital liek a flash before we debate the risks of home births). Just didn's seem as nice at Kings as at Lewisham (and we use the former as our usual hospital for a number of relatively routine appointments). Maybe it was the difficult parking that put us off rather than the chaos of numerous wards crammed into a small space.