Mums who have given birth at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust are very happy with their care, according to a recent survey.

The national survey, commissioned by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), asked women across the country about the care they received during pregnancy, labour and birth. Our results rated us as one of the top performing trusts in the region.

Audrey Warren, head of midwifery, said “We are delighted that women are happy with many aspects of the services we provide to them during a special time in their lives. We’ve spent a lot of time developing our services over the past few years, investing £6million on developing a dedicated women and baby centre at Stoke Mandeville and, more recently, refurbishing Wycombe Birth Centre and investing in a range of birthing aids that enable natural movement during labour. We continue to welcome all feedback about our services which helps us to continually improve our services.”

Our midwives support movement during labour and encourage our mums-to-be to use our birthing pools and birthing balls to help ease pain and discomfort. We were really pleased that the survey revealed that many of our new mums felt they were given the freedom to move around during their labour.

We also encourage skin-to-skin contact between mum and baby as soon as possible to help with bonding and this was also recognised in the survey.

Audrey adds, “Whilst we are happy with the results of this survey, we recognise that there are some areas where we didn’t score as well as we would have liked and these are being addressed. Over the next year we are focussing on the care women receive in pregnancy from their local midwife and extending the information available about choosing their place of birth and increasing the breastfeeding support available.”

Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust provides a full complement of choices for women wishing to access our maternity service including homebirths, either of our midwife-led birth centres and our labour ward at Stoke Mandeville where mothers requiring more monitoring in labour can have their babies. For more information on your birth choices, please watch our video at www.buckshealthcare.nhs.uk/birthchoices Based on information supplied by Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.