GIVING BIRTH IN LEWISHAM’S THREATENED MATERNITY WARD

East London Lines, January 2013
by Ellie Slee

A newborn baby’s first, silence-shattering cry is something that never leaves you. It’s a sound that rings through the corridors of Lewisham Hospital’s maternity unit, where four and a half thousand of London’s babies will be born in the next year alone.

There, mothers-to-be are placed in a relaxed environment where they are quietly cared for by committed staff. Though she conceded that giving birth is never pleasant, Sarah Atkinson, 35, of Honor Oak, described the midwifery-led unit where she gave birth as “a really nice, safe, comfortable environment designed after consultations with women who had given birth at Lewisham before.”

Alexandra Hill, 34, an ITV newsreader, gave birth to her daughter, Olivia, at Lewisham in 2011 and her son Alfie there in 2012. “I was looking into a home birth as the idea of a birth surrounded by doctors and machines scared me,” she says. “But I was also worried at the idea of not having that, if I needed it. So Lewisham was perfect, and is the most fantastic place to give birth.”

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