WARWICK Hospital is looking to provide a home from home for expectant mums with the opening of a new £1.5 million birthing unit – but they need your help.
South Warwickshire Foundation Trust, which runs Warwick, Leamington, Stratford and Shipston hospitals, is planning to open a midwife-led unit early next year offering parents the chance to give birth in less clinical and more homely and comfortable surroundings.
With some 2,500 women giving birth annually at the Lakin Road hospital’s Swan Ward maternity department or with the hospital’s community home-birth teams, the unit will mean more choice, including the option of using one of the four birthing pool rooms.
There will also be separate areas for patients to relax in and a private garden.
But to make the unit ‘fabulous’ the trust is calling on local residents and businesses for help. They want to raise an additional £200,000 for ‘little luxuries’ such as special baby cribs instead of plastic cots and furnishing to make the unit a ‘home from home’.
They also need to buy two additional birthing pools, which cost around £12,000 each.
Director of development Jayne Blacklay told The Observer: “This is a really exciting development for maternity services in south Warwickshire. We recognise how important it is for women to choose where they give birth.
“Building a Midwifery Led Unit at Warwick Hospital supports choice, with the added reassurance of a full obstetric unit on site.”
A similar appeal was recently run at Stratford Hospital – currently the focus of a near complete £22million overhaul – which
raised £1million for non standard extras such as iPads and special chairs.
The new maternity unit will provide services to women across the south Warwickshire, and as far as Redditch, Rugby and Solihull, and will also have facilities for partners to stay overnight.
With doctors and consultants still working at the hospital’s Swan Ward, which will remain open, and an accident and emergency department on site, any complications can receive prompt treatment.
Call 01926 495321 ext 8049 or email [email protected] to contact the fund-raising department.
