St Mary's Hospital, London

I am going to start featuring pictures and details of birthing rooms which have been designed in an innovative way to facilitate physiological birth.

I am hoping the new birthing center rooms in Liverpool (the Big Push project) will incorporate some of these ideas.

The first hospital I want to feature is St Mary's in London. The midwife-led St Mary’s birth centre opened its doors on June 4 2008 following four years of planning and preparation.

The center is open to women with low risk pregnancies.

All five bedrooms are en-suite, with a double bed, mats, birth stools and hammock as well as a TV for the whole family to relax together and welcome their new arrival. Three of the bedrooms are fitted with corner baths and the others with a birth pool and wet room.

When we interviewed women at the 'A Space to give birth in event in FACT' one of the issues that came up was the difficulty in transition from one physical space to another, having to walk down busy public corridors in the second stage of labour or transition to get in a pool.

As you can see in the picture above, St Mary's have en suite wet rooms with pools, so women can get in or out of the pool as they choose.

I also love the hammock which women can use to hang onto, this technique of 'dangling' is described on the Spinning babies website as 'allowing the pelvis to have the most mobility of any technique' and the "baby come out" position, so named by Penny Simkin.

I think the pull down double beds are a FANTASTIC idea. With the beds up, there is lots of space to move around and there is less of that sense of a bed dominating the room. The bed is also low to the ground so may feel more 'Safe' than beds which are high up off the ground, in the Cork birthing room that I mentioned in a previous post, whilst I love the decor (much more like an expensive spa than a hospital) the bed does not look as comfortable or welcoming as St Mary's!

The beds at St Mary's are also Doubles, which means there's room for Dad too! This that they are valuing fathers and the creation of the family unit.

This takes on board the recommendations of the Fatherhood Institute (The Dad Deficit: The Missing Piece of the Maternity Jigsaw)

Their research found that-

• 70% of men and women (asked) agree that dads should be able to stay overnight in hospital with their partner when their baby is born.