"Amazing maternity experience"

I cannot thank or praise the midwives at Inverurie Community Maternity Unit enough for delivering my son and for the exceptional care afterwards. I really wanted a midwife-led birth and hoped to be able to use the birthing pools, so my first choice was AMH if they were available, and if they weren’t we knew we wanted to go to Inverurie. I still feel like I’m on such a high after having the most wonderful, positive experience at Inverurie.

I wasn’t sure if I was in active labour or not, having not experienced a spontaneous labour with my firstborn, so I went to Inverurie to be greeted by midwife Julie who made us feel so welcome. I expected to be sent home but I was 8cm dilated, so we were taken to one of the birthing rooms straight away where Julie let us both get comfortable. From there Julie encouraged me to follow my instincts and breathe through contractions as long as I could, provided a birthing ball and helped me move into different positions to help baby move down. She was so intuitive, friendly, involved me in all decisions and talked me through everything she was doing, and I felt so comfortable and safe in her presence. The atmosphere was so calm and peaceful, and I would never have believed I could be coached through labour and manage to deliver a baby with no intervention and using gas and air.

The baby came quickly at the pushing stage and midwife, Jenni, joined us, and although things happened very quickly at that point, there was no panic, things remained so calm. He was delivered and passed to me while still attached to his cord and it was just a magical moment I’ll never forget. We did lots of skin to skin and managed to start breastfeeding before moving into the postnatal room. It was such a lovely place to recuperate and was again so peaceful, and it was so nice to have my husband able to spend as much time with us as possible. I was worried, with covid, that there would be more restrictions on that.

Our first postnatal midwife visits were from Sophie, who had been my antenatal midwife with my eldest, and it was so lovely to see a familiar, friendly face again. I found all the visits so thorough and reassuring. The midwives scheduled extra calls and even took a panicked call from us on Christmas Day, when we had concerns over our baby’s vomiting. Jenni extended our midwife care beyond the 10-day discharge which I really appreciated, and also referred us to the infant feeding team at AMH for additional support. Within 24 hours I’d had a video call and my baby’s feeding assessed. Karen was so helpful and gave me tips on ways to feed, to help alleviate my baby’s reflux symptoms. It’s a brilliant service which I’d recommend to any new parent who was concerned about feeding.

The midwife unit at Inverurie is a fantastic facility with a truly wonderful, caring team of midwives. I hope I’ve not missed anyone out (I’m so sleep deprived and rubbish with names at the best of times!). I just want to say a huge thanks again to Julie and Jenni for looking after us during labour and to Sophie, Julie, Jenni and Lisa for their attentive visits in the days afterwards. And also thanks to the midwives and student midwives I saw during antenatal appointments, we think you are all amazing.