Maternity

The information here will  cover all aspects of the services we offer, including pregnancy, birth and postnatal care, both in the hospital and community.

Visiting / opening times

  • Seven days a week 08:00 AM — 08:00 AM

Accessibility:

For another, unlisted language, please head to https://translate.google.co.uk/

If you have any urgent pregnancy concerns please continue to call our 24 hour triage service on 01302 642711/2 (you can also call 07720173885).

We provide care for women and families to help achieve a positive transition from conception to parenthood. The maternity team is committed to helping all women to have a happy and healthy pregnancy and a safe birth of their baby. The service runs smoothly from the community to the hospital to meet the individual needs of women and their families. We aim to support all women to make informed decisions about what they want and need from their maternity care whilst also ensuring a positive maternity experience.

The Trust has two maternity units, each providing midwifery led care, with the option of a home birth service for low risk women. Please ask a community midwife about the option of a home birth and she will be pleased to discuss this in detail with you. ‘Maternity Team Care’ with a consultant obstetrician for women needing additional care is also available.

Antenatal care is provided in the community setting, in GP surgeries, at home or in one of the four hospitals:

  • Doncaster Women’s Hospital
  • Bassetlaw Hospital
  • Mexborough Montagu Hospital
  • Retford Hospital

Individuals can choose to book their pregnancy at either Doncaster Royal Infirmary’s Women and Children’s Hospital or Bassetlaw Hospital. There are no birthing facilities at Mexborough Montagu or Retford Hospitals.

If you would like to see statistical information about births at either hospital, you can find it here. In addition, you can find information on the standards of quality and safety at the hospital by visiting the Care Quality Commission (CQC) website at http://www.cqc.org.uk.

Visiting 

Please click here.

Just found out you are pregnant?

If you have had a positive pregnancy test, you can self-refer to our Maternity Services by registering on mypregnancynotes.com – https://www.mypregnancynotes.com/.  Once you have  completed the pregnancy registration form, it will automatically go to our Maternity Records Department so that you can be added to our Maternity System. Our Community Midwifery Team will be automatically notified of this. and will arrange your booking appointment within 2 weeks, for which you will be sent an appointment letter.  The new ”My Pregnancy Notes” has a wealth of health advice and serves as your personal maternity records that you can add entries to – such as your personalised care plan.

If you have registered on mypregnancynotes.com for a previous pregnancy and need to let us know about a new pregnancy, please log back in to your account and select “new pregnancy” from the “My Account” menu option.  On clicking the new pregnancy button you will be given the registration form to complete with the new pregnancy details.  Once completed this will automatically be sent to our Maternity Services team.

Positive pregnancy test? Don’t delay, please book to see a midwife before 10 weeks.

The benefits of timely maternity care are as follows:

  • Information and suppot
  • Screening mothers for infection
  • Arrange additional investigations
  • Starting beneficial treatments
  • Stop medications unsafe in pregnancy
  • Screening baby

Self Referral 

If you are unable to complete the self-referral on mypregnancynotes, you can call the maternity records department om 01302 642814 who can complete the referral on your behalf.

Parent Education Programme

We welcome women, partners, birth partners, family and grandparents at all our classes.  The classes are free and include a wide range of topics including birth, life after birth, feeding your baby, fourth trimester, introduction to hypnobirthing, induction of labour, vaginal birth after caesarean and multiple birth.   If you would like more information on what is available or details how to book on a course please click here.

Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate

Supporting you after a distressing experience (an adverse outcome) during your maternity and/or neonatal care.

If you had your maternity and/or neonatal care in South Yorkshire or Bassetlaw, who is your Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate (MNISA)?

Abbey Harris

Who can Abbey support?

  • Abbey might be able to support you if:
    • your baby died before or during labour, after more than 24 weeks of pregnancy (known as stillbirth).
    • your baby died within 28 days of being born.
    • the person who gave birth died.
    • you had a hysterectomy (your womb was removed) within 6 weeks of giving birth, and you did not expect this to happen.
    • you were cared for on the Intensive Care Unit or High Dependency Unit, and you did not expect this to happen.
    • you were told your baby has or might have a brain injury.
  • It doesn’t matter if this happened recently or some time ago.
  • You don’t need to be sure that something went wrong during the care of you or your loved one.
  • Abbey will help make sure your voice is heard. She will make sure that you are supported.
  • You don’t have to use Abbey’s service if you don’t want to, and you can stop contact with Abbey at any time without giving a reason.

How you can contact Abbey:

Abbey’s service is free. She can arrange for an interpreter if needed.

Call or text 07811 796494

Email syicb.advocate@nhs.net

You can also speak to any health care worker involved in your maternity or neonatal care. They can ask Abbey to contact you.

Abbey can support you by:

  • finding the best people for you to speak to about your experience. She can come to meetings with you.
  • explaining ways you can find out more about what happened during your care.
  • helping you to make sense of how hospitals might look at what happened.
  • helping you to tell someone you are unhappy about your care, and/or that you want to ask more questions.
  • finding more support for you if you need it.

Abbey can give you information about other services if she thinks they are better placed to help you.

Will Abbey tell other people what you say?

  • What you choose to tell Abbey is confidential. This means she won’t share what you say to her with anyone else unless you say she can.
  • If Abbey is worried about your safety, or someone else’s safety, she would have to tell someone what you shared with her. Even then, Abbey would talk about this with you first.
  • Sometimes, one of Abbey’s team might help her to check if there are any messages from you that she needs to reply to. This person must follow the same rules as Abbey does around sharing your information.

More about Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocates (MNISAs)

  • Abbey does not work for any of the hospitals in South Yorkshire or Bassetlaw. This means she is independent of them. Abbey works for the NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (SY ICB). They are in charge of all care which happens in your area.
  • The MNISA role is part of a new plan across England which will run until March 2025. After this, the NHS will look at whether the plan has been helpful to those who have had distressing experiences during their maternity and/or neonatal care.
  • If Abbey is still supporting you in March 2025, she will work out a new plan with you and her team. They will make sure you carry on getting the support you need.
  • The plan to introduce MNISAs was put into place because of important reports (like the Ockenden Review) in some parts of England. These reports show that those who had distressing experiences in their maternity and/or neonatal care in the past were not always heard. Care did not always get better, and this needs to change.

What happens if you are unhappy with the MNISA service?

For more information about the South Yorkshire Maternity and Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate, please visit: https://southyorkshire.icb.nhs.uk/MNISA

Further support

You can follow the Trust’s Doncaster and Bassetlaw Maternity Services Facebook page, which is administrated by qualified Midwives at the Trust. Please click here.

Managing your appointments

You can check, book, and manage your hospital appointments quickly and securely using the NHS App. This includes viewing referral letters, test results, and other useful information about your care. To find out more, visit our NHS App page.

Waiting for your appointment?

While you’re waiting to be seen, it’s important to look after your health and wellbeing. Our Waiting Well page has advice and support to help you stay well, including guidance on what to do if your symptoms change or you start to feel worse.

Royal College of Obstetricians (RCOG) and Gynaecologists Report 2016

In 2016 we invited the RCOG to assess our Maternity services and provide external advice on where improvements could be made. The summary of the report and recommendations, which has been completed, can be found below:

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