Kettering General Hospital home birth service 'paused' after review highlights 'challenges'

Women will not be given the choice to have a KGH midwife attend them at home ‘until late spring’ and will either have to go into the Rockingham Wing maternity unit, travel elsewhere or go private.

But pregnant women under the care of Northampton General Hospital – part of UHN The University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (UHN) Group along with KGH, will still be able to access home births.

UHN chief nurse Julie Hogg said: “We have made the difficult decision to pause our home birth services, operating from Kettering General Hospital.

"The decision follows a review of our home birth services across UHN, which highlighted some challenges for the service.

“We are sorry for any disappointment this may cause. Our priority is the safety of the women, families and babies using our services, and supporting our colleagues to provide this care.

“We plan to pause the services until late spring to enable us to safely build a robust and strengthened service. In the meantime, we will continue to offer women and families personalised care plans.

"If you are due to have a baby with us and were thinking of opting for a home birth please contact your community midwife if you have any questions, they will be able to speak to you about your options.”

Those women who had opted for a home birth are being contacted and offered other ‘options’ including the use of birthing pool rooms – which run on a first come first served basis – and the midwife-led unit at KGH.

Of the 7,191 babies born in Northamptonshire in 2024, a total of 4,145 were delivered at Northampton, and 3,046 in Kettering, with two per cent (152) home births.

Under Northamptonshire Maternity Services guidelines, those choosing a home birth should be supported during labour with regular monitoring visits. The midwife then stays once labour is established until the baby is born. The midwife should stay at the home for a couple of hours to ‘ensure the mother and baby are well’.

One Kettering mum, Anna, opted to have a home birth with her first child in 2018 but was disappointed when she was told she would have to go to hospital.

She said: “It took me about eight times to get them to come out. They were very reluctant. When she did turn up, I was told the baby would be here in 10 minutes. Then I was told it was the end of her shift. I ended up in hospital with a c-section.”

Her second home birth experience was ‘amazing,’ having refused a hospital setting due to Covid restrictions and hiring a private ‘doula’.

She said: “My second baby’s birth was perfect. I wanted autonomy over my own body. They sent my angel of a midwife to my home afterwards. She was brilliant.

“My third home birth was calm. The lights were down. I had the people I wanted there.”

Women living in the Northampton area will still be able to access their home birth service.

In 2016, Baroness Julia Cumberlege, independent chairman of the National Maternity Review, published the Better Births report into improving outcomes of maternity services in England setting out a five year forward view for care.

She concluded that “women should be able to make decisions about the support they need during birth and where they would prefer to give birth, whether this is at home, in a midwifery unit or in an obstetric unit, after full discussion of the benefits and risks associated with each option.

In light of the report, the Local Maternity and Neonatal Systems (LMNS) were set up in 2017 by Northamptonshire Maternity Services. The LMNS Maternity Programme vision for maternity services, included ‘safer, kinder, personalised care for all birthing individuals, with informed decision-making and tailored support’.

It added that ‘trusts which supported more home births achieved better maternal outcomes compared with trusts which supported fewer home births’.