Water baby for Norfolk hospital’s new birthing unit

The new Midwifery-led Birthing Unit at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital opened its doors today and the first baby was delivered by water birth this morning.

Baby Hetti Griffiths, weighing 7lbs and 3ozs, was delivered by water birth at 0919 to Trudi, aged 31. The new Midwifery-led Birthing Unit offers women a home-from-home environment in which to have a natural birth if the delivery is expected to be low-risk.

The new unit is on the hospital’s Blakeney ward and has four birthing rooms named Lavender, Lotus, Jasmine and Rose. The new birthing unit has a total of three birthing pools and cost £400,000 to build.

Baby Hetti was born in the new unit’s Jasmine room. Mum Trudi, from Wymondham, said: “My birth plan was to have a water birth and I knew from my community midwife that the birthing unit was due to open soon. It’s my first baby and I’m just very pleased that I had the water birth I wanted. It’s given me a real sense of achievement.”

Midwife Molly O’Brien, who provided one-to-one care throughout the labour, said: “From a first time mum’s point of view she did very well. It was a completely natural birth.” Trudi’s community midwife Lorraine Skipper was also on hand when Hetti was born.

Dad Grant, 31, brought Trudi in at around 5am this morning and was impressed by the new unit. “Having the midwife there all the time was fantastic and, from my perspective, knowing that down the corridor you have the delivery unit and all the back up was reassuring”.

The philosophy of the new midwifery-led birthing unit is to give one-to-one care and support to women throughout the process of birth naturally and without intervention. Midwives on the unit are also trained to do the paediatric checks needed before babies can go home.

To mark baby Hetti’s arrival as the birthing unit’s very first delivery a special presentation was made by Head of Midwifery Glynis Moore and Community Midwifery Manager Pam Sizer. They presented Hetti, Trudi and Grant with a shawl and booties knitted by a midwife and a silver Noah’s Ark money box.