Maternity care at Christmas
At Christmas everything stops, doesn’t it? Schools close, the postie doesn’t come and if you’re lucky, you get some time off work. Generally everyone is happy to wait until the new year before normal life resumes. Everyone with one major exception - babies of course! If you’re due around this time, or even just wondering what the cover would be around hospitals in case you need anything, we have the lowdown on how maternity care functions over the holidays. The good news is, they are there for you!
Hospitals and Maternity Units within the NHS run a 24/7 service, 365 days a year. The staffing over the Christmas period on Birth Centres, Delivery Suites, and Homebirth Teams remains the same as if it were not a major holiday. So if you need to speak to anyone, go through the normal channels of communication - that is the emergency line of your midwife or the maternity unit triage line (save these numbers in your and your birth partner’s phones!). Or of course there are the usual NHS services of 111 and 999.
Additional services may be more restricted, however. For example, there is not likely to be an elective Caesarean Section list running on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and, often due to maternal choice, the number of planned inductions falling on these days is likely to be lower.
If you still require an urgent induction or emergency C-Section, these services will be running as normal and will not be impacted.
Community services run at a more limited capacity over the Christmas period, so only ‘essential’ visits will be undertaken, such as your first visit after leaving hospital, or the day 5 screening visit. Other visits are likely to be moved to the days surrounding Christmas day and Boxing Day, but again, often this is also down to maternal choice.
Visiting hours are sometimes adjusted on Christmas day to allow increased family-time. Some trusts will drop all visiting restrictions and have 24 hour open visiting access, this is something worth asking your midwife about if you are anticipating a hospital-stay over Christmas.
Many of the staff will be celebrating Christmas with you, as opposed to their own families, so there is usually a very nice, festive atmosphere over the Christmas period, with some trusts even serving up Christmas dinner and a visit from Father Christmas.
There is often a level of excitement and a ‘buzz’ surrounding the birth of a Christmas baby.
Hopefully this makes you feel at ease that whenever your baby chooses to make an appearance, care is available to you. So you can relax and wait for your baby, but maybe get your wrapping done early and perhaps consider a ‘Plan B’ for a Christmas Day for any other children in case you happen to be an in-patient!