In Great Western Hospital’s Delivery Suite, we are trying to promote normality alongside safety. We have a new Pool room located on the Delivery Suite to enable “high-risk” women choice when it comes to birth.

When the pool is not in use, this room still needs to be used for labouring women and women post birth; a multi-functional birth bed is required in these scenarios.

As the birthing pool takes up a considerable amount of space within this room, there is limited room for the standard delivery bed.

The Delivery Suite would like to offer patients in this room the benefits of using a “birthing bed” – of the same type used successfully in our White Horse Birth Centre for mums with a lower risk of complications.

Promoting an Active Birth

The Croyde Medical AVE 2 birthing bed has a smaller footprint than a standard bed, but also has multiple functions which promote normality in labour; it maximises the floor space to promote active movement, use of mats and birth balls. It ensures that the bed is not the focal point and removes the presence of visible stirrups to help normalise the birth environment.

The bed moves into lots of positions to support women in upright and active positions (kneeling/all fours/lateral position) during labour, but also facilitating use of stirrups when required (e.g. for instrumental birth or suturing). It can also be used to evacuate women from the pool in an emergency.

Benefits

Feedback has demonstrated that high-risk women feel that their choice is restricted; we regularly have high-risk women asking to birth on the White Horse Birth Centre and have to decline their request for safety reasons. We want to create a similar environment and birth facilities on the Delivery Ward as on the White Horse Birth Centre.

A birthing bed would:-

• Create choice to help improve patient experience
• Support upright and active positions during labour, which in turn facilitates natural birth
• Give a less clinical appearance (improving the release of oxytocin & facilitating natural birth)
• Maximise floor space to enable mobility during labour
• Be used for different types of birth (natural/instrumental) and suturing