Contact details
Email: rushey.ward@royalberkshire.nhs.uk
Address
Level 3 Maternity Block
Royal Berkshire Hospital
Craven Road
Reading
Berkshire
RG1 5AN
Related wards
Midwifery Led Service
If you are healthy and at low risk for complications you may choose to have your baby under our midwifery led service.
Our midwife led care birthing room is located on our delivery suite, and is equipped to support active birth in a calm and relaxed environment. The room has a birthing ball and active birthing furniture to provide comfort during labour. We can also support a pool birth in this environment (subject to availability)
You will be supported by our midwives throughout your labour and during the birth of your baby.
Unfortunately, we are having to undertake some essential building work to the maternity block and while this is happening, we have temporarily relocated our Rushey Ward. We are still offering pregnant women the choice to have a midwife led birth by our Rushey midwife team but have moved this care environment to be based within our delivery suite on level 3.
At the moment we do not know when Rushey Ward will be open and we expect the essential building works will take some considerable time. We will communicate when the unit is reopened.
We understand choosing a place to give birth is important and you should feel relaxed and safe. We’re sorry we are not able to offer you our Rushey Ward for your birth but we can still offer you a midwife led service in our Rushey room on delivery suite.
You will be cared for by the same excellent and experienced team of midwives and the room will have the same facilities, birthing bed, birthing balls and ensuite. The room aims to look and feel as similar to our Rushey Ward as possible. We also have a pool on delivery suite so when requested we will do our best to facilitate this option if not already in use.
You can discuss your options with your midwife and they will listen to what type of birth you would like. These are the options available:
o Midwife led care birth
o Delivery Suite - where you have consultants (doctors) on hand
o Theatre Births - for elective and unplanned caesareans or instrumental birth
o Homebirth, with our experience homebirth team.
New fire regulations came into place at the beginning of this year and this has changed the classification of the maternity block. We are now working on fire safety precautions to ensure the building meets all the new regulations and this requires some essential work and improvements.
While this is happening, we will have to move some of our services from the building to other parts of the hospital and this includes Rushey Ward. We are working as quickly as possible to carry out these works and expect it to take 12 – 18 months for the works to be complete to return our services to the block.
The building is safe to use, and we are putting in mitigations to ensure we can continue to provide safe and excellent care to all our patients.
Due to the required essential works on the maternity building we have had to adjust some of the birthing services we offer. This means we can only accommodate one pool room for birthing women but for the majority of women they will still have the available option to deliver in the pool room if they wish.
We understand some women who visited our Rushey Ward open tours will be disappointed they can no longer have their baby on the unit but we aim to still provide the same experience through our Rushey midwife team on delivery suite.
