Maternity unit rules on partners staying

Heyy, yes this was the same process when I had my son 9 years ago. So they’ve had these rules in place for some time. I wished someone had told me this beforehand because when I gave birth to him at 11.50pm, my partner had to leave & we knew nothing about the whole visiting hour thing. For first time mums this is quite sad really. I’ve opted for a home birth this time & that was one of my reasons. Fingers crossed we can stay home!!

Depends on the hospital. My partner was able to stay 24/7. We ended up staying in for four weeks and he never left.

Mines the same.
Say for example I give birth at 8pm,
Visiting ends at 9pm so when they move me to a ward approx 11pm he will have to go home until 9am. Absolutely awful xx

It depends on your NHS trust. Mine also has no overnight stays once you are in the post natal ward - it seems to be very common. But to be fair, I’d rather he go home anyway and get some sleep so he can look after me and the baby the next day.

My hospital has all private en-suite rooms on the maternity ward so that might be why they allow partners to stay. Each room has a fold out bed. The only open bay ward we have is for c-section recovery and as far as I know, partners are only allowed on that part during visiting hours

My hospital allows partners to stay after the birth. They don't really recommend before but they also said they wouldn't refuse them, it's just a normal chair in most of the rooms so have to take that into consideration.

I think most hospitals are like that, mine is anyway. Once on the postnatal ward they are chucked out after 8pm. They are building a new maternity hospital though to replace the current one which will be all individual rooms so I imagine then they will let partners stay. The current hospital is wards so honestly I wouldn’t want all that extra people there during the night.

You can get your midwife to request your partner to stay at all times. Mine did this for me and said it shouldn’t be a problem as I suffer with anxiety and mental health so would actually benefit from having my partner stay. The only time I was told he couldn’t is if one of the side rooms is already being used then he would have to go home but that’s unlikely x

All hospitals are different. The hospital I'm giving birth in, you can have your birth partner there from 8am-11pm.

This happened to me last year, baby was born at 7pm and we had the room in the labour ward for a couple of hours then when I got transferred to the shared ward for overnight my husband had to leave and come back 8am the next day. They’ve changed the rules this year so he can stay but I’m thinking of sending him home anyway as it worked well that he could get a good night sleep last time so that when I got home I could sleep myself (the shared wards are very noisy as you can imagine with newborns crying through the night!)

Most trusts work in the way that partner will have to adhere to visiting hours. Labour wards of course have other mums and babies on it so I've heard they're not the most comfortable. Homebirth is in the comfort of your own home with no other mamas and their babies and should a need arise, you'll be transferred to the hosp. But if no need arises then you could have baby in the comfort of your home. Hope that helps x