Sarah was born at the Maternitat hospital and although I had an episiotomy and she was pulled out with forceps in the end, we felt happy with how we were treated. It was pretty slow and they didn’t rush us into doing anything we didn’t want: my plan to have a natural birth didn’t quite work out, but it was our decision to have the epidural in the end rather than the hospital staff. We paid about 80 euros for a room to ourselves which was worth every cent as Phil, Sarah’s dad, could stay quite comfortably on a sofa bed rather than on the floor. There’s not always one free but its worth asking when you first arrive at the hospital. The only thing that I wasn’t too happy with was the conflicting advice on breastfeeding and staff didn’t really have time to help too much. If we have another one I’d be happy to have it here, either at home or the Maternitat again. (Elinor Ridler)
Sarah was born at the Maternitat hospital and although I had an episiotomy and she was pulled out with forceps in the end, we felt happy with how we were treated. It was pretty slow and they didn’t rush us into doing anything we didn’t want: my plan to have a natural birth didn’t quite work out, but it was our decision to have the epidural in the end rather than the hospital staff. We paid about 80 euros for a room to ourselves which was worth every cent as Phil, Sarah’s dad, could stay quite comfortably on a sofa bed rather than on the floor. There’s not always one free but its worth asking when you first arrive at the hospital. The only thing that I wasn’t too happy with was the conflicting advice on breastfeeding and staff didn’t really have time to help too much. If we have another one I’d be happy to have it here, either at home or the Maternitat again. (Elinor Ridler)