Maternity

Maternity

Welcome to Wye Valley NHS Trust maternity service

This section is designed to support you through your pregnancy, birth and beyond, with up to date, evidence based information to enable you to make informed choices throughout your maternity journey.

A warm welcome to our Maternity department and congratulations on the beginning of your journey into parenthood. 

As a maternity team, we work together to provide women and babies with the best possible care and a healthy and positive birthing outcome for all. We believe in an equitable service for all women and follow compliance with national directives and agenda’s to facilitate patient safety. Our maternity service cares for low and high risk women across a large and diverse demographic area.  

The Maternity service consists of the early pregnancy assessment unit, maternity triage, delivery suite (inclusive of obstetric theatre and water birth facilities), maternity ward (antenatal and postnatal care), community midwifery service (including home births), antenatal clinic and day assessment facilities. The maternity service team consists of an associate director of midwifery, three midwifery matrons, senior specialist midwives and coordinators, midwives and maternity support workers, health care assistants, housekeepers and ward clerks who support the administration of these areas.   

This website includes information on what to expect in terms of your care throughout pregnancy, birth and postnatally.  This includes who to contact when you have questions or concerns, how to feedback to us including when you want to celebrate the care you have received or where you think we could make improvements. 

The information on these pages has been provided by our midwifery team with the aim of providing you with evidence based information to support you making informed choices throughout your maternity journey.   If at any point, you need further support with this information, have questions, queries or concerns, need this provided in a different language and/or support with the accessibility of this information, please contact your midwife - we are here to help you.  Our friendly team looks forward to meeting you and your family and giving you the best possible care, as you welcome your new addition(s). 

How was your maternity care? You may be invited to take part in 2026 Maternity Survey

We always strive to provide a high standard of care for you and your baby and to ensure that you have the best possible experience. We are pleased to announce that, in April 2026, the NHS Care Quality Commission (CQC) is launching a major survey on experiences of using maternity services. 

• If you give birth in January or February 2026, you may be invited to give feedback on the quality of care and support you received during your pregnancy, labour and birth, and after you and your baby went home. Your participation in this survey will help us monitor the quality of our services and suggest further areas where we can continue to improve.
• If you are invited to take part, you will receive a letter with information on how to complete the survey online or on your phone. If you prefer to complete the survey on paper, a paper questionnaire will be sent in a later mailing. You will also receive information on how to complete the survey in a different language, or a different format (e.g. Braille, Easy read, Large print). 
• Participation will not affect your care in any way.The survey is confidential, and your responses will not be shared with our staff.
• The results will be published in Autumn 2026 and will be used by us to understand what you think of our maternity services and care. What we learn from your feedback will help us to make improvements to NHS maternity services so we can provide the very best care for you and your baby and support our local community. Have your say and make a difference to local NHS maternity care. For more information about the survey, please visit the Care Quality Commission website

We are pleased to have made a number of improvements to maternity care based on feedback from women provided as part of the previous Care Quality Commission survey, which was published in 2025.  We work together with the Maternity Neonatal Voices Partnership (MNVP) to co-produce an action plan based on the survey feedback, which is focused on continuous learning and improvements, and is monitored by Wye Valley NHS Trust and the MNVP.  We also encourage parents to join the Maternity Neonatal Voices Partnership, which enables people to influence and shape our priorities.

Other ways that you can provide feedback - feedback from families is essential for us to continue improving our service.  If you are not invited to take part in the survey above, we encourage you to provide feedback, including positive experiences, recognition of maternity staff who have provided your care, concerns and complaints.  Find out more about how to give feedback

Improving quality of maternity care for women and families

We are pleased to share with you our staff recognition video from our Annual General Meeting in 2024, which reflects the hard work of our midwifery team to make further improvements to the maternity services we provide.

Maternity policies and guidelines 

Please contact the Trust's communications team if you wish to view a WVT maternity policy and/or guideline.

Looking after your personal property

We make every effort to ensure your belongings are safe and secure whilst you are in hospital. However, you are advised to bring only essential items into hospital as these are not insured under any hospital policy and will remain your own responsibility if they are lost.

NHS videos 

Please view our maternity website pages on the right hand side of this page and the videos below for local information.

For additional information on your pregnancy, birth and beyond, you can also view video provided by NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire.

Take a virtual tour of our maternity ward

We have two tour videos taken in 2020 and 2021 for maternity.  The 2020 tour includes maternity triage, delivery suite/theatre area and maternity ward.  The 2021 tour includes maternity triage and maternity ward. 

Take a virtual tour of our Special Care Baby Unit

We have two video tours of the Special Care Baby Unit - an interactive tour as detailed below, which includes a video to play or you can view the various rooms within the unit by clicking on explore 3D space or floor plan, and we also have our video tour filmed in June 2011 below.

Tour of maternity unit

Video filmed in June 2021

Tour of maternity unit

Video filmed in June 2020

Interactive neonatal unit tour (Special Care Baby Unit)

The interactive neonatal unit tours have been designed to help families understand what to expect before they arrive on the unit. The 3D tour enables families to explore the unit, get to know their way around, and includes useful information such as:

• Directions and facilities
• Commonly used equipment
• Educational videos
• Support available
• Useful website links

Tips for exploring the video tour

Our interactive tour includes a video to play or you can view the various rooms within the unit by clicking on explore 3D space or floor plan on the video screen and you can enlarge the tour to view in full screen. 

• For a brief guided tour of the space, select the play button in the lower left of the screen.
  
  
• To explore the 3D space, click the person image. This takes you onto the unit to move around the rooms and explore.
  
  
• There are different coloured tags within the tour that you can select as follows:
  
  
• Red tag – hospital information, parking and how to find us
• Blue tag – general information and equipment
• Yellow tag - videos
• Purple tag – feeding information
• Pink tag – food and drink facilities
• Select the magnifying glass icon for quick search for information

Take a virtual tour of our special care baby unit

Video filmed in June 2021