Overview

Choosing where to have your maternity care

Congratulations on your pregnancy.

We understand it can be an overwhelming process to find the right maternity care for you.

To help you do this, it can be helpful to know how NHS maternity care is provided.

We want everyone to have continuity of care during their maternity care.

This means you are linked to the same team during your pregnancy and postnatal care. This helps build a relationship with your midwife and their team. Research shows this leads to better outcomes for both mums and babies. It can also give you a more positive experience throughout your pregnancy.

Please consider where you live as part of your decision about where to have your maternity care. All hospitals offer continuity of care if you live within their catchment area.

If you live outside of the catchment area, we can still provide maternity care but are unable to offer continuity of care. The hospital from the catchment area you live in will be responsible for your postnatal care once you have left hospital after giving birth.

All midwifery appointments are held in local community hubs if you live within our catchment area.

You can use the catchment area map to see:

• if you live within our area for maternity services
• details about your local hub

Map of Guy's and St Thomas' maternity services catchment area

Please see the community midwives page for more information on each midwifery team and their catchment areas.

If you live in postcodes SE3, SE4, SE6, SE9, SE10, SE12, SE13, SE24, SE25, SE27, SW11, SW12 and SW17, we'll book you into our community hubs for antenatal care. Please refer to our catchment area map. Your postnatal care after giving birth will be from your local hospital.

If you do not live within our catchment area, you can find out which hospital can offer you continuity of care on the catchment area map for other London maternity providers.

Map of catchment areas for other London maternity providers

We hope this information has been helpful in your decision on where to have your maternity care.

It's important that you only receive maternity care from one NHS hospital at a time. You can choose to transfer your care between hospitals at any point. Please notify the hospital that you are no longer receiving care from.

If you no longer wish to have your maternity care with us, please complete the cancelling your maternity care form.