Private Midwife in London

In the UK, it’s advised to initiate contact with a GP or midwife immediately following a positive pregnancy test. Arranging your initial midwife consultation is often referred to as “booking appointment” and happens before reaching 10 weeks of pregnancy. This timing is essential to ensure you’re provided with early ultrasound screenings and blood tests. 

Private midwife antenatal care unfolds a spectrum of advantages, enhancing your pregnancy experience profoundly. It offers not just satisfaction with the care received but also a variety of childbirth options, a diminished likelihood of preterm birth, a rewarding breastfeeding journey, and assured access to medical interventions when necessary. Thus, embracing midwifery care from the outset of pregnancy is instrumental in fostering a nurturing, positive, and health-centric journey to motherhood.

At London Pregnancy Clinic, we advocate for an early engagement with midwifery services, ideally preceding your viability scan, to ensure a comprehensive support framework is established right from the start. Please note that before week 6 of pregnancy, we won’t be able to offer you an ultrasound scan. Therefore we recommend seeing one of our midwives.

Selecting the right midwife and obstetrician team is key to a fulfilling pregnancy experience. At London Pregnancy Clinic, we specialise in offering cohesive midwifery and obstetric services, ensuring you receive comprehensive, synchronised care from conception to postpartum.

Why Choose LPC?

• Integrated Team Approach: Our midwives and obstetricians share a collaborative ethos, essential for seamless, high-quality care and superior outcomes.
• Unified Care Philosophy: Emphasizing patient-centred approaches, our professionals support your pregnancy journey with shared decision-making and respect for your childbirth preferences.
• Efficient Communication: Our team’s open communication guarantees that all aspects of your care are coordinated effectively, ensuring a smooth transition through all stages of pregnancy.
• Expertise and Respect: The mutual respect among our midwives and obstetricians for each other’s expertise fosters a supportive environment, balancing traditional and medical care practices.
• Coordinated Services: Experience a harmonised prenatal to postpartum care trajectory, with services designed to offer you the most integrated approach to maternity care.

The three common causes of pelvic health dysfunction:

• Urinary incontinence: 1 in 3 women experience urinary incontinence three months after pregnancy. This can manifest with an urgency (sudden and intense need to pass urine, leaking before making it to the toilet) or stress (leaking when coughing, sneezing, laughing).
• Pelvic Organ Prolapse: 1 in 12 women experience symptoms of pelvic organ prolapse. It is a descent or the drop of one or multiple organs in the pelvis such as the bladder, the urethra, the uterus, the rectum. This can manifest with a sensation of heaviness in the vagina.
• Fecal incontinence: or accidental bowel leakage. 1 in 7 women experience anal incontinence six months after birth.

Other pelvic health conditions include pain during intimate relations, perineal pain, chronic constipation, anal pain.

Diastasis recti: when the parts of the abdominal muscle or rectus abdominus move apart once they are not able to stretch any more. Up to 60% of women may experience symptoms such as a bulging or doming in the centre of your tummy when moving from laying down to sitting up, feeling of a gap when you feel along the middle of your tummy, lower back pain, symptoms of incontinence and/or prolapse.

Safety and Adaptability: Our osteopaths are skilled in adapting techniques to suit each stage of pregnancy, focusing on gentle methods to ensure comfort and safety.

Pain Relief: Osteopathic treatments are excellent for managing common pregnancy-related discomforts, including back, neck, pelvic, and hip pain, providing much-needed relief.

Labour and Postpartum Benefits: Research highlights osteopathy’s role in easing pain, potentially shortening labor duration, and minimising complications by maintaining the body’s structure and function.

Yes. At London Pregnancy Clinic, our osteopathy services offer a gentle, safe way to ease pregnancy and postpartum discomforts. Our trained specialists understand the unique changes your body undergoes, providing relief from back, neck, and pelvic pain. With a focus on your wellbeing, we ensure treatments are tailored to each stage of your pregnancy journey. Always consult with your healthcare provider before beginning new treatments. Beyond pregnancy, osteopathy can also address sports injuries and arthritis, supporting women’s health at all life stages.

Acupuncture is widely recognised as a safe practice during pregnancy when conducted by a qualified practitioner like our lead midwife Sarah. She has a decade of experience in acupuncture after she expanded her expertise to include Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture in 2014. 

Before beginning acupuncture or any new treatment during pregnancy, consulting with your healthcare provider is essential. This step ensures that the treatment aligns with your personal health needs and pregnancy journey.

Benefits and Safety

• Safety: Acupuncture, under the care of a certified professional, minimises risks, typically limited to minor ones such as bleeding or bruising at the needle sites.
• Benefits: Research supports acupuncture for various pregnancy-related conditions, including aiding in birth preparation, alleviating musculoskeletal pain, and assisting in the management of breech presentations.

At London Pregnancy Clinic, we’re committed to offering safe, supportive, and beneficial care tailored to your unique needs during this special time. Sarah’s expertise in acupuncture is part of our holistic approach to your prenatal care, supporting your physical and emotional wellbeing throughout pregnancy.

The pelvic floor is a vital structure in women, consisting of muscles, ligaments, and connective tissues that support the pelvic organs, including the bladder, uterus, and rectum. This network of muscles is integral for several key bodily functions:

1. Supporting Pelvic Organs: It holds the pelvic organs in place, preventing them from prolapsing (dropping) into the vagina.
2. Bladder and Bowel Control: It is crucial for controlling bladder and bowel movements, aiding in the maintenance of continence.
3. Pregnancy and Childbirth Support: During pregnancy, the pelvic floor supports the baby, adapting as the baby grows and during the birthing process.
4. Sexual Function: It contributes to sexual sensation and function, affecting sexual satisfaction and comfort.

Importance During and After Pregnancy

During pregnancy, the increased weight and pressure from the growing baby place significant stress on the pelvic floor muscles. This can lead to weakening or damage, resulting in conditions such as urinary incontinence (leaking urine), fecal incontinence, and pelvic organ prolapse (where organs drop and press into the vagina), affecting a woman’s quality of life.

After childbirth, the strain experienced by the pelvic floor during delivery can exacerbate these issues or introduce new challenges, such as reduced sexual function or discomfort. This makes the recovery and strengthening of the pelvic floor postpartum crucial for regaining pre-pregnancy pelvic health.

Welcoming a new life is a journey filled with joy, anticipation, and a fair share of uncertainties. At London Pregnancy Clinic, we’re dedicated to guiding you through every step with our private midwife antenatal care in London. We offer:

• Antenatal & Postnatal Care: Engage in a maternity plan that evolves with your pregnancy, offering everything from birth planning to postnatal checkups and scar therapy.
• Flexible & Online Consultations: With digital midwife services and in-person midwife options, get expert advice and support even without leaving your home.
• Holistic Therapies for Wellbeing: Explore our complete midwifery services aimed at enhancing your physical and mental health pre, during and post pregnancy, including acupuncture for natural pain management and osteopathy for improved pelvic health.

Rest assured, we can proceed with examinations during this time. However, we fully respect your comfort levels—if you prefer not to have an internal examination, we can adapt our approach to focus on external treatments, still effectively progressing toward your health goals.

It’s important to note that standard family health insurance policies often don’t cover pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal care. However, if you have a Private Medical Insurance (PMI) policy, it might include benefits for private healthcare services during pregnancy. At London Pregnancy Clinic, we collaborate with various insurance providers to ensure you can access our premium care. Please contact us to discuss how we can work with your insurance to support your pregnancy journey.

A doula and a midwife offer different types of support to expectant mothers, with distinct roles and training.

Midwife: As a primary healthcare professional, a midwife delivers prenatal care, support during labour and birth, and postpartum care for both the parent and baby up to six weeks after birth. They empower pregnant individuals and their families by providing informed choices and supporting clients in making appropriate decisions.

Doula: Focusing on physical and emotional support before, during, and after childbirth, a doula doesn’t offer medical advice. Instead, they assist women in navigating the physical and emotional challenges of labour and the postpartum period, offering non-medical comfort, emotional reassurance, advocacy, pregnancy and childbirth education, and breastfeeding support.

Yes. Our dedicated midwives are here to support you and your newborn for six post-delivery. After welcoming your baby, the blend of joy and excitement often accompanies sleep deprivation and concerns about your new parenting duties. At London Pregnancy Clinic, we’re committed to supporting you during this transformative period. Our midwives are available for at-home consultations, conducting essential physical checks for you and your baby, offering feeding guidance, and emotional support.

Struggling with breastfeeding? We offer bespoke breastfeeding support packages tailored to your unique needs. Contact us to explore how we can assist you. Our post-delivery services focus on the health and well-being of mother and baby, including:

• Postnatal Care: In-hospital support from our midwives encompasses breastfeeding help, pain management, baby’s health assessments, and newborn care advice.
• Home Visits: Continued at-home support for postnatal checks, breastfeeding assistance, and mother-baby well-being assessments.
  Emotional Support: Guidance and reassurance for new parents, covering all aspects of postnatal care.
• Health Education: Advice on safe sleeping, feeding, and infant care essentials.
• Physical Checks: Monitoring maternal health post-delivery, including uterine position, postnatal bleeding, and dietary recommendations.

Our dedicated midwives are here to ensure a smooth transition into parenthood, providing expert care and support every step of the way.