When Anna Young*, 38, was pregnant with her daughter, she did everything she could, to choose a London hospital that would help her give birth safely. “Among my NCT group, there was a sense that it was a postcode lottery as to the standard of care you would get,” she explains. “Women I know had a mixed bag of experiences at my local hospitals and it made me paranoid.”
A new report suggests she had every right to be. The survey by NHS regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found that the number of women nationwide who report a positive pregnancy, labour and birth experience has fallen dramatically.
