North Devon expectant mothers are on their own as of today.

Unfortunately any hopes of the unit reopening on 29th September as promised have now been dashed. The future isn't looking very promising.
Oh well, I think we saw that coming.

DD1 turned up at Harlow to be told there was no room that night. Eventually they said she could go on the postnatal ward but her husband could not stay. He was sent home, 45 minutes away. Luckily he sat in car park because DD delivered an hour later and he would have missed it! Yes, it's pretty dire everywhere.

MartavTaurus

www.theguardian.com/society/2026/aug/10/maternity-cuts-devon-women-stark-choices

This isn't just an inconvenience to mothers to be, it's stressful and quite frankly dangerous.
If you don't know the rural geography of Devon, patients will, as of August 11th, have to travel over 90 minutes to give birth. In peak tourist season too, so that's on a good day! I'm sure these decision makers only have half a brain.

It’s much the same thing around here it’s either Watford, Stevenage or Harlow . Nothing in between . It’s rare these days for a baby to be born in hertford the county town .
The paramedics told me this when my daughter was born. She arrived quicker than expected we were at home !. The second one was born in the garden city that’s now just more like clinic set up these day

I actually didn't know until I was in labour until it reached the second stage, which then went very quickly. The first stage can be ambiguous with false alarms, and feel exactly like normal late-pregnancy discomforts. It is common to miss them entirely.

So if Exeter handles 10 births a day and 4 additional ones rock up from N Devon, I'd say that's quite some surge in their figures whichever you look at it.

We've already discussed MaizieD's point about staffing levels further back in the thread.
No one said it is a backdoor attempt to close all maternity services did they?

So an average of three or four births a day. That is low compared to my local hospital where the average is 12 a day and around 4,500 a year with a total population only twice the size of North Devon. That’s probably because the population is younger.

The numbers are important because is indicates how many women might have to go to Exeter to give birth while the temporary issues are being resolved.

By the law of averages most births are going to be normal. The average labour is 12 to 24 hours for a first-time birth and 8 to 12 hours for subsequent births so there is enough time to get to Exeter.

Surely it is better to have a longer journey to a hospital where staffing levels and expertise are deemed safe than a closer hospital temporarily deemed unsafe because of staff shortages.

To repeat what Maizie said earlier,

The hospital says it has made the decision because of unsafe staffing levels. It seems to be between a rock and a hard place.

What solution would posters suggest?

It remains to be seen how long it takes to resolve this. From what I read, community midwifery, scans, ultrasound clinics, antenatal outpatient clinics, and birth planning services remain operational so this isn’t a backdoor attempt to close all maternity services.

Shinamae

I gave birth to my three children in the N.D.D.H maternity unit and back then it was excellent..
(my youngest is now 32)

One of DD's friends has recently given birth in the NDDH after having previously delivered at the RDE a few years earlier. She found the experience at Barnstaple far superior to Exeter.

The thread is not intended to be a sob sob story about poor North Devon compared with the rest of the country. As another poster said, it serves to show that the level of service nationwide is appalling and getting worse.

We have already established that 1300+ births occur each year at Barnstaple, so I am not sure why you deem that figure low, Graphite. Yeovil handles a similar number of births.
We know that the closure has been called temporary, so maybe we should return to this thread in 3 months to see if the service has been reinstated? Personally I would be surprised if that were the case.
Lastly, no one is making this a competition between different areas in the UK.

I gave birth to my three children in the N.D.D.H maternity unit and back then it was excellent..
(my youngest is now 32)

Data published in November 2024 by North Devon Council, shows the number of people living in the region who were between the ages of 16 and 49 was 34,867.

(By contrast, the number of people age 50 and over was 47,321.)

Assuming half of that 34,867 were male that’s around 17,500 women of childbearing age and even then that’s including the very upper end.

Across England and Wales, the average age of mothers giving birth is 31 years.

The number of people between 24 and 34 years was 10,418 so around 5,200 women.

In any typical UK community, roughly 11 to 14 women are pregnant at any given time per 1,000 total residents about 1.1% to 1.4% of the total population.

That means that at any given time, fewer than 250 women in North Devon will be pregnant and they will, of course, be at different stages of their pregnancy.

The is about a temporary closure of services for safety reasons due a shortage of skilled staff.

In reality, the number of women who are going to have to go to Exeter to give birth rather than give birth in Barnstaple hospital will be low.

As others have pointed out the length of journey is no different to what is typical for other areas.

Population of North Devon: 101,000 to 103,000 people,

The point of the OP, I think, is that midwifery and obstetric services were available in this area previously but have now closed down and these services have been centralised a long distance away.

If someone chooses to live in a remote area away from such services, they will take that into consideration when they choose to live there, but to have these services removed is quite a different matter.

It's not the only area where this is happening and not just midwifery and obstetrics. A&E and Minor Injuries are being closed so people in urgent need of treatment have to travel for some time to receive treatment.

All in the name of progress?

SueDonim, yes, I thought that was the case but have no direct experience now so did not like to post that.

Someone in our family (not in touch with her now) started training as a midwife a few years ago, not a nurse and no nursing experience at all. I thought at the time that midwifery should have been a specialist subject after nursing training.

To be fair I live in county Durham so know kielder very well, and adore it, but it is by its nature a very isolated place, I do think it us a place where you have to balance the benefits of isolation and the downsides.

I know it’s not a competition, the level of service nationwide is appalling, but people living in some areas of Northumberland have had to travel 90 minutes to the nearest maternity department for many years. It’s 1 hour 25 minutes from somewhere in the west like Keilder Village, to the nearest A and E department too.

My medic dd won’t work in Obstetrics now, she feels it is so unsafe. The quality of a good proportion of the standalone midwives is appalling, they’re unskilled in knowing when to call in the cavalry. They don’t get training in non-pregnancy related conditions so whenever a woman presents with unusual symptoms, they miss serious conditions because they try to fit everything into a pregnancy framework. There is also a real issue with relationships between the midwifery and obstetrics teams with neither really trusting the other.

Part of the reason for the low staffing levels is because there are so many doctors and midwives unwilling to put their careers on the line to work in these tinder box areas where they may well end up court. And who can blame them? My dd reckons it will only get worse as the old school midwives who previous trained as nurses come up to retirement and leave the profession.

I don’t know how you ‘mend’ this situation, I really don’t.

MT62

I would allow all the drs & nurses arriving in the country on the boats a chance to work if it’s got to a crisis stage- no I am not joking!

Is that tongue in cheek? 🤔. People who arrive on boats destroy all personal papers so that wouldn’t be a feasible solution.

MT62

I would allow all the drs & nurses arriving in the country on the boats a chance to work if it’s got to a crisis stage- no I am not joking!

& dentists

MaizieD

The hospital says it has made the decision because of unsafe staffing levels. It seems to be between a rock and a hard place.

What solution would posters suggest?

Advise any young girl uncertain about a career choice to train as a midwife and when qualified start a private practice!

Advise expectant mothers to invite someone with the knowledge to deliver a baby to come and stay for the last month of the pregnancy. And to discuss with their GP if he or she is willing to be called to a birth that will have to take place at home.

Check what the Highway Code has to say about driving fast with flashing lights and, or emergency flags when taking a woman in labour to hospital.

These are the concerns from expectant mums in the area:

Planning how to get to the hospital, not everyone has a car
Transport costs, £100+ each way by taxi
Parking costs
Accommodation needs, nearest hotels £100 a night
Coordinating childcare from a distance whilst you are in labour or in hospital
Mobility or accessibility needs
What to do if there is road disruption and hold ups like in very busy summer months
Etc.

When was it decided that all births should be in hospital and not in maternity homes staffed by nurses and midwives, with a GP on call to come in and do the stitching, if necessary? Or an experienced sister to realise that more specialised help was in fact needed and the mother-to-be blue-lighted to hospital?

Was it less safe in those days?

It was certainly a much more pleasant experience in a maternity home than hospital in my experience.

I would allow all the drs & nurses arriving in the country on the boats a chance to work if it’s got to a crisis stage- no I am not joking!

Correct! Half a Brain!!!
Just wrong to be that far from maternity hospital.

sazz1

I saw this on local TV last night and thought what would I have done. I decided I would get an Airbnb or BnB in Exeter around 10 days to 2 weeks before my due date to ensure being nearer the hospital. Yes it's expensive but I would get a loan, credit card, borrow from family or friends any way I could to be sure my baby arrived safely.
You need a consultant obstetrician, anaesthetist and paediatric consultant in some cases with complicated deliveries. My friend's daughter had a prolapse and haemorrhage during a recent delivery so just a midwife wouldn't have been enough to save her.

But firstly, you shouldn't have to be forced into doing that and not everyone could afford it.
Secondly, what if this is a second, third, fourth baby? Do you decamp en famille to Exeter, take older children out of school, all added expense? Can the father, assuming there is one, take this extra time off work?

It should not be necessary.
Most births are fairly straightforward but the fact remains that, generally, maternity services in this country are inadequate.

A friend’s daughter gave up her midwifery course with six weeks to go. She felt the training wasn’t sufficient.