THE birthing unit at a hospital has been suspended, leaving mums-to-be having to make last-minute changes to their birthing plans.

Labour and birth activities at St Peter’s Hospital in Maldon have been suspended due to staffing issues.

The Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust will be reviewing the closure every two weeks while bosses work to recruit more staff.

The services were previously temporarily closed in August 2021 due to the same issues with staff shortages.

The Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust was allocated almost £2million with the plans of bringing in more maternity staff.

They expected to see an additional 37 full-time midwives and four full-time obstetricians.

They also said that 60 experienced and newly qualified midwives would be joining the unit in September 2021.

A representative from the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust said: “The safety of the women and babies using our maternity services is our absolute priority.

“With the third largest maternity service in the country, we constantly review our activity and staffing levels to make sure that we are providing women with the very highest standards of care.

“We have a recruitment campaign underway to attract more midwives to the trust, but in the short term we want to make sure that our staffing is concentrated in the right areas.

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“For that reason we have made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend deliveries at our midwifery-led birthing unit at St Peter’s Hospital in Maldon.

“While women will not be able to give birth at St Peter’s from August 15, we will still be running antenatal and postnatal outpatient clinics, and offering antenatal triage between 9am and 3.30pm for low-risk women.

“We get fantastic feedback from families who give birth at St Peter’s - or go there after they have given birth - but our priority has to be providing the very best care while we work to recruit more staff.

“We are committed to giving women choice when it comes to having their babies, and mums who were planning on going to St Peter’s will still have the option to deliver at the midwifery-led unit at Broomfield Hospital or could opt for a home birth.”