Your pregnancy, your choices
We want to help to make your experience as easy as possible, so we provide information and advice on what to expect in the early weeks of your pregnancy, and how to look after yourself and your baby.
Antenatal classes
Covering essential topics such as pain relief in labour, induction of labour, feeding and bathing your baby and more.
Recommended reading before meeting your midwife for the first time
Have your say on how to shape maternity services in Barnsley
Barnsley Maternity Voices are a team of volunteers dedicated to making positive changes to maternity services in Barnsley.
We work alongside midwives and health care professionals as an independent group under National Maternity Voices. We pass on feedback gathered from local families during pregnancy and after to influence improvements to services.
Please get in touch to have your say, share your experiences with us, or join our team.
Barnsley will support you to make informed decision on your care. We utilise tools such as BRAIN to help explain your options.
B.R.A.I.N - An acronym for making informed decisions
- Benefits: What are the benefits of the particular diagnostic test, pain management approach, medication, procedure, protocol, etc. being considered? This is an important question to ask in today’s healthcare climate, where so many choices are available.
- Risks: What are the risks of a given test, procedure, protocol etc? What are the risks relative to the benefits? Are there any side effects? What sources of information do you suggest I use to inform myself about this issue?
- Alternatives: What other approaches might be taken? Particularly in pregnancy, where we are usually dealing with a healthy process rather than a disease process, there may be multiple approaches to a similar situation or condition. If alternatives are available, go through the BRAIN acronym for each one offered.
- Intuition: What does my gut say about a particular test/procedure/ intervention/protocol? Intuition is an important and often overlooked piece of information. Including intuition in your decision-making process leads to decisions that have an internally derived logic, integrity, and authority.
- Nothing: What would happen if I do nothing? What would happen if we wait an hour? A day? A week? You might apply the first part of the BRAIN acronym to doing nothing.
Please also take a look at our maternity guidelines.
Knowing your rights and the law in pregnancy and childbirth is important. Please see these Birth rights factsheets to provide you with the latest information on your rights, where they come from in law, and how they are backed up in guidance.
Information to support you during your pregnancy
Your first appointment
This is also called your ‘Booking appointment’ and usually takes place between your 6th and 10th week of pregnancy. There are important tests that we offer before the tenth week of pregnancy so please contact your midwife early if you have not already got an appointment.
We offer booking appointments at a variety of venues in our region.
- Athersley Family Centre (Secret Garden)
- Barnsley Hospital
- Dearne Family Centre
- Grimethorpe Family Centre (Milefield)
- Lundwood Health Centre
- Thurnscoe Family Centre (Embankment)
- Wombwell FamlCentre (King's Oak)
Your personalised care plan
The care and support you receive throughout your pregnancy, labour and after birth should be personalised to meet your needs and the needs of your baby and family.
This is your personal care plan which aims to help steer you through this journey and can be adapted at any stage.
This has been developed with some of our lovely mums from Maternity Voices, which is our mums group and through national guidance.
Take a look and let us know what you think. If you need this document translated into a different language, please speak to your midwife.