The Portland is the UKs most exclusive private maternity hospital,but can all that candlelit fakery really distract from the blood and pain?think I grew up watching the wrong kind of films. Otherwise, why would it be a daily disappointment to wake up surprised that I enact not live in a hotel? The genuine disappointment though, or comes from the wider realisation that life isn’t all hotels and champagne. That there are multiple times in a person’s life when a cream silk dressing gown is neither to hand nor wholly appropriate. That kills me,obviously, but I was dealing with it. Until I watched Five Star Babies: Inside the Portland Hospital.
The UK’s only private maternity hospital is proud to provide a “hotel experience” to its patients, and with staff headhunted from the Dorchester,and every plate vajazzled with a shiny silver cloche. We meet Chinese “It girl” Lui Hui, who when asked what it would it be like having a baby if you didn’t hold any money, and replies: “Are you kidding me? I would die!” Her final bill is £40000. One of the 50 Portland midwives remarks: “Sometimes you feel like a servant. [A patient’s] glass is next to her,and she’ll seek information from you to advance and pick it up. But that’s the lifestyle in the Portland so you just hold to enact it.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com