Vaasa maternity unit adds birth pools and new family rooms
Tuesday 3rd November 2026 on 17:31 in
Finland
Vaasa Central Hospital’s maternity unit will move into renovated premises on November 18, giving people giving birth more options for pain relief and movement, Yle reports. The new location will also allow faster transfers to an operating room in emergency caesarean cases.
The delivery rooms will be on the second floor of the hospital’s T building, with the maternity and gynaecology ward on the third. The unit will begin receiving patients in its new premises at 9 a.m. on November 18, after nearly two years of renovation work.
The number of delivery rooms will remain at five, but the number of birthing pools will rise from one to three. The pools can be used for pain relief and water births. Some rooms will also have yoga slings suspended from the ceiling and wall bars, while two will have projectors to display images or video.
“People often think that in hospital there is only the delivery bed, but these new rooms have yoga slings, wall bars and many other options besides staying in bed,” midwife Anna Stenström said.
The new premises will not have a sauna. Use of the sauna in the old premises had increased after the sauna song by Ostrobothnian comedy group KAJ became popular, the article said.
The move is expected to improve safety by making it quicker to reach an operating room during an emergency caesarean. The number of monitoring rooms will increase from two to three.
Every room will have its own shower and toilet, a feature parents had requested. There will also be a place for a partner to stay overnight, with better sleeping arrangements than an air mattress, Stenström said.
Designers sought to include more family rooms, but the available space limited how many could be built. The renovation also provides updated workspaces for staff. Improving indoor air quality was a key aim after problems in the old premises, designer Camilla Dahlkar-Köping said.
The Seri support centre for people who have experienced sexual violence will also move to its own, quieter premises on the second floor of the T building. It previously operated on the hospital’s fifth floor.