Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust is one of London’s largest NHS trusts, caring for thousands of pregnant people and babies every year across St Thomas’ Hospital and community hubs throughout south east London. GSTT runs a continuity of care model, meaning most patients see the same midwifery team from their first booking appointment through birth and beyond, and offers two distinct birth centres: a midwife-led home from home birth centre for straightforward pregnancies, and a hospital birth centre for planned C-sections and more complex births.

GSTT’s maternity team had identified a real gap through extensive consultation with patients and staff: prospective parents wanted to feel prepared and reassured long before they arrived on a ward, and the information available to them didn’t achieve that. The Trust wanted a film package built directly from what patients and staff said actually mattered, not a generic overview of “what to expect.”

Representation was central to the brief. GSTT already runs initiatives like its Colourful Birth Wallets, designed to help Black and Brown women feel informed, confident and heard throughout their maternity care. The films needed to carry that same commitment through to screen, reflecting the real diversity of GSTT’s patients rather than a single, generic version of what having a baby looks like.

We made seven films, each with a distinct job to do.

A walkthrough film took prospective patients from their very first contact with GSTT through to postnatal care, touring both birth centres. We put real GSTT midwives on camera as recurring guides throughout, deliberately, so patients would recognise familiar faces when they arrived for their own continuity-of-care appointments rather than meeting strangers on the day that mattered most.

A pain relief film covered every option honestly, epidurals, gas and air, water birth, combining mothers’ real experiences with clear guidance from midwifery staff, so the information came from both sides of the conversation.

Five personal story films, each led by a real mother speaking under her own first name, covered different corners of the maternity journey at GSTT: Rahma on how her birth plan changed at the last minute during labour, Felicity on the support she found from the infant feeding team, Vertika on feeling like she had a friend at every stage from scan to birth, alongside Natasha and Valeria’s own experiences of care and the birthing suite. Together, the five reflect how differently birth can go for different people, rather than presenting one tidy version of it.

Filming live births meant consent was built into planning from the earliest conversations, worked through carefully alongside GSTT’s clinical and communications teams so every contributor felt properly supported at every stage, not just signed off on paper.

The films were shot across the final months of 2025 and have just been released across GSTT’s maternity communications.

If you’re looking for a healthcare video production company with real experience filming sensitively in clinical environments, including live births and operating theatres, find out more about our healthcare video production services or contact us to talk through your project.