What is it like to give birth in your area? Use our interactive tool to find out

From tests to scans, and from going into labour to feeling your new baby's skin on yours for the first time - what happens at each stage of the maternity care journey is recorded by healthcare staff.

Tens of millions of data points tell the unique, exciting, life-changing, sometimes heartbreaking stories of how new life enters the world.

We've analysed all those numbers to tell you the key stats about how each part of the process works where you live, and how that compares with other parts of the country.

Enter your postcode or the name of your health board, or click around the map, to find out.

Return to the top of the interactive map to explore a different area by either clicking on a new part of the country, or searching for a new postcode or health board.

What we found - differences across UK nations

There is no single part of the country that stands out as being either bad or good across all measures.

For many metrics, like whether births are induced or delivered via C-section for example, higher or lower percentages are a matter of personal preference rather than an obvious representation of success or failure in either direction.

However, it is interesting that Wales is the last remaining UK nation where "natural", unassisted vaginal births still make up more than half of all babies delivered.

Scotland has the highest C-section rate, while Northern Ireland has the highest rate of births assisted with instruments like forceps or ventouses. Mothers in England are least likely to have their labour medically induced.

Midwifery units in England appear to be more stretched in terms of staffing compared with the other UK nations - there are more than 20 births per midwife per year in England, compared with just 13 in Scotland, 15 in Northern Ireland and 17 in Wales.

The staffing ratio is a crude measure, however. It doesn't take into account the experience level of midwives or how many of them are in patient-facing roles.

It also doesn't appear to be linked directly to worse outcomes. Birth injuries to mothers are more common in Scotland than England, for example, despite there being more midwives per baby. Data on mothers' birth injuries is not available for Wales or Northern Ireland.

Read more:
Maternity crisis - what it's like to give birth in the UK

Which local areas stand out

At health board level, figures that might appear concerning are not necessarily indicative of poor performance. Some areas face more complex cases than others, so worse outcomes may be inevitable regardless of standards of medical care.

That said, analysis of our data shows that the Nottingham & Nottinghamshire care board ranks poorly across each of the three "staff/procedure" measures - how many mothers had their first antenatal appointments within the recommended 10 weeks, how many were assigned a named midwife during pregnancy, and the ratio of midwives to babies.

It is also one of the parts of the country with the highest rate of birth injuries to mothers.

A report by Donna Ockenden, published last week, found that hundreds of babies and mothers at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust were either harmed or died as a result of failures by medical staff between 2012 and 2025.

The trust has apologised "unreservedly" to those affected - and following the report said "important changes have been made" to its services.

Our data covers what's happened in the 12 months to March 2026.

Watch:
Inside UK's maternity crisis | Sky News investigation

At the other end of the scale, Humber and North Yorkshire scores highly across each of the three admin measures, and has better health outcomes than average for both mothers and babies.

People giving birth in Mid and South Essex have unusually high rates of both inductions and emergency C-sections. The number of planned C-sections has also almost doubled there in the last two years.

In both Fife and the Forth Valley, two neighbouring health boards north of Edinburgh and Glasgow, more than 40% of mothers had their labours induced - double the proportion in Birmingham and Solihull.

Birth instruments were almost five times more likely to be used in certain parts of the country - Belfast or Lothian (which covers Edinburgh) for example, compared with Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin on the English border with Wales.

Use our tool to search again for other areas to see how they compare across each of these measures.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

(c) Sky News 2026: What is it like to give birth in your area? Use our interactive tool to find out