Find the nearest maternity unit

Until now there was no simple tool answering this question without asking anything in return. This one does it in two clicks: your country and your town — or the “use my position” button — and it ranks maternity units by distance. For France, the list is the one published each year by the DREES from the annual statistics of health establishments: 445 maternity units at 31 December 2024, with level, status and number of births. For other countries, the tool queries OpenStreetMap and shows the hospitals recorded there with a maternity service — less complete information, and we say so.

For France your position never leaves your browser (the calculation is done locally); for another country it is sent to OpenStreetMap and to no one else. If you entered your town in My personal details (the icon at the top of the page), it is already filled in.

Reading the level of a maternity unit

In France, maternity units have been classified into three levels since 1998, according to the care they can give the newborn on site. A level 1 unit has an obstetrics department: it suits pregnancies without particular risk, that is the great majority. Level 2a adds a neonatal unit (for babies who need monitoring or care without being in vital danger), level 2b neonatal intensive care, and level 3 neonatal resuscitation: high-risk pregnancies, expected extreme prematurity and complicated multiple pregnancies are directed there. The level says nothing about the quality of the welcome or the comfort: it says what the establishment can do if the baby is born too early or ill. A health professional may refer you to a higher level during pregnancy; the reverse also happens when all goes well. Other countries use comparable tiers (levels I to III or IV in the United States, for instance), even if the names differ.

The nearest, or the most suitable?

Distance matters: in France half of women give birth less than seventeen minutes from home, but in some rural or mountain areas the journey exceeds forty-five minutes, and the closure of small units over the last twenty years has lengthened it. The tool ranks as the crow flies; count the real travel time, at night and in bad weather, and work out the route in advance. The number of births a year is another marker: below three hundred, teams are small and on-site cover is not always guaranteed; above three thousand, the organisation is that of a large birth factory, with all that is reassuring and impersonal about it. In between, everything depends on the team — and nothing replaces a visit, often offered in the second trimester.

When to register, and what to ask

In big cities you register in the first trimester, sometimes as soon as the test is positive; elsewhere the fourth month is enough. Useful questions: who will follow the pregnancy (midwife, obstetrician, both); the caesarean and epidural rates; the possibility of a less medicalised birth (birthing room, pool, free positions); a paediatrician on site at night; length of stay and support for going home; how the other parent is welcomed. The pregnancy pages and the law country by country complete these markers.

Frequently asked questions