Homebirth - Pros & Cons

[lovecloud]

I am very interested to hear your views, also are there any requirements?

I bled very heavily after giving birth as I pushed for 2 hours with a full bladder, I cant not remember exactly what the midwife said but she said my uterus did not close in time even though i had the injection and that it was becuase my bladder was full. The whole bed was a sea of red and they said I was not far off a heamorrage (excuse spelling). The rest of my birth was ok except that the cord had strangled dd and she had to be resusitated but she was ok. I would like to have a homebirth but I am worried about something going wrong, like bleeding to death etc...
Btw I am not actually pregnant yet - but trying... very hard... my poor dh is shattered

[RedZuleika]

There have been a couple of other threads on homebirth just recently. Too tired at the mo to formulate thoughts completely, but would just say that what you will probably be told the 'requirements' are differ very much from the actual requirements.

This is a good site for an initial shuftie:

homebirth website

[lovecloud]

Thank you - just read most of that site!

Very interesting, i even read about heavy bleeding after birth and all the possible reasons - none however mentioned a full bladder as a reason so thats worrying. I wonder why i did bleed, my notes said my placenta was intact?

thanks

[RedZuleika]

Morning. Slightly more awake today. Only slightly though...

Have you seen the other homebirth threads which have been going on here recently?

Here and here

I don't know about the bleeding / bladder thing, but would have thought you could find someone to discuss your obstetric record with you? Do you have a copy of the full content? If not, I believe you can apply for a copy under the Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts.

The thing I've realised about planning a home birth (coming up in September, hopefully) is that the world and his dog thinks they have the right to offer an opinion - usually extremely ill-informed - because hospitally "obviously" is the safest place to be. Maybe people do this too if you're planning an elective section or VBAC, I don't know. However, I do think that the most important thing is that you do your own research and make your own risk assessment. Different consultants have different risk assessments too, so although I have respect for what I'm told, I don't regard it as being set in stone.

Obviously, if I had placenta praevia, say, or I go in to labour before a certain point - then I would arguably be a bit of a fruitloop for wanting a home birth when the outcome is so 'compromised'. In the absence of any problems like this, however, I am exercising 'informed refusal'...