To be fed up of the "home birth is risky" misinformation?

I had two straightforward low-risk pregnancies, but the babies would've died in labour if I'd been at home. Both vaginal births, I had no trouble with labour, birth or pushing them out, and no risk factors to the babies - it was just random

It's not something I'd ever risk tbh

Of course they arise in other countries, the problems are exactly the same.

North Manchester hospital where it says she was has been rated as requires improvement for maternity and as “inadequate” for safety by the CSC. I don’t know why the articles were not mentioning this. If women are terrified to go back to hospitals they’ve had awful experiences at and which are deemed as unsafe then of course it’s unsurprising that they would opt for a home birth. The whole trust needs to be sorted out for its maternity provision which is quite frankly a fucking joke.

Why do you assume a breech baby would mean death? Most of the time they are delivered successfully.

That's not really the point I was making though, was it?

However, the stories of planned NHS home births (no private midwife/doula lunatics) for appropriate candidates on this thread suggest she would actually have been monitored at home. Distress picked up and transferred to a hospital expecting and prepared to actually provide some evidence-based medicine/surgery for her and her baby.

This is absolutely not guaranteed for run-of-the-mill 'low risk' women turning up at hospital because they have been led to believe they will have a 'safe' birth there.

She may not have needed one. She was ignored by the staff even when she felt something was wrong

This neglect would not have happened with a planned home birth with 1:1 care. She'd have been listened to and a rapid transfer to hospital arranged if necessary.

They wouldn't have been able to do an emergency C-section if she was at home though would they?

That's horrible.

I don't know why it's considered ok to let women labour on their backs like that. It should be total no no. Most other mammals have much easier births than humans and yet we know perfectly well that would cause a massive uptick in problems. Human mothers need to move around to help the baby move through the pelvis and to avoid problems like compression of the baby and cord.

How many times the "baby's heart-rate has dropped" is caused by mum labouring for hours on her back would be interesting to know. Even with an epidural they are supposed to be helping her move around to avoid these issues.

A lot is because they care more about the monitor read out at the nursing station than proper care, and it's easiest to monitor a mum in bed who isn't moving much. The monitors aren't really more effective than regular checks, but they don't require staff to really be actively involved or even necessarily go into the room.

This is why mums need a midwife, or someone who knows what she's doing, with her pretty much throughout the labour.

You aren't listening. Plenty of people go to hospital while in labour and are completely ignored. A friend of mine had a crash c-section after spending hours and hours pleading the midwives to monitor her as she felt something was wrong. When they finally, very reluctantly gave in both she and the baby were in such a bad way she had to be knocked out for the c-section and there was nobody to hold the baby when she was born as the Dad had been sent back home.

Everything was fine in the end and she left hospital 2 days later and was back to normal/driving 2 weeks later, which is why these stories don't get told. Because women are told 'the only thing that matters is a healthy baby'.

Many women on this thread have highlighted that they weren't 'safe' in hospital where they were being ignored and denied medical monitoring, intervention or pain relief when it was requested. These make the home birth horror story anecdotes sound a bit hollow. They also make the 'doctors will force interventions on you' horror stories sound fantastical and dismissive.

We are proposing a narrative that is counter to the 'low risk' = doesn't need intervention and 'high risk' = deserving of intervention, and asking, whether the concept of low risk (particuarly first time mothers) is actually a fob off designed to save money, with mother's blamed for 'not understanding risk' properly, when they didn't come up with the inappropriate, binary labels in the first place. Its not inevitable that medical science finds birth outcomes 'unpredictable'.

My second would 100% have died had I not been in a hospital. They almost couldn’t save her and the damage done by resuscitation plus her undiagnosed condition meant she was in the NICU for months, nearly dying several times.

I loved the idea of a home birth but now absolutely no way.

But regarding the news story. It’s worth pointing out that this has made national headlines. According to google about 3% of babies in the UK are born at home. That’s 1 in 33 births. And this story of an adverse outcome, with a woman that was very high-risk and opted for this against medical advice, has made national news.

So I don’t really see how her situation, as sad as it is, relates to low-risk mothers making an informed choice to give birth at home.

Things can go very wrong in just a few minutes my second child was “low risk” after a perfect birth with my first and being young slim and healthy and it ended in emergency c section because baby’s heart beat was distressed.

factor in traffic and that a lot of people don’t live near hospitals and it could quickly be a disaster

The thing is if you ‘ban’ home birth, many women will just opt to free birth instead which IS dangerous

But 'banning' a woman from giving birth in the location she wants, for the good of the 'baby' is bestowing personhood on the foetus before it is born. Which doesn't follow for any other law in this country.

Retired Midwife here.I have one horrific memory of a delivery that went horrendously wrong at the last minute.Absolutely nothing at all to suggest this young Mother was at risk,right up until she started fitting just as she was fully dilated!Both Mother and baby were fine,but had that been a home birth they would both have died,no doubt about it.A team were in the delivery room so quick after the emergency bell was activated.No history of high blood pressure,all during labour it was fine.The mother was extremely ill for several days post delivery.

This happened before I had any children,I went on to have 3,would never have considered a home birth.Childbirth is one dangerous event!

have you read the thread here when most of the birth was handled by a paramedic?

It’s strange that in other countries where epidurals are the most common and routine form of pain relief that these complications don’t appear to arise. It does suggest to me that in the U.K. the statistics may be skewed to those who are already more likely to have difficult births so request epidurals.

In any event, few first time mothers over 30 have completely unassisted no intervention natural births. Having listened to a friend’s horror story of instrumental delivery and stitching with inadequate pain relief, it’s not surprising that many more mature mothers I knew opted for epidural.

If no midwife is available then you go in otherwise you are choosing an unassisted birth.

Thats different to a planned home birth where the midwifes are in attendance don’t mix them up.

When I got to the hospital with my first at 9cm there was still times I was left completely without anyone with medical training while they came and went from the room as I wasn’t pushing yet.

At home the midwife was in the room with me, watching me, she had called for the second midwife before I realised I was that close to delivering as she could see the changes in me. The same way she would have been watching for tiny subtle changes that something was quite right and that’s it you go in to hospital. They are very risk adverse they don’t want mums staying home if they think something is about to go wrong.

You also Though has to remember midwifes cannot force the mum to transfer if she doesn’t want to.

Apart from sudden oh shit. A lot of problems start showing signs just in hospital they are often missed because it’s 1 midwife to 8 women.

If you could give me a home from home room with birth pool, my own personal midwife, fast discharge. I would have happily gone into the hospital. But they don’t. My care was better at home.

But inevitably they end up free birthing or insisting on stay at home knowing they’ll end up having to send someone as some care is better than no care. In this case they counselled against it and she went ahead and stayed at home - there was no alternative but to send midwives.

I find it very hard though that they’re trying to pin this on the hospital.

i don’t believe it should be an option for all women. The woman in the paper who died along with her baby made a stupid decision that killed her and her baby, and traumatised the midwives.

She had had a PPH and gave her baby sepsis by being a carrier of group B strep in her previous birth. Anyone ignorant or arrogant enough to think they know better than medics should have had the home birth option entirely off the table for her.

Well then you'd be in hospital from the get go. They arent going to let you free birth because they can't get you a mid wife.

but if no MW is available to come, then you end up with a paramedic, who may have very little experience.

I'm not talking about free birthing. I'm talking about kid wife led delivery at home.

and when there is no MW available to be sent, so you end up with paramedics? It's not that uncommon.

If there are no ambulances available though no ambulances will come.