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

I'm talking about a home birth, which would have at least 1 to 1 monitoring throughout. As I've been saying, the threshold for intervention would be very low.

One of the problems with hospital births that people don't talk about is over stretched midwives and labouring mothers not getting 1 to 1 attention and problems not being picked up on. All the medical equipment and expertise in the world is no use if your midwife hasnt realised you're in difficulty.

I think the thing that’s dangerous at the moment is that everything you hear seems to be to such extremes. The hypnobirthing course I took basically told me that if I was im hospital I would be forced into situations that I was unhappy with, my baby and I would suffer under unnecessary medical procedure…

my first birth was in a hospital led birth centre which was great at first and then it all went wrong. I had no previous complications but the day ended with midwives having to lift me out of the pool unconscious and we would have dies had we been at home without a doubt. That was no one’s fault. I’m really grateful there was a space for me to give birth in a comfortable environment with the emergency help right there

Have you ever worked in maternity or obstetrics? They are really not that rare. And you are reliant on a midwife being available (there's another thread on here where one wasn't and most of the labour was monitored by paramedics) and being able to recognise early signs of something going wrong.

I think the situations where this is comes entirely out of nowhere are extremely rare. In a birth that's being properly monitored, the midwife will be responding to signs all the way through, which may not evoke urgent action in a hospital setting, but would be responded to at home (lower threshold).

It doesnt work like that. If a woman is labouring at home the news is passed on so that the hospital are aware a transfer may happen. Midwives dont call 999 like you would in an emergency.

As has been pointed out, the "going wrong" is not the same at home. Community midwives are far more risk averse, they know that there isnt the luxury of "wait and see" like there can be in hospital.

True, but in a completely normal delivery, after a completely normal pregnancy, things can go very wrong, very quickly.

But the threshold for something 'going wrong' at home and the transfer to hospital is much lower. It's not a like for like comparison.

5 minutes after something has gone wrong at home you'll still be on the phone to 999 giving your address.

5 minutes after something has gone wrong on labour ward, the baby could be out.

The point is that the threshold for intervention and transfer to hospital in a home birth is very low. The likelihood is that most labouring mothers would have been transferred long before it gets to this kind of emergency.

I'm not making any statements about particular births as I don't have the information to do so. However, generally speaking, that moment where you get rushed to theatre in the hospital is not a direct 'translation' of how it would have played out at home. The likelihood is that you would be moved long before, based on the midwives reading of how the situation unfolded before this.

This is crazy. I had a midwife (actually 2!!) with me the entire time I was in hospital and then my baby had foetal distress and I had a crash section. Yes my baby WOULD have died. I got told that over and over, it’s in my notes at my post birth meeting.
so the midwife at the hospital is the same as the midwife at a home birth: she would NOT have been able to save my baby’s life.

Such a sad story.

Mine were planned home births. I opted for this primarily because it meant there was a significant reduction in the likelihood of unnecessary medical intervention compared to planned hospital births. You just need to look at the recent post where a woman was forced to have a C-section because there were no beds in the labour ward in her local hospital!

I had complete faith in the mid-wife throughout the pregnancy and if she had strongly advised a hospital birth I would have very likely taken the advice. Thankfully that didn't happen.

Absolutely! Daughter ticked every box as a low risk birth and community midwife was encouraging her to have baby at midwife led birthing unit . Daughter thankfully declined and baby born at local hospital. Everything went tits up at the 11th hour and baby unexpectedly went into foetal distress. The 19 minutes after he was born before he made any audible noise was the most terrifying experience for us.
The emergency team were in that room within seconds.
So yes ,IF something goes wrong it is safer to be where the staff and equipment is are seconds away .

All births are risky! Hone births even more so due to no medical assistance
I have had 2 hospital births the last one i got rushed to theatre when my babys oxygen level dropped dangerously . She wasnt breathing when she was born . Had we been at home she would not have lived

Not really. It was suggested as what I might consider a preference as I might be more comfortable not having to risk delivering en route. But we were 20 minutes from the hospital where DH worked so we had free and guaranteed parking and an office we could wait in if I had turned up and been turned away.

There's no way staying at home was less risky, even a previous fast labour. No midwife would have gone to our house quicker than I'd have got to the labour ward.

No one knows how any birth is going to go so that is what makes home births riskier - I wouldn’t want to depend on an ambulance in the circumstances of a birth gone wrong.

If I had had a home birth then DS and me would be dead - I ended up have a crash c section with general anaesthetic and haemorrhaged badly

But the disadantage of epidural (especially the older types) is that it limits mobility, increasing the likelihood of unfavourable presentation, increasing the likelihood of baby going into distress, increasing the likelihood of delivery via foresceps ventouse or c section, increasing the likelihood of a heavy bleed and infection.

Its called the Cascade of Intervention for a reason. This is exactly the sort of issue that can be caused by being in hospital in the first place.

The point with the statistics is low risk births with little likelihood of medical intervention are at least as safe in hospital, but high risk births with medical intervention are much safer at hospital.

Home births increasing would actually cost the NHS more due to the fact that one woman needs one and usually two midwives with her. Two midwives can cover several women at once in hospital.

I very much doubt that they would encourage anything that costs more than what is currently being spent.

They want you to birth at home

I think the reason it is so divisive is experiences. If you have had a hospital birth and been traumatised you can't compare it to a home birth where you were traumatised. Assuming the grass is greener clearly is working both ways on this thread. My issue with that is that it is far less likely you will be bleeding out in a hospital due to something suddenly happening, as it often does, unexpectedly.

If we were safer doing this at home we'd be having a lot more push from NHS as they want to save £££! Believe me the first thing they'd be doing is pushing us to stay at home and save millions!

I was under a caseload team - they see you in the community, which was fantastic, all antenatal appointments in your living room. You have the choice to have a home birth or hospital birth and the midwife assigned to you (same one who does your antenatal appointments) will attend your labour and delivery whether at home or hospital. It really was an amazing service and I was so lucky to have access to it.
BUT there was a definite undercurrent of home births being better/superior much like the pressure to breast feed. I just let it wash over me.
I definitely didn’t want to have a home birth but didn’t want to stick around in hospital for too long afterwards either, so I do sympathise with the discomfort and stress of being in hospital versus being at home.

Yes misinformation of all kinds is bad.

But many women want decent pain relief which can only be accessed in hospital. The advantage of the epidural, for example, is that you have effective pain relief while maintaining mental clarity.

Well, infection and sepsis in my case. Caused by so many unconsented vaginal examinations as was basically admitted in my birth notes.

I was coerced into unnecessary medical interventions by consultants and had such a horrendous birth that ended with an emcs, ptsd and pnd.

Homebirth gives women like me the chance to labour naturally without fear and the stress from feeling unsafe by brutal medical staff during a very vulnerable time.

Its very strange how so many women are 'my body, my choice' when it comes to abortion, but when it comes to birth, we are told to unquestioningly rely on 'the experts' to the detriment of our physical and mental health. Maternity care is not women centered, and much of what is done is to get women in and out as fast as possible, like an assembly line at an abbatoir.

The problem with birth is it can all be going perfectly until it isn’t. You can only transfer in by ambulance, and lord knows there’s not enough of those and due to sheer weight of traffic at all times these days, getting one to you is always a struggle.

my first birth was going along nicely until my baby turned sideways at 9cm and refused to turn the ‘right way’. Thank goodness, because after my EMCS the doctor said to me he’d never come out naturally due to size! I have a teeny pelvis and they said they could guarantee shoulder dystocia with my baby and due to how big he was, a crash section (pushing him back up) would have been the only chance of saving him. I still shiver thinking about it.

Well, I personally wouldn't choose to have a major operation at home so by the same token I wouldn't want to give birth at home. Giving birth is dangerous. It's fair to say that hospitals can (and do) screw up but if anything goes wrong unexpectedly I think mother and baby have got a better chance than if they're an hour away with no doctors or medical equipment etc.