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

Maternity payouts make up a third of the total cost of NHS payouts

I would had died if I had opted for a homebirth. No risk factors or anything worrying throughout my pregnancy but DD got stuck and I needed an emergency c section. Had to have a blood transfusion too. Home births aren't worth the risk imo

My midwife only did home births and wouldn't have been in a hospital unless transferring a woman who needed hospital care. It didn't take anyone away from anything.

My trust has a separate home birth team. I wanted a hospital birth anyway (and needed one due to PPROM and no labour starting within 24 hours). What they don't tell you is that if they're all out on home births you're out of luck and will have to go to the nearest birthing unit or hospital. This happened to my NCT group friend. As it was, she needed a section anyway as they had vastly underestimated the 10lb baby's size and she is tiny.

Yes, very different scenarios. That said, it took the ambulance half an hour to get to me at home when we had an ambulance station just up the road. It came from another one.

Something is very wrong but that is true of most of the NHS at the moment.

If I'd had my last baby in hospital I'd have been writing the same. "Lucky I had this one in hospital or we would probably both be dead!" Yet I had baby at home and here we both are ... just. But we're here. Previously no risk factors and good births.

I’ve only skim read the article but my post was based on mothers who want a home birth and have no obvious complications, in which case it could be just as safe to birth at home.

It seems in her case she wasn’t keen to go to hospital when needed and was advised not to have a home birth as she had strep b and other complications? I personally would have birthed in hospital in her case, but I guess we don’t know enough to know if she would have definitely survived in hospital either.

My dm was a midwife on a gp unit.
The women were monitored throughout pregnancy by gp’s and midwives and gave birth in hospital but on a ward run by midwives and very low tech.

If a woman got into serious difficulties the midwife could transfer them to the consultant unit below in minutes or the medical staff could come up to the gp unit.
It was the ideal halfway house for women who wanted a more ‘home type’ birth but the added safety of all the medical staff and equipment on site.

The evidence shows that for low risk pregnancies home birth for first time mothers is as safe for the baby and slightly less safe for the mother. Fro second and subsequent births home is safer for mother and baby.

Lots of times when people say they would have had a terrible incident if they'd been at home they had accepted or been forced into interventions at hospital that increased those risks. For example being induced increases your risk of baby's shoulder getting stuck, PPH and instrumental delivery. If they hadn't been induced those risks wouldn't have been present. Epidurals increase risk etc.

I was technically a high risk as my BMI is in the overweight category but after my induction with my first in hospital I had my other two babies at home. One was born before the midwives arrived and the other the midwives were present. In both cases baby and I were perfectly healthy despite a mild PPH in my hospital birth and an episiotomy. Home births were relaxed, comfortable and my babies had a much gentler introduction into the world that my poor first baby who got dragged out due to an unnecessary induction.

Hospital births are absolutely the safest for high risk pregnancies (breech birth, gestational diabetes, pre eclampsia etc etc) but for low risk subsequent pregnancies it is statistically safer for mother and baby.

It was 100% coercion. Every woman is entitled to informed choice and informed consent. Just coming into your home and telling you horror stories is not informed consent it's threats. Every single "complication" that the consultant had come up with was baseless threats that even those 3 nurses agreed with me. We compromised on getting the GBS Swab then remaining at home.
He was the smallest PPH of all of them as there were no other interventions which the hospital always insisted on.
Home Birth is inherently less risk than a hospital birth the statistics back that up. When done correctly with informed choices made.
People will claim survivor bias but the same applies to hospital. How many women claim that their baby wouldn't have survived had they not been in hospital, then go on to say the huge chain of interventions which have been proven to cause these life threatening situations. That is also a survivor bias.

I'm really sorry you went through this 🤗

Probably need to see some stats for home birth risk factors in relation to proximity to emergency care. A home birth 2 hours from hospital vs a home birth 5min from one - very different scenarios.

@TempestTostthat is exactly what happened to me. I ended up with major abdominal surgery as a result of being pushed through a cascade of interventions. They pressured to break my waters, then pressured to start pitocin (then didn’t notice that they had completely missed the vein and I had been labouring for hours without the pitocin). Added to which for the monitoring I was forced to lie on my back for hours and hours. You wouldn’t treat an animal like that.

I was hallucinating with lack of sleep by the time my son was born midnight Saturday/sunday as had not slept since Wednesday. I was then returned to the ward, alone with no pain relief. Vile.

I think there would be fewer. Something is very wrong with maternity

I think it comes from a place where most people like the idea of having a trusted woman helping them through birth, like an ancestral thing? And then when you find out that you're just on a sort of production line with different people who you don't know changing shifts and so on, it feels wrong. For good reasons.

But a lot of preparing for birth in 2025 is to truly understand what the environment you're going to give birth in is like, and preparing for and adapting to it.

Then why did this lady die?

Hospitals can cause a lot of complications. Infection is a big one. Mothers are less comfortable and often under more stress, which can retard labour. Being relaxed and able to move freely is an important part of labouring. (Something vets know very well, btw. Some of the stuff they do in hospitals any vet would think was crazy and likely to result in a bad birth requiring interventions.)

Some bad management is so common they just amount to hospital risk factors. They tend to look more at monitors than the mother which leads to poor decisions. They don't give the staff and support to use the less invasive solutions to avoid complications - they want mums in beds or at least in their rooms, often aren't able to manage things like unusual birth positions or presentations and just send those to be sectioned, or even mothers labouring longer than they'd like.

They also tend to make interventions that lead to other interventions. Trying to artificially start or augment labour for example, seems simple but it can often lead to a labour that is less effective or more painful, which leads to the next thing, and so on. Some of this is related to the time and staff pressures.

I think it’s easy for people to criticise home births as not enough people are aware of the set up of them, and just how good the care can be. Areas like Leicester where they have a dedicated homebirth team you’re likely to have 2:1 midwife care from early labour as well as sometimes a third student midwife. They set up a rhesus station immediately in your home just in case baby needs it, and they have injections they can administer to control excessive blood loss in a PPH until they can get you to hospital. Obviously if you were in a hospital then an emergency situation would be better there but the midwives really are well equipped in a home birth and will call an ambulance at any moment they have the slightest concern. The care and attention is much more focussed and feels like an incredible private service!

Genuine question here - ie I'm not trying to inflame discussion, and I don't know the answer! Could it be thought of as a teeny bit selfish to arrange a home birth with a midwife present, when that midwife could be in the hospital assisting more than one birthing mum? I know that ideally we would all have a midwife with us through the whole labour, and there would be enough funding for us all to have the support we want.... but in reality does having a home birth with an NHS midwife there impact on the general system for all? Or are those professionals who come to to home births actually community midwives who are separate to the hospital ones?

I had a hospital birth. Textbook delivery, everything fine. Until the placenta wouldn’t come away and I haemorrhaged. Midwife rang for assistance and within seconds there was a team of people in the room who sorted me out. If that had happened at home who knows how much blood I would have lost, and I would have probably have had to be rushed into hospital for surgery.

Friend’s friend had a home birth. Baby had an infection that wasn’t picked up on and sadly died. Outcome might’ve been different in hospital, who knows.

Yes these are only 2 stories, but they both point in one direction.

There will still be litigation payouts.

Not to mention mums are older - I don’t know a single first time mum over 36 or 37 that hasn’t ended up with a c section (actually I know 1, out of probably 10).

Things are so much worse in the NHS now compared to 20 years ago. Whether or not a home birth was safe then doesn't mean it's safe now.

I know. But given they spend £1 billion a year on maternity litigation payouts, maybe it’d save money in the long run.