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

I’ve just read the article and I think it has to be made clear she chose a home birth despite significant risk factors - her first baby had group B strep and sepsis, but she declined to be tested for group B strep in her second pregnancy and declined to be in hospital for an antibiotic drip. She’d also had a large haemorrhage in her first pregnancy and again declined hospital where these can be managed more quickly and efficiently.

I take issue with the fact the inquest is now making out the doctors hadn’t explicitly warned her by saying ‘you could die’ and ‘this goes against all our advice’. They explained the risks to her and she made her own decision - if they’d said the former no doubt they would’ve been criticised somehow for scaremongering or ruining women’s bodily autonomy etc.

I feel like they can’t do right for wrong really

I know! She had horrible experience because she has medical issues during birth, not because she was in a hospital. Very sad.

But the funding ultimately comes from the same pot, taxes.
Home births are only considered safe when there is adequate one to one midwife care.
If the same ongoing individual support was provided in a hospital setting then it would negate some of the risks of a hospital birth.

I took notice and glad I did as there was an issue and lucky I was at the hospital.
A F had homebirth a few years ago and there were issues and unfortunately her baby didn’t survive.
Bettet to be near help if it’s needed rather than making a point and then people looking at you thinking that if you had your baby in hospital it might have survived.

There are different risks.

Home births have lower risks of needing escalation/interventions etc, and generally progress quickly and more calmly than hospital births. You will have a midwife with you at an earlier stage - meaning earlier gas and air if that is what you want.

But in the event that it does turn into an emergency situation you are better off at hospital.

Surrounded by medical teams, testing, equipment.... It is safer

I’ve just read today about a mum in Manchester who insisted on home birth despite high risk. Sadly both the baby and she died.
the husband then claimed that they were not told verbatim that this is “against medical advice” and “out of guidance” even though they were told about the risks and were referred to a consultant.
and midwives said they are discouraged from saying words “against medical advice”, talk about risks of death because they have to RESPECT WOMEN’s CHOICE (to die, I guess).
as a result they see more and more high risk births in home setting.

your rhetoric is plain DANGEROUS.
home births are safe for absolutely straightforward pregnancies (and even then things can go wrong and hospital might be too far away).
for a lot of women - including straightforward pregnancies. Let alone high risk ones - home births ARE more risky

And good luck getting the home birth activist to listen to or react to the actual medical facts you are all quoting, let alone admitting she has gravely misunderstood the facts.

As stated above "Nobody is saying giving birth at home necessarily increases your risk of something going wrong, but what it does increase is the risk of a bad outcome if & when something does go wrong."

Yep, irrefutably so.

And as was also stated, the only people having home births have been assessed as being extremely low risk so cannot be compared to the general population for risk.

And sometimes they still die.

Anyway, I'm off, good luck getting through to her, it would all be very silly if it wasn't so serious.

A shoulder dystocia is a shoulder dystocia though.

If it's going to happen, it will happen regardless of place of birth.

No longer practicing Midwife here - decades ago when I did my training we were told -despite the medical advances - pregnancy and childbirth is still one of the most dangerous things a woman can do. Advances in care have mitigated a lot of those risks, but it's still a risky thing to do.

This lady did have quite substantial risk factors but they’re risk factors I see ‘holistic doulas’ urge women to ignore all the time.

I would like to recommend a book called ‘Reckoning with Risk’ by Gerd Gigerenzer.

It is fascinating & will assist anyone who ever needs to make a decision (such as one about medical treatment) that involves thinking about risk & uncertainty.

I had one hospital birth which was horrific. I was left to it and no pain relief. It took 12 hours. Second birth was unplanned at home with a paramedic car just making it in time. That was scary but I had more care there than in hospital.
Third was planned home birth as consultant (had scans as baby had small legs) was concerned i wouldn’t make it to hospital after quick second birth. He was right, baby was born five mins after midwives arrived.

However, I was low risk. My planned home birth was absolutely lovely. I was relaxed and felt safe in my home. I would choose it over hospital every time, but not if I was advised that it was a high risk.

Not bothered to RTFT as I am sure I am not the first person on the thread who had unexpected complications that would have killed me if I had stayed at home in the birthing pool I had set up.
Just be flexible and do what the experts suggest.

This attitude is exactly how maternity care treats women like non sentient pieces of flesh in this country. Your argument may stand in a strictly statistical sense if you are looking at whole populations and writing an essay about it.

However, pregnant women are human beings within that system. As a woman who is having a low risk pregnancy with her second child I can look at the reported risks - as long as I'm informed of them properly - and say 'I am less likely to experience medical interventions that snowball than I am to have a straightforward birth if I have a homebirth so that's what I'll do' rather than having somebody bellow IT'S ALWAYS SAFER IN HOSPITAL which in my (imaginary) case is not true at all. It is not always a purely emotional decision (although it is worth mentioning that emotional factors have a practical effect during childbirth).

The question being asked here: ‘Am I being unreasonable to be fed up with the ‘home birth is risky’ misinformation?’ is ridiculous.

All birth is risky, wherever it takes place. In most cases, the risk will be extremely low and we live with it in order to reproduce. But the exact level of risk in any individual woman’s case can only be estimated in advance on the basis of best practice & medical knowledge, not known with certainty.

In the event of a home birth, IF the risk transpires in an individual case to be higher than estimated, emergency assistance is highly likely to take longer to be obtained than would be the case in a hospital (particularly given the state of ambulance services), and the risk of an adverse outcome will therefore be increased.

Again the likelihood of this happening can only be estimated in advance in an individual woman’s case, not known with certainty.

The choice for any individual woman considering where to give birth is the extent to which she is willing to live with uncertainty about the degree of risk in her particular case, and the extent to which she thinks it is ethical, in terms of the welfare of her unborn child, to do so. The relevant factors and appetite for risk will vary in individual cases.

Trying to pretend that talking about risk and uncertainty in the context of childbirth is ‘misinformation’ deprives women of the information they need to make their own choices. It is not supportive of the right to make free & informed choices.

We understand this in the context of investment advice, which is subject to regulation to clarify risk and uncertainty & assess the prospective investor’s appetite for both, and their circumstances. Why ever should the advice given to pregnant women abour birth be held to a lower standard than is the advice given to a person by a financial adviser?

For a first baby I agree. I follow a lovely lady on Insta, she has just given birth to her first baby. She’s early 20s (so perfect age biologically), is very healthy and slim and stayed very active and well in her pregnancy with no complications, average sized baby. She was determined to have a home birth, went into labour naturally at 41 weeks and had set the house up for optimal usage (birth balls, use of the shower, pool, bean bags, etc).

She live-posted her birth and initially it seemed to be textbook - waters going, regular contractions. Eventually the posting stopped, and eventually it turned out her labour had gone on for a full 48 hours with an 8 hour pushing stage. She had 2 very holistic midwives who despite trying everything the baby would not budge. They ended up calling an ambulance as the baby’s heart decelerated, luckily just as the paramedics arrived they did an episiotomy and the baby came out.

The mum was so deeply unwell from her labour she wasn’t able to get out of bed for a
month, and is still in near constant pain 3 months later. She’s had a reparative surgery and will probably need more. She only went to the shops for the first time the other day as lifting or being on her feet is too painful.

Honestly I’ve followed it thinking, there’s absolutely nothing she could’ve done differently and she’s still probably permanently damaged.

I do find it frustrating that people think they know better than all medical guidance based on their own gut feeling, yes. I didn't 'shout', and your annoyance that I've asked a question you can't answer doesn't mean I am 'incensed'.

Nobody is saying giving birth at home necessarily increases your risk of something going wrong, but what it does increase is the risk of a bad outcome if & when something does go wrong.

As I say I was low risk, as textbook as it gets, no concerns whatsoever, and still both my baby & I would be dead if I’d chosen to have a home birth.

So, yep, home birth is always the riskier proposition and there is no rational argument against that.

Now, I'm off. I already know I'm right and have no interest in being shouted at by irrational people. Feelings don't trump facts, I'm afraid and I don't want to just keep repeating myself on a loop.

Cheers. 👋

The homebirth team is often separate to the hospital. During mine, the hospital wasn't accepting new admissions (the second nearest being 90min from my house) but the homebirth team was the community midwives.

Look at this graph at how common death was in childbirth in this country. Annoyingly the lines aren’t annotated but I assume the huge drop is mothers not dying.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon-Collin-3/publication/226933583MaternalMortalityinDevelopingCountries/links/0c96051b83b2c98467000000/Maternal-Mortality-in-Developing-Countries.pdf?origin=publicationdetail&tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6Il9kaXJlY3QiLCJwYWdlIjoicHVibGljYXRpb25Eb3dubG9hZCIsInByZXZpb3VzUGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIn19

The current statistic is that 50% of women who attempt a homebirth in my area are blue-lighted to hospital.

Both women in my antenatal class who attempted a homebirth with their first child ended up in hospital with EMCS.

I needed c sections for both my children.

I would only have considered a homebirth for my second child if i had a smooth natural delivery for my first.

She's absolutely hell bent on not listening I'm afraid, rationality and reality won't touch the sides.

Why are you becoming increasingly incensed by calm statement of facts? It's a bit odd.

Again, it is completely, totally and irrefutably correct that it is always riskier to go into labour where you do not have quick access to an operating theatre, blood clotting drugs, medical staff and medical care.

It doesn't matter how angry that makes you. Reality doesn't care how you feel. You have nothing important or useful to say to me so please go and yell at someone else. Cheers.

Saying that low risk women (which will be those on second or subsequent babies with a proven track record of no complications, no underlying health conditions, no pregnancy complications etc) should be offered home births doesn't mean that 'for the general populations homebirths carrier greater risks) is not a valid statement. First time mums, anyone with any kind of health co diton or pregnancy complications, anyone well overdue etc home births will be much higher risk