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

Hospital adds risks that don't exist at home. Of course other risks are mitigated by access to emergency care. But it is not as straightforward as 'homebirth is riskier'. That is not the whole argument at all because the home environment provides factors that can statistically improve birth outcomes and lower interventions for women who are already low risk.

That doesn't mean home birth is always safe and it doesn't mean hospital birth is always safer either.

But you are assuming that there will be a higher level of care at home.
If the hospital is overstretched and can’t provide enough midwife care then equally the same system will be unable to provide enough midwives for 1 to 1 or 2 to 1 midwife care at home.

I think what that says is births are safer when there is adequate medical care available.

Double check the statistics that you're using- if a home birth baby is transferred to hospital because medical intervention is needed to save the mother or baby, is the birth counted as a hospital birth? This certainly used to be the case which sways the data significantly. The probability of things going wrong may be low for a straightforward pregnancy, but the severity of the consequences is high.

Not for the first baby. For the first baby there’s a higher risk than hospital. This is only applicable for 2nd+ baby and with no risk factors.

I’m torn on this topic. I’ve had 1 medicalised but okay hospital birth, and one that was truly awful - despite insisting I needed to be in hospital ‘for our safety’, my entire 12 hour labour was completely unattended (bar midwife popping in to do my obs every 4 hours) in a cubicle on an 8 bed ward because they refused to acknowledge I was in labour. This is despite me telling them my contractions were strong and regular, an initial vaginal exam the night before showing me to be 4cm (yep), and me literally saying ‘I’M IN LABOUR’ any time a midwife walked past my bed. How on earth they could make such a prolonged and blatant mistake I have no idea. By the time they realised I was vomiting through pain and 10cm with a visible head. I had been signed off for the birth pool and I feel very angry that my birth was being ignored and left on a bed for hours, followed by a rushed transfer to labour ward and told to lie on a bed with bright lights and endless staff coming in and out.

I had no labour or baby complications, and despite my ‘background condition’ I’m sure my son would’ve been safer at home with one on one midwife care rather than being completely ignored in hospital.

Hospital apologised but damage is done - no good experiences for me and I can’t have more children.

Me too. I was 21 years old and it was my first (and only) baby. Everything went wrong in labour and me and baby very nearly died and indeed would have without quick action from doctors

It makes me reslly angry when people downplay the risks in favour of the so called 'perfect' birth experience.

I’d consider home birth only if I lived within a few streets of a hospital and had someone on hand who could drive me there if needed.

id pay no attention to whether or not I was “low risk” my second child after having a normal birth with my first one I was slim, healthy and young with no complications and still needed a c section and we both could of died

Just my advice to anyone reading

Again, why do you think NICE gives the advice it does then? If you know better just from your own common sense?

Out of interest, does your argument mean that you're equally against standalone midwife units? Why do you think the NHS runs them if they're obviously dangerous?

All that went wrong with my first iPhone, in hoputl (not NHS, a private hospital in a western European country usually considered a lot safer than UK) was caused by the fact I was left alone as too many women were in labour simultaneously and they didn't have enough midwives and doctors. So the quiet one, who didn't appear to be on active labour, was told to get some rest.
I gave birth 10 minutes later completely alone as DH tried to find help.

Whereas my home birth in the UK... I had two midwives and a student midwife with me from when I called the midwives office in early labour. She was born calmly and safety a few hours later (with again a very short active labour)
And thats what made it safer... undivided medical attention.

Until we are at the point where every women in labour has undivided medical attention in hospital, complications like that will occur.

Why would you take a ‘risk’ with a life?

Who is to say that exact situation would have happened if you had stayed at home though. It's impossible to know.

Childbirth used to be the single biggest killer of women before modern medicine op.

In Afghanistan now that western medicine has been removed it is becoming so again.

(and I’ve seen a news story where the Afghan men are not blaming this on their own lacks or thanking past western interventions, no they’re cursing the removal of gifts they won’t create themselves, grumble grumble).

Yep.

And the bottom line is that it cannot be argued - absolutely simply and irrefutably cannot be argued - that it is equally safe to be an unknown time away from an operating theatre, doctors, drugs, medicine, medical intervention.

It's not rational to make any argument other than "I know home birth carries more inherent risks than hospital birth. I know I cannot argue with this. But I want to have my baby at home".

That's the whole argument, I'm afraid, no matter how unpalatable.

Completely agree.

All birth is risky. Home, hospital, in an ambulance, in a taxi in the carpark. There are always risks and it's impossible to predict or mitigate all of them.

I can sit here and say I'd be dead if my mam opted for home birth, which is true. Doesn't mean that statistically home birth is any more or less risky than hospital births, just that there are different risks to take into consideration and with the state of healthcare in this country it's a crapshoot whether you'll have a good or shit time.

Going into a home birth thinking "home births aren't risky" is reckless and moronic. Going into a hospital birth assuming that you've mitigated all risk by giving birth in a hospital is naïve.

Perhaps we need to stop arguing amongst ourselves about who is superior because of where they gave birth and start arguing in favour of better care in hospitals and better education and easier to access information for all about all birth types, possible risk factors and benefits?

And, to be clear, I had had a perfectly healthy pregnancy, no risk factors at all.

I didn’t say it wasn’t fair, I said it wasn’t the question being asked. Really not the same thing. The question being asked in the post is not “are low risk home births safer”. It refers to ALL births.

Is NICE staffed by irrational people then? Is that why they say low-risk women should be offered home birth?

Well that’s because answering this as a general question with zero nuance or acknowledgment that the answer will be different for different people is stupid. They look at the specific questions to see whether it’s riskier for specific people because that is actually useful information.

Yes, having nearly died in childbirth I understand completely that a living, healthy mother and baby is absolutely the only outcome that matters.

Are you referring to this OP?

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/mum-34-baby-die-home-32669749.amp

I think the thing is there’s no way of knowing if a home birth will be safe or not. Easy pregnancies with no health implications do not guarantee straightforward births.
I have personally known of uncomplicated home births, yet at the same time known of several very risky home births where both mum and baby have very nearly died. It’s luck of the dice.

I read this and was devastated for her and her family and her baby. Her toddler.

My second baby would have died in a home birth. No indcetion of any issues, straight forward pregnancy. Category 1 c section - a crash section, I was immediately put to sleep and baby had to be born in minutes as had stopped breathing. Heart rate absolutely plummeted. Went to nicu

Having called an ambulance in circumstances such that the call should have been right at the top of the list I second, third and fourth this.

The idea that we can rely on an ambulance arriving promptly for a true emergency is delusional. It is fantasy land.

Again, then, why aren't the outcomes worse for home birth in second and subsequent low-risk births? Why does NICE recommend: 'Advise low-risk multiparous women that planning to give birth at home or in a midwifery-led unit (freestanding or alongside) is associated with a lower rate of interventions and the outcome for the baby is no different compared with an obstetric unit.'? How could that possibly be true if home birth is always riskier?

But that isn’t what was asked in the original post.