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

We’ll never know.

The only stats we can reference is those from a time when homebirth was the norm - 1940s and 1950s. The issue is at that time the average maternal age was much younger, they were much less likely to be obese, and fewer twin births due to the IVF etc - it’s not comparable really. I remember a comment from a medic on here saying women are sustaining pregnancies now that would never have been sustained 30 or 40 years ago - donor egg, huge amounts of drugs to prop them up etc

Age massively affects how a labour goes for first time mums. A first time mum aged 40 is 3.5 times more likely to have a C-section than a first time mum age under 30 (a study I just found said, anyway).

Oh gosh @TheBerry it’s both sad and very nice to hear a bit more about her as a person and not just the few words spoken by the midwife at the inquest. She sounds like a very likeable person and it’s easy to just take the case on the bare facts and assume she was a huge risk taker. As I said above I myself was surprised there seemed to be so many medical mistakes at an already high risk situation.

It’s a real issue because honestly I do understand about cascades of intervention and poor hospital care, I’ve been there myself and objectively DS’s birth was as haphazard as it was due to completely undeniable failings by the hospital - as I wrote upthread, I was given a pessary, put in a cubicle (just a bed behind a curtain) and left there for 15 hours, 12 of which I was in active labour and nobody did a thing - just popped in to do obs, said ‘mmm yes hun’ when I was saying how regular and strong my contractions were, and occasionally bringing paracetamol. They only took me to labour ward when I was 10cm, DS’s head was visible and I was vomiting everywhere and clearly in transition. How this was allowed to happen I have no idea, and it transpired one of the midwives had falsified my notes to say I was 1cm dilated at the check the night before when I was actually 4 and I was able to ‘catch her out’ by printing a screenshot of a text I sent at that time to DP telling him to be on standby to come in as I was probably to be taken to labour ward soon. Only then did they apologise and say she had been ‘spoken to’ - spoken to?? There was me thinking falsifying notes to cover up mistakes would be a disciplinary offence. I would be sacked in my job.

I honestly left that hospital feeling midwives were about as useful as a chocolate teapot and frankly beyond a bit of supervision and doling out paracetamol, barely necessary - they could’ve not existed at all and my labour would’ve been no different.

I actually struggle to know what they’re even there for half the time, they don’t listen, are incredibly passive, forget everything you tell them and when they say they’ll be back in a minute they never are (sorry I’ve gone on a tangent now).

I can absolutely see how this lady was as traumatised as she was to make the decisions she did.

Agreed every woman should be able to make their decisions based on fact. However, sometimes women don't appear to be put in a good position re: informed choice.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5425163-in-labour-need-urgent-advice

How often does this kind of thing happen, I suspect we will never know?

As most of the above, anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything. Research suggests there is no greater risk. There is no right or wrong and we should support women in their choices, even if it's not the one you would choose personally. Surely we all want a happy outcome for both mother and baby?

I think she wasn’t in her right mind and reading between the lines was influenced by the online home birthing community.

I was in her form at school and though I’ve not seen her for years (apart from Facebook) I did know her pretty well. She was lovely - warm, kind, chatty, outgoing, thoughtful. The woman I knew is not the woman described by the midwife in the articles - quiet, only speaking to her husband, uncooperative, turning her back when a urine sample was requested, etc. I think she must have been so traumatised from her first birth and in a very impressionable state of mind and had been influenced by home birthers telling her than pph is caused by the stress of being in hospital, etc.

She was always very meticulous and she planned such a beautiful wedding, kept a beautiful home, always hand made things, and I guess she thought that if she planned her perfect birth down to the very last detail then that’s how it would go.

It is devastating and I don’t think enough was done to address her trauma or mental state. Her clinical team should have done more to dissuade her.

Half of all births. Deemed necessary by medical professionals. We have established some interventions may have been unnecessary but the majority are required.

It's a practically an immeasurable thing to determine because you can't really prove whether a Dr is wrong in his/her decision at a specific time.

What you can do as a woman, is take on the information presented to you and try to make an informed decisions from there.

For example, I'm 2 days over. I'm offered an induction, I refuse. vs I'm going to tear from fanny to arse, thank you I will have an episiotomy.

An estimated 10 - 15% of births involve a cascade due to unnecessary invention according to AI. This isn't wholly reliable when you look at how it was broken down.

Around half of births have an intervention which ranges from episiotomy 10-15% to C section 38.9% of that half. The overwhelming majority of interventions are deemed necessary.

A woman has the right to refuse medical intervention whether she is in hospital or not. I personally would refuse a stretch and sweep or an induction for the sake of it.

This doesn't change the fact women and babies are at greater risk if something goes wrong during a home birth, meaning hospital is a generally safer place to be giving birth.

'My last baby was a home birth and far, far safer.' Because nothing went wrong with your HB fortunately. Had something gone wrong you'd be safer in hospital. You keep ignoring this point.

I can't tell if you are being purposely obtuse but the general consensus on here is that a home birth isn't any likelier to have complications than a hospital birth, unless it is a first time mum.

What the majority of us have been saying is, if something were to go wrong you and your baby would be at greater risk of death or injury if you were at home.

Where would you rather be haemorrhaging to death, in your living room or a hospital?

The NHS backs this up and it's plain common sense.

They’re still in some cases a way away from a hospital though. My friend booked into a rural unit to have her first baby, and although it wasn’t a life/death scenario and they were both ok, she had to wait an hour stuck at 10cm for an ambulance and then a 30 minute drive to the hospital. I don’t see any reason why we can’t just improve maternity units in general so they have a homely feel, pool access etc but the doctors just upstairs.

I wish there were more birthing units

Halfway between home and hospital births and with hospitals accessible if there is a problem

And you're not put in a noisy ward with mums, babies and partners afterwards, you get your own room

Unfortunately I'm not shocked by that part of it having come across (via NMC work I previously did) many midwives who failed to resuscitate a baby born in poor condition - meaning hypoxia often until paramedics arrive who tend to be quite good at airways.

Resuscitation is much much more effective in hospital with neonatologists and supportive medicine if needed, intubation etc, but even at home a MW should know how to do compressions and airway management. Unfortunately many are deskilled having leaned it years ago and never putting it into practice. HB midwives are I'm sure very good when nothing goes wrong as that's the situation they fave most of the time.

A home birth with an experienced midwife (who has extensive experience of home births) in a low risk pregnancy can be a wonderful experience. The issues arise when it’s a first time mum who has had a normal pregnancy, who is birthing with an inexperienced midwife (or a midwife lacking in home birth experience) who perhaps doesn’t flag an issue early enough, or a mum who is too stubborn to accept medical advice because they dream of the perfect home birth.

I’ve got friends who had very succesful
home births with minimal support from
their midwife, and who delivered overnight and the most the midwife really did was a few checks and cleaned up after. I’ve also got a friend who delivered successfully in hospital and then haemorrhaged so severely 3 hours later that they had to have a hysterectomy to stem the bleeding.

I planned to have my son in a midwife lead unit of a main hospital, which au gel was a brilliant compromise between having the relaxed hands off delivery that I wanted but within the confines of a main hospital if support was needed. Thank goodness I did. My contractions stopped at 10cms dilated and my son’s heart rate dropped dangerously low. I was able to be transferred quickly to the main delivery suite and put on a trace to monitor my son. They did a quick hand scan to discover he had moved position between my 36 week check and going into labour and was back to back. I ended up delivering in theatre where he came presented with shoulder Sonia and came out fist first with the cord round his neck so tightly that if they hadn’t been able to do a 4th degree episiotomy his delivery would have lead to possible placenta abruption and him being strangled by his cord. He needed oxygen at birth.

Like I said, there is a place for each option, but unless you are in your second pregnancy and have already had one uncomplicated delivery it shouldn’t be the first option for many ladies. And certainly should be considered very carefully for a first time delivering.

The lady in the papers was failed twice. The first time she delivered by being made to feel that she didn’t have a successful labour and delivery and the second time by the team that didn’t press on her exactly how high risk she was having had a previous post partum haemorrhage

A lot of medical cultures (including US and continental Europe so we don’t have an argument of how superior British practice is - it really isn’t per medical stats) consider it necessary and a natural part - if you go to a gynaecologist you obviously expect him to perform a VE and same with birth. Like, why would you not consent? Consent may be sought formally but it is strange not to provide it.
(and as a side point UK is also pretty unique that women and NHS don’t consider seeing a gynaecologist regularly as medically necessary - which is bizarre frankly).

so if you are conditioned to think that VE is assault and not necessary you will think so. But UK is quite an outlier in this regard as I said above.
A lot of people (not from UK) will perceive this as negligence if a midwife or a doctor would not do VE during birth

I really didn’t - that’s not how proving a point works.

I think it would be very rare for a VE to be so urgent that it must be done then and there. The only time I would find that acceptable is if the cord prolapsed and the VE was actually an intervention to push the baby up to take the pressure off the cord. Of course, a c-section is the only real option then.

Not sure about VE's but when i had a c-section after saying no and they did it anyway i was told that if it's urgent they don't need consent. Although when they took my gas and air away from me i started screaming at them to get the spinal in now so maybe that counted as consent.

I heamorraged at home after my miscarriage and the pain was worse than 2 of my labours. Dh phoned the gynae ward as instructed the previous day and they said call an ambulance. So a and e checked i wasn't anaemic, gave me prescription strength co codamol (which didn't touch the sides) and sent me home. I was admitted to the gynae ward 2 days later with a pulse rate of over 200 because I'd lost too much blood. So when the midwife recommended a homebirth when i got pregnant again I jumped at the chance.

When you first started this thread I thought you were being supportive of home births, but in an open-minded non-agenda driven way.
As it’s progressed, it’s become clear that you have an axe to grind about hospital treatment of birthing mothers and their babies, and that is why you are trying to deny the inherent risks of a home birth.

I don’t think this is helpful to your ‘cause’ or to mothers-to-be. Scaremongering because of anecdotal bad experience is nasty. Mothers considering how and where to labour are under enough pressure and stress as it is without anyone indicating that there are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ decisions.

In terms of the law it is assault here in the UK.

Maybe it isn’t in some other countries with different cultures but that can also be said for a lot of things 🤷‍♀️

Some cultures see it that way and some cultures don’t, surprise - not everyone has the same culture as British.

You're not likely to be in a position where they can do a VE without your participation until you're in the pushing stage (if you have your baby on your back in stirrups). Then they don't need to do a VE to see how far you are along anyway (which isn't really necessary as the mother's body will tell you). It wouldn't have been possible for anyone to do a VE during my home births without my consent via getting in position, as I was ambulant through all stages.