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

Your baby OP that thankfully was born at home with no complications was sheer luck & don’t think anything otherwise ..
Sorry to hear about your daughter & her permanent hearing loss, but the dangers of home births v the danger of hospital births
, sorry I feel no comparison ..
Answer me this , a woman is at home & her baby stops breathing or she haemorrhages, what do you do at home if faced with this ??? What do you do if you’re in the hospital?
I think the answer is plain as day in the question & where the woman is better off to be …

But your last baby was your second baby, and second births are statistically much better and more straightforward. It’s all but impossible to separate out the confounding factors. I’m sorry you had such a bad experience first time round.

I bled out at home and needed a lot of blood transfusions. Just one doesn't seem like such a big bleed in the context of mine. Still alive. I do think I'd have not got into such bad condition in hospital (but don't know that) and my midwife wasn't proactive enough about handling the situation, but it still worked out. I know I'd have been screwed if I'd had a PPH that just kept pouring out as you can bleed out within minutes and die. However, in that situation, there's no guarantee I'd survive in hospital either.

Oh yes, if I did have another baby I'd have it in hospital, but only because my risk has changed.

Spot on.
Survivors bias.

Agree. There was a poster on here some years ago who had a very smooth homebirth but her baby was born not breathing. She was catastrophically brain damaged and needed 24 hour care as she couldn’t sit up or speak. The 10 minutes the transfer took was 10 minutes her daughter didn’t have. She posted quite a lot about it, I often wonder how she is doing now.

When I had dd3 , it’s was a horrific hospital experience due to a horrific midwife ..
That said I didn’t dream of having my son at home cause at the end of the day if anything went wrong there are doctors present …

Why does it bother you so much? If someone wanted a homebirth but was scared off it but a believe it is inherently riskier without looking more into it then that's her choice. Why are you concerned with the choices other women make so much.

You would never have convinced me 8 years ago when I was last pregnant that it was a sensible choice to consider a homebirth as I simply wasn't interested and ultimately it still feels far safer to be at home regardless of what evidence you believe to the contrary. Why is that a problem? If I wanted a homebirth I could have had one.

The problem with this thread is that all the pro home birthers had good home births with healthy children that lived. The dead women aren’t here and the women whose children died in home births dare not open this thread.

The pro home birthers have never felt the fear that your child is a whisper away from death, that medics are white in the face and the fear in their voice that they think your baby is probably going to die as they rush you in for a crash section. Your baby’s heart rate has stopped.

So they are arguing from a place of ignorance and privilege

It if you have an incompetent midwife in hospital, there are other midwives and doctors there to intervene. At home there isn’t - there’s a wait for an ambulance then the time taken for a hospital transfer. A PPH or baby in need of resuscitation could happen to anybody, albeit she was higher risk for those things. This scenario could’ve happened to a low risk women although it was less likely.

YABU
Home births can be extremely risky for some women and/or their babies. It is not risky for all women, by any means, and can be a good choice for some women who are well with low risk pregnancies.

That said, even low risk pregnancies can rapidly become complicated and it’s not a risk I would want to take, personally. My second was a fairly textbook/entirely normal, pregnancy and I am fit, healthy and low risk. Had I opted for home birth there is a very high likelihood that my baby would have died. it happens, it’s not always predictable. I don’t think that my experience means no women should have home births, but I think women do need to consider that factor, and indeed know how to understand the evidence in context.

The evidence shows that for low risk women/pregnancies, home births are indeed largely safe. However, the data does not suggest it is safe for all women- most women who have home births in the UK are low risk, so the low complication rates are exactly what I would expect. It’s a pre-selected, “biased” sample by its very definition and relatively low in number when compared to total births. You have to bear that in mind when using the data and extrapolating from it.

My point is that people often say they get better care at home and that the midwives are brilliant and experienced, so if complications do arise, they’re in capable hands.

That wasn’t the case here. The midwife at the birth had no experience in resuscitation and had never dealt with a haemorrhage outside of a hospital setting before. Then there’s the queries around why readings weren’t properly recorded and so on.

So is it just the fact the mums are healthy and low risk and generally multiparous that make it ‘so safe’ rather than the much better care everyone has mentioned here?

This lady did make very high risk decisions but even a low risk person can have haemorrhages or a baby that needs resuscitation. If the midwives are inept that’s a real worry as people often quote ‘they can do that all at home’.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/midwife-scrawled-heart-rates-incontinence-32684929.amp

Here’s the article by the way. I’m quite shocked a home birth midwife had never resuscitated a baby before and couldn’t work the equipment which didn’t even fit the newborn baby. Although the mum did obviously make high risk decisions it sounds like they lost control.

Yes but you’re an unusual case. Most people don’t have 5 or 6 children to test out the various scenarios that can arise - most people have 2, and the usual pattern is a ‘bad’ hospital birth (which may be poor care but may also just be because first babies are notoriously a worse labour), followed by a home birth (which again may have been great due to good care, but may have been smoother because it’s a second baby). They then conclude home birth is much better.

Not true. I had 5 hospital births and one at home. Two were because home birth honestly didnt cross my mind. Two were because I booked for home but medical reasons required I birth in hospital, I didnt question having to change my booking as it was best for the babies. One because I was very over due and agreed to an induction.

Last one, home birth, no issues but I would have changed if my midwife had told me I should but she and her colleagues were happy to go ahead and I trusted them.

And actually the further article on this very sad case today indicates medical mistakes at the home birth as well - I guess malpractice or poor care doesn’t just happen in the hospital. The midwives didn’t record her blood pressure or heart rate, didn’t follow up worrying readings etc and then lost the notes they did write because they jotted them on an incontinence pad and threw it away when clearing up afterwards. The midwife interviewed also said she had never resuscitated a baby before and was panicking, and the equipment was not fit for purpose.

Just wondering what the OP makes of the above.

And thats why when planning a homebirth and alternative back up is usually prepared, often the birth partners car. My midwife said that it is good to have a back up in the unlikely circumstances of a delay in an ambulance transfer. In my case it was my father as my ex didnt drive. He was put on alert as soon as I went into labour and didnt leave the house until it was all over.

The whole point of planning a home birth is covering the eventualities as far as possible. My midwife said that they had never needed to use the back up except in cases where women wanted more pain relief and transferred in for an epidural.

But it seems that you wont concede the point that home births can be just as safe as hospital (and in some cases more so) at any price.

The problem with research comparing home birth with hospital birth is that it is always done in countries where If there are any problems, women are transferred to hospital. Your chance of getting an ambulance in the UK now in an emergency is much, much lower.I find it quite ironic that the people who think hospitals are not safe for giving birth seem to have great faith that an ambulance will arrive when they need one.

I don't think it's helpful to see it in terms of a conflict (and saying 'natural mother type' is just a bit inflammatory). It's obvious on this thread that lots of people have had really unpleasant and frightening experiences giving birth generally - in and out of hospital. It's no good trying to contradict people's personal experiences on either side. I think people should be supported to have home births where the risk is low and if they want to. I think people should be able to give birth and have access to a safe and dignified labour in hospital if that's what they want and/or need. I don't think either one is superior or makes anyone more of a mother or whatever. But it is simply not factual to say that hospital births are always safer than home births and women should not be frightened away from considering it.

Well, my second birth was very quick (I was only in the hospital 15 minutes before my DS was born) but I unexpectedly haemorrhaged so that theory wouldn’t haven’t applied to me.

I was a low risk birth but bled out massively and needed a blood transfusion, I was very grateful to be in hospital and would never advise a home birth as you never know what could go wrong.

I don’t think the two parties on here will ever see eye to eye. I do think home birth and ‘natural mother’ types in general can be absolutely vociferous about defending their choices and while I understand to a certain extent, they tend to come from a place where all these things are options for them and so confirmation bias comes in as well as a lack of understanding of people whose circumstances are different. In a sense they’re a bit ‘privileged’ and will never really know what it’s like to actually have to make these decisions when risk factors come into play.