To think free birthing should be entirely banned

Wow so first you're telling women where they should give birth and now you're trying to tell them not to have anymore children!
You're acting like you are the one personally paying for the homebirth midwifes!
Women can have as many babies as they want and birth where they want!

Reminds me of the two videos I saw on FB just this last week of two different women in America both in labour not being listened to by the hospitals. One was screaming in pain and a nurse was just asking her questions typing on a computer instead of rushing her to the delivery ward and her baby was born with having swallowed meconium because of the nurse and another woman was just wheeled back out of the hospital in a wheelchair and she ended up giving birth in the car!

Why should someone have to pay for a private midwife?
Not everyone can afford private midwifes.
Would you pay private for something you are entitled to in the NHS?!

I would even say it is racist because it ignores all the evidence if how dangerous unmedicalised birth can be because it mainly comes from outside the white Anglosphere.

Screenshot from comments on that Yolande with the 11 kids instagram page. Very cult like

I had a shitty hospital birth with DS and an even worse experience on the hell that is the post natal ward. Fortunately I knew I didn’t want any more children, but if I had I probably would have been tempted by the idea of a free birth.

My hospital birth made me feel like I was on a conveyor belt, if I wasn’t at a certain point at a certain time then I was failing and was told there would need to be ‘interventions’. Drips to speed things up, painful internal examinations, threats of an instrumental birth etc. DS eventually arrived via emergency c-section at nearly midnight, when I’d been awake for the best part of 72 hours.

Then I got told off because I was too tired to try and feed him. I didn’t even know what day it was by that point.

In total contrast, I was born at home with no medical staff present, just my dad and the family Labrador in the room. My mum said it was a world away from her hospital birth with my older sister the year before. Oh and apparently the dog was more useful than my dad!

Do you mean send them to hospital to improve staffing levels there and not attend home births ever?

or do you mean rather than be on call from home after working all day have the on call home birth midwife rostered to work as an extra midwife on the labour ward. But to leave the labour ward and go to a home birth if called?

Thus ensuring that firstly she’s not knackered, secondly she’s keeping her intrapartum skills up to date and also improving staffing (most nights) on labour ward?

Because that needs to be a model which is adopted by all hospitals I think. Which will cost money. Which sadly the govt aren’t providing.

You know what though I was already arguing on your side yesterday I’ve only just read the guardian link you posted and wow it is so much more fucked up than I thought.

I remember the thread on here months ago about home birthing and someone said it’s fine if you’re healthy, young, good weight etc and I mentioned how with my second (after a straightforward delivery with my first) I was a healthy weight, young with no health conditions and still it went wrong and luckily I was in hospital.

But these online grifters were telling women with gestational diabetes and pre eclampsia it was fine to give birth at home??
The part about people’s babies dying and then their comments being deleted and the grifters telling them it was basically their fault for listening to the grifters was very chilling.
I went and checked their instagram page it reminds me of the raw fruitarians who ate nothing but raw fruit and fed their kids that way.

Free birthing is Darwin's theory in action - weeds out the stupid.

It’s horrific that the leader’s own baby was stillborn this year. But I do hope this makes other women who might be thinking about free birthing a lot more wary. They seem to brush all the others under the carpet and never mention them, but I think/hope it happening to her will make people think twice. I will also add, I agree there are some terrible units out there and improvements need to be made, but I had my three babies in hospital (3 different hospitals as it turned out) and had excellent birth experiences with all 3. Not at all taking away from those that have had awful experiences- just that it isn’t always the case.

Agreed. As should “influencers”, who in the main are only interested in influencing their bank accounts

You can't ban stupid.

And who do they want to pick up the pieces when it all goes wrong?

It is dangerous and proves they dont care about the baby just themselves

You can't force people to accept medical treatment.

That is so sad! Did he never see his children again? Didn't he have any family who could help out?

Agree. You'd want to be mad to free birth, but forcing medical treatment is but the way to go

Some people do and it is perfectly legal.

Let's just let the few die then?

So should you take risks with your own children and not vaccinate?

Nowadays one can have the best of both worlds. Have scans, have medical insights into the birth that were unknown a century ago but choose a sensible holistic approach to the birth if you choose knowing that emergencies can be dealt with.

I believe Polygamy came from this as a wife could die during pregnancy, birth or afterwards. If you had 3 or 4 wives, I guess it minimised the disruption to the husband and there was another on hand to raise the baby should one die during delivery.

Im as guilty as the next woman in not being totally honest about the pain etc of giving birth to my own daughter and being all 'oh it's all going to fine' bla bla bla.

More honesty amongst women would help I think

Before this, though, childbirth was, due to the lack of hospital care from the outset, more of a 'suffer even more and maybe one or both of you will survive - if you live, you can always have another one and if you don't, well, he'll just marry another one or perhaps his sister will take the baby in if it's not too damaged'.

So are the hospitals going to shut maternity units due to unavoidable deaths also

Some women not all .

I know.

I agree - but it doesn't seem to be what some people on here mean by bodily autonomy.