Looking back, do you think getting tips from a birth expert would have helped?

[Chicchicchicchiclana]

A current sticky/Q & A on Mumsnet has got me thinking. Do you think your diffiçult/traumatic birth was caused by you being unprepared or was it due to circumstances outside of your control?

Are you asking if you can reduce your chance of intervention or a c-section by being prepared? That's not what I thought you were asking, sorry. I thought you were asking about avoiding trauma and feelings of failure.

I suppose it must depend on what the complication is. There are so many possible complications it would take forever to go through them one by one. But I would expect that for some complications it's just one of those things, there is absolutely nothing that can be done to influence it, it either happens or it does not and you just have to respond to it.

Then for some complications it might be possible to reduce the chances somewhat. So for example, positioning can help to move a baby down and engage them, which is meant to help with certain things, or might bring labour on a bit faster which might result in mum being less exhausted by the end stages for example.

Knowing about certain things (e.g. pre-eclampsia) in advance could make it more easily picked up at an earlier stage so that a better outcome is more likely simply because you have the benefit of time.

I was very well prepared, including a birth plan largely written by my consultant because if specific health issues.

Problem was the midwives chose to ignore the plan and by that point I was too drugged/exhausted to object.

So maybe it’s the staff who need to do more prep.

It's definitely not going to be possible to 100% influence the outcome of every birth just by being prepared - if we could do that then we wouldn't need interventions etc.

That's not what I take all of these "prep for birth" classes/books/videos/whatever resources to be for though. I think you're making a bit of a straw man argument, because avoiding interventions entirely has never (as far as I am aware) been the aim of any of these things. Staying calm during labour and maybe reducing the chances of some interventions, yes, but I've never seen it claimed that you can definitely avoid all.

Hypnobirthing course, read lots of birthing books, hired a doula, bought one of those balloon things to help flexibility, pregnancy yoga, happy birthing course. Emergency section and intensive care.

All fine now but what happens happens, no matter how many ‘tips’ you might get.

Two of my friends had a completely avoidable stillbirths 6 months before we had DS1 (one at home and one in the MLU). We didn’t have a great experience with the first bloods, scan and checking in through NHS and decided to go privately in a MLU. We STIlL had a bad birth (placental anruptikn, special care etc).

For the next 2 births we chucked even more money at it and all was well, but I had soo many scans and was induced at 41 weeks.

What would be helpful is honesty...