Why does it seem everyone has a bad birth these days?

[Littleigloo]

Just doing my research (but I have a while to inform myself as we are only trying, at the moment). Out of all my friends and family who have had babies in the last 5-10 years, I would say all bar one or two of them had difficult births to the extent. Two needed debriefs and counselling. Inductions that fail and needed forceps, baby was injured as a result. I don’t know if this is just an unfortunate group of people or indicative of a larger sample. All different ages, some first and some second pregnancy, most of them were low risk.

This coupled with hearing that maternity services are struggling with poor staff and low ratings. How do you mitigate any risk to yourself? I understand it’s very much a how long is a piece of string situation and highly dependent on lots of variables but is it as bad as it seems or do the people with bad experiences just talk about it more?

Thanks

Anecdotal but I had 3 home births and for the first I was an elderly primigravida ( so positively geriatric for the last). Had a graze with the first. Midwives arrived for third stage with second two. Obviously luck is important and I was fit - but I think knowing what was happening to me and being in a calm environment- my environment- helped enormously.
It's my honest belief hospital births would have potentially gone less well.