I've name changed to post this. My blood ran cold to see this article. I hired this IM and was due to give birth next. I'd employed her to accompany me into hospital to give birth there. She transferred my care over to another IM only a month before my due date, but not until now did I know why.
To all those wondering why a mother would employ an IM and even consider a HB given previous difficult circumstances - it is often the case that a past hospital birth is so horrific that a woman looks for a way to make it less bad the next time. Many people in this situation who book an IM do so primarily to ensure continuity of care, rather than being driven to have a home birth at any cost. The poor mother in this case had already lost a baby - we have no idea exactly what happened there but whatever it was led her to have less faith in the hospital than in a woman whose details she found on the internet. I had no faith at all in the hospital.
I gave birth to my first child in the Royal Berks. I was in labour for nearly 2 days and went through 4 shifts of midwives. If you asked me to nominate my favourite one of them, I couldn't tell you. I disliked one of them especially as she was rather too aggressive in her manner, but the rest just merged into one single memory of passive uselessness. On the evening of my second day of labour I curled up on the floor in the delivery room. My husband recalls being alarmed at this and asking the MW if I was OK. She stated I was having a rest. Unbeknown to me the hospital had closed it's doors to any new patients (see here) and the head MW popped her head round the door to see whether I was any closer to producing a baby as they needed the room urgently for another patient. She called for doctors immediately and I was rushed to theatre within minutes and sliced open. There had been just enough time to site a spinal block, but not enough time for an epidural. While slicing me open so quickly undoubtedly saved my baby's life, it would have been nice if any of the MWs had noticed me slowly slipping into unconsciousness after nearly 2 days of trying and failing to push out a baby ear-first. They seemed more interested though in accurate record taking than offering any kind of assistance or advice to a first time mother. One of them actually wrote in my notes that I was asking for her to help me and she replied that only I could help myself and have the baby. 56 pages of unhelpful drivel were written about me - when I asked for my records from the hospital the clerk who gave them to me was appalled when I told her this was for a labour and birth - normally there are about 11 pages.
During the course of my slash-and-grab the doctor (who was wearing an eyepatch. I kid you not. I did wonder if I had been hallucinating at this point, but the mother of one of the other children in my child's class has the same one-eyed lady carry out her CS,) the doctor cut through a ligament and peritoneal membrane, and I started to bleed profusely. My baby was jammed enough that she took 5 minutes to yank out, and was blue and limp. She was rushed up to SCBU with an APGAR score of 1, and I didn't see her again till the next day. By this time the surgeon and anaesthetist were arguing - my spinal block was beginning to wear off and the surgeon had still not identified the source of the bleeding. I was open on the operating table for over 2 hours before a consultant was called in to repair me under general anaesthetic. I spent the next 24 hours in an intensive care room, with a dangerously low blood pressure (70/40.)
I was treated patronisingly by the ward staff, my catheter tube was cable-tied to the bed leg in order to prevent me from wandering off to see my baby (and no one would take me to see her,) and left in the same blood-stained clothes I arrived in. My husband had been shoved into the corridor when I was given the GA and no one would tell him if either of us were even alive till the next morning. My mum cried when she came in to see me. I was allowed no privacy to sleep, breastfeed or anything, as the nurses wanted the curtains round my bed left open so they could see me without having to get up. They inserted needles into my hand while I was sleeping to administer high dose IV antibiotics, unable to use the original cannula sight as it had become infected. 5 long days after arriving at the hospital for what I assumed would be a normal birth after a healthy pregnancy under the care of the West Berkshire Trust, I was limped out having discharged myself and my baby after no one had bothered to check on either of us that day.
So in case anyone is wondering what on earth persuades an intelligent woman to hire an independent MW, it IS possible to have horrific experiences at the hands of the NHS. I was IN hospital and it still took them a day to realise things were going wrong. I remain convinced that the lack of continuity of care and general uninterest (whether that be due to being overstretched or whatever) contributed to such a difficult birth. I would probably have needed a CS anyway, but maybe not if any of the NHS MWs had been as skilled and enthusiastic as the IM that I had in labour was. It would have been nice to have moved to CS a bit sooner though, once it became apparent that I would not be able to give birth to this baby vaginally. And so I came to employ an IM - the IM in this article, as an advocate and a companion for a planned hospital birth (NOT as Royal Berks this time!) I can't comment on what she would have been like as a birth companion, but certainly she seemed to be much more interested in her patients than any of the NHS MWs I came across in my first pregnancy and labour. Other than that, I can't really think of anything to say about her. She seemed nice enough and was competent for the first 8 months of my pregnancy. I just wanted to answer, in detail, how it is that a woman who has had a difficult first pregnancy can come to consider a birth outside of the NHS.