To go against DH and labour how I want?

[ListenToYourself]

DH is dead against me having a home birth and shuts the topic down very quickly.

He doesn’t want me to have one and thinks it’s just too dangerous as the hospital is 30 minute drive away anyway.

It’s what I really want. I would feel so much better labouring in my own home, preferably in a pool, which MW has said I’m guaranteed to have access to, unlike the birthing centre where they may not be one available.

DH isn’t keen on the birthing in water idea either, even in a hospital. And says “but if you really must”.

I can’t really afford to rent one out on the off chance the birthing centre don’t have one available.

I’m willing to go into hospital at the first sign of trouble, no issues there at all. At least I got what I wanted - to try a home birth.

But it’s not practical, apparently. And he says even though I am the one in labour, how he feels counts too, since he’s my birthing partner and I don’t want anyone else there.

I agree how he feels does count too, but he won’t even listen to my MW who agrees that it is safe and it isn’t a big risk.

He just feels too anxious about it.

Where do I go from here, since he just won’t listen?

I would feel just so much more relaxed knowing I can try a home birth. I would love to

The wisest words on this thread. I think a major cause of problems for new mothers is that for nine months they think 'I'm going to give birth'. That's not the life changing bit. The life changing bit is the actual baby, whose needs take over your life from the moment they arrive. The giving birth part is just admin You and your husband need to get on the same page. Is he going to be so dictatorial when the baby is actually here? As an aside, I find the home birth stats a bit baffling - surely if it all goes tits up and you have to be rushed to hospital then it doesn’t count as a home birth anyway somewhat skewing the results?

I find the home birth stats a bit baffling - surely if it all goes tits up and you have to be rushed to hospital then it doesn’t count as a home birth anyway somewhat skewing the results

In the studies I read they compared planned homebirths to planned hospital births, for low-risk women, to try to get useful results.

We do call 999 in A&E if we need a blue light ambulance....

You absolutely must do what you’re most comfortable with

I had my first in hospital when the whole time I wanted to be at home and it wasn’t a nice experience.

Be firm. Make arrangements and explain to him that you are having a home birth regardless of his opinion. Make a vague plan and allocate him jobs to make him feel important

You’ll have one to one midwife attention from when they stay and in my experience they monitor you so much more closely than in hospital (I nearly gave birth to DS without a midwife present as they were delivering a baby in the next room)

Not sure Id want to risk it when it can take over an hour to get an ambulance to a road accident with people trapped because it was a bad time I'm sure you would be lower priority than a heart attack for example. Baby can be doing fine one minute and then panic Mine would have died if id had to wait an hour. (which is the minimum a 20 minute ride would take with call out etc).
Your OH is probably very scared.

Thats odd @LBOCS2 i must have been given conflicting information then as i had hoped to be in the pool a bit. Ah well, ended up in theatre for an episiotomy/foreceps anyway

People seem to be missing the part about him not wanting her to have a water birth either????

I spent all my time in labour until I was too exhausted to stand up anymore (about 8 hours ) under the shower no one tried to move me and all the monitoring was done whilst I was in the shower.

I think you may have to reconsider your DH being your birthing partner. It's a stressful enough time without you worrying about whether he is going to respect your wishes or not.
As a PP said, you seem very tightly focused on controlling everything. It just isn't possible to do that with labour. I think it may be helpful for you to have a chat with the MW about what happens if you don't like being in the pool; if you go over your date and need to be induced; if you end up in a labour ward and not a midwife-led unit, etc.

Of course this is your decision op, but please don't be swayed by thoughts that an ambulance will be on standby nearby. It won't. As someone who has worked in the ambulance service for 20 years I can catagorically say it won't be sat waiting nearby. Your need would be triaged, there are many 'life threatening' category calls at any one time and you would wait, for as long as it took to arrive, like everybody else. It could be 20 mins after the call, it could be an hour. Or longer. It depends on the demand at the time. Please take this on board, I speak from (bitter, sad) experience. Personally, I wouldn't risk it.

I went for a home water birth and needed to do an emergency transfer followed by EMCS at a hospital half an hour away from my home.

The drive to the hospital was a little scary but all was perfectly fine.

I had a home birth with DC1, and contrary to others on here who talk about it not being recommended for first time mums, it was my mw who suggested it (we look like hippies, I think she thought it would float our boat).

Anyway, it was great, very painful but great. I'm planning another homebirth with DC2.

That said - I live 5 minutes from a very large maternity hospital! I knew that I could be under consultant care very quickly should I need it.

There is no way on this planet I would have a home birth if I lived maybe more than 10 minutes from a load of very highly trained medics, nurses, theatres, blood, drugs etc.

My paramedic friend rolls her eyes when ppl talk about home births, she's seen a whole other side of it.

Lolz at the thought that ambulances are on standby. No way that's true!

I wanted a home birth for when I had DS. Hated the thought of being in hospital, lack of control etc. DH was dead against.
In the end I went to the hospital. Lucky really - massive post partum haemorrhage, they saved my life.
I think the odds change in subsequent pregnancies but I would never recommend a home birth for a first baby.
As for your DH not being keen on a water birth, bollocks to that. He doesn't get a say. But please think very carefully about the hospital

nottwins, I think that might have been my post about shoulder dystocia etc. I’m not doubting that my midwives would have been able to cope with that alone, they were great and one stayed with me at all times. I thought the midwives and hospital in general were much better second time around. I do doubt that they could have dealt with everything else on top of that. It’s difficult for me to know what it would have been like as a home birth because some of the complications were already known/predicted so it was never an option anyway.

First birth was far, far worse and to be honest, I don’t think my midwives did deal with it very well. I know that I could well be dead if I hadn’t been in a hospital and all the relevant people hadn’t been so close to me at that time. I know it’s a rare thing to happen, but I would never ever take that risk now, knowing how quickly my blood pressure went from normal to having a seizure and the aftermath of it. It was like being trapped in a nightmare.

Of all the people I know who’ve recently given birth, one needed a C-section due to cord blocking cervix, one had to have forceps delivery after hours of getting nowhere (she had been in a midwife unit having a pool birth and had to be transferred), one developed some sort of liver condition and had to be induced then emergency c-section and one had a home birth but had to be transferred to hospital as she had a bad tear requiring a few stitches. None of them were considered high risk during their pregnancies. It’s made me very wary! The idea of a home birth sounds lovely, and I definitely felt that things were done ‘to’ me and hated every moment of being in hospital, but still felt that it was the least bad option.

I'm sorry if this has been said already, but if this is an NHS supported home birth it may not happen anyway as they could just not have the midwives available. The only way to guarantee that is to pay for independent midwives, which costs a lot more than a birthing pool!

I attempted to have DD at home and when I needed a transfer, after waiting an hour, still no sign of an ambulance so DH drove me, which was a bit stressful for everyone.

It's really hard to know what's best but I did find the birthing pool (which I hired) very helpful.

I'm a regular ambulance caller. DS has severe disabilities and epilepsy.
Recently had a seizure and was turning blue......still took 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive .....

I'm medical. I have seen all sorts of births go wrong. You could not persuade me to have a home birth in a million years.

If DH were carrying our baby and insisted on a home birth I honestly don't know how I'd handle it.

We have 4 healthy hospital born children. I'm no martyr but the absolute priority for me was the safe delivery of my children with state of the art medical equipment if required.

Talk of one to one "experienced" midwives and stand by ambulances as opposed to a theatre at the end of the corridor just angers me.

Things change so incredibly quickly and you want the option of knife to skin to baby out to be available ASAP. You also want consultants/lots of midwives and neonatal Drs to be available at the press of a buzzer.

If things go wrong, you want to know that any delay in the availability of these resources wasn't down to a choice you made prior to labour.

Good luck OP but please understand why your husband is frightened for the two most important people in his life.

Well my ex wouldn't hear of a home birth either op. Refused to discuss at all. It was hospital or hospital

Nice chap. ( not)

Thankfully my local hospital has a one-midwife to one-woman policy. Mine never left my side. None of the horror stories you read in the paper of one midwife to seven women. That just seems impossible to me and I can understand seeking out riskier alternatives if that were the only option.

Not all shoulder dystocia cases can be solved by a midwife, experience or not. I had this and the reasons for anyone having it are not fully understood or predictable although there are risk factors which elevate chance of it. The 5 minutes we had from this presenting to my dd being born were amongst the most frightening I’ve experienced. As for your dh, I know it’s your body but he loves you and wants only the best for you and his unborne child. I think some of the comments on here about him are pretty harsh

@splandy of the births you describe, wouldn't some of these have been ruled out as possible homebirth, and others would have had the same outcome being at home or not? Eg umbilical cord blocking cervix detected in monitoring which would be a no to homebirth; hours of getting nowhere could be at home as much as it could be in a midwifery unit and the outcome would be to transfer to hospital; liver condition assume was detected as was induced so that's a no to homebirth; tearing happens in hospital as well as at home?

The one of these that I could see being scary scary problem is the umbilical cord if undetected and at home, as my understanding is that you need to move fast. The rest, either home birth was not an option or location makes no difference to outcome? I've heard one homebirth story where the woman laboured for 30 hours at home and agreed to transfer when she realised was not progressing and she was tired. I can't see that being in hospital would have made it much easier for her. Perhaps different, but it was just the way that it worked out for her.

i understand that basically people are attempting to manage risk and the unknown. Everyone approaches that differently. Personally, I'd like to give it a try to be at home but I am really making myself resist any kind of idea about how it should or will be. I don't consider the statistical 0.6% increase in risk as a first timer as that significant, I think the potential benefits outweigh the risks. Bit surprised by all the 'you are terribly selfish for assessing this small but real statistical risk differently to me' comments. Not saying that's what you were inferring @splandy!

I agree Fizzy!! Don’t know why people are slagging off Homebirths.
I had trained midwives at my Homebirth.
If you listen to all these hospital horror stories of women in labour and afterwards. There is no way I will ever set foot in Hospital maternity unit -unless there is a real medical reason.

Giving birth anywhere has risks if something goes wrong.

Your DH can voice his opinions, but he shouldn’t tell you what to do.

@ListenToYou "I don’t understand that, women give birth in them so why wouldn’t you be allowed to stay in once waters break?"

Once the waters are broken the risk of infection entering the uterus increases - the seal's open, so to speak. Strep, for instance.

Oh, and you may find not all centres support giving birth IN the water. That's considered risky for infection reasons. Mine said I could labour in it, but they didn't recommend giving birth in it. This was for the best - they needed to be able to see how he was descending, as well as testing his oxygen levels because he was coming so slowly and occasionally veering into distress, which they could not have done in the pool.

Giving birth in water is considered riskier than just labouring in it - OK, so first the water could become contaminated with faeces, yours or the baby's. Yay. Or even just a regular infection, because once your genitals are in the water, it isn't sterile. And second there's the risk of the baby breathing in water. And drowning. And pneumonia. Have a google. I know there's all the airy-fairy floaty videos about it, but it sounds far riskier than anything mentioned so far and it often not encouraged.

It really doesn't make anything 'better' or more relaxing. Births are generally (and literally) a shitshow of pain and distress, the first even more so, and even a best case scenario can still be traumatic.

I had trained midwives at my Homebirth.
If you listen to all these hospital horror stories of women in labour and afterwards. There is no way I will ever set foot in Hospital maternity unit -unless there is a real medical reason.

So you are put off hospital births because of horror stories about them is logical, but people being put off homebirths because of stories of what has gone wrong are just being daft?

It's your body, but...he's being reasonable in being concerned. With a first labour you really don't know how your body will react. My friend had a home birth with her 4th child (after 3 normal and speedy hospital deliveries) and her child ended up brain damaged from oxygen deprivation. You just can't tell. Especially with a first time.

I think if you're 5 minutes from the hospital it is less of a worry, but 25-30 minutes is the difference between life and death/significant injury. I wouldn't dream of having a home birth without knowing how my body labours.