Freebirth. Fallen out with my friend. *title edited by MNHQ*

[whateveryouneed]

Friend is 3 months pregnant. We've been friends for around 5 years. Saw her today for the first time in 8 or so weeks. She was asking me about my pregnancy and son's birth. I was honest with her and told her how it went (she already knew a fair bit but not finer details). She said it scared her a bit hearing about my son being born blue and floppy, completely flatlined. He had to be intubated and resuscitated (he's 100% fine and healthy now).

The reason it scared her is because she's planning a freebirth. She wants to give birth in her bathtub at home (rural, about 18 miles from the nearest town, further from nearest hospital). She wants no medical assistance. Just her and her husband.

I told her (fairly firmly) that I think she needs to rethink that idea and that it could be really dangerous. She thinks that because she's not high risk (at the moment), that the chances of something going wrong are minimal. She thinks that if baby is head down that she will be fine.

AIBU to be really scared for her if she goes through with this? She's just told me she can't be friends with me throughout her pregnancy if I can't support her choice.

Not sure what to say or think...

Bless her heart.

£10 on her calling an ambulance and asking for an epidural.

@EverdeRose is this your first pregnancy?

Selfish shit.
It was Fairly common for women To die in childbirth pre medical help. Her baby needs it’s mum.

Whilst I started off When I saw the title thinking you were being a bit unreasonable telling her the scary stuff, I don’t think you were at all. It’s hard when your a bit ahead of a friend not to scare them but to be honest. But I think you were absolutely right to tell her how yours was. I’d try to leave her to it and not back her into a corner about her choice so she can’t come back from it when she hopefully realises she’s a twat.

[quote EverdeRose]@KaitK

My husband fully intends to catch our baby. Midwives are completely aware and happy to be hands off. They won't enter the room unless we ask them to.
Would that make what we plan to do illegal?[/quote]
Is this your first by any chance?

@Nartl0ngNow 😂😂😂

I had a very positive outlook for labour and delivery... didn’t stop me ending up having an emcs due to foetal distress and other complications!

Nice theory you’ve got, however as you can see very plainly from this entire thread, it doesn’t really come off in reality.

@whateveryouneed your friend is irresponsible and selfish - at least she’s taken the decision about friendship out of your hands. I’m glad you and your son are doing well now x

You told her the truth, that its potentially dangerous. You also have the experience to back that statement up. I had an easy first birth and contemplated a home birth with my second. Boy am I glad I went to hospital instead. I ended up having to give birth in the emergency position. My baby was too big and her shoulder got stuck. At one point the dr pushed her back in, then pulled her out! I'm so thankful to the dr and midwives who assisted me.

I'm another one who would have died if I'd not been in hospital, I had to have a forceps delivery as I was exhausted after only 12 hours of labour, I'd been induced and the contractions were constant with little or no break between them . I was exhausted but OK until I was ready to go to the word. I went dizzy and then everything went black. For two days I was unconscious, I had 3 drips of blood and another of saline. It turns out that my blood pressure had severely plummeted and my iron count was, I believe , down to 2.

If I'd needed to get to hospital I wouldn't have made it. For that reason I wanted my other 2 in hospital.

Your friend is reckless and is risking her child's life as well as her own.

If I hadn't been in a hospital with a monitor on, I wouldn't have known that my son was in distress and I needed to get him out as soon as possible. Turns out the cord was wrapped around his neck and I highly doubt my DH would have coped with that calmly if we had been at home. I then haemorrhaged and without quick medical support things may not have turned out well.

The worst thing is her baby isn't getting a choice here and they deserve a chance to be delivered safely.

The next thing’ll be that she’s going to deny baby their immunisations, just wait.

Being present at a planned UC is also not illegal. However, in the UK, Article 45 of the Nursing and Midwifery Order makes it a criminal offence for anyone other than a registered midwife or doctor to ‘attend’ a woman during childbirth, except in an emergency. This is not intended to prevent birth partners from supporting women, but they must ensure that they do not assume the role of a midwife by performing midwifery functions, such as monitoring the progress of labour. The Nursing and Midwifery Council has produced guidance on this issue which states that birth partners, including doulas and family members, ‘may be present during childbirth but must not assume responsibility, assist or assume the role of the medical practitioner or registered midwife or give midwifery or medical care in childbirth’.

From this article doula.org.uk/statement-on-unassisted-birth-with-doulas-present Yeah, not legal and your friend is a total idiot

My daughter and I would've died if I'd tried to give birth at home with only my husband present.

When DD was born, the midwife noticed some fresh bleeding as I was pushing. The registrar had also spotted some borderline readings in her heart rate, which weren’t getting any better. As a result I was taken to theatre and DD was born with forceps. Just as well, as I then haemorrhaged 2.3l of blood, and they told me I’d been having a placental abruption. I still shudder to think what would have happened if the midwife and doctor hadn’t been so on the ball early on. The consultant who did my birth debrief also pointed this out and they were both commended for it. How would her husband ever spot something like that?

Huh. I was low risk, easy pregnancy, everything went fine. Up until the baby's birth which I don't really remember because I haemorrhaged and woke up in the ICU the next day. Had I tried giving birth at home, my first born would not have a mother (and obviously my other children would not exist).

From a practical point of view I would leave it. She's three months pregnant. If she cuts off everyone who looks at her like when she says freebirthing, she is going to end up with very few people around her. I cravenly hope that her partner will eventually lose his bottle and refuse to be responsible, and although I'm normally hard core 'it's the woman's labour' he would have every right to turn that job down.

I would text her again in a couple of months just to say 'thinking of you' and hope to hear she's thought again.

My friends child was born with what seemed to me a very unusual (but is about 1 in 5000) serious defect. Without immediate surgery he would have died.

I just don't understand not wanting to have every assurance of the safest delivery you can have allowing for the fact you can't completely eradicate complications.

@Wolfgirrllf

What difference would that make?
Due to previous issues, unless I need a midwife to touch me I don't want one to. If all goes to plan as most births do midwife will stand at the door and instruct DH how to catch.
If things don't go to plan and there is any issue I'll be the first to want and accept support.

She sent the message cutting you off after she'd gone home.

She sent it after speaking to her husband. Probably about the emergency treatment your DC needed.

I had an ex like that. His mother was a Sheila Kitzinger fan. I finally got seen by myself at 41+6 (as he insisted upon attending all the appointments, whilst he went to the toilet, I shot up and said I needed to be seen NOW - they already knew there were issues, so got me into an office straight away) when I knew he was pushing for a drive out into a forest in November/December and they found a bed for me there and then. One planned section later, they unravelled the cord from where it was wrapped around DD's neck three times, which was why she was in an undiagnosed breech (it had stopped her head from moving away from my spine) and we were both alive.

He still fucking sulked about it because I'd deprived him of his birth experience and wasn't a true mother as I hadn't given birth.

She might be under a lot of coercion here.

I’m sure it’s been said, but she can have a home birth with fairly minimal intervention, just occasional dopplers and the midwife can be asked to be elsewhere in between. I had one home birth where I transferred and one successful, and the midwives were very respectful and attuned. Ie they realised I needed/wanted to be alone but was being polite and feeling I needed to entertain them! What a dick! Second time they just ran in for the last 15m which was so not intrusive. But she could have a lot of control with a hb.

@EverdeRose because these sort of plans are usually made by first time mums, who have zero experience of birth but assume with a bit of mental willpower, they will succeed where most women do not.

I'm not criticising as such, but I think you will have a very different take on childbirth afterwards if you are a FTM (assuming you are).

I wasn't high risk, it's a good job I was in hospital though or potentially both me and my baby wouldn't have made it.

Why any woman would want to put their child at risk like that is beyond me.

If she has a positive outset and surrounded by people that trust her body can birth light all the thousands of generations before us then she has every chance of having the outcome she wants.

This can only be believed by someone with no knowledge of history, a quick look around an old graveyard would disabuse you of this notion.
In addition these women weren't trying to birth with only a clueless first time father, there were experienced women birth partners present.

Hopefully midwives will help to persuade your friend of her poor decision making prior to the birth.

@jimmyhill

Her body her choice

But it isn’t just her body is it? Does she have the right to put her baby at risk like this?

'If all goes to plan as most births do'

Lol

I prefer to call it freedeath. You just have NO idea how any birth will go.
What if the baby died because there were no resuscitation facilities? How could you ever forgive yourself.
An aquaitance of mine had four freebirths and they were all fine but equally they might not have been.
I'd rather have a homebirth with a midwife.

I really don't think most births go to plan and I don't understand what you are saying about catching the baby. They generally don't just fall/pop out!!!

My DS1 had shoulder dystocia. All seemed fine till his head came out but his shoulders wouldn't. He needed resuscitation immediately and was in ICU. I was grateful to be in hospital as we would have lost him otherwise. If it was a home birth we may have made it to hospital at some point if we realised it wasn't happening normally but we lived less than 5 min drive from the hospital so totally different decision.