Guardian article on freebirthing

[BeautifulSofa]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/dec/05/women-give-birth-alone-the-rise-of-freebirthing?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

I think this is an irresponsible article that doesn't make it clear how dangerous freebirthing can be, and pits vulnerable mums against an evil NHS. It literally starts with a lovely image of a freebirth with fairy lights and a pool. It covers several women with health conditions who have been advised against freebirthing and have gone ahead, with no poor outcome. It would be very easy to read this article and be persuaded that freebirthing is all fairy lights and cuddles, and not a dangerous choice.

It’s not selling freebirths so much as pointing out that this is the result of shutting down home births and refusing birth partners in hospitals?

I like the idea of it because I was so terrified of hospitals when I had my son I think my whole body shut down and I needed all kinds of interventions because I was so terrified.
However, it just isn't safe, women died in huge numbers in eras when medical care was not available.
What is needed is better maternity care and much more choice in environments that make you feel comfortable with people you trust.

I think it's a very good article. It isn't saying they are wonderful and not dangerous, it is showing the agonising decisions women are being forced to make and the lack of support from the system that should be working with them.

It's fundamentally not a balanced article. There's not a single example of it going badly. Or a Midwife's perspective on it. I get that it's drawing attention to the impact of COVID, and I think it's awful that independent midwives are no longer able to work and support women in a home birth. But it would be easy to read this and see freebirthing as the answer, which it most definitely isn't.

I completely understand the demand for it. Maternity services were woeful and deeply misogynistic before the pandemic.

Pregnancy and birth provision is an area that is more and more totalitarian as the years go by.

I believe that 2 of my 3 DCs' births would have resulted in fewer injuries to both of us if I had been at home, free to move.

People should be able to hear all sides to make informed decisions. Women get very much pushed towards a medical birth by their practitioners even when they're low risk. So it's only right that there is equally biased information for alternative options.
Doctors, nurses and midwives can be very pushy and force you into things you dont want, especially when you're vulnerable. I had a nurse harass me while I was waiting to find out if my baby was ok for the flu jab. Said no over 10 times, she only left me alone when i got called in to ultrasound.

So for women who dont want a medicalised birth, like myself, you need to hear stuff that makes you feel confident in your decision when you're being harassed to make a different one. We get plenty of information about the risks and medical options it's not like pregnant women will ONLY read this one article.

There’s a difference between home birthing and free birthing. Of course, choices should be respected and home births should be supported, but free birthing is something else entirely.

I agree, OP, there wasn’t enough mentioned about the risks. All the women were on their 3rd birth at least, so presumably lower risk of complications, but FTMs reading that article might think ‘Oh that all sounds lovely and empowering’ without any appreciation of the shit show of labour and how doing it with no medically trained person present could be disastrous.

I also felt it was slightly classed and indulgent (puts on tin hat and waits for inevitable comeback!).

The problem I had was the confusion between homebirth and freebirth.

I know people who have had great homebirths, and there are many countries where they are supported as a normal way to give birth.
Problem with freebirth is that it not only emphasises a 'natural' delivery, it rejects even the use of midwives. There is a massive emphasis on the body's natural instinct to give birth etc
Conveniently ignoring the fact that childbirth is, and has been the biggest killer of women over the centuries.

There are some really scary FB groups where labouring mothers have been actively encouraged to avoid medical support in serious situations (those groups list as a condition of membership, that no-one should advise labouring mothers to seek medical care regardless of the situation- messages of concern are deleted) and babies have died as a result.

Freebirthing often means no antenatal care, no scans, nothing.

I saw a Facebook post from an independent midwife I think who had attended a birth where the woman had no antenatal appointments - she had identical twins. The fact that those twins survived is something of a miracle - no checks for TTTS, a shared placenta, really scary.

I work in this area and completely understand why so many women are wanting home births at the moment and when home birth services are shut down. Occasionally home birth teams have to be suspended temporarily due to serious incidents, but these things are rarely discussed. I’m sure freebirthing is lovely when it goes well - but when it doesn’t, it’s potentially a tragedy. Any discussion of this needs to cover this.

Yes, absolutely agree @Yamayo I actually think it’s a terribly privileged position for women to adopt when in plenty of places childbirth continues to be a matter of life and death.

I've stopped reading the Guardian since my pregnancy; I found that the articles I found regarding birth and pregnancy bordered on the sadistic, not helped by the comments. I think it's fundamentally an anti-NHS stance, that is molded to suit whatever issue they wish to highlight (birth in hospital is dangerous! Birth at home is dangerous! etc etc). The feeling I was left with is that women are passive victims of a 'cruel' patriarchal health system. Fwiw, when I gave birth during Covid, the care I received was excellent. I appreciate that there are some postcodes where the experience isn't as good (birthrights website was an eye-opener and CQC reports and informed my choice of hospital) but that existed pre-Covid.
I found a much more realistic and balanced view re: birthing experience and choices when I switched over to Mumsnet 👍

I gave birth alone. It was definitely not empowering or relaxing. I was very lucky that the doctors, nurses, midwives etc arrived within a couple of minutes. DH still has nightmares, and she's 9yo. (It was in hospital, and happened unexpectedly. DH was shouting in the corridor for help, and turned round to find a baby on the bed and me in a state of shock. Not NHS, a private German hospital). It was terrifying... My body just did the natural thing, but too quickly.

My second was a homebirth. That was lovely and relaxing, especially having the qualified midwives around.

I wish the media would stop pushing the fallacy that birth partners have been banned from attending the labour/birth. This simply isn’t true. Yes, there has been situations where a birth has been missed due to partners being asked to wait for the birthing woman to be assessed or during the induction process but this happened long before covid! Sometimes things happen more quickly than you can possibly anticipate.

Yes it’s shit that Homebirth services and birth centres have been suspended. Sometimes that can’t be helped. I’m all for women making INFORMED choices about their care... but this article alone does not give a balanced view.

Free birth is extraordinarily dangerous - BUT.

If the public health system wants to counter it, perhaps they should look at how poor the care is to peri and post partum women and women's medical care in general and how deeply the misogyny runs in medicine, nursing and also midwifery in our culture.

I was at times greatly alarmed at the woeful standard of hospital midwives - some incompetent, some downright nasty - and none who were both competent AND interpersonally decent at the same time). The saving grace for me (and my child) was that our care was overseen by a private obstetrician, private paediatrician and private aftercare midwives, who were fantastic and sorted out issues which were stonewalled by hospital staff. If I was reliant on those people for my care and that of my child, I'd have been terrified.

The problem isn't stupid women. The problem is the public system which despises women.

@Velvian

I completely understand the demand for it. Maternity services were woeful and deeply misogynistic before the pandemic.

Pregnancy and birth provision is an area that is more and more totalitarian as the years go by.

I believe that 2 of my 3 DCs' births would have resulted in fewer injuries to both of us if I had been at home, free to move.

Free birthing is not being at home free to move. Home births can be wonderful, but there are some pretty bad stats for freebirthing, especially for first time mothers, and this should have been clarified.

I agree that the article glossed over the risks very quickly. I noticed they turned off the comments, presumably because they were very, very hostile last time they had an article on freebirthing (which I think is itself a bit of a.euphemistic term - 'giving birth without any trained care' is more accurate)

@PreRaphaeliteMotherhood 100% this. The mail ran a headline in late Spring, something like Covid 'increases stillbirths'.. And the actual detail was RCOGs expressing concern that if women were too reluctant to attend triage as normal for low kicks, stillbirths could increase, so women needed to attend as normal.
The media are obviously so concerned about women and babies' health that they deliberately chose to twist the story to create the very fear and panic that might lead to women avoiding hospital.

@PicsInRed

Free birth is extraordinarily dangerous - BUT.

If the public health system wants to counter it, perhaps they should look at how poor the care is to peri and post partum women and women's medical care in general and how deeply the misogyny runs in medicine, nursing and also midwifery in our culture.

I was at times greatly alarmed at the woeful standard of hospital midwives - some incompetent, some downright nasty - and none who were both competent AND interpersonally decent at the same time). The saving grace for me (and my child) was that our care was overseen by a private obstetrician, private paediatrician and private aftercare midwives, who were fantastic and sorted out issues which were stonewalled by hospital staff. If I was reliant on those people for my care and that of my child, I'd have been terrified.

The problem isn't stupid women. The problem is the public system which despises women.

But of course your care with private staff was better. You were cared for by a private obstetrician that wasn’t also trying to cover A&E, gynae ward, Labour ward and main theatres all at the same time. You were cared for by midwives that only had you to care for, not multiple other women all needing their attention at the same time, you got an excellent service because you paid for it. It’s the sad truth.

The NHS is in a totally impossible position, maternity care is in crisis. Women are more high risk, the wards are busier than ever and the staff are completely burnt out. I really don’t know the solution here but the guardian putting a positive spin on free birthing definitely is not it.

you got an excellent service because you paid for it. It’s the sad truth.

Absoutely. It is sad - yes, care can deteriorate with workload, but kindness and basic decency cost nothing. The public service fosters misogyny and actively alienates female patients from it. That's what needs to be addressed.

@PreRaphaeliteMotherhood

I wish the media would stop pushing the fallacy that birth partners have been banned from attending the labour/birth. This simply isn’t true. Yes, there has been situations where a birth has been missed due to partners being asked to wait for the birthing woman to be assessed or during the induction process but this happened long before covid! Sometimes things happen more quickly than you can possibly anticipate.

Yes it’s shit that Homebirth services and birth centres have been suspended. Sometimes that can’t be helped. I’m all for women making INFORMED choices about their care... but this article alone does not give a balanced view.

The other one that annoyed me is the widespread insistence that 'the government' didn't allow partners into scans because they don't care about pregnant women. People kept saying that, even when they were allowing partners to scans around me! It was the decision of individual NHS trusts following their own risk assessments, based on their individual buildings, spaces, set-ups, done to keep patients and staff safe - I agree it's shit if your partner can't come (I know I was lucky) but it wasn't an arbitrary whim of Matt Hancock's!

I know for a fact at least 4 of my friends and aquaintances wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for the fact they had doctors there when they gave birth. They all went in for normal natural births, and doctors saved their lives. One actually had to be resuscitated, and it was her second child after an easy first birth. Having a home birth is such a roll of the dice...

I’m of the generation of babies where women routinely died in childbirth at home and my mother was sadly one of those who died.
As an adult I tracked down a doctor who attended after my birth, but my mum was already dead. He told me he attended another birth the same day where that mother had died too, and said that was not unusual before hospital births became the norm.
I had my third baby at home, with a midwife and a GP because I had a real need to ‘prove’ it could be done safely.
Having a baby at home is not something fro do lightly and certainly not without appropriate support.

It's not a balanced article but if a woman dies choose to do this she'll have plenty of medical experts pointing out the dangers and most women would also research free birth so would find out the danger that way too.
I would have loved a free birth in June but had loads of pregnancy problems so it wouldn't have been safe.
I think the majority of mums wouldn't go ahead if they weren't confident with the research.

Again, I think that we have to be really careful about distinguishing between home and free births. Statistics show that you are not 'rolling the dice' more in an uncomplicated second pregnancy than you are in hospital. People find this hard to believe but that's because people never account for the particular risks that are increased by hospital birth. There are also many, many women who are adamant they would have died if they'd had a home birth and really believe this but again, statistically this is not true for most of them because women do not die in large numbers in home births. Most of those women would have been transferred much earlier than the point that they were told that there were concerns in the hospital, or they might actually not have had the issue at all at home in some cases (e.g. giving birth in hospital actually increases the risk of postpartum hemorrhage).

I wouldn't pick a home birth for myself but it isn't an irresponsible choice and I don't think any discussion on freebirths should get side tracked into condemning home birth - they're very, very different things.

@PicsInRed

you got an excellent service because you paid for it. It’s the sad truth.

Absoutely. It is sad - yes, care can deteriorate with workload, but kindness and basic decency cost nothing. The public service fosters misogyny and actively alienates female patients from it. That's what needs to be addressed.

Completely agree with a lot of your points and it is really sad. But the kindness and basic decency works both ways, couples are understandably frustrated by the system that you automatically start on the back foot with people sometimes. I can completely understand the frustration but I can only do my best to sort out the here and now. I cannot even explain to you how demoralising it is when everyday you are faced with people that expect a private standard of care on an NHS ward. I’ve had an adult male physically square up to me as they wanted to leave and their paperwork hasn’t been completed yet. I’ve had a water jug thrown at me because I asked the visitors to finally leave, having ignored the fact there was way too many of them for the majority of the day and letting them get on with it. There is so much wrong with the system but for the whole, the staff have just lost any morale that was there. I’m sorry your care wasn’t brilliant, but I promise you, we do really care. It’s just an impossible struggle sometimes.