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.

Genuine question
If a woman and her partner freebirthed and the baby died as a result (due to no medical care or from a medical condition that could have been prevented by proper medical monitoring and care) would they be prosecuted?

Would ss remove their other children from their care??

People keep mentioning that home births have been suspended.... have they? I had a great home birth 17 days ago (2nd baby, 1st home birth), my (devon based) home birth team are still delivering babies in their homes unless I have missed something???

@fatkitchen

Genuine question If a woman and her partner freebirthed and the baby died as a result (due to no medical care or from a medical condition that could have been prevented by proper medical monitoring and care) would they be prosecuted?

Would ss remove their other children from their care??

Would anyone know the baby ever existed if the pregnancy wasn't known to any statutory services? There does seem scope for keeping the baby -alive or dead - under the radar if the parents are so minded.

I probably didn't phrase the question well. I meant would there be a prosecution on the parents if their baby died following a free birth and the cause of death could have been prevented by correct monitoring?

@fatkitchen

I probably didn't phrase the question well. I meant would there be a prosecution on the parents if their baby died following a free birth and the cause of death could have been prevented by correct monitoring?

Hit the button too soon....

For example my aunts baby was delivered early due to issues with the umbilical cord. She had regular scans, assessments, early admittance to hospital etc

She wasn't negligent. She attended medical appointments and put her child's needs first.

Personally think it opens up a can of worms....

I had my third baby end of May. I'd been booked for a home birth as soon as I found out I was pregnant. My other two births were hospItal (controlling ex) and both were absolutely awful.
However, the homebirth team for my local NHS Trust suddenly suspended about five weeks before my due date (staff shortages due to Covid).
I was in the fortunate position in that I had savings I could use to employ an Independent Midwife. She was exceptional. My birth was amazing. My fiancé delivered his first (and last!) baby on our bedroom floor under the watchful eye of our midwife. Midwife was hands-off and it honestly felt like it was just myself and my OH in the room.
But had we not had that option I honestly would have considered freebirthing as the local hospital were imposing rules that were simply not acceptable to me.
For example, partners not allowed in unless woman in established labour, assessed by an entirely unecessary VE. As someone who is strictly anti-VE this would have been an infringement upon my right to choose.
Lots of birthing partners also subsequently missed births as labours progressed quickly etc.
I also still strongly feel that the safest place to labour (especially during the pandemic) is at home.
No regrets.

I'm afraid that I haven't RTFT but I was annoyed that the article writer used free birthing and home birth interchangeably - I felt this was really confusing and irresponsible.

I understand FB to mean - giving birth alone, perhaps another person present. I understand unassisted birth to mean the same.

HB means others are present, midwives too.

They are two entirely separate ways of labouring and giving birth. My second child was an unplanned HB - all fine, beautiful healthy baby, the two midwives arrived just before I started pushing - but I quickly started haemorrhaging once my son was born. Thankfully there was an ambulance already waiting to transport me to hospital - thirty minutes away. It was an emergency and I was quickly surrounded by a team of medical staff. I was extremely lucky that the drugs to stop the bleeding (a synthetic form of oxytocin) worked although they took a while to kick in, and I almost lost consciousness. I lost two litres of blood and came within a hair's breadth of needing a hysterectomy (only way to save my life).

In many developing countries, PPH is the leading cause of maternal death. I was advised to "have one more and stop there" (I did - hospital this time, and onto a drip immediately post-delivery. No PPH).

The woman in the article who had her seventh child at home with her partner (and the aunt who popped in to give the children fruit - an important detail in her account 🙄🙄) glosses over the retained placenta and potential for PPH - it could have been life threatening. It made for a very skewed account.

The focus on fairy lights, children putting glow sticks in the birthing pool etc sounds very magical, but to women who have experienced an emergency either during or post-delivery, the bottom line has to be - thank God I had access to medical expertise which saved my life. I did a huge amount of reading before my first (straightforward, hospital) birth and loved the writings of Sheila Kitzinger, for example (and so learned the importance of breathing, focussing, "going in on yourself", etc - all really empowering) but ultimately you want yourself and your baby to be safe and well. I wouldn't NOT advocate HB (FB - I just don't understand) but I would certainly advise any woman considering it to research, for example, how long it takes to get to the nearest hospital rather than worrying about fairy lights, glowsticks and aunts bearing fruit...

@OverTheRubicon

The babies who are brain damaged at birth (as mine would have been, had I freebirthed my second after a very easy first delivery) or left with other life long conditions.get no say in this

At this point you are making a pro life argument - i.e. that the unborn baby's rights supercede those of the mother. Which is fine if that's what you're comfortable with, just be aware that is the logical conclusion.

Additionally when people talk about the rates of maternal and infant death for pre-hospital birth in this country, so many if these deaths will have been related to insufficient levels of hygiene both before, during and after birth. We live in a very different world now to the 1950s.

Why is it every time a woman in this day and age who has a successful home/free birth go well she is called "incredibly lucky" (despite this being the overwhelmingly more likely outcome) whereas every time she has a bad outcome it is seen as inevitable and her own fault (despite these outcomes being incredibly unlikely)?

It is also incredibly difficult to say what situations could have been resolved if in hospital and which couldn't. Women die of PPHs in hospital. Babies get hypoxic brain injuries and cerebral palsy in hospital births. Hospital birth actually increases your risk of a PPH. Women's bodies are frequently and unnecessarily brutalised during birth (I read a woman's birth story just recently where in the middle of a contraction she had to literally kick a female consultant away because the woman had stuck her whole fist into the labouring woman's vagina having been told not to do so and then told to get out once she was in - baby and mothers were both reading fine on the monitors, consultant just wanted to hurry things along presumably so the could get to the next patient and wouldn't take no for an answer). See also the "Kimberly Said No" story from the US about a woman whose doctor gave her an epesiotomy she had refused before she even started pushing, and went so far as to cut her vagina 12 times, basically because she argued with him.

My point is, hospital led/medicalised care often leads to the crises they then heroically "rescue" you from. I'm sure all involved think they are doing the very best thing, but there is a tendency to be risk averse to a point that would be considered absurd in any other area of life (anyone ever take their baby for an unnecessary trip in the car?) and to opt for an early intervention over " wait and see" even when the odds are things will resolve themselves if left alone and monitored.

[quote Draineddraineddrained]@OverTheRubicon

The babies who are brain damaged at birth (as mine would have been, had I freebirthed my second after a very easy first delivery) or left with other life long conditions.get no say in this

At this point you are making a pro life argument - i.e. that the unborn baby's rights supercede those of the mother. Which is fine if that's what you're comfortable with, just be aware that is the logical conclusion.[/quote]
No I'm not. I'm fully pro-choice and support the woman's right to bodily autonomy up to the point of birth. However at the point of birth there is a child born that is legally and morally its own person. And if that birth takes place in a way that recklessly endangers that child, it is indefensible.

Of course the lines are not always clear and most people can see that - I don't know many, pro-choice or not, who would be ok with the termination of a healthy pregnancy at 39 weeks, for example, and I personally see this as a similar case. If this hadn't become so politicised it would be easier to discuss edge cases, where it's never going to be an easy decision because there is a need to balance the rights of the woman with the rights of any healthy potential baby.

Please don't conflate home births with free birthing.

My home births were planned with drugs dropped off and available in the fridge and 2 qualified, experienced midwies in attendence. Full risk assessments were carried out in advance and I felt exceptionally safe and well cared for.

Compare that to my in hospital birth where I was patronised, belittled, palmed off and ignored, and coercive language was used as standard...

I can completely see how women end up considering going it alone sometimes. Misogyny and scarce resources combine to make maternity services an unpleasant place to be sometimes.

@Draineddraineddrained

Additionally when people talk about the rates of maternal and infant death for pre-hospital birth in this country, so many if these deaths will have been related to insufficient levels of hygiene both before, during and after birth. We live in a very different world now to the 1950s.

Why is it every time a woman in this day and age who has a successful home/free birth go well she is called "incredibly lucky" (despite this being the overwhelmingly more likely outcome) whereas every time she has a bad outcome it is seen as inevitable and her own fault (despite these outcomes being incredibly unlikely)?

It is also incredibly difficult to say what situations could have been resolved if in hospital and which couldn't. Women die of PPHs in hospital. Babies get hypoxic brain injuries and cerebral palsy in hospital births. Hospital birth actually increases your risk of a PPH. Women's bodies are frequently and unnecessarily brutalised during birth (I read a woman's birth story just recently where in the middle of a contraction she had to literally kick a female consultant away because the woman had stuck her whole fist into the labouring woman's vagina having been told not to do so and then told to get out once she was in - baby and mothers were both reading fine on the monitors, consultant just wanted to hurry things along presumably so the could get to the next patient and wouldn't take no for an answer). See also the "Kimberly Said No" story from the US about a woman whose doctor gave her an epesiotomy she had refused before she even started pushing, and went so far as to cut her vagina 12 times, basically because she argued with him.

You are conflating home birth - which is low risk and can be better all around than a hospital birth if there aren't additional complications and it's properly supported and backed up - with freebirthing. That alone suggests you are coming at this from a highly partisan position. Even most midwives and home birth advocates don't support freebirthing.

This was the point I made in my first paragraph - the article conflates the two. This thread is proving that the readers of the article are also - perhaps as a result of reading the article - conflating FB and HB.

They are two entirely different situations.

The article is, as I said, really irresponsible.

So you're going to ignore every other point I made then? Convenient for you.

The argument that freebirthing is natural and has happened for millenia is also quite disingenuous- births have always been assisted, by older women and/or doctors.

Homebirthing is a completely different experience.

Freebirthing these days refers specifically to women who reject antenatal care/vaccines/midwives.
They give birth with partners and at best, a doula.
They give a huge emphasis to the power of body and the instinct of giving birth.

There was a case on a freebirth FB page a little while ago of a woman whose waters broke without contractions. She was leaking meconium for days before her contractions started- eventually she felt so bad she went to hospital.
She was looked after for days but her baby didn't make it.
At no point through her labour was she advised to call anyone- she was instead repeatedly told 'trust yourself, your body looks what to do'.

@Draineddraineddrained

So you're going to ignore every other point I made then? Convenient for you.

We're ignoring many of your other points because homebirthing and freebirthing are so different, but you are grouping them together, then mentioning some of the potential negative outcomes of hospital births, as if freebirthing wasn't seriously more dangerous.

I was utterly terrified of a hospital birth, an article like that would have made me even more adamant on the idea of a home or ‘free’ birth.
Fortunately I went overdue and wasn’t allowed a home birth.
Had I not in been in hospital I would have probably died as I had a severe haemorrhage.
I agree that articles like that are dangerous.

I know someone who had a 'freebirth' about 7 or 8 years ago now, she was always hippydippy and adamant that a few herbs can cure everything. Sadly things went very wrong and the baby didn't make it. She is a shell of the woman she used to be, she lives with the knowledge that what happened was completely avoidable and that her choices caused her babies death.

The most irresponsible thing is using the term “freebirth”, which was obviously coined to promote the idea that it’s wonderful and tree-huggy. The slightly less catchy “dangerous homebirth without midwives” is more accurate.

It’s the guardian, a sense of reality does not apply, only ridiculous platitudes do.

Referring to not being "allowed" a home birth...ultimately it's your choice.
My waters started to go on the Saturday morning with my third and she wasn't born until the Tuesday! Working closely with my IM I still opted for the home birth I had planned. And it was brilliant! )

Sorry for digging this up but I just found out a friend freebirthed at home with just her family, no midwife. I'm really shocked but at the same time not that surprised. She's one of those insta yoga types and is quite woo-woo. She spent 9 months reading positive birth stories and avoiding negative ones.

I knew she was planning a home birth with a midwife, but it totally shocked she didn't call them when the time came. All went fine, lucky for her. But when does "trust in your power" become too much?

I'm debating whether to watch "pieces of a woman" when it comes out on Netflix. It is my worst fear, after having a traumatic birth, but I'm really drawn to it. I hope my friend watches it!!