Wanting to tell 44 weeks and breech friend she's risking her baby?

[scottishlass43]

My friend is 44 weeks pregnant with a footling breech. She's determined to have a natural birth at home with another friend of ours who's a midwife. She's been declining all intervention till now and has no cut off point - she wants to let the baby come naturally and doesn't want scans or any monitoring. She refuses to consider a c-section.

She's older (late thirties) and has been waiting for several years for this baby. I have no idea why she'd risk it now.

AIBU wanting to tell her what I think? Am I (and other worried friends) overreacting? Does anyone know of anyone who's done this, and how it went?

@Lilyargin

My friend declined induction at 42 weeks. Then the baby stopped moving. She had to give birth knowing the baby had died. She wishes she hadn't declined the induction with all her heart.

Your poor friend. That sort of regret is incredibly hard to live with.

@scottishlass43 I would send her a screenshot of @aurynne 's post below. Yeah, she might not ever speak to you again, but I think you need to do something. She might just see sense.

@HairyFanjoBanjo

Women in my NCT group refused to be induced into labour and insisted on a ‘natural birth, - after 42 weeks she was finally rushed into hospital as home-birth didn’t work out and she had a stillbirth.

There is an appalling ‘culture’ of woowoo birthing bullshit amongst a really wide cross-section of middle class women who are almost competing to have the most ‘natural’ birth. It’s delusional and has horrific outcomes for a minority of them.

I don’t mind a bit of woo now and again, but why on earth would you risk your unborn child’s life - it’s utterly tragic and completely unnecessary.

I remember being pregnant with my first and my good friend was too but a few months ahead, sent me a "wonderful book" (her words) about natural birth, it's a while ago so I forget all the details but remember reading the male doctors opinions about how women can labour without pain relief how it's all in the mind and how's years ago women gave birth and an hour later they were up and out working again in the fields, factories etc as the had no choice I stopped reading it, though it was a load of rubbish and gave it back but said nothing to her as I thought it was none of my business.

Fast forward, she was blue lighted across the city when everything went wrong at the natural birth centre. Luckily with a healthy baby at the end. This friend is very like the relative I have who left her birth 43 weeks. Highly educated, middle class and a bit "alternative" in views but essentially arrogant as they believe they know better than the healthcare professionals who are highly trained. I love them both but they're also ignorant (and wouldn't appreciate me saying it).

I work in healthcare and have sadly seen the other side of all the success stories, I understand the wanting to limit medical intervention and "naturalise" birth, but I really don't think people like this realise that death is another outcome of a natural birth with no interventions. It's playing russian roulette with their and their baby's life and the consequences as sadly displayed in this thread show are tragic and ripple out to more people than that mother

There's nothing to lose by laying it on thick to your friend op, how would you feel about supporting her if the worst happened? It's harsh but I'm not sure I could have forgiven my relative for her opinions if the worst had happened, in that sense I "got lucky" too as I didn't have to deal with the consequences and neither did my family, I suspect I wouldn't have been alone in my feelings either....

I never understood the obsession with waiting for labour to start naturally. I was terrified when I was overdue with my DD and they wouldn't do anything until I was late by a certain number of days...

Obsession with it all being "natural" is very much a first world privilege.

@DrSbaitso

Obsession with it all being "natural" is very much a first world privilege.

I agree and I think many people forget that if we left childbirth entirely to nature many women and babies die.

@Justheretoaskaquestion91

My 3am reading (non sleeping toddler) unearthed a fucking irresponsible article in the Guardian of all places essentially supporting free birth! Wtf

What article was that? I've read a few over the years in the Guardian but I wouldn't have classed any as supportive of that choice.

@scottishlass43 what is your mutual friend / her midwife doing to her through this situation? She must realise she's risking fitness to practise by supporting this?

Prefacing this comment by making it clear that I think this woman is making a terrible decision.
BUT - all of the approaches on this thread about showing her this thread, telling her her baby WILL die etc isn’t the approach.

She is obviously making this decision for whatever reason she has, which we don’t know. She is allowed to make this decision. But it needs to be an INFORMED decision.

In my experience women in these situations get frustrated because they aren’t being heard. And the medical experts get frustrated because they feel they aren’t being heard.
What’s worked MUCH better in my previous experience is to approach this conversation as “Ok as your caregiver I t’s my job to ensure you get the care YOU choose. I can provide you with your options and the benefits and drawbacks of both and then you decide what the right decision is for YOU. I want you to make an informed decision so I need to provide you with all the information to be able to do that” and then discuss risks / benefits etc.

Simply going into that conversation saying “if you don’t do what I say your baby will probably die” does NOT open up that dialogue.
I’ve seen so many women shut down a conversation before it’s even begun because they feel they are just being railroaded into doing what the doctor wants them to do rather than both parties listening and being heard.

@DropYourSword

Prefacing this comment by making it clear that I think this woman is making a terrible decision. BUT - all of the approaches on this thread about showing her this thread, telling her her baby WILL die etc isn’t the approach.

She is obviously making this decision for whatever reason she has, which we don’t know. She is allowed to make this decision. But it needs to be an INFORMED decision.

In my experience women in these situations get frustrated because they aren’t being heard. And the medical experts get frustrated because they feel they aren’t being heard.
What’s worked MUCH better in my previous experience is to approach this conversation as “Ok as your caregiver I t’s my job to ensure you get the care YOU choose. I can provide you with your options and the benefits and drawbacks of both and then you decide what the right decision is for YOU. I want you to make an informed decision so I need to provide you with all the information to be able to do that” and then discuss risks / benefits etc.

Simply going into that conversation saying “if you don’t do what I say your baby will probably die” does NOT open up that dialogue.
I’ve seen so many women shut down a conversation before it’s even begun because they feel they are just being railroaded into doing what the doctor wants them to do rather than both parties listening and being heard.

This is exactly my experience. I am currently pregnant with twins (20 weeks). I see a consultant every fortnight and they have talked about stillbirth every time. I am told when and how my babies are delivered by policy. I'm going to do as I'm told, but it has left me sobbing on multiple occasions at the lack of advocacy over my own body and the sense that I have no choice or control over what will happen. I'm dreading an induction and being told so glibly that my choice will be that or stillbirth does not make a great environment for collaborative decisions around my care.

This lady has driven it to the extreme, but I can empathise with how people get there.

What the fuck? Both those situations individually would be extremely high risk for a home birth but together it's a recipe for disaster. She's a fucking idiot to put her baby at risk like that and I'd have to say something. At what point will she accept medical intervention?

Any news @scottishlass43

the lack of advocacy over my own body and the sense that I have no choice or control over what will happen

I'm very sorry to say it, but there isn't a lot of control you can exert over birth. If there were, we wouldn't ever have terrible tragedies. Hopefully you will be lucky and get the birth you want, but it is a simple fact that there are all sorts of things that could happen that you can't control. It's the same for all of us.

I’m nervously check the thread to see if OP updates with news on the baby, I don’t think this story has a happy ending unfortunately.

@dumdedumpop

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/29/free-birth-janet-fraser-system

This is absurdly positive given the context IMO. I say that as someone who had a homebirth (second baby, textbook pregnancy and with two midwives there, 10 mins from a hospital).

But what is an ‘informed choice’?

To be honest if you think you can weigh up risk better than a medical professional then you’re very unlikely to listen to them anyway.

@DrSbaitso you can’t control birth but you can control how involved a mother feels in her own pregnancy and provide her with options and information so she feels as though she as much control as possible rather than just being a passenger in her own pregnancy.

[quote GrealishHairband]@DrSbaitso you can’t control birth but you can control how involved a mother feels in her own pregnancy and provide her with options and information so she feels as though she as much control as possible rather than just being a passenger in her own pregnancy.[/quote]
I strongly suspect that some (not all of even most) women who say they felt ‘bullied’ by the medical profession in pregnancy merely mean that the medics didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear in order to justify an unsafe birthing preference.

@Blondeshavemorefun

44w and not given birth

Are you sure ?

Seems very weird no scans since 20w

Why not a 28w one

You don't have to agree to any scans. And routinely no scans are given after the 20 week one any more if you're considered a low risk pregnancy.

OP, maybe talk to the so called midwife who is involved with your friend.

In this instance I would 100% make my feelings known and damn the consequences.

Please do let us know how things go, this thread has made a lot of us quite anxious about the welfare of the baby.

There was once a heartbreaking post on here, from someone who’d insisted on a home birth for a first baby - which was brain damaged as a result. She was consumed with guilt about that decision.

Whether it’d be any use telling your friend about that I don’t know, though. Some people seem so fixated on the birth itself, rather than on the hoped-for outcome - which is a healthy baby, with a healthy mother to care for it.

[quote GrealishHairband]@DrSbaitso you can’t control birth but you can control how involved a mother feels in her own pregnancy and provide her with options and information so she feels as though she as much control as possible rather than just being a passenger in her own pregnancy.[/quote]
Yes, I'd certainly agree with that.

But I don't relate at all to the idea that birth is something you can control as such (I'm not saying PP said that, but I know some women feel that way). Hopefully you can have the water birth or whatever you want. But I never saw it as an "experience"....for me, it was always a means to an end. I didn't even write a birth plan because I was aware that so many things could happen that I simply couldn't control. Just as well, as it happens.

Birth trauma is very real. I don't know what the solution is. I don't want mums to be to be terrorised, but I also don't think it's a good idea to get too invested in the idea that you can control everything, and you've somehow failed or missed out on the "experience" if it doesn't go as you wanted.

I think that part of the free birthing movement it due to doctors and sometimes midwives (not all please don't shoot me) for not really allowing mum to have a voice and women feeling completely uninpowered, often not being asked to consent to medical checks and treated less a human and more a oven. It's not right btw but there should be some type of balance. I mostly found the worst was the consultants, I wish I had been completely in MW care with my DD but with my history I couldn't be.

I really hope your friend changes her mind. Burying my baby was one of the worst days of my life. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The statics maybe "low" but that's sometimes not how life works, now what I go by is if there's a chance of the worse happening, could I live with myself.

Please update us OP.

One of the reasons there isn’t a huge amount of info out there on the effects of such an overdue baby is because it is completely unethical to do a study like that which risks babies and mothers lives. Sweden tried it a few years ago and cancelled the study after 6 of the babies died. If your friend is interested in doing research on it maybe this would be something she’d read? Reported in lots of places if the guardian isn’t her thing but this is the first one that came up when I searched for it

amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/oct/28/post-term-pregnancy-research-cancelled-babies-die-sweden

My oldest is nearly 27. By the time induction worked I was 43 + weeks, not something I'd have chosen! He wasn't breech though and he weighed 11lb 2. It wasn't pleasant