AIBU- home birth social media support groups are f’ing dangeorus **Content warning - title edited by MNHQ**

[Namechangetimes100]

I’m in a few Fb home birth groups as I was planning to have one til the service got suspended, had an MLU birth instead and was absolutely fine! I’ve not left the group yet (probs should) but some of the advice given is fucking dangerous as hell.

The advice is free birth left right and centre. Birth at home for a pre term (35 week plus) baby, the woman did and the baby needed resus this was met with almost rapturous applause and more recently refuse induction or action for iugr. I mean ffs this advice can kill as well as the doctors = evil mentality.

I do totally believe and support informed consent and I do think that choice isn’t often presented to women in obstetrics and sometimes induction is made to seem like the only choice when it isn’t. I was coerced into induction with a ‘constitutionally small’ baby based on old guidelines so I’m sympathetic to a point to some of these opinions. But to even contemplate birthing a premature baby at home, fgs and a baby measuring under the 3rd centile and dropping and to refuse any sort of medical support in pursuit of the perfect home birth. I just don’t get it.

Any free birth or demanding midwives come out when there’s a national short staffing. It seems like a recipe for disaster.

I totally get my body my choice but seems like playing with fire In some instances to me-aibu?

[quote AliceAll]@Liathroid The US has a crazy health system and no it’s not remotely generalisable to the UK but, if you read the papers I cited, I did not do that. The Hutton and Reitsma papers are based on studies from around the world and include data from the UK, the Netherlands, Canada, Iceland and New Zealand.

The authors are Canadian. I'm surprised you'd confuse Canada and the US while trying to make a snide point about geographical context :-p (Joke by the way - not trying to get at you - but humour is hard to convey by text)[/quote]
I don’t find it funny. I may have misread where the authors were from but you are telling women on this board that risks of home birth are X when this is based on many different countries experience under vastly different healthcare systems rather than taking the official NHS advice and data based on the actual healthcare system where women are giving birth. While the different findings are interesting from an academic point of view it’s misleading information like this that puts women at risk.

@Maranta

I'm all for evidence based home birth when appropriate, I had 2 myself. But I personally can't get my head around freebirth. And I think it's unbelievably unethical for a doula (not a medical professional) to be charging people for "advice" on how to have one. The admin of one of these groups is always rattling the tip jar, charges for phone calls with her, turns every post people make to being about herself and posted the other day saying "my groups are an empire and I am their dictator", which is... yikes. There was also a vote for "woman of the year" by a clothing brand. They asked people to nominate someone who deserved to win it. One of the nominees was a woman who volunteers to photograph stillborn babies, incredible stuff. But the admin of one of these groups asked all the group followers to nominate her, in multiple posts. Telling people "it's your last chance to nominate me!". She ended up with loads of nominations and likes from all her group members and won the competition. Kind of defeats the point of people nominating someone and that person winning organically.

I saw that too, completely agree with everything you've said, @Maranta. 😔

@Theregoesmyhomebirth

I suppose my point is that often the advice of professionals/NICE guidelines are hailed as flawless and to be taken as gospel. But they're not perfect, have their own biases, and aren't always based on that great data, because well (for the reason you stated above) there isn't the data available.

I don’t think they are hailed as flawless. But it’s the best evidence we have, and based on the experience of people who see many many more births than we do from a few Google searches. It’s much better than no evidence, and there’s a reason why the advent of medicine has seen maternal and neonatal mortality drastically reduce.

I think MN can be… borderline paranoid when it comes to the intentions of medical professionals. It does feel slightly that women who do not have the exact labour/birth they want say they were ‘coerced’ or that the doctors had some kind of
malign determination to medicalise them as much as possible. It feels very much like a case of ‘shoot the messenger’ and medical staff being blamed for simultaneously ‘stressing mums out’ by telling them risks, and ‘not helping them make an informed choice’ by not telling them risks.

They can’t win really.

I'd love to comment on it one day! But can only imagine the flying monkeys going crazy at me. I'm still in the groups because I like to watch the occasional dramas unfold sometimes during long night feeds 😆

@Lifeisnteasy when I was induced, I absolutely wasn't coerced into anything, but I was patronised, treated as a specimen to examined and generally treated like crap by one specific doctor and that 100% put me off being under consultant led care unless absolutely necessary.

[quote rosettesforjill]@Lifeisnteasy when I was induced, I absolutely wasn't coerced into anything, but I was patronised, treated as a specimen to examined and generally treated like crap by one specific doctor and that 100% put me off being under consultant led care unless absolutely necessary.[/quote]
Why not just change consultant?

@Maranta

I'd love to comment on it one day! But can only imagine the flying monkeys going crazy at me. I'm still in the groups because I like to watch the occasional dramas unfold sometimes during long night feeds 😆

Ha! I’ve left the group now but I’ve few friends in it and I’ve head the thread has created quite the stir in the group (absolutely not the intention) but all I can think is it must have hit a nerve for the admin to be so triggered. She must know she’s elevated to sainthood some risky decision making

Iits flipping scary. I thought the NCT was bad …. I was told by my midwife to attend the NCT class as the ones run at the hospital were during working hours - deliberately to discourage working women from joining and thereby keeping costs down . They were aimed at unemployed and they provided only a service for those who couldn’t afford paid for classes. The lack of NHS finding is driving women to seek birthing courses from all sorts of questionable sources. I honestly couldn’t believe the bullshit I heard at the NCT.

@Maranta

I'm all for evidence based home birth when appropriate, I had 2 myself. But I personally can't get my head around freebirth. And I think it's unbelievably unethical for a doula (not a medical professional) to be charging people for "advice" on how to have one. The admin of one of these groups is always rattling the tip jar, charges for phone calls with her, turns every post people make to being about herself and posted the other day saying "my groups are an empire and I am their dictator", which is... yikes. There was also a vote for "woman of the year" by a clothing brand. They asked people to nominate someone who deserved to win it. One of the nominees was a woman who volunteers to photograph stillborn babies, incredible stuff. But the admin of one of these groups asked all the group followers to nominate her, in multiple posts. Telling people "it's your last chance to nominate me!". She ended up with loads of nominations and likes from all her group members and won the competition. Kind of defeats the point of people nominating someone and that person winning organically.

I completely agree with you. It frustrates me that she is always begging for money. Her language is very high level narcissist as well. ‘Wouldn’t you love to vote for me’. For someone who is meant to be a doula, she doesn’t attend many births does she as she’s always on fb sharing her ‘R A F F L E S’. I do think if people give out ‘professional’ advice on Facebook, they should be liable if the worst happens. And I’m a massive (safe) homebirth supporter but I do draw the line at this doula. She had people post reviews on her trust pilot 🥲

@Namechangetimes100 She's posting a few "highlights" from the replies on her page, apparently she definitely 100% hasn't read the thread 😉 and asked someone to send her the worst replies to post about... because she doesn't care at all, y'know. 🤭

Can someone tell me who this is please? I’m intrigued

@Lifeisnteasy this was at the actual point of being in labour so it didn't feel like I had much choice! She was awful. I wasn't even arguing with her, just asking questions (honestly! I have massive respect for doctors normally) but she was speaking to me in the most condescending way.

The surgeon who did eventually drag my son out with forceps was great though, as was the consultant in another hospital who briefly looked after me when I had extra growth scans. It's just that first hospital experience that put me off for any future births.

I haven’t managed to read this thread in full, but just in response to this for anyone else reading..

The Birth Place Study quoted here is now over 10 years old, and quite outdated in terms of home birth research.

The Birth Place study looked at 64,000 births, but since then in 2020 there has been a very large review of homebirth research looking at 500,000 births, which has shown no statistically significant difference in outcomes for babies (birth first born and subsequent births) when you compare home to hospital birth, but significantly improved outcomes for mothers (in terms of reduced rates of both complications and intervention) in the low risk population. The study is in The Lancet which is one of the worlds’ leading medical journals, so certainly a respectable source.

I hope that is reassuring for anyone who feels that home birth would be a good choice for them personally.

I personally found these groups incredible. Medical intervention is so heavily used nowadays and I was met with severe hostility by a hospital consultant who said "nobody wants a dead baby" as her opening line when she told me she was inducing me at 40 weeks when actually, upon thorough research of my own, the risk was no greater than the average birth. I had a beautiful home birth with 2 wonderful midwives (one of them my own actual midwife who supported me so much through my awful pregnancy), my partner, best friend (ex midwife) and my 9YO bobbing about as he liked. There is DEFINITELY a place for medical interventions, however, they are so heavily used and the risks for them are great too. My first birth was awful in hospital with induction drips being whacked up full blast and aggressive contractions, begging for pain relief, theatre for stitches etc. I'm very grateful for my healing homebirth and the advice of the women on there.

Oh, the

RAFFLES!

How could I forget? The constant promotion of MLM, then telling off people who rightly criticise them that they're great because they work for her 🙈 The asking for "Those who love me" to help with this thread seemed off to me. She's often going live from her bed in the middle of the day... then asks for donations all the time so she can continue doing her "sometimes 24 hour day" job. And when she says that no one is seeing her "R A F F L E" posts but it's probably that people just... aren't interested?

Sorry that reply was for @PurpleRock 😆

@Maranta

Oh, the

RAFFLES!

How could I forget? The constant promotion of MLM, then telling off people who rightly criticise them that they're great because they work for her 🙈 The asking for "Those who love me" to help with this thread seemed off to me. She's often going live from her bed in the middle of the day... then asks for donations all the time so she can continue doing her "sometimes 24 hour day" job. And when she says that no one is seeing her "R A F F L E" posts but it's probably that people just... aren't interested?

What MLM does she promote? I’m not in the group so can’t see her posts

Who is this person?????????

From the latest rant about this page, posted in the group. I find this grotesque.

"I am not responsible for a birth. The person giving birth is. This sentence removes power from where it belongs - the woman/birthing parent. They and they alone are responsible for their decisions.

This is a disgraceful patriarchal comment from a handmaiden of the patriarchy - women have always been it's greatest supporters and object when others are set free of the bonds they themselves cannot break.

Sadly death is a part of life and the Great Mother will sometimes, thankfully rarely, claim her own. We cannot approach birth in fear of it - however much we would like this not to be true.

I'd never claim to be responsible for someone's birth you'll often see me reply "you found me", putting praise right where it belongs.

Much as I'd love to be an all powerful and omniscient goddess - actually I'm just an average, everyday goddess living a human existence."

My concern with the Birthplace study is the way that it's often quoted as simply saying that birth is safer in hospital for first time mothers. The paper does not say that. It merely says that hospital is approximately twice as safe for the baby (with respect to severe outcomes), while also being approximately twice as dangerous for the mother (And many of the interventions (forceps, ventouse, csec) included within this are not without risk for the baby although don't cause severe enough harm to be included in the primary outcome.). They also report significant improvement in breastfeeding rates at home v hospital which is also known to convey long-term benefit to the baby.

So as a mother making a decision how do you balance a nearly double (although tiny) risk of death/brain-damage from 0.5% to 0.9%, against a tripled (and much higher) risk of being born by csection, forceps or ventouse from 7% to 26%. Many more babies will be positively impacted by being born at home, but those few babies who are negatively impacted by being born at home will be more severely impacted. It's comes down to how an individual personally handles risk - would you rather a high chance of a mild negative impact or a low chance of a serious negative impact. These are the figures women need to make an informed decision - not just a statement that hospital is safer if you're a FTM. We also need stats on the long term effects on both mother and baby of the increased interventions seen in hospital - birth trauma, mental health problems, breastfeeding problems etc.

Well for me it was easy - I was happy to take a more likely but moderate risk to myself, to negate a less likely but much more serious risk for my baby. It isn’t entirely benevolent - I also wanted to lessen the risk of having to raise a child with birth related disabilities.

I’m not against homebirth at all and think for a second+ baby in low risk pregnancies it can be a very good choice. And final decisions should absolutely rest with pregnant women.

But that doesn’t stop me considering some of those decisions to be reckless.

Anyone who describes themselves as "an every day average goddess" is probably best ignored and avoided in my opinion.

Maybe she can go rub some crystals on her crotch and inhale some incense and come back with a better CV before pontificating on childbirth.

@Lifeisnteasy I understand your reasoning and it makes sense. I came to a different conclusion not because I valued my safety higher than the babies but because of the long-term effects that csection has on the baby (disrupted microbiome, reduced chance of breastfeeding, increased risk of asthma, obesity and childhood hospitalisation due to infection) as well as the increased risk of miscarriage and stillbirth to future pregnancies. Obviously I'd rather avoid surgery myself too but that was of less importance to me than the impact on my children.

Honestly, are we children here?

Blaming other people for taking their "advice"? Really?

All the alternatives to freebirthing and whatever could go wrong with it, like yes death, are such fun aren't they? Things like c sections and obstetric violence are such total breezes and cake walks - for everyone. So let's slag off all those who choose the particular bitter pill you wouldn't take as your pill is next to candy or a sheer candy floss ball for everyone?

No, I am grateful for this helpful group with its very helpful leader which supports people to decide what's best for them and their babies - as regards the possible bad stuff, as well as the possible good possibilities.

It's not right to persecute someone doing that within a field where there is so much potential for suffering. Someone who brings some balm to that. And who as regards to the joy potential, is a light bringer.

Because among us are people who can't take responsibility for making up their own minds?

@Lifeisnteasy

Who is this person?????????

Just join the uk home birth groups on Facebook and you'll see for yourself.