Thinking that this should be illegal?

[TyrannasaurusJex]

Basically musing over this article - https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/19/call-midwife-freebirthing-nhs-crisis-unmedicated-medical-support
I get nervous when a friend says they want a homebirth anyway, but to choose not to have any kind of trained medical professional or equipment with you when giving birth is, I think, tantamount to child neglect. Yes women can do what they want with their bodies but putting an innocent baby's life at serious risk because you've been sucked into the 'freebirth' movement? Despicable.

My stepdaughter in law freebirthed with their 2nd baby last year. I was incredibly impressed they managed so well. I myself had a home birth with 2 midwives present and that was hard enough

Laboured at home until the very last hour - was so close to being a 'free birth' due to no midwives being available at the local maternity unit.

They knew I was in labour 1st time mum, had rung up 2 or 3 times during the night and no-one told us until it was too late to do anything (snowed in and 20 miles away to next big hospital as we are rural). The 2 midwives on duty had had to go (one a transfer with a stuck baby, and one broke her arm on icy pavement). The big hospital sent no back up, which I am still horrified about to this day.

I didn't think anything of it at the time but GP was horrified as I had not had fetal heart monitoring or anything. Luckily all OK (DS has complex SEND but more likely to be genetic than birth related, no meconium etc when I finally did reach a midwife and waters broke I was all ready to push!).

I was quite proud of myself on the whole but not what I would have chosen.

One of the reasons I wanted a home birth for my second is that I essentially free-birthed my first, not at all through choice and in a hospital. I was sent home because they didn't believe I was in active labour. When I came back in I was told off for coming back and left in the corner of the triage room for a couple of hours even though I kept saying I was pushing. No monitoring, no checks - until, finally, after begging, a midwife begrudgingly checked and said I was near crowning. I was transferred into a labour room and he was born less than 30 minutes later. This was a pregnancy that I had been told was too high risk for me to have the choice of using the midwife unit - but in practice it was totally unattended, no fetal heart monitoring, no checks. We had gone into hospital while I was actively pushing (and while the midwives kept telling me not to come in), which was an awful, agonising journey. I nearly gave birth in a public ward, which was absolutely humiliating. My second birth did end up being in a hospital and was totally different and much better, but the 'care' I got in my first absolutely convinced me at the time that I'd be better off at home.

This kind of thing is plausible to people because they have such little trust when the doctors tell them something is risky. And that's partly down to the medical community. The risks of scar rupture, for example, are often very over-blown, especially in the US, where almost anything seems to be reason for a c-section.

And of course c-sections have their own risks which are often minimized by doctors.Once people lose trust in the recommendations of doctors it's very difficult to have any good relation with them.

And frankly maternity care can be extremely coercive. With my third child the hospital wanted to me to have an IV in place the whole time as I'd been sectioned previously, I said I didn't want it, and signed a paper well ahead saying I understood the implications. Mainly I didn't want it because I knew it would tend to make me less mobile. Anyway, when I finally got there, well into labuor, the CoO said he didn't care, I would have one or he'd send me to the city an hour away in an ambulance. Trying to argue my position while in labour seemed hopeless, and I just told them to section me. (Which I regretted later but I was not thinking as clearly as I might have been. My poor husband wasn't sure what to do.) When I was in the waiting room a few weeks later to have my incision checked, every mother in the room had been sectioned!

Yes, this is an element it would be tricky, though not impossible, to legislate around. Generally we don't insist that people access medical care. Though there are a few instances related to communicable diseases or public health.

@TempestTost they probably only check the wounds of sectioned women.
My youngest is 7, they no longer do routine 6 week checks unless you have an issue. Very deep 2nd degree tear and nobody looked at it after I was stitched up.