To be fed up of the "home birth is risky" misinformation?

[everychildmatters]

Because clearly evidence says otherwise!!

No one knows how any birth is going to go so that is what makes home births riskier - I wouldn’t want to depend on an ambulance in the circumstances of a birth gone wrong.

If I had had a home birth then DS and me would be dead - I ended up have a crash c section with general anaesthetic and haemorrhaged badly

Not really. It was suggested as what I might consider a preference as I might be more comfortable not having to risk delivering en route. But we were 20 minutes from the hospital where DH worked so we had free and guaranteed parking and an office we could wait in if I had turned up and been turned away.

There's no way staying at home was less risky, even a previous fast labour. No midwife would have gone to our house quicker than I'd have got to the labour ward.

All births are risky! Hone births even more so due to no medical assistance
I have had 2 hospital births the last one i got rushed to theatre when my babys oxygen level dropped dangerously . She wasnt breathing when she was born . Had we been at home she would not have lived

Absolutely! Daughter ticked every box as a low risk birth and community midwife was encouraging her to have baby at midwife led birthing unit . Daughter thankfully declined and baby born at local hospital. Everything went tits up at the 11th hour and baby unexpectedly went into foetal distress. The 19 minutes after he was born before he made any audible noise was the most terrifying experience for us.
The emergency team were in that room within seconds.
So yes ,IF something goes wrong it is safer to be where the staff and equipment is are seconds away .

Such a sad story.

Mine were planned home births. I opted for this primarily because it meant there was a significant reduction in the likelihood of unnecessary medical intervention compared to planned hospital births. You just need to look at the recent post where a woman was forced to have a C-section because there were no beds in the labour ward in her local hospital!

I had complete faith in the mid-wife throughout the pregnancy and if she had strongly advised a hospital birth I would have very likely taken the advice. Thankfully that didn't happen.

This is crazy. I had a midwife (actually 2!!) with me the entire time I was in hospital and then my baby had foetal distress and I had a crash section. Yes my baby WOULD have died. I got told that over and over, it’s in my notes at my post birth meeting.
so the midwife at the hospital is the same as the midwife at a home birth: she would NOT have been able to save my baby’s life.

The point is that the threshold for intervention and transfer to hospital in a home birth is very low. The likelihood is that most labouring mothers would have been transferred long before it gets to this kind of emergency.

I'm not making any statements about particular births as I don't have the information to do so. However, generally speaking, that moment where you get rushed to theatre in the hospital is not a direct 'translation' of how it would have played out at home. The likelihood is that you would be moved long before, based on the midwives reading of how the situation unfolded before this.

5 minutes after something has gone wrong at home you'll still be on the phone to 999 giving your address.

5 minutes after something has gone wrong on labour ward, the baby could be out.

But the threshold for something 'going wrong' at home and the transfer to hospital is much lower. It's not a like for like comparison.

True, but in a completely normal delivery, after a completely normal pregnancy, things can go very wrong, very quickly.

It doesnt work like that. If a woman is labouring at home the news is passed on so that the hospital are aware a transfer may happen. Midwives dont call 999 like you would in an emergency.

As has been pointed out, the "going wrong" is not the same at home. Community midwives are far more risk averse, they know that there isnt the luxury of "wait and see" like there can be in hospital.

I think the situations where this is comes entirely out of nowhere are extremely rare. In a birth that's being properly monitored, the midwife will be responding to signs all the way through, which may not evoke urgent action in a hospital setting, but would be responded to at home (lower threshold).

Have you ever worked in maternity or obstetrics? They are really not that rare. And you are reliant on a midwife being available (there's another thread on here where one wasn't and most of the labour was monitored by paramedics) and being able to recognise early signs of something going wrong.

I think the thing that’s dangerous at the moment is that everything you hear seems to be to such extremes. The hypnobirthing course I took basically told me that if I was im hospital I would be forced into situations that I was unhappy with, my baby and I would suffer under unnecessary medical procedure…

my first birth was in a hospital led birth centre which was great at first and then it all went wrong. I had no previous complications but the day ended with midwives having to lift me out of the pool unconscious and we would have dies had we been at home without a doubt. That was no one’s fault. I’m really grateful there was a space for me to give birth in a comfortable environment with the emergency help right there

I'm talking about a home birth, which would have at least 1 to 1 monitoring throughout. As I've been saying, the threshold for intervention would be very low.

One of the problems with hospital births that people don't talk about is over stretched midwives and labouring mothers not getting 1 to 1 attention and problems not being picked up on. All the medical equipment and expertise in the world is no use if your midwife hasnt realised you're in difficulty.

If there are no ambulances available though no ambulances will come.

and when there is no MW available to be sent, so you end up with paramedics? It's not that uncommon.

I'm not talking about free birthing. I'm talking about kid wife led delivery at home.

but if no MW is available to come, then you end up with a paramedic, who may have very little experience.

Well then you'd be in hospital from the get go. They arent going to let you free birth because they can't get you a mid wife.

i don’t believe it should be an option for all women. The woman in the paper who died along with her baby made a stupid decision that killed her and her baby, and traumatised the midwives.

She had had a PPH and gave her baby sepsis by being a carrier of group B strep in her previous birth. Anyone ignorant or arrogant enough to think they know better than medics should have had the home birth option entirely off the table for her.

But inevitably they end up free birthing or insisting on stay at home knowing they’ll end up having to send someone as some care is better than no care. In this case they counselled against it and she went ahead and stayed at home - there was no alternative but to send midwives.

I find it very hard though that they’re trying to pin this on the hospital.

If no midwife is available then you go in otherwise you are choosing an unassisted birth.

Thats different to a planned home birth where the midwifes are in attendance don’t mix them up.

When I got to the hospital with my first at 9cm there was still times I was left completely without anyone with medical training while they came and went from the room as I wasn’t pushing yet.

At home the midwife was in the room with me, watching me, she had called for the second midwife before I realised I was that close to delivering as she could see the changes in me. The same way she would have been watching for tiny subtle changes that something was quite right and that’s it you go in to hospital. They are very risk adverse they don’t want mums staying home if they think something is about to go wrong.

You also Though has to remember midwifes cannot force the mum to transfer if she doesn’t want to.

Apart from sudden oh shit. A lot of problems start showing signs just in hospital they are often missed because it’s 1 midwife to 8 women.

If you could give me a home from home room with birth pool, my own personal midwife, fast discharge. I would have happily gone into the hospital. But they don’t. My care was better at home.

It’s strange that in other countries where epidurals are the most common and routine form of pain relief that these complications don’t appear to arise. It does suggest to me that in the U.K. the statistics may be skewed to those who are already more likely to have difficult births so request epidurals.

In any event, few first time mothers over 30 have completely unassisted no intervention natural births. Having listened to a friend’s horror story of instrumental delivery and stitching with inadequate pain relief, it’s not surprising that many more mature mothers I knew opted for epidural.

have you read the thread here when most of the birth was handled by a paramedic?