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

[everychildmatters]

Because clearly evidence says otherwise!!

If I was asked to choose now....I am not sure I could.

Losing a child but me being there for my other children versus me having a truly traumatic experience and me being so mentally damaged I wanted to take my own life. Sophies Choice isnt it?

ETA that I say that as a woman who has done both. You have done neither of those things so I am sure that you can understand that I dont take your assertions as fact. Its rather like when childless people assert how they will parent. Its easy to say what one would do in a particular situation, safe in the knowledge that one will never be in that situation.

@Tralalalama Stop telling other women how they should or shouldn't feel after trauma and/or loss.

This is really interesting. Denmark I assume?

I was aware home birth was the norm but wasn't aware that only 10% of first births actually happened at home. So in other words, midwifes don't make you 'stick to your birth plan' or use being 'low risk' as an excuse to not facilitate interventions as it becomes clear they may be necessary. And they actually provide support in early labour.

Midwives in the UK, in hospitals anyway, are actively hostile to both those points ime. And hugely defensive when challenged.

@ThisTaupeZebra In my experience they don't, especially as if something starts to happen which could potentially have been indicative of hospital transfer being required, they would be under the spotlight (quite rightly). Much closer monitoring than in hospital and dedicated minimum of one midwife at all times (two in established labour) which of course can't be provided on the NHS as funding simply wouldn't stretch.
My IM was with me throughout - my husband called her on my first contraction (first time dad so was surprised my third labour took from one evening until the next morning!) and she was there within minutes until about midday the next morning and once my baby was settled. The second IM was there when first IM knew labour was established until after delivery too. My main IM then came out to see us that same evening and then every day for about a week afterwards. I have never felt so well-supported.

Usually, if a group of employees are reluctant to escalate or refer care onwards, it is because they feel they'll be punished for doing so. They found this to be the case in aviation, too.

The problem with this thread, OP, is that it berates women for not perceiving risk correctly, which is exactly what a lot of the anti-home birth/anti-choice rhetoric berates women for too. That is why this thread was ill-advised.

The real problem with any conversation about risk in childbirth is that it based on the premise of low and high risk. These labels were originally developed for population-level health surveillance after WWII/start of the NHS, but are now inappropriately used to triage women or even to push them into 'birth plans' that they don't really want. And that goes in both directions.

That is why statements like: 'home birth isn't risky for people who are deemed to be low risk' can sound a bit hollow to many women, particuarly those who have given birth in recent years as maternity scandal after maternity scandal has emerged.

You are asking women to align themselves with a set of inappropriately used labels surrounding risk, which women know they will then be blamed for 'not understanding' when it all goes wrong.

I'm a scientist and the entire 'low risk' label is inherently unscientific. Low risk women are not monitored or rather 'observed' (though sometimes their babies are, though that is a whole 'nother thread!) so we are actually unable to learn exactly what a 'low risk' birth looks like from a scientific/mechanical/medical perspective, which would allow us to better predict when interventions may be necessary.

Compound that with the very poor experience many women have surrounding their reproductive health and actually, many of those 'low risk' women are just undiagnosed women. I believe my undiagnosed endometriosis had an impact on my 'low risk' birth in a way that remains unappreciated, for example.

You point to Denmark as a good example, and they are. I believe they have the lowest maternal and neonatal mortality rate in Europe if not the world? However, many of the 'home birth' crowd on this thread would not be thrilled with the 'compulsory' c-section for breech birth that medics there are proposing is adopted internationally to reduce maternal and neonatal births globally.

There is very little room for a conversation inviting the possibility of more home births and more elective c-sections in this country, yes partly due to funding, but also some quite nasty attitudes towards women, particuarly pregnant/labouring ones.

Similarly, all of the doctors/midwives on this thread talking about how 'unpredictable' births are. That is a manufactured situation developed through a refusal to observe 'low risk' births, and women's reproductive health in the first place. Proper research in place would make birth much less 'unpredictable' and we wouldn't be having silly arguments about inappropriately applied statistical labels.

Then how would the patriarchy function?

@ThisTaupeZebra I totally agree with you in that more research needs to be done. But that is unlikely to happen. Where would the funding come from for a start? As, as you allude to, women are always bottom of the priority list.

I'm in NL. I'm sure we have bad midwives, but all the ones I met were brilliant. I originally said hell no to a home birth, but had a really easy pregnancy and read The Positive Birth book both of which changed my mind. You don't need to decide until the day. 12h in I most definitely changed my mind back! Off we went to the midwife unit to try out the birth pool (the midwife phones up, reserves you a room, and tells them to fill the pool and put the whale music on) Three hours later I was sick of whale music and they wheeled me over the hall to the hospital proper for an epidural. My midwife stayed with me all through and she'd done about half my appointments before. There was no pressure to try any course, although I think they'd have strongly recommended an epidural if I'd waited much longer because it was getting obvious I was struggling. I'm a stubborn marathon runner, which they knew, so I think they decided that I'd listen to my body and knew my limits, which was true. I reckon if I was a bit more delicate they'd have been hinting about pain killers much earlier!

I'm not sure what percentage of first births are planned at home. In my pregnancy class only 2 out of 10 wanted to try, one succeeded. Most of the rest gave birth in the birth house, like a midwife unit, I think mostly due to nerves and fear of the unknown. You get sent to hospital straight away, do not pass go, for anything worrying at all, but hospital is still a private room with bathroom, kitchenette and sofa bed. They don't take risks. Going over 41 weeks doesn't count as a risk here though if everyone is healthy, so far fewer inductions.

What some women experience in childbirth has been described as virtually identical to the experiences of - and long term effects on torture victims - no agency, being held down and extreme agony being visited upon them. I’m not sure that the motivations of the torturers are particularly relevant to the woman in the moment or even afterwards when revisiting the trauma over and over again.

Thankfully very extreme cases are rare - but they do happen. Perhaps you should read the several state commissioned reports into maternity scandals and also read the posts on mumsnet over the years of women who have been criminally assaulted by medical professionals who are ignorant or uncaring of the law on consent.

I’m not sure that those of us who haven’t suffered in these ways have a right to an opinion on what is worse or how we would have reacted.

"You don't need to decide until the day. 12h in I most definitely changed my mind back! Off we went to the midwife unit to try out the birth pool (the midwife phones up, reserves you a room, and tells them to fill the pool and put the whale music on) Three hours later I was sick of whale music and they wheeled me over the hall to the hospital proper for an epidural."

So in the UK you are very much pushed towards 'choosing' midwife-led unit or 'consultant-led unit' depending on whether you are 'high' or 'low' risk, and there is the option of homebirth. Transfer from the midwife-led unit to the consultant-led unit is deeply taboo.

Pregnant women made decisions on how low the transfer rates between units were at their local hospitals, and low transfer rates are used symbolically to suggest that the 'cascade of intervention' was being avoided. There was no attention given to the women who were having evidence-based medicine withheld from them because they were in labour.

When I went to visit the 'midwife-led unit' weeks before giving birth I was told "this is not a half way house for people on the way to the labour ward. It is for women for whom there is no need for medical intervention". I was told this again when I turned up there, (because I had to, because I had chosen it and been registered there, not the consultant-led unit) with a number of symptoms I now understand were red flags. I was denied pain relief and sneered at for eventually having to be transferred and asking about epidural during the transfer. I was treated as though I had 'let them down'. TBF, at the time, transfers between one unit to another were recorded in Government statistics, and higher rates of transfers were considered 'bad'. This was a stat they were going to have to mop up elsewhere. This was 2018, before the various scandals broke that have led to the removal of the idea of a 'max c-section rate'.

That's horrendous. Honestly the more I hear about giving birth in the NHS, the more barbaric it sounds. My parents can't understand why we say we won't be coming back unless we're paid enough for gold plated health insurance and even then probably not. To make you more jealous, pelvic physio is default here too. Our breast feeding rates aren't great though and the insurance doesn't cover a lactation consultant.

It is crap but it’s not as poor as America. At least we don’t have to pay for our obstetric violence.

Sorry, I should say pay extra* because of course we do pay for the NHS

It's crazy because this doesn't even save money. It will mean more women choose for hospital just in case and cause more chronic issues afterwards due to poorly managed births. I'd have probably ended up with an expensive c- section if an epidural hadn't been easily available due to exhaustion.

Also most women who have a c section opt for a c section with subsequent pregnancies. More money.

it’s significantly cheaper to hire 2 midwives to watch and observe - hands off - at a home birth then it is to pump all these women full of drugs and cut their babies out of them. Not to mention the absolute trauma of forceps which is wildly popular, is anyone talking about the damage those do to our babies?