To find this desperately sad? TW: freebirth death

[ExtraHotDoubleShot]

I just feel so sad for her husband and little boy. I also understand why she didn’t want to go into hospital. Feels like women are stuck between a rock and a hard place with childbirth at the moment.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jun/20/stacey-warnecke-melbourne-influencer-died-freebirth-inquest-ntwnfb

Thank you - that point seems to be lost of posters here. Am leaving/hiding the thread now.

Only thing I will say is that I had my baby within a few hours because I felt safe and supported; I did not have to have the inlaws etc come to stay for weeks in advance in case I went into labour, or have to have my elder, sensitive (autistic) child wake up to find mummy and daddy gone and a random neighbour in the house. She woke up to find mummy and daddy in bed as normal and the baby in mummy's tummy in the cot beside the bed. It was the right decision for us and our family. Managed, pre-planned homebirths have their place in women’s obstetric care and expand women’s options.

Oh and that baby is 6ft 4, 18yo and at uni right now. And I am sitting on the sofa in the exact place where he was brought in to the world.

Stupid is as stupid does. There are always risks but she appeared to be too dumb to realise that.

Women used to die regularly whilst giving birth at home , just like many children used to die before vaccinations from things which are very treatable now It's madness to want to go back to these times when you took a chance that you wouldn't survive giving birth at home . I just don't get the mind set that you'd take that risk with your own and your baby's life .

You’re completely right! I had a homebirth recently and they were surprised when they did the assessment that I wasn’t an ‘out of guidance’ one. The midwife said they seem to have had an increase of them recently. 🤣 Or maybe, just maybe you’re marking more and more women as ‘out of guidance’. 🫠

This.
Women need to focus less on their birthing experience and start focusing on having a healthy baby.
Giving birth is painful, messy and the most dangerous thing most women ever do - it makes sense to have trained staff and the best medical equipment available in the event of an emergency.

That's lovely and I am genuinely happy for you. However, I can tell you from first hand experience that ambulance response times were much faster 18 years ago, and the current state of the NHS needs to be factored in. If I'd been low risk back then, I would have considered a home birth. In fact my neighbour did during that time period and had a lovely birth. If something had gone wrong, an ambulance would have been there within 10 minutes.

That's not the case now.

Congrats on your new baby.

It’s like the MLUs, hardly anyone can get into them. I was refused that as well. In our hospital stats only 6% of women give birth in the MLU. 6%!!!

As far as I can see one of the issues is that the medical system, the levels of intervention, the bad behaviour towards women, lack of care and the covering up of incidents is actually pushing women into doing this sort of thing.

Unfortunately some women in their efforts to avoid that system end up going too far in the other direction and come to harm. Yes they are misguided and perhaps naive or even idiot but if the medical system took a good hard look at itself and actually addressed someone of those issues they might be able to meet those women in the middle instead.

Survivor bias.

To be fair, I last had a home birth 16 years ago and I hadn't thought about this.

I sadly had a termination for medical reasons 4 years ago. I was 42. Before I had the sad diagnosis though, I was amazed that midwives were encouraging home birth (having found out I had two previously). I had been 27 and 29 with my home births and I wasn't sure about 42!

“Giving birth is painful, messy and the most dangerous thing most women ever do”

Giving birth isn’t like this for all women. I had two natural home births without any pain relief. I never once thought this was the most dangerous thing I would ever do.

I’ve had two homebirths in two different counties in the past 5 years and both times the ambulance was there immediately when the midwives requested it, literally within 2-5 minutes. A birth and heart attack are the highest levels of priority for them.

And before anyone comes at me for ‘risking lives with a homebirth’, I actually birth too quickly to arrange to get to a hospital so it’s the safest option for me.

I agree with you. I have always thought birth is a means to and end, and that end is a healthy, living mother and child. I haven't given birth for nearly 40 years and that was a straightforward hospital birth. I was treated ( apart from the bitch of a doctor who stitched me up afterwards) with dignity and respect and felt safe. However, it does seem that clinical standards are falling, and I would be more concerned about my daughter giving birth in a hospital now. This fall in standards coupled with a 'content creator'' attitude to giving birth is placing women and babies in danger. More investment in midwife led units for less complicated births might mitigate the need for the idiotic trend for 'freebirthing', which basically puts a women back into a 'mud hut' with untrained 'wise women. '

Maybe it's just my county that is failing, because I was the first aider on duty at work when a man was taken ill, and reported heart pain and breathlessness. Emergency services said it could be a heart attack and directed me to have the defibrillator on stand by, and that the ambulance was on its way. Two hours.

As humans, we need to teach everyone to think more critically. Our failure to do so is showing up in all kinds of ways, of which this is one.

Women die everyday at hospital too, are they also disgraceful for going there too?

Home births are statistically safer than hospital births, did you know that?

@Fatsnowflake Why were you amazed at the suggestion of a third hb when you'd already had two prior successful home births?

I was 42. It's a big difference in terms of risk.

Anybody who (falsely) thinks that home births for subsequent low-risk pregnancies are somehow riskier than in hospital are very ill-informed.

Absolutely agree with this.

Savannah Miller just had a 3rd baby in her 40s after two home births in her 20s and ended up with an emergency c section (she explained it on Insta).

Compared to what?

Women have been dying in childbirth for centuries precisely because there were no hospitals and no advanced medical care. It seems crazy to take the risk!

My own birth was very straightforward, quick and pretty much textbook. I was extremely lucky. Yet I would never in a million years risk doing it at home. It gave me huge comfort that I was in a place where medical intervention was at hand if anything went wrong.

@Fatsnowflake It's not a big difference. I had my first two at 26 and 29 - hospital births. I was 39 when I had my third at home - still not classed as any more risk. Not sure what the "increased risk" threshold age is these days, but the difference certainly isn't "big."

@ExtraHotDoubleShot
This can't be evidenced as due to age.