to think this woman's misguided to say the least?!

[Floopy21]

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/melanie_reid/article6101189.ece

I think YABU

I had a very low risk pregnancy followed by a horrendous and unsuccesful labour and em CS - without that myself and DS would not be here

I had a very romantic notion of childbirth thanks to the NCT but was very thankful for it to be very meidcal

but no one is saying all women should have home births, just asking that those who make the informed choice to do so, are not stupid or spoilt or misguided

the MWs come with equipment, including neonatal resus equipment. they don;t come emptyhanded

with one to one care, at a homebirth, problems that require further intervention can be picked up sooner and transfer in arranged

there are mothers & babies who do not survive, whether at home or hospital, the hospital is not a guarantee of safety. i imagine most people's homes are cleaner than a lot of maternity wards

lots of women who have had complicated hospital births have had a cascade of intervention that would not necesarily occurred at home

you can't say for certain that things would have been better/worse at home

but the language and patronising tone of the article is unecessary

i agree with her. can't bear simpery women who have birthed at home and are hugely smug about it.

especially those who by being at home forced their other kids to hear their bellows of pain, or god forbid had them there at the birth. how cruel and uneccesary is that?

i wonder how many of these kids will need therapy to get over seeing their mum in such a state

unnecessary

I had shockingly poor care in my local hospital.

I didn't see a midwife until I was ready to push my baby out. This is despite having been in the delivery room for 2 hours and my dh running out of the room every few minutes begging for someone to come and help. In addition, when my dd was born the midwife whisked her away into a corner and shouted at us to press the emergency button to get help. We pressed it, and pressed again and again and then we waited, and waited and waited some more. Seven minutes later, someone (midwife? doctor?) casually stuck their head round to door to ask if everything was ok. Fortunately everything was ok, but this was NOT the emergency response that it should have been. I hate to think what would have happened if the problem had been serious. The whole thing was very frightening, not to mention painful as no one had shown me how the gas and air worked until I was fully dilated.

For the birth of my second child I chose to have a homebirth. It was great. I had two midwives for most of my (very short) labour. I was much more relaxed and it wasn't even that sore. It was a considerably nicer experience for me than being in hospital and it felt a lot safer.

tclanger and girlafraid - while obviously not knowing your circumstances fully (and not contradicting what you're saying), if a labour wasn't going well at home you would have been transfered to hospital and would have still received the intervention. Both my DDs were delivered by section and the first was brow and suffered distress. I know I would have been transfered to hospital if I'd been at home at the first sign of things going wrong. The outcome would have been the same. In the vast majority of cases it is the access to the intervention - not a "hopsital delivery" that is life saving. They tend to transfer early at any signs of trouble.

I agree with the article, I'm afraid.
It always struck me as very odd that throughout pregnancy, we are always told 'not to risk it' when it comes to food/alcohol/hair dye and asked how we could live with ourselves if there was something wrong with the baby.
Yet when it comes to birth, homebirth advocates seem to totally ignore any 'what if'.
Personally, I'd rather have the odd glass of wine while I'm pregnant and give birth in the safest environment possible, where there are people to take over in case of any sort of emergency

but i don;t think that is true, wasabi

i think homebirth, for a low risk, normal pregnancy is a good , safe option

when you start looking at home VBAC or multiple birth it gets complicated and women need to undertake lots of research and make informed decisions.

if homebirht advocates are ignoring risks that is wrong, putting the risk into context is important though

also, again, being in hospital does not guarantee a normal or safe outcome

women have to be trusted with the information to make an informed decision and this article does not really help IMO, the opening , patronising and frankly stupid paragraph sets a nasty tone

Wilkos not all women who have a hb are smug about it. It is about choice, I fully understand why somebody would feel happier and safer in hospital. Why is it so difficult for others to understand that I felt that way at home.

As for other children suffering through it, I think the majority of women do not put their other DC through that. I most certainly didn't. DS1 slept through my hb as I knew he would. Had he woken I had people on hand to take him out of the house. You are making steroetype comments as much as the woman who wrote the article.

I think that if I was to have another I would have the confidence for a home birth but I liked being in hospital, especially when it wasn't the first because I was free to concentrate on the new baby without having to worry about the other DCs.
I had lovely births in 3 different hospitals.
I think that sometimes people plan for the 'perfect' experience, rather like the 'perfect' wedding and then it is disappointing when things go wrong. I was open minded, I didn't have a birth plan and didn't need one, no one ever saw me before I was 8cm dilated so I was too late for anything except gas and air and so it was all much better than expected. In the case of the 3rd, as the midwife examined me for the first time I said 'can I push now?' and she said 'yes' and that was it! Thinking about it-I would have had to have gone for a home birth if I had had a 4th as I don't think I would have got to the hospital in time!
However, I wouldn't expect people to think the same and really it ought to go back to home births being a norm if that is what people wish. The important thing is to have a choice. It is unfair for journalists to 'pigeonhole' people-every story is different.

My DS1 didn't suffer at all when I had my homebirth. He went for a day out with his grandad who he hardly sees and his uncle. They went to the sealife centre, had an ice cream, look at boats and got to go on a bus twice!! Then he slept at my mums overnight and got to play with the dogs. He loved it.

lady pink - yes it is about choice

my post was arguing that some home birthers are smug about it, thereby making other women feel uncomfortable with their choice (or not) to birth their babies in hospital.

and for the record some women do have their kids there. that as far as i am aware NOT a stereotypical comment, its fact.

Oh good lord, The Times is such a useless 'news'paper anyway, and getting worse by the week - I have a dip into it, to confirm my suspicions!

If you want good, evidenced-based info with which to make an informed decision about anything, not just where to have your baby, FGS don't attempt to get it from newspapers - they are merely spouting polemic crap in order to feed an intoxication with high drama... and then get people to buy more of the same the next day!

The fact of the matter is birth can sometimes be a risky business, there is no such thing as a guarantee - which we all know. This is the case, whether it is at hospital or at home. We've all heard of/experienced dreadful situations that have happened at hospital births and at home births. Both tend to be in the minority - which of course is no comfort for anyone who's had the misfortune to be in that minority, but still.

You can be sure that any article about choice, written in a manner which makes you violently agree/disagree is going to be, informed-choice-wise, a load of rubbish. IMHO.

"I had a home birth and I am categorically NOT spoilt or complacent. And I do not wear sandals " me too bunnylebowski

I have 6 children and had first 3 ds's in hospital and then after a few years break (and change of dh)had dd1 in hospital but only just....hospital miles away and got there with 2 minutes to spare
ds4 was born at home....planned carefully with full support of gp, consultant and wonderful midwifes...again very quick labour and only 1 midwife made it for birth but all was well and it was the most wonderful experience!!! dd2 was going to be born at home and everything was going to plan till week 32 when the amount of fluid around her began to increase....I delivered at 35 weeks in hospital after a 20 minute labour (luckilly I was there anyway) and we came home next day I would never compromise the health and well being of my child for anything and would always go with the medical professions advise but if given the choice I would have another home birth any day

Wilkos - I suspect that there are smug people on either side of the homebirth v hospital birth divide - a smug person will always be smug about their choice, and I don't think that being smug makes you more likely to chose a home birth or that having a homebirth makes you more likely to be smug.

What I do believe is that pregnant women and their partners need accurate and clear information about all aspects of labour and delivery, so that they can make informed choices about their care - bearing in mind, of course, that labour is unpredicatable, and your body can change your birth plan for you!

In my experience, the NCT classes that I attended, and that I supported as a Class Supporter, did their best to provide this information - for example, when we covered pain relief, we discussed the pros and cons of all the different methods of pain relief, Nd I believe that equal time was given to the pros of epidurals as to those of the more natural methods, and at no time did I feel any disapproval of anyone who chose to use analgesia or an epidural.

I am certainly not smug about the fact that I had a homebirth nor was I disappointed when it didn't happen last time....I am just grateful to have had lots of good advise and information on both sides of the argument and to have successfully birthed 6 beautiful children (minipink crawls into a corner and is slightly smug about how gorgeous her children are )

I agree that information is key and that mw's, doctors and mothers need to work closely together to make the best possible situation for all xx

Isn't it ridiculous how badly some of these articles are written. Half-baked statistics mixed in with a dollop of prejudice and a soupcon of totally unsubstantiated opinion.

I agree with whoever said it is more than irritating to have somebody like Ms Reid claim to be speaking on their behalf. It provokes unhelpful and irrational reaction.

Home births work well for some. Hospitals better for others. You ain't gonna know until you're in whichever situation so you can only make the best decision for you at the time. Surely this should be obvious to anyone - even journalists, although admittedly it doesn't make that great copy.

i've had a home birth and a hospital birth and the home birth was about a gazillion times better in every way

that said i had the security of living only 10 mins from hospital

dd1 had a breeze with some good friends of ours...no being subjected to bellowing for her...does anyone actually do that anyway?

Whats so bad about wearing sandals? I do and am miles from eco earth mumminess. confess leanings towards organic veg but thats it.

Do prefer to have my babies in hospital though. All 3 were low risk but I'd never have forgiven myself if something had happened and medical intervention came too late.

i will confess to wearing sandals in summer
is that allowed? i don't like having hot feet!

I wear sandals all summer and had hospital births-perhaps it has to be a specific type of sandal!

Regarding the sandals I think the writer means these sort...

site-images.ws/images/cust/38166888507414901669189337903146296879/Photo-0014.jpg

minipink - you're allowed to be smug, your dc's are beautiful! Your son is so handsome!

I had my first child in hospital because I thought that was the best option and I was scared of any problems which could develop. During my labour I was sharing one midwife with 3 other labouring women and she was hardly there and my husband and I was left to it. As a consequence she did'nt realise that my baby had its cord around its neck until I could'nt push the baby out and suddenly all hell broke loose and we had everybody in the room trying to get the baby out. Luckily it was fine in the end. That experience led me to look at other options when I was expecting my second child and since the hospital was still understaff relying on locums I opted for a home birth. Having discusse this with a friend who trains midwives she told me that community midwives ( those who undertake home births)have to have more experience than midwives who work in hospitals. My midwife had to ensure I was low risk at 37 weeks & I discussed all my fears/concerns with her and was happy with the course of action they would take should there be an emergency. In the end I had a midwife with me for the entire labour and another midwife joined us just before the baby was about to be born. I could labour without pressure and the presence of the midwife with me all the time together with my husband was just so reassuring. I had a fantastic birth second time round and was so glad to have been at home. I also think that some of the emergencies during labour and birth in hospitals are caused by a lack of monitoring & attention women get because of understaffing or inexperienced staff . Often these emergencies then require medical attention and leaves the parents, ironically thinking that they were so lucky to have been in hospital!