to think home births are selfish?

[woozlet]

I just watched a 'desperate midwives' that I had recorded and there was a home birth on it which went wrong. It worked out ok in the end and the baby was ok. But I was really scared watching it, it just seemed like an unnecessary risk to take.

but warthog a home birth is not "unmedicalised".

It's not like women are giving birth in bushes fgs!

Most of the time you get exactly the same treatment as a low-risk woman in hospital - MW care and intermittant monitoring via a doppler.

Carrie told her to fxxk off, which is what got my goat tbh

anyway, back to work

And actually, (different thread but still), most of those 1/3 deaths were as a RESULT of medical "treatment".

Prior to routine hospitalisation and doctor attendence, the maternal death rate was about 1/100.

It was only when vast numbers of women were herded together with doctors doing routine checks and vaginal exams without proper hygiene, that the death rate rose so high, mainly due to infection.

Read Tina Cassidy's "Birth" if you'd like to know more. (Which, incidentally, is not in any way particularly pro-home birth. It's just a history of birth practices through the ages and very neutral).

Warthog, the risk with medicalised births is that one intervention can lead to another, and another - the cascade of interventions mentioned earlier. This can mean that a woman may be more likely to end up needing ventouse/forceps/c-section.

For example, a woman who is being monitored constantly can't walk round or change position easily, so the birth may be slowed down. This could lead to further interventions such as rupture of the membranes, which could cause a cord prolapse, which might necessitate a section.

Of course intervention is amazing when it is needed, but the problem is that obstetricians tend only to see the high risk births or the ones where something has gone wrong, so their perception is that all births are like this - which leads them to treat all births as if they are high risk, where a more hands-off approach, such as you get in a homebirth, can often mean the woman is able to give birth with minimal intervention.

in childbirth, if something goes wrong you have a very short time to sort it out, often with life-threatening consequences if you're not quick.

your midwife might need backup from a consultant. there's no consultant at home. no theatre. no specialized equipment.

a friend's child has cerebal palsy as a result of mistakes by the midwife.

why take that risk??????? WHY?????????????

women died 100 of years ago from a multitude of things. not birthing.

they died because of poor nutrition in earlier life and during pregnancy for example.

they died because the cord was cut with unclean instruments and they an/or the baby contracted tetanus, for example.

the death rate of women dying in childbirth absolutely soared when they moved women from giving birth at home and into hospitals.

all that has happened in the past 100 years or so is that hospitals cleaned up their act. pardon the unfortunate pun.

Well yes but Warthog one of MY friends' children spent a long time in ICU as a result of a hospital acquired infection.

There's no perfect solution.

Warthog - did your friend have her child in hospital or at home?

This could just as easily have happened at home or in a low risk, midwife led unit - the issue was the midwife's mistakes, rather than where she made them, wasn't it?

'a woman who is being monitored constantly can't walk round or change position easily'

• not true. i was mobile when being monitored. uncomfortable - yes, not un-doable.

'Of course intervention is amazing when it is needed, but the problem is that obstetricians tend only to see the high risk births or the ones where something has gone wrong, so their perception is that all births are like this - which leads them to treat all births as if they are high risk'.

• are you seriously saying an obstetrician doesn't know that most births are incident free and that every birth they attend will end up in intervention? i've had two births attended by an obstetrician and had no intervention.

just because they're experts doesn't mean they see problems where they are none.

i agree that once intervention starts, it tends to continue but the opposite is a worse scenario imo.

how unfortunate that carries post has been deleted.

she made a very succinct if personal point that the hospital screwed up when she was in labour.

many posters here seem to believe that giving birth in hospital may have saved them or their baby from death or disability had they not been there and yadda yadda...

when in reality being in the hospital environment and getting substandard care is more likely to have caused the emergency from when they and their babies were 'saved'. I am wondering if that was more like Carrie's experience and why she was so upset.

I think that it would have remained undeleted had she chosen to post in inoffensive language.

stayingsunnygirl, yes, it was the midwife who made the mistake and she was in an hospital. i was using her birth to make the point that i'd rather have a consultant close by to help in case of emergencies. if you're at home, you only have the midwife.

"a woman who is being monitored constantly can't walk round or change position easily'

• not true. i was mobile when being monitored. uncomfortable - yes, not un-doable."

true but you may find that this situation is the exception and not the norm when women get to labour wards.

funny way to make a point about home birth though - by referencing a hospital birth that went wrong in which being in hospital IN NO WAY prevented there being long term medical effects on the baby.

why? you've got a belt round your tummy and possibly a drip. why can't you move around?

What I said about obstetricians isn't just my opinion, it seems to be a pretty widely held view, at least amongst the midwives I worked with during my nurse training, and other midwives I've spoken to since. I've even heard an obstetrician say it.

And if constant monitoring is not necessary, why is it good for a woman to be more uncomfortable when she tries to move round? Regular intermittant monitoring using a sonicaid would be better for the mum and baby, in that circumstance.

Warthog - are you saying that the alternative to a birth with interventions, is a birth where either mum, baby or both end up damaged or worse? Because that simply isn't the case. An unmedicalised birth, properly monitored, has a very good chance of resulting in a healthy babe and healthy mum.

Surely the best outcome from childbirth is a healthy mum and a healthy baby, born with as little intervention as possible? Who would choose unneccessary intervention?

I had midwife led births each time - first one in hospital and the second and third at home. Each time I had very long labours - 37.75 hours, 24 hours and 20 hours. First time round, I was in second stage for 1.5 hours. I still managed to have a normal vaginal delivery with only minimal intervention (an episiotomy), because my midwife was patient with me, monitored the baby to ensure that he was OK, and let me take my time, only offering the episiotomy at the last moment.

Had I had an obstetrician present, I would certainly not have been allowed to push for more than an hour, and would have ended up with either a ventouse or forceps - which would have been more traumatic for me and for ds1.

Had I been in hospital for the births of ds2 and ds3, I would almost certainly have been pressurised to speed things up, which would have started the cascade of interventions - entirely unneccessarily, as both were born with no problems at all - I just take a long time in first stage. I didn't even tear with either of them.

Well said stayingsunnygirl. Exactly the point I was trying to make about artificially accelerated labours.

"how unfortunate that carries post has been deleted" ?????

All she said was £fxxk off OP" or words to that effect, I did not see a story about her terrible birth.

anyway, this one is going to run and run

What does piss me off is that we go on and on, and dont seem to realise how bloody lucky we are compared to 3rd world countries and a few generations ago. I am not saying we should be complacent , and I do agree people should have choice. But reading here I dont get any sense that we appreciate how much things have improved for 1st world women. But given the topic, I dont supporse people that had a nornmal birth will bother posting here anyway

Many women are discouraged from moving round whilst monitored, because unless the woman stays still, the sensor on her abdomen can slip out of place, and the monitoring is interrupted.

Also with constant monitoring, benign changes in the baby's heartbeat can be misinterpreted, and then there's pressure to speed up the birth, and to use the monitor that's attached to the baby's head (which requires rupture of the membranes). Once one of those is in, moving round is much, much harder.

'Warthog - are you saying that the alternative to a birth with interventions, is a birth where either mum, baby or both end up damaged or worse? Because that simply isn't the case. An unmedicalised birth, properly monitored, has a very good chance of resulting in a healthy babe and healthy mum.'

no i'm NOT saying that. it's down to assessment of risk. that if things do go wrong, then you have the support network right there.

of course it's better to have no intervention. who WANTS intervention? but if something goes wrong, i want to make sure that i have the right people and equipment to help. not be stuck at home 30 mins away.

i agree that hospitals push you to go faster. tis a sad fact. but you can say no. or if you're not in a position to, you make sure your partner says no.

they had my syntocinon drip so high my contractions didn't stop and dh made them turn it down.

you can take control over your birth in hospital and make it the birth you want. they can't force you to stop pushing and have an episiotomy. you can refuse forceps as my sil did.

as for obstetricians seeing problems where there are none, that has not been my experience.

Not sure where I stand on this one as 1st child extremely traumatic hospital birth which led to PND. 4th child hospital waterbirth but baby ended up in SCUBU as flat at birth so very relieved to have medical backup there. I know I found hospital absolutely terrifying but was too scared as an ex-nurse to "risk" a homebirth so I can really understand why some people would want one. However I also know that there are some childbirth emergencies that can happen with no warning and if this happens at home there is nothing that can be done to save the baby from serious harm I also know these cases are very rare. So all in all I will get splinters in my bum from siting on the fence

yabu a bit, would only really be selfish if there are known medical risks for the particular individual concerned.
For me a hospital birth would be my choice because I am a worrier, but nothing wrong with homebirths at all. My Grandmother had homebirths for all of her 5 children without incident.

I had three decent hospital births (two were induced at 35 and 36 weeks).I had no pain relief with them and was not pressured in anyway to do so (at two different hospitals). I was monitered ALOT espcially with my second because he was small) but I was also free to get up, walk around, had a birth ball brought for me was able to wander around, nip to the hospital shop, had a bath and was pretty comfy. Not all hospital births are horrific just as not all homebirths are doomed to end in disaster!.

Agree Fernie, I had a wonderful hospital birth, apart from a shortage of beds, the staff were professional and caring. I preferred a hospital birth as it is a peice of mind that there are professionals on hand should anything go wrong like it did when i gave birth to dd. Not all hospital births are horrific some of us have had very good experiences. Also i dont think that home births are selfish so YABU, i do think that giving birth without any medical staff there is a bit selfish as some people do not want any medical intervention.

I'm certainly prepared to believe that maternal mortality could rise as women were moved into (dirty) hospitals but my own previous work (on economic history) which involved studying births/deaths etc in parish records (incs in popln growth) didn't give me the impression that the maternal mortality rate before women were generally in hospitals was as low as one in a hundred. Unless the parishes I looked at were particularly deprived and unfortunate.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3511335

The above reference seems to be reasonably reputable. Note that it confirms that early hospitals were not necessarily better and could be rather worse. And that intervention could have worse results (and also could involve cases that were riskier in any case). It gives an estimated eighteenth century rate for unhospitalised/medical births of around 25 in a 1000 ie around 4 in a hundred - which would tally far more with my own studies. Maternal deaths were certainly not the 'massacre' that many seem to believe but they were sadly not that uncommon - as the prayer of thanks for safe deliverance in the Book of Common Prayer would testify. to.