What do mumsnetters think of freebirthing?

[withorwithoutyou]

Just wondered what people on here think of freebirthing as I've never seen it discussed on here before.

My gut feeling is that it's dangerous and an unnecessary risk but I've never really heard the positives - does anyone know much about it, or have experience of it?

Edith - we have a midwife led unit which I suppose is the same thing? I'm not sure having not seen it yet. I'm seeing a consultant in a couple of weeks so will discuss options with them. It's very important for me to feel in control and my environment will take play a huge part in that.

I don't think I could do it but I can understand that there may be reasons for some people wanting to do it - be it distance/midwife cover, previous hospital experience, thinking that it is how birth should be.

I absolutely don't think that people should be prosecuted for doing it. Childbirth is a natural event. Yes it can go wrong but so can lots of things in life. Smokers get treated on the NHS, if you break a leg after doing skiiing or another 'dangerous' sport you get treated. They are all choices.

x

Self indulgent-people have to put the experience they want over all other considerations.

I can understand the impulse - I had a very strong need for privacy and calm during my experiencing of birth. If you live in the US and want a quiet calm dark place with as little intervention as possible, then you're onto a hiding to nothing. Or even a lot of places in the UK. :(

There is no way that I would have one, though. I just would not compromise the health of my unborn child like that (or the health of me, come to that).

I went to a MLU both times, first time around, everything pear-shaped, I had to go to the regular delivery ward (hideous - I can understand why lots of women hate them - I would have been very unhappy if I'd been forced there with a normal uncomplicated delivery). Second time around, I delivered in the MLU, which was great.

The thing that really gets my goat is that so many hospitals that used to have both a regular delivery ward with capacity for medical complications, CS and a SCBU, and a low-risk MLU are shutting either one or the other. So women are forced to choose between easy access to medical facilities, or a calm natural birth with little interference. There is no concept of a woman who would hate being proded and poked when there is no good evidence for it, but who doesn't want to risk a transfer in an ambulance (and I know the route that would have to be taken for two hospitals from two different MLUs and they are horrendous, even without rush-hour traffic).

What do you mean exotic? you could argue that it's self indulgent to want access to as much pain relief as possible to get the experience you want by going into hospital, no?

I mean that people are so used to choice that they build up in their mind 'the perfect experience' with just DP, whereas it is much more sensible to have medical help on hand-at home or at hospital.

exotic - do you know anyone who's deliberately given birth without a health professional present?

If not - how would you know what really motivates people to make that choice?

I DO know people who've done it. None want a 'perfect experience'. They just don't want to be mangled in hospital - usually because of a previous horrible experience.

Whatever the case they are mad not to have a health professional about IMO.

Freebirthing is the domain of narcissistic, pompous, deluded, self-obsessed idiots (unless there is no choice) and I feel sorry for their subsequent children

Minx - the people who I know who've done it are good, loving parents.

Who do you know who has had a baby without a hp present?

I know someone who wanted to but her dp talked her round to a hb instead, even then she started ranting about interventions etc. She fulfilled this type if criteria.

it's not good or loving to put your babies health at risk in this way.

I had 2 hosp births one good one not so good no "forced" interventions though, just what needed to be done so dd didn't die.

Freebirthing is dangerous and selfish. end of.

spudulika would those who've got a "deep mistrust of medical professionals" refuse oxygen if their dc would die without it? An adrenaline injection in the case of severe anyphalaxis? Cardiac massage after an MI?

Acute emergency care is invaluable in some situations and that includes childbirth.

So you don't know anyone who's done it then.

I do. They are good parents.

You don't have much insight into people's feelings surrounding this issue. You prove that by your silly comment about people refusing oxygen for their child.

BTW - this thread got me thinking about how dangerous freebirthing actually is. Can't find any good quality research into it, but I did find an article on outcomes for BBA's in one area of the UK. Looked at 29 mothers, of whom 6 were 'high risk'. These include a mother with mitral valve prolapse and low platelets, previous myomectomy, high parity, iv drug use, hep C positive, history of DVT, a concealed pregnancy, and a previous c/s. One baby was less than 2.5kg. All were term. 4 births occurred in the car.

Outcomes? For the mothers - 'good'. Only two tears requiring suturing. No haemmorhages.

For the babies - 6 admitted to SCBU. The majority because they were chilled. No deaths or long term damage to any of the babies. So, one in five admitted to SCBU. The likelihood of admittance to scbu for babies born at term in hospital? Slightly less than half that. If you removed the babies suffering from hypothermia from the bba group there wouldn't be much of a difference.

So on that evidence - where the birth is an emergency and the parents have done no planning or preparation, unassisted birth doesn't look THAT dangerous for a full-term mother when there is an ambulance service on standby in the case of a dire emergency.

Food for thought no?

Only read the OP.

No to free-birthing. Giving birth is one of the most dangerous things a woman can undertake, if done on her own. Insane.

No.

The plural of anecdote is not data, and the information you seek is in the Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths and Stillbirth. Absence of antenatal care and unattended birth are major factors in poor outcomes in UK.

Statistics on unassisted birth outcomes can't be taken as an indicator of how intrinsically dangerous it is unless they are adjusted for social class, fetal maturity, drug and alcohol use, mothers take up of antenatal care and maternal age. (this isn't done in CEMACH I don't think). The groups who are most likely to have unassisted births have poorer outcomes whether at home or in hospital.

The study I mention is from a mainstream uk midwifery journal. It looks at all the BBA'S in one area over a year and examines risk factors and outcomes. I think it's very unfair to dismiss this as 'anecdote' and therefore worthless.

Aside from risks to the baby, the single biggest killer of women associated with childbirth is PPH. How does a freebirther deal with that?

Spudulika you keep saying the people you know are "good parents". Maybe so. But they still made a choice which could have had devastating consequences for all concerned, which many consider to be reckless.

I don't call them good parents. However they performed later, they put the mother and baby's lives at risk from purely selfish motives.

If anyone was 'mangled' in hospital it was due to a difficult birth. You do not get 'mangled' with a straightforward one. If you have a difficult first birth it makes it more likely you will have a difficult second one and need medical help on hand.

Self-indulgent, ignorant both of human biology and evolution, all about the mother and not about the child.

But I know two friends who gave birth unassisted (not even partner there) and both had happy endings, although both were troubled or unsettled by the experience. Kudos to those who kept their heads!

Actually, I do believe that a proportion of "mangled" deliveries could have been straightforward with appropriate care. Not all of them, obviously, but if you take a large number of low-risk pregnant women and put them into an over-crowded labour ward with no privacy, glaring lights and lots of noise, have a random selection of midwives pop in occasionally, none of which the women have ever met, and strap them on their backs for monitoring, then yes I think that you will greatly increase the number of difficult deliveries, some of which will be mangled.

I would never have a freebirth, and if someone I knew told me that they wanted one, I would do everything that I could to persuade them otherwise (independent midwife for a homebirth, perhaps?).

I suppose that I think that the solution is dangerous and reckless, but that I understand the impulse.

You can have a perfectly nice birth in hospital. No one ever saw me until I was at least 8cm dilated, I just did my own thing. On the last occasion (in hospital) I wasn't seen at all until the last minute and said 'can I push' and that was it-I would class it as almost free birth, but I was in the right place if it had gone wrong.
There is absolutely no need to be strapped up and monitored. I can't remember glaring lights and I didn't have more than one midwife. On the first occasion I had a doctor afterwards, and I was grateful that he was there just to pass a second opinion.
If you are nice and friendly, don't have preconceived ideas, you can have a perfectly nice birth.
If you go in with minutely written birth plans, have a fixed idea of what it will be like and see the staff as 'the enemy' , you are probably doomed to disappointment.

"Aside from risks to the baby, the single biggest killer of women associated with childbirth is PPH. How does a freebirther deal with that?"

Well - they'd call an ambulance. But you are right - it could be a catastrophe. But then PPH is most commonly associated with emc. And this seems to be far more likely to happen to mothers who have gone to hospital to have their babies. So, thinking from a point of view of someone who might be attracted to freebirthing: deaths from pph for healthy, full-term mothers birthing outside of hospital are vanishingly rare, despite the 1 - 2% BBA rate (unplanned homebirth rate in the UK). Deaths from PPH are more likely to occur to mothers having hospital care. Ergo, I'll keep myself out of hospital.

"Spudulika you keep saying the people you know are "good parents". Maybe so. But they still made a choice which could have had devastating consequences for all concerned, which many consider to be reckless."

Many people consider a planned homebirth to be 'reckless' judging from the comments on this board over the past few months.

Mothers who plan to freebirth DON'T have the same beliefs about the dangers of unassisted birth as the general population. They do not believe that it's as dangerous as you or other people do, and they've arrived at that view through (usually) their prior experiences of childbirth and their reading. You may not agree with them. But they believe they are doing this in the best interests of both themselves and their babies. And to argue that if someone chooses to give birth in circumstances the majority think is risky is irresponsible: well this could also apply to mothers in the US and many other countries who are having homebirths. They are often making this choice in the face of strong opposition from doctors, family and friends. Are these people irresponsible?

And the reality is that none of us have a particularly clear idea or firm knowledge about what the risks actually ARE, because there's a dearth of research into this subject. Most people on this thread have come to a conclusion about the safety of freebirthing by looking at the maternal and infant death rates for poverty stricken mothers giving birth in developing countries, in situations where they have no recourse to emergency help. Or by looking at the levels of complicated deliveries in hospital.

You can't compare the outcomes for these women with those of women who have made a conscious choice to give birth without a health professional present. Mothers in the UK who choose to do this have generally had full antenatal care, are likely to be healthy and low risk, and often have a previous history of uncomplicated labour.

"There is absolutely no need to be strapped up and monitored"

I agree. So why does it happen so often?

Why are so many women having interventions in their birth in UK hospitals, and coming home with significant birth injuries?

"If you are nice and friendly, don't have preconceived ideas, you can have a perfectly nice birth"

In some hospitals only a MINORITY of mothers will get through the birth without instruments, an episiotomy or a c/s.

I sympathise with women who turn their backs on this by choosing to go it alone.

I went into hospital with my first with an open mind, excited about my labour and meeting my baby, and ended up with a classic 'cascade of intervention'. None of this was the result of me having a 'bad attitude'. It was down to having a baby who was poorly positioned, and midwives who had nothing to offer me except pethidine or an epidural.

Spud - you clearly haven't read the Confidenial Enquiries, or else you wouldn't make such a statement about the absence of consideration of co-factors. And you don't seem aware that it is about deaths in the UK only.

I'm leaving this thread. I find what you say increasingly hysterical, as you set up more and more false parallels.

For anyone who makes it thus far, and can face thinking about maternal death and still birth, I do commend you to look at these reports about why mothers die in UK, and why babies die around the time of birth (in many cases, not explained, but very good analysis of those where there is evidence). Unattended birth, and also absence of antenatal care, are each and both strongly associated with poor outcomes - in addition to, and irrespective of other factors.

I agree that you can have a perfectly good and nice birth in hospital. You don't have to read many birth stories on here to realise that you can also have a dreadful birth in hospital.

And blaming the woman makes me a bit .

There are some absolutely wonderful medical professionals. I wrote on MN just the other day how I would like to hug my postnatal midwife, because she was so wonderful. But there are also awful midwives who treat people badly - either because they aren't very nice people, or because they are put in a position where there are worked off their feet and very stressed. I get very annoyed when people treat medical professionals as a homogenous mass, either way, they are not all awful, and they are not all angels either.

As I said, I would never advocate freebirthing, I think that it is completely reckless and endangers the life of both the baby and the mother. I'm not arguing that women should freebirth, just that perhaps we could understand the reasons why women might feel that impulse. And certainly in the US, that might be a way of preventing freebirthing, by allowing women to feel safe and calm, but with a medical professional present - there are almost no midwife-led units there or homebirths, for example.

"Aside from risks to the baby, the single biggest killer of women associated with childbirth is PPH. How does a freebirther deal with that?"

Well - they'd call an ambulance. But you are right - it could be a catastrophe. But then PPH is most commonly associated with emc. And this seems to be far more likely to happen to mothers who have gone to hospital to have their babies. So, thinking from a point of view of someone who might be attracted to freebirthing: deaths from pph for healthy, full-term mothers birthing outside of hospital are vanishingly rare, despite the 1 - 2% BBA rate (unplanned homebirth rate in the UK). Deaths from PPH are more likely to occur to mothers having hospital care. Ergo, I'll keep myself out of hospital.

Spudulika, you're clearly an articulate and intelligent person and can hopefully see the utterly flawed logic there. The inference is that the hospital birth CAUSED the PPH! However it's more likely that women who are at a higher risk of PPH are strongly encouraged to deliver in hospital and take that advice seriously.

As for calling an ambulance, that wouldn't work - you'd have to have someone there who can adequately manage stemming the bleed and do a transfusion, on site, which is beyond the remit of the ambulance services. And by the time you get to hospital, with a serious PPH, it's game over. You've got a very small time frame to work in.