Im sorry but i am very very irritated by a lot of the posts above.
Surely no professional would suggest a caesarean/episiotomy etc if not required ? it is bad for the mother and makes more work so surely less desirable for the medic too. Doctors are trained holistically (looking at the curriculum and exam contents on the net) and dont have to be authoritarian or ignore psychological/spiritual elements and certainly dont treat childbirth as pathological.
I would think that pushing for home births was poor use of services too ? would you insist it was your right to have a surgeon visit you at home for an operation because it was 'low risk' (eg mole removal) or a teacher teach your child at home, when there was already a shortage of staff? By all means campaign, but go for training more midwives only and then realise that this means the country can afford to do less of something else eg treat diabetes less well. This is the real world.
Tittybangbang, your comment 'Because the midwife has a duty of care to the baby as well as the mother' doesnt make sense to me as the mother is making the choice on behalf of her baby. You cant say, I refuse to go to hospital, but take my unborn baby if they need it. You dont know what the baby would decide. Legally, an unborn baby has no rights apart from not to be aborted after 24 weeks. A mother with capacity can refuse to go to hospital, even in a life or baby-threatening event but this shouldnt have to be different to other healthcare. Some people would say that a midwife should breach the mother's autonomy to reduce harm to a baby, but that is not the legal position in the UK. If people refuse going to hospital, there is nothing that ambulance crew can do about it in most other situations - the responsibility is the persons and they can choose to risk their life. In less life threatening senarios eg a normal birth, the choice should only be given because its 'nice' not because it is a 'Right'.
In my antenatal NCT classes, there was a HUGE push towards home births and the great risks of pain relief drugs. We looked up all of the research from the footnotes and found most of it to be by the same couple of people, and to have many confounding factors - I can add links if you like with explanations, if I work out how to. I can see why giving birth at home is appealing though.
My situation is that I was a very low risk pregnancy, that ended in a 41+1 week stillbirth of a perfect baby boy. I did this in hospital and was given no choice at all - in the shock of death, I asked for a caesarian (as most in my situation do) and was refused it, having to give birth 'naturally' (I hate that term too - when is little electric shocks or inhaling untested substances natural, when morphine from the poppy isnt), with 1 to 1 care lucky me.
Is a low risk planned stillbirth included in the statistics of low risk hospital births? (I Hate statistics now - 1 in 200 doesnt happen to you does it - EVERY baby matters, please remember that, people who talk about risks and consider how you would feel if it happened to you, as 11 stillbirths happen a day).
I didnt have the choice of a home birth did I? In the research, people self-select into hospital or home births as you cant force people one way or another - this affects the risks on its own - people who choose home births are more likely to be middle class, better health, less alcohol and drug use etc. Are they the same ethnicity, have the same number of previous births?No, not according to the Dutch study. Are these variables controlled for in all of the studies? I am sure there are factors that I and you havnt considered, not being an expert at obstetrics, before I get shot down.
Talk of choice is useless to me as I have little choice about my care if I want a healthy child in the future. My Alexander could have been born alive if I had gone against non-intervention advice a week earlier and I kick myself that I didnt push for intervention. I cant exactly relax after 12 weeks now.
I appreciate this is a long pissed off rant and I could keep going the rest of the night, as it is strangely helpful, but I will leave it there for now.