First-timer considering home birth...advice please!

[crazybutterflylady]

Hi

I have just moved to a new area and have a choice of a few hospitals... however I had a meeting with my midwife this week and she suggested a home birth. Mainly, I think, because I have expressed an interest in a water birth and the hospitals near me can't guarantee it.

I would really appreciate some advice/opinions to help me decide... thanks in advance.

I had a homebirth with DS (1st baby) and am definately planning on one for DC2 once we finally conceive

my DH was dead set against it at first but we did a lot of research and reading it was by far the best decision for us. I totally freak out at the thought of hospitals anyway and the thought of being medicalised, having obstetricians telling the midwives what to do when they just want to get on with their jobs, changing over midwives with shift patterns, bright lights and metal greeting my baby into the world, epidurals, likelihood of further intervention, episiotomies - EVERYTHING about hospitals put me right off

The homebirth webiste mentioned above is a brilliant wealth of imformation, has loads of birth stories from successful homebirths, to those that had to transfer for a variety fo reason.

DO your research, talk to your midwives, make the decision that is best for you and your DH (but mainly you, he has to be happy with it)...DO NOT listen to anyone who has never been pregnant or had a baby. You wouldn't believe the number of people who thought it was their business to tell me their opinions despite knowing nothing about labour

The pain will obviously be bad no matter where you are. I was really worried about it really didn't want an epidural (thoughts of needles in my spine, no thankyou!!) and somehow my mantra over several months of "this pain results in something good" saw me through it, completely to my surprise I did it with no pain relief bar 5mins on a gas and air canister...you can do it!!!

More than happy to share stories etc, it sounds like you really want to go for it - there's no reason for not going for it just because it's your first baby. I honestly believe my labour was relatively quick and hassle free because I felt safe and secure

I had my first baby (she's 8 weeks old tomorrow) at home and, honestly, it was a quite straightforward birth. I think it was because I was relaxed as I felt in control of what was happening as I was on my own turf.

Also, it was better for my DH as he is the sort of man who wants to fix it whatever it is. He ran around putting water in every room and feeding me satsumas. He felt useful, he said.

So I would go with what others said. Book for a hb as you can always transfer into hospital, but you can't really do it the other way round.

Namechanging to avoid IDing someone else.

Good point from Loopymumsy about comparing the two risk sets. No birth is completely safe and there are some women who birth in hospital but may have been better off at home or in a birthcentre. You just don't know which way it's going to go on the day.

For example, a good friend of mine had her DS a few years ago. She was low-risk, didn't want or feel comfortable with the idea of homebirth, and opted to give birth in the excellent local MW-led birthing centre.

Unfortunately, she was told during her ante-natal appointments that only women expecting babies with a birth weight of 8lb or under could use the birth centre.(Has anyone heard this one before?!)

She and her husband are both very tall and well built so it was no surprise when it was announced that the estimated weight of her baby was over 8lb and she was therefore going to have to go to the big CLU at the local hospital which has sky high intervention rates.

Being a shy, retiring kind of person, she didn't challenge this even though she was very uncomfortable with the CLU. Her DH assumed that they were being given sound evidence-based medical advice and didn't challenge it either.

Anyway, what started off as a straightforward but slow-moving first labour turned into the typical cascade of interventions when the MWs persuaded her to lie down and take the syntocinon drip "to speed things up a bit". Extreme increase in pain, epidural which took several attempts to place, stuck on her back with monitoring even before the drip, people in and out of the room throughout (not nice for anyone but particularly hard for someone who's shy and stressed by strangers), on her back to push, failed ventouse, episiotomy and tearing, baby delivered by forceps at the second attempt. It took a long time for her to recover both physically and psychologically.

Next time she intends to stand her ground re the MLU or opt for a homebirth since she feels that all her negative experiences were likely to have been caused by the hospital environment and protocols. Her baby was only 7.5lb in the end too.

I am a first timer who had a homebirth 2 weeks ago and definitely would recommend it. I had a birth pool and gas and air for pain relief and coped just fine.

I also have a cream sofa, which I had to deliver on, and that survived as well! Just get some cheap plastic sheeting and your old towels out!

Like a lot of other posters I really wanted to avoid the medicalisation that seemed to come with a hospital birth. My husband was fully behind me too but only after reading up and presenting the evidence to him.

my dd midwife said she would be great for a homebirth,young age low risk,etc,she ended up with a really bad hemorrhage,and if we had to wait for the ambulance she wouldnt be here today.

I dont mean to scare you but there is always that risk,i never ever considered that,and nor did my dd,im just so glad she had the baby in the midwife led unit,of our local hospital.

my mum had all 3 of hers at home,with no trouble at all,i think its just a case of pot luck.

NB MWs carry the same drug (syntometrine or similar) to treat PPH as would be used in hospital.

You can't always assume that you would be treated more rapidly in hospital if a problem did arise. There are enough stories on Mumnset of women being left unattended for long periods of time. I had my first in the evening and was left in an end ward with one other woman. I was too excited to go to sleep and noticed that no staff came near us between about 10 pm and 6am. Thankfully we were both OK.

I had a completely unplanned home birth with DD. We had community midwives who were supposed to come with us to hospital but I managed the first stage a bit too well and was 10cm by the time they arrived.

it was lovely to give birth in familiar surroundings. Though I was very glad to be close to a hospital as I couldn't deliver the placenta and ended up haemorrhaging.

Swings and roundabouts, but I'm lucky I got to do the 'natural' bit naturally and had the 'medical' bit looked after medically.

Hi Crazybutterflylady - am also on the Due in May thread. Am a second timer, had DD in a midwife-led unit attached to a hospital but am seriously thinking about having this one at home (not because of a bad first experience - quite the opposite - I think DD's birth in the MLU would have been pretty much the same at home, but without the faffing about getting in a car and driving to the hospital whilst in very established labour).

I was struck by one of your posts saying that one of the things which puts you off a HB is being worried about how you will cope with the pain (an understandable worry) - you still have a whole load of potentially very effective pain relief options open to you at home: TENS, a pool (or using water for pain relief in other ways, such as a bath or shower), breathing, positions, vocalisation, gas and air and loads more. Everything I used in the MLU for pain relief I could have used at home.

So I suppose I'm trying to say that it's not a case of hospital = pain relief, home = no pain relief.

I am reading this book called Birth Skills this time round and it's very good on suggesting lots and lots of possible pain management techniques you could use. It's got a very practical tone, which I like.