homebirthers: did you have your post birth baby check in hospital?

[soandsosmum]

I'm just planning logistics, esp what to do with dd1 during and post birth.

Did you have to go to hospital the next day to get all those new born checks or did someone come to you? Did it take long? (i seem to remember it taking hours in hospital). And did it kill your homebirth afterglow?

If you avoid having a homebirth on a friday it seems to work better for the midwives. DS2 was born at 4am friday, we slept through most of the next day, woke up to several answerphone messages telling us that they wanted to do our check, when I called back everyone had knocked off for the day and I was told to go to hospital, to have it done on the saturday.

On saturday they had an emergency so we had the option of waiting 2 hours for the paediatrician or coming back on sunday. They made a big note on the wall chart saying we'd been and we needed to be seen on sunday, when we opted to go home.

On sunday I was told off for not having a drug chart and that hospital midwives couldn't do a check on a homebirth baby, apparently our paperwork was all wrong. When I said I wasn't bothered and someone could come round on monday if they really needed to see obviously healthy and thriving DS2, a paediatrician somehow managed to get round us having the wrong paperwork and do the check.

I have a conspiracy theory about homebirths depriving hospital car parks of money and this being their revenge...

LOL re car parks plague

Right, will aim to have baby midweek then ;)

DS1 was born at home. GP came out the next day and did the check. DS2 was meant to be born at home but I was transferred to hospital in labour. We left when he was 3 hours old so GP came and did it the next day. DS3 was a planned hospital birth and we left hospital after 3 hours again. The community midwife works part-time and she happened to have 5 days off after DS3 was born so nobody asked the gp to do the check. In the end DS3 was referred to the children's ward with 17% weight loss on day 5 so the paed did the check for us then.

So jealous of everyone in areas where checks are done at home. I will be asking my mw about this tomorrow. Why is it OK for GPs/MWs to do checks in some parts of the country but not here - Cambridgeshire?? I don't understand.....

Yes! How stupid is that!?

Baby born on the Friday morning, had to visit the hospital for paed check on the Sunday morning, so we went from their to a posh restaurant with 2 kids and a 2 day old for a Father's day meal!

Dd had her check at home by the GP. Ds2 and Ds3 had to go into the hospital for their's. It was a PITA, but not impossible.

I think it is up to the individual GPs as to whether they want to offer the service or not.

Everything done at home except of course the hearing test at a few weeks old :) I'm in East London

I think it important to remember what the tests are for, heart, hips, eyes and testicles in boys newbornphysical.screening.nhs.uk/

These tests are designed to pick up conditions that have a much better outcome if picked up early. They should therefore be carried out by a suitably qualified person who does many of this type of screen on a regular basis. If in your area this means that the GPs don't see enough homebirths to be competent in the screening checks then you are usually referred to the local hospital.

With DS I transferred to hospital for a delayed placenta which meant his checks were done there. With DD1 one of the local GPs came out a few hours after birth to do the screen, this same GP then did our 6 week check. Both times she missed DD1s dislocated hip and leg about 2cm shorter than the other. She went undiagnosed for over 3 months and I was dismissed as a paranoid mother as she had 'passed' her screening. I nagged long and loud enough for DD1 to have an ultrasound based on family history (which she should have been referred for at birth by said GP). She was then diagnosed with a type IV dislocation (the most severe type). The delay in diagnosis meant different, more invasive and longer treatment than if she had been diagnosed earlier.

All this perhaps means I have a skewed view of people dabbling in screening checks of course but I would have rather gone to hospital or had a GP who had done many, many newborn checks with DD1.

For DD2 I was in hospital anyway for the month before birth so homebirth was scuppered but she had her referral for hip ultrasound before her six week check.

All three of my DCs had the hearing screen as an out patient at a few days old.