Just thought you mmight be interested in what AIMS had to say:
Dear PrettyCandles
I?m sorry to hear that your Trust withdrew their home birth service at such a late stage. It must have been very stressful and I think you and your baby are very lucky to have been able to cope with it so well and still go on to have a healthy and positive birth. Many women placed in that situation would not have been so fortunate.
Sadly your experience is far from being an isolated case, it is a story we have heard many times.
Personally I am not a fan of ?should? or ?ought? since the word that pops into my head with both is ?Why?? Yes you could have insisted on your right to a home birth ? it was an option, but not necessarily one you would have wanted to take.
It does take a very strong and confident woman to calmly state that she has had a home birth booked for x weeks/months, their staffing issues are not her concern, that she has no intention of transferring into hospital, and that if anything does go wrong she will of course be suing the hospital for non-provision of appropriate care. (It is also a good idea to make sure you have the name of the person you are speaking to if you are going to have that conversation.) So far, as far as AIMS is aware, a midwife (max 6 midwives!) has always been found, but we feel very strongly that women should not be placed in the position of having to call the bluff of the maternity services in this way.
Should you complain is also not a straightforward question to answer. I think what you want to know is whether complaining would be of benefit to other women, since you don?t have a strong personal motive as the birth did go well.
Processing a complaint can be a very long, drawn out, emotionally draining process, but most of the women I know of who have battled with the complaints system have been through traumatic experiences that they needed to receive explanations and apologies for before they can reach some kind of closure.
Personally, yes I think complaints do tend to make those providing maternity services think twice about their routine handling of certain issues. I think also that all the individual complaints do add to the momentum of change that all the individual actions are trying to achieve in their own small ways.
Would lodging a complaint improve the maternity provision in your area? I don?t think it could make matters any worse. Midwifery staffing levels are in crisis across the country. Midwives are leaving the service in droves, mainly because they just cannot continue working under the current systems of highly technological managed care. Straightforward, positive vaginal births are becoming quite rare ? research has shown that less than 10% of births are without some major intervention. It is possible that the local Director of Midwifery Services would find it helpful to receive a letter complaining about how the midwifery shortage adversely affected a birth since it would give her ammunition to fire off at the powers that be.
You could contact the Head of Midwifery and ask for an appointment with her to discuss her feelings about whether she would like you to make a complaint and along what lines.
Another question of course is whether you feel you have grounds for complaint. Your birth went well. The main aim of any labour is to produce a healthy baby, which you did, and because it was also a positive experience you are happily non the worse for having transferred in. Many women would not have fared so well.
I deal mainly with caesarean mothers since that is my personal area of interest. Some book home births with their second babies because they simply cannot face battling the hospital system and losing a second time around. These women, had they been forced to transfer as you were, would not have coped and would almost certainly have ended up with a repeat caesarean. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to explain why to those planning the maternity services since they simply cannot see why the place of birth is so important to some women ? the baby is fine so what else matters?
There is also the plain fact that the service you were expecting was withdrawn at the last minute with absolutely no notice, which in any other walk of life would be seen as totally unacceptable. The NMC recently issued a statement regarding home birth which you might find helpful (pdf attached).
There is some information on making a complaint at www.aims.org.uk/complaints.htm
You might also be interested in supporting the One Mother One Midwife campaign, details at www.onemotheronemidwife.org.uk
PrettyCandles, hope this helps, and I?m sorry to be so long winded.
luvnhugs
Gina