Crumbs - I certainly didn't expect this thread to kick off so much!
First of all, I want to say that I had a good birth. The worst of it was the distress of having to deal with the sudden change in plan, but apart from that everything went amazingly well and the end result was happy healthy baby and happy healthy mum. I can't complain about that and won't.
It never occurred to me to make a fuss when I was told that there were no midwives available. I was deep into intense labour, didn't want to have to concentrate on anything else. Tried to discuss with the person on the phone whether the situationw ould change, midwives come free etc, in the next hours, but wasn't really capable of it. She told me (and I have no reason to doubt her) that she had been phoning around to try and find me a midwife. I didn't care who came, I'm not fussed about having got to know the midwife veforehand, but if there's no-one available then even not being fussy isn't going to help.
And, for your information, it would not have been an agency midwife who would have come, but an NHS one who was not even on duty. There are only 3 community midwives covering homebirths in this area, so most home births are actually attended by offduty volunteers. I don't know whether they are paid for volunteering, but that's hardly the point - they aren't agency midwives.
As to whether I have the 'right' to a home birth - well, I suppose I do, as much as I have the right to any treatment on the NHS. But, equally, as a woman who has also given birth in hospital were midwives had to rush between women, and as one who believes that we look after each other (after all, think how the NHS is funded), I don't feel it would be right to take two midwives away when they may be needed for more than one woman's care. The stories I've read here on MN about mums labouring in totally unsuitable places, or without enough personal attention and therefore reliant on monitors, just don't compare with the care I have been lucky enough to receive in hospital, even with having to share midwives, and I wouldn't deliberately inflict that on another woman. Even if it's not 'my fault' but caused by the underfunding of the hospital.
I think that the hospital tried to make it up to me for losing my HB. Although they have a birthing pool suite, it is, according to other mums I know in our town, very difficult to get access to the pool. Every one who has used the pool believes that they got it because they had someone fighting for their right to do so. In one case the mum was accompanied to hospital by her community midwife, in another her health visitor was on the ward for some reason. So the fact that I arrived there and the pool was already filled and waiting for me does suggest something.
I don't see what benefit there would be to my making a complaint. The facilities weren't available for what I wanted, but the hospital did their best with the facilities that they had.