Has anyone regretted a home birth?

[WonkyDonkBonk]

I'm expecting DC2 in December and had a very straightforward birth last time at a MLU so my midwife suggested a home birth. At first I dismissed it, but it has been rolling around in the back of my head. There are lots of people saying how wonderful and calm a home birth is and I don't think I have ever read any negative comments.

I wondered whether anyone out there didn't enjoy it or found it a logistical nightmare.

We live about 10 minutes away from hospital by car.

Thanks in advance.

"because US hospitals show proper timely care to women giving birth"

US hospitals certainly do intervene much more quickly. They induce earlier and more often, augment labours earlier and more often, and do many more c-sections. They spend vast amounts of money on maternity care, and women have more scans and more medical input than women in any other system of maternity care, and yet they've got a neonatal mortality rate similar to ours, and a maternal mortality rate which is much worse.

Really, I'd never be holding the US system of maternity care up as an example of anything other than giving a living example of the saying 'using a hammer to crack a nut'.

I just can't get past the fact that the emergency c/s rate for healthy women having their second or subsequent baby is 20 times greater if she chooses a hospital birth (4% compared to 0.5%), than if she stays at home. Even going to a birth centre for your second baby rather than staying at home appears to nearly double the likelihood of a c/s compared to and nearly triple the likelihood of a forceps delivery (1.1% vs 0.4%).

The accepted position adopted by most mumsnetters on home birth threads is that home birth is safe, safer than hospital, 'better' etc etc. There are always a few posters who feel that hospital is 'safer', 'better' etc. The truth is neither position is correct because birth isn't safe. Birth ALWAYS has risks. You run different risks at home than you do in hospital but nobody should ever go in to labour thinking that they are guaranteed a risk free, 'safe', physical experience. And that's the problem with the place of birth study and every other piece of pro home or pro hospital literature. It encourages you to think the choice you make is safe when what you should be recognising is how can make that choice as safe as possible for you and your baby.
Incidentally somebody said below that the brain injury suffered by a mumsnetter's child might have happened in hospital. My understanding in that particular case is that the injury was caused by the length of time the baby was left without oxygen. Appropriately monitored in hospital, the same physical indications would have been picked up as were picked up at home. The difference is the transfer time to theatre for delivery. In hospital it's shorter. So no, in that particular case, from what I've read here, there's every chance the injury would not have been as severe or indeed happened at all. It's no use shying away from these situations. That's the reality of some home births. Just like it's the reality for a hospital birth where poor monitoring and lack of vigilant staff behaviour has the same effect. That too is something that wouldn't have happened with a different place of birth.

In the OP's case it sounds like home birth is reasonable choice. Just don't make it thinking it's necessarily 'safe'. It may not be. Accepting that you'll live with the consequences is part of any birth choice.

Women have struggled for centuries giving birth at home.
We are extremely lucky in this country to be able to have such safe free access to hospitals to give birth.
Millions of women the world over would give their eye teeth to be in our position.

Northern - to be fair, scanning the thread quite a number of posters, including Rosey, tilder and me have stressed that there is risk in everything. What is being objected to is people scaremongering (based on false facts, such as assuming that the place of birth study didn't compare like with like ) that homebirth is riskier for low risk multiparous women. I am not pro homebirth. I would aways say that you need to decide which risks you are happiest with. But it has even been claimed here that homebirth gives a low risk birth the same risk level as a high risk birth - that isn't helping anyone make an informed decision.

"Women have struggled for centuries giving birth at home"

No - most women have given birth quite happily and healthily at home throughout history.

Antibiotics, good antenatal care, aseptic techniques and effective treatment of PPH (oxytocics - can be administered at home) and eclampsia have been responsible for most of the reduction in maternal and infant deaths, not c-sections, inductions and augmentation.

All women want is decent, expert and safe care in pregnancy and birth, and that can be delivered in a range of different settings.

THat is a very nice cosy middle class view you have of home births nicole.
In my home town many families were living in poverty, overcrowding and squalor in the 1920s and 30s. Babies were often delivered on newspaper on the kitchen table as the labouring mothers' own beds were too filthy and infested to be safe.
Many women breathed a sigh of relief when free hospital deliveries became available.

When the NHS came in, most 'hospital' deliveries would have been at small maternity homes/cottage hospitals i.e. much more like an MLU. Consultant units, until the late 60s/early 70s, were only for the problem cases. My MIL for her third, had great difficulty getting a hospital birth in 1959 - it was considered selfish and unnecessary.

Ultimately I think a woman should birth where she feels safest, as this is the place she is most likely to have a straightforward birth.

If someone feels safer in hospital then they should of course labour and birth in hospital. If someone feels safest going to a MLU then that's where she should go.
If your partner is really not comfy with a home birth then that's something that should really be considered as you really need their support in labour.
I don't think there is a 'one size fits all ' answer to this. It all depends on personal preference, personal approaches to risk, what kind of pregnancy you have had, if you are high risk for any reason, what previous births have been like etc

We decided that due to my very quick active labour with dd1, that it would actually be safer to plan a home birth. I'm really glad I did because I would have ended up with an unassisted home birth with dd2 had I not. I have long latent labours and very fast active labours. A MW came out to see me at 4pm and I was 2-3cm. She left at 4.30 to let me labour in peace but stayed close by. By 5.15 I was unable to move as I was going into transition. I would never have been able to get in the car. The contractions went from totally manageable at 4.45pm to my waters breaking and me being unable to move for the contractions a mere fifteen minutes later.
I felt it was much safer the way we did it as we had mws there at home.

Sorry for the long winded post. Just trying to get the point across that it's such a case by case thing as far as risk is concerned.

"Many women breathed a sigh of relief when free hospital deliveries became available."

Well, who in those circumstances wouldn't want 10 days in bed being waited on hand and foot?
But that's not the point I was making. I wasn't talking about their physical comfort, I was talking about the ease with which they gave birth.

Sadly one price of moving women into hospitals on masse in the UK was a widespread decline in breastfeeding - the result of the separation of mother and baby that happened in that setting.
Re: safety - Marjorie Tew is interesting on this subject:

I planned two home births, had one.

First one, transferred in for failure to progress. DD finally born (with super fast 20 min pushing stage) after 48 hrs. Birth was lovely but I was exhausted and looked shit in the photos. Hospital recommended home birth next time due to precipitate fast labour?!

Second home birth - some good bits, some tough bits. One night had a big coughing fit, waters burst. no contractions. Midwife came. Had one contraction. Asked mw to check dilation - 6cm. Then had one giant 54 min contraction and DD was born. Super super fast, no time for 2nd Mw to get there. DBaby Didn't breathe, cord tore away (no oxygen coming through cord) - poor DH had to call ambulance. Mw was brilliant - cut cord, resuscitated DD. She had apgar of 1 at birth and even once breathing was quiet and slept - they said because birth was so fast, she was in shock. It was very scary for all of us. But midwife was amazing. Ambulance there in 3 mins and looked after me.

I did recover super fast after 2nd birth, as wasn't so tiring. People always say about 2nd birth that I'd have been better in hospital, but I don't think I'd have made it there. Because had planned home birth, midwife was with us when it all went batshit crazy. Otherwise we'd have been on our own - only had two contractions! Wdnt have gotten to hospital in time.

Despite what happened, I am glad I was at home - but I did have a super experienced independent midwife.

I don't think I'll have a third, but not sure what I'd do if I did.

nicole but this wasn't about comfort- this was about making childbirth safer.

Babies if first time mothers were almost twice as likely to have an adverse outcome if born at home (9.3 per 1000 as opposed to 5.3 per 1000 ) than those born in hospital.

www.nct.org.uk/professional/research/pregnancy-birth-and-postnatal-care/birth/birthplace-study

Almost half of planned home births end up being transferred to hospital (45%) presumably in the later stages of labour making for an uncomfortable and possible worrying journey.

I am not some form of advocate that home is the best place to give birth. It can often be hospital. But you can't separate the other improvements- like ante natal care and home sanitation - from the availability of hospital birth. They were part of a wider picture. If you are giving birth on filthy bedding like something out of the worse scenes in Call the Midwive, of course hospital is better! It doesn't mean it is automatically better for an affluent women (also low risk, multiparous) today.

Keepitwhite- most transfers are for more pain relief or failure to progress. That isn't that different to going in at 3/10 in terms of the journey.

People who are anti homebirth often present transfers as a 'failed' homebirth. When you talk to women who have planned them, the picture is often very different. Just as many women who have an emcs wouldn't say that they should not have planned a vaginal birth. If you treat any departure from the original plan as failure, everyone should have a planned section. (NOT knocking those, but few would argue they should be universal )

Statistically the safest place for a first time mum is an MLU. Which is weird because many of these are free standing and not near ORs or instrumental delivery either.

The move to hospital was safer for whom? A Horizon programme from back in the 70s showed how the John Radcliffe in Oxford, which was enthusiastically inducing women at the time, made no difference to the stillbirth rate but doubled its CS rate.

Libraries has a point though about the Call the Midwife scene - by about the 1960s it had become fashionable for middle class (and upper class?) women to go into a little maternity hospital to have a baby. Home births (and breast feeding) were associated with poverty. Marjorie Tew's stats from the 70's had shown that hospitals were by no means safer (not even for 'high risk' cases, as far as I recall). It took until the Place of Birth study for someone to actually do the research necessary.

As for the Place of Birth study, the 'adverse outcomes' were a whole range of outcomes lumped together of which some were relatively minor. Transfers too - a large number transferred for more pain relief, which was more common for first time births. An uncomfortable and worrying journey - is it any more so than a last minute dash in a car wondering if you will give birth by the side of the road? (Reading gaslamp's post, how scary and dangerous would her second birth have been by the roadside?)

But OP is on her second birth and has already had one straightforward MLU birth, so she is coming from a different place than an anxious first timer. But if she was happy with her first birth, and is unsure about a home birth then yes, she should stick to what she feels most at ease with.

"Almost half of planned home births end up being transferred to hospital (45%) presumably in the later stages of labour making for an uncomfortable and possible worrying journey."

The word here is 'presumably'. I transferred in labour and didn't find it a problem.

Lots and lots of women not planning home births arrive at hospital and give birth within an hour or two. It's common. Nobody goes around telling women not planning hospital births that they should go to hospital BEFORE they're in strong labour.

Cote- what a horrible post. Your ignorant speculating about my birth is complete twaddle.

DC developed a problem after the birth. Kind of pointless having a c section then?

You show your ignorance of how 'medicalised' a HB can be. DC was resuscitated on my bed with the neonatal oxygen and resuscitation equipment that was delivered 2 weeks previously and was right at hand for the 2 mws to use.

Get your facts straight before you start scaremongering about something you obviously know so little about.

Op I would add that the published stats in risk tend to be risk for a population or group and nor an individual.

I find the home birth or hospital birth question can be a bit polarised on mn. Talk to your midwife. Work out your risk and if you are comfortable with that. Find out how common homebirth is where you are, how experienced the midwives are and how long it normally takes for a midwife to get to you when you call. I have found the response does vary and so yes this had affected my view.

I'm very well thank you and how are you and your beautiful offspring?
I shall be enjoying the joys of school sports day this afternoon so may have melted into a puddle by teatime.

Sorry to derail thread, everything has a risk, work it out, see what feels right for you and make a judgement based on that. I would suggest you seem a good candidate from what you have posted but obviously I can not assess that based on a few posts on a forum.

What I will say is that a lot of people have birth "horror" stories to tell and those of us that don't and have a wonderful relaxing time tend to keep quiet or we are accused of gloating. The following has some good stories to tell and offers a buddy system HTH.

tellmeagoodbirthstory.com/

See what I did there Saul, got straight back onto the topic

I live about 15 miles from hospital but opted for HB for DC3 - he got stuck (forget the medical term!) long story short, I ended up transferred by ambulance for emergency C-section. But I don't regret having tried for a minute. Even though the ambulance doors did fly open on the way

Hi, I've been through it it all, weather give birth, sister or seen my mum had twins. But tell u now I didn't want to give birth in hospital after lockdown. So had a birth pool set up in living room. All 3 my kids never had pain relief, ryland was water birth. Thomas wanted too. so I was determined willow not be born in hospital. I planned for her to be water baby. Xx

tbh this is what happened with my dc2 when I attempted vbac in MLU but I was in hospital and they saved her life and from brain damage in a handful of minutes / seconds. I still feel sick how close we got to losing her