HELP NEEDED!!!!!! - HOME BIRTH AT 42+ WEEKS PREGNANT

[kimberleyholistic]

Hi,
This is a long shot, I am overdue and looking to find a midwife/doula, anyone with some experience where I can give birth at home.

I was due to give birth at UCLH birthing pool, but because I am overdue my 2 weeks (their records) 4 days (by my records, from date of conception) it has caused concern.

Long story short, I agreed to go in for monitoring baby's heart beat, whilst moving positions, baby's heart beat dipped (I know now is normal). Awful midwife called in consultants who were like animals. Standing around me telling me I am now high risk and I have to have an induction. They even said better an induction than a dead baby. I am a very strong woman and have really done my research on EDD dates, induction, truth about still births etc... Although I was in floods of tears and an emotional wreck, three hours of continuos monitoring, it was shown baby is healthy and so am I. At this point I was able to discharge myself. I am making an official complaint as they used fear and incorrect data to try and get me induced. Effing wrong!!!!

No way am I allowing these controlling and manipulative midwives to intervene. My question - is there any independent midwives out there or if anyone can recommend solutions to a home birth??

I am have labour pains slowly, but I truly baby won't come out until I feel safe. I am setting up a fb page to help all women stand their ground.

Thanks
Kimberley

Heart rate dips are not normal. I had a still birth at 41 weeks after a consultant failed to act from heart rate dips. Induction is better than a dead baby! Your anger is misplaced, all those years at medical school and have obviously made you better informed... Oh, wait....

Posts like yours scare me op. I know of someone who was determined to have the birth they wanted and unfortunately baby did not make it.
I know your birth experience feels important but I promise you that, once you have your baby in your arms you won't care at all.
Please do the sensible thing and listen to the people who have the experience and medical training to advise you.

When you have a child you cease to be the picture, you become the frame. It's about the baby now , not about how you get it out.

Still births happen. They happen a lot, far too much in the UK, and get happen to strong, determined, healthy, holistic women as well as "other" women. We don't talk about them enough because we can't face it, but we need to talk about them more because many of them are avoidable if people understand the risks and act appropriately on warning signals. And cases like yours are exactly the cases where intervention is appropriate.

OP I get where you're coming from.

I'm wondering what it is about a home birth that you feel will be better than a hospital and I'm wondering if it's panic setting in because of how you felt you were listened to and treated by the HCPs you saw?

Home births aren't always stardust and lullabies and hospital births aren't always nightmares either. What is crucial is that you feel supported and it doesn't seem like you do.

You might be lucky and find an IM who takes you on, however, if you're high risk then it's not straightforward.

Another option is to find a doula who comes to the hospital with you.

You have every right to choose how you want your pregnancy and labour to be - although obviously there are factors in both that we can't control as mothers - and be supported in that.

You sound frightened which isn't a good place to be at the end of the pregnancy. Is there another hospital you could check out even as a backup in case you labour at home and need transferring? Or another doctor or set of midwives? You need to explain your concerns to them calmly and let them know how frightened you are and also listen to what they say. You may be able to figure something out that gives you the best of both worlds.

I wish you all the best.

You sound like the crazy woman at my pregnancy yoga classes, they are full of this nonsense about Drs being evil. I was also told my DS didn't come out because I didn't feel safe, sorry but that's bullshit, he didn't come out because he was stuck.
You need to think about what's best for your baby, how they come out doesn't really matter in the long run, just that they come out and are ok. At some point you have to give up on your dream of an ideal birth, it honestly won't be that bad!

Kimberly,
I had an experience very similar to yours. Surrounded by docs trying to persuade me to have an induction on the grounds that I was very overdue by their scan dates, refusing to believe that my dates (1 week earlier) could possibly be more accurate. I had full monitoring - placenta scans looked good but baby's heart rate didn't look so good. I was squished into an uncomfortable chair for an hour on the trace, and it was only when they let me up that I realised that the problem was the chair - baby was pushed so far up into my rib cage that I couldn't breathe properly, hence accelerating heart rate.
I was already booked in for a HB, and HB team were more flexible than hospital, but even so we reached a weekend where it was 'now or never'. Baby was born at home on the Sunday evening, and was agreed by all to be in line with my dates (10 days over, as has been the case for all my pregnancies), and not 17 days late - as per their dates.
I felt more able to resist the pressure as it was 3rd baby and have previously allowed myself to be pushed into interventions that I felt at the time were unnecessary.
You know that you are under no obligation to have an induction, and if you think that you are only 4 days over I fully understand why you don't think it's the best option for you at this point. I also am aware that if HCPs see anything that isn't perfect they can focus on it disproportionately to try and scare you in to going along the intervention route.
I suggest at this stage you -

• re iterate that you are only 4 days over, and request to be treated as such
• have baby's heart rate monitored again to see if that reading was a one off (and possibly due to inaccuracies), or if there really is a problem with heart rate. Feel free to PM me if you want further discussion. It is hard to discuss this on an open forum when you are being put under such pressure by other users to submit to intervention that you are not convinced is necessary.

Kimberly, I'm so sorry you haven't had any helpful comments. I was in the same situation as you almost 5 years ago. They tried to scare me too. It does happen and it's because they are covering their backs. If they agreed to let you go home and the tiny chance something could go wrong, they could be sued. Home birth rates are so low due to scaremongering when actually they are safer than hospital births for low risk women.

Have them monitor your placenta for signs of deterioration, in the meantime try and relax yourself. Tell your normal midwife you are having a home birth and add you to the list. Ring around some local midwifes too as some may be willing to come out to you.

You don't have to have an induction, and at the end of the day it's up to you what you do. They can't force you to do anything you don't want to do. Yes, the doctors are operating based on best practice and they are risk aware. They are ultimately trying to do what's best.

Have you anymore appointments with your MW or anymore dates for monitoring?

I've had two home births, the first tries to scare me out of it due to being overdue (baby was born 42+2 covered in vernix!) I had the midwife check the placenta for any signs of being old and she said it was 100% healthy. Second one my midwife was anti home births so I had to deal with the negativity the whole way through! Eventually she found an excuse to deny me one (Lower haemaglobin). Luckily my area had employed 2 home birth specialists to raise home birth rates so I contacted them. They were so helpful and helped me have the birth that was best for baby and me.

I'm not an HCP.

But thought that accelerations of heart rate (as described by WifeOfDarth) are normal.

Deceleration (as described by OP) is not.

It is hard to discuss this on an open forum when you are being put under such pressure by other users to submit to intervention that you are not convinced is necessary

Has it ever occurred to you that someone who is referring to consultants as "like animals" isn't actually in a rational state of mind? Nobody is asking the OP to submit to "unnecessary intervention", but to discharge yourself against medical advice without looking at an alternative way forward is nothing short of stupidity.

I had a home birth at over two weeks overdue and my experience was very different to yours. The midwives were very helpful and there was no pressure at all to induce. I went in for daily monitoring and regular scans and all was fine.
The nice guidelines say that daily monitoring after 14 days overdue should be offered as an alternative to induction.

Have a look at the Tell me a good birth story page on Facebook, run by an independent midwife/doula.
Having said all that, I would (and did, with a different baby) have an induction if there were signs that it was actually clinically indicated, other than for just being overdue. Are you sure that they are suggesting it simply for being overdue?

Is there a midwife led unit you could attend rather than hospital?

I went to 42 weeks and was scared I'd lose my HB - and really upset about the prospect of induction, I so get where you are coming from. But over 42 weeks I would have accepted that I needed to take medical professionals advice.
If you can take some control would that help? I had one hospital birth and with the help of my lovely experienced birthing partners I had no intervention despite the standard hospital protocol to intervene at certain points.

You sound like you have a very good idea of what you want, but you might have to accept that isn't what you need. I wish you the best of luck.

Oh I had one hospital birth and the next three were home births - including DD at 42 weeks.

You can hire an independent midwife, although I have no idea if they would be happy to caseload with you due to the deceleration (which isn't normal, unless it was an early deceleration and even then that's not normal). If you did have a homebirth with an independent midwife, there is nothing to say you would get the birth you wish for. If anything were to get risky you would have to be transferred to hospital/delivery unit and your independent midwife would have to cease facilitating your labour and birth (although is likely to stay on for emotional support).

There is no way a doctor or midwife would push for an induction for no good reason. One early deceleration (a deceleration beginning with a contraction which recovers very quickly) wouldn't call for an induction so there must have been more to this.

Having had two induced labours and two non-induced, I don't really understand the vehemence so many women feel against induction. The labour experience isn't that different. Having an epidural in one labour was more invasive by far as it meant lying down and constant blood pressure and fetal monitoring. However it also enabled me to sleep for an hour which after 36 hours awake was profoundly necessary.
Before my first induction I was a bit scared as I had been told induction was more painful. It wasn't, not really, I managed my second induction on gas and air.

I am struggling to understand why you feel, OP, that a home birth for an overdue baby who has been experiencing decelerations unrelated to labour is 'safe' whereas an induction in hospital with medical intervention available for your baby if necessary is ',unsafe'. I think as a pragmatist I simply see the goal of pregnancy and birth to be the delivery of a healthy child. To me whether that delivery is at home, in a pool, in a hospital bed, via c section or in a forest glade surrounded by fawns is less important. I hope you can find a way to be at peace with the delivery of your child even if this ends up not being the scenario you had imagined.

They tried to scare me too. It does happen and it's because they are covering their backs. If they agreed to let you go home and the tiny chance something could go wrong, they could be sued. Home birth rates are so low due to scaremongering when actually they are safer than hospital births for low risk women.

AIN:

1. It isn't 'scaring'. It's providing you with the truth.
2. They are 'covering their backs' to ensure a live mum and baby, wherever possible. It's not some big conspiracy.
3. They want to ensure they don't blithely let people go home and something goes wrong. What's the problem there?
4. Safer for low risk women, by your own words. Being post term with an at least suspicious non labouring CTG does not equal low risk.

Wishing yourself low risk doesn't make you so. I also strongly question how much 'research' OP has truly done when she states she has calculated her EDD based on conception date. It just doesn't work like that!

I was "pushed for an induction for no good reason". I knew my dates (40+5), the hospital insisted on their dates (40+12). I too was told induction was better than a dead baby, was told the research I had done was wrong, was told I was being irresponsible. It absolutely confirmed to me why I didn't want a hospital birth. I knew there was a minimal increase in risk of still birth but I balanced that against the fact that I knew their dates were wrong and the increase in risks if I was to have a hospital birth. My baby was born the next day at home and the midwife said there was no way I was 13 days over (hospital dates) by the condition of my baby and placenta.

Whatever your opinion, you don't get to come on here and call the OP names. I was hounded by the consultant for no other reason than I had hit the hospitals policy of inducing at term+12. The aggressive and uninformed posts on here are just awful.

According to OP! this isn't about dates. Or rather there is some dispute over dates, but by either reckoning she's over 40 weeks.

It's about a pre-labour deceleration.

That is alarming.

Now, it must have recovered, or they would have been recommending crash section (yes OP, you really are in that territory).

But even with recovery, this is squarely 'baby is safer on the outside' territory. There are various causes of such decelerations and all can be serious.

Even so, the Op, the patient, is clearly terrified. It is poor practice to scare someone into a serious medical intervention. They should be setting out the facts which should speak for themselves and be empathic rather than emotionally manipulating her.

But fourormore this is not the case here. On monitoring they found evidence of fetal distress, serious enough to get doctors to come and persuade the op to stay in hospital. Op chose to believe the professionals she spoke to her had a hidden agenda. Please OP if you are reading this, rethink. I was dead set on home birth each time. I was high risk each time I gave birth safely in hospital. Work with the hcps. Tell them what is important to you, continuous monitoring? Being mobile? You need to compromise as no midwife will go against medical advice and attend to you at this stage.