Consultant against 1st time births at home - your advice

[Annie75]

My consultant says that she wouldn't recommend first babies being born at home for two reasons: not having adequate resusitation equipment on hand should the baby deteriorate immediately after birth; not being able to offer blood tranfusions should the woman need one and/or suffer a large loss of blood. I can't quite see why first births should be different from subsequent births as surely every birth is different?

I'd desperately like a home birth for all the advantages listed repeatedly by women on this and other message boards (the ability to relax in my own home, avoid medicalisation and intervention, labour at my own pace etc etc). I'm not put off by her comments as I reason that I live a max 15 min journey to the hospital should I need an urgent transfer, will actually benefit from increased monitoring by my midwife prior to a homebirth, and will hopefully have adequate warning signs should anything go wrong. I am also having additional scans prior to the birth to monitor the baby's growth.

Any thoughts about first-time home births or the consultant's concerns? Thanks

Oh Annie, Where to begin????

You can choose to have your baby anywhere!

Granted it is my own personal belief that you should only contemplate homebirth if your pregnancy has progressed without incident, you are in good health and you are close to a hospital (should you need to be transferred).

I had my DS at home and thank god I did! I had 2 whole midwives all to myself which meant they had a really chilled out night shift cause I required no intervention.

Trouble with hospitals is usually you don't get much time with your midwife and as such the hospital likes to 'keep you monitored' which keeps you stuck to a chair or bed. Not the fault of the midwife but more the fact that she (v sexist sorry) has a gizzilion other women to take care of aswell!!!!!! >>>RANT sorry

Just to say that first births do tend to be harder, or rather subsequent births do tend to be easier - as one midwife put it to me, for an article I did a while back,'it's like programming a computer'. However, there is no way of telling, obviously, what your body's like at birth. (Mine was dreadful, first time round. Absolutely appalling. Second time completely different.)

But then I don't tend to do the 'it's your mindset' thing.

Motherinferior, Did you have a homkebirth? What was it that was awful?

Like chilledmama I had my DS at home, first baby. and plan to have my second baby at home too.
I also had two midwives throughout and they were attentive but chilled - they let me get on with it and as another post said, I was upright and moving around until right at the and and things progressed quite fast.
I know people who gave birth at my local hospital who had far less MW care and attention through labour than I did at home.
I would follow your instincts and go with the home birth, you can transfer if problems arise and I think these are invariably picked up early on.
As other posts have said, consultants see the worst case scenarios and not the women who manage to give birth without any intervention, whether its a first or subsequent birth...

My first was in hospital, my second at home. My first - for which I laboured for the first 24 or so hours at home, btw - was awful because it went on and on and on and on and on and on and on, and the only way of dealing with the pain was by walking around, and after a while that gets a bit wearing, really. It ended up about 12 hours later in an emergency ventouse.

My second was seven hours, and therefore much more bearable. Although my back hurt like hell.

Just a thought Annie, because I felt the same as you when I was trying to decide what to do. Even a 15 mins transfer to hospital would be aboslutely horrendous in the later stages of labour. I could hardly even bear to change position at that stage. In hindsight I think I'm glad I was in hospital, because the second stage took so long it's very likely I would have had to transfer. I know one could argue that things wouldn't have stalled if I'd been at home but actually I really don't think it would have made a difference.

Also do you live in a detached house? If not, you may not end up being as relaxed as you think.

If you're going to have a slow labour, that will happen where ever you are (hospital or home), I just liked the idea that I didn't need to ask permission to eat, drink, go to the toilet. I felt like I was in charge and therefore was able to make decisions that worked for me.

It's ironic because I spent so long thinking about that stuff before I had DS. When it came to it I couldn't move to go to the toilet (and couldn't go anyway when they made me - the MW had to put in a catheter), I absolutely couldn't eat anything and drank only a couple of sips of water the whole time. It's amazing I didn't expire actually!

You can have both. I had twin 1 at home and then we moved to hospital for twin 2 because I was fed up and nothing much was happening. Nothing to stop in a normal birth moving to hospital mid way. We just bundled twin 1 up (he was a hospital visitor!), I made sure I had plentiful gas and air for the drive and off we went. No emergency or problem.

Labour does odd things to women doesn't it. I don't do contact when I'm in pain so midwife got a fright when she tried to comfort me and I growled at her

Oh Xenia, Its so nice to hear off twins have a homebirth (well almost)!

Annie, Do you live anywhere near Portsmouth???

Chilledmama - are you Lulumama? Everyone's namechanging at the mo and lil ol me is very confused.

Twinkle- No Lulumama is a doula guru...I'm just a gal who believes in knowing all the options!. Flattered by your confusion though!

Well you see there's been lulumama, homemama and chilledmama on this thread. Thought it was lulu having an identity crisis!

Hey...mama's popular! I wonder why???

Got to go and feed DS, night night everyone.

Will check back tomorrow.

cm, I was planning a home birth for the 4 th children. When we realised it was twins I and my independent midwives decided it would be better if they delivered them in hospital but I knew they and I would really have preferred them at home so they came and twin 1 was coming fairly quickly so we had him at home. Meanwhile the NHS sent their head of midwifery or someone to my house with an ambulance to sit in the kitchen for about 5 hours. Fine I've paid massive amounts of tax in my time so might as well get something back but not what I wanted. I just ignored them and we got on with it upstairs. I think twin 2 would have preferred to be born a good few days later. I never thought I'd have to have two separate full 7 hour labours on the same day one for each twin.

They were born in different London boroughs 7 hours apart. Made the announcement in the Times fun to draft.

sorry haevn't had time to read all posts but i had my first LO at home 5 months ago and i am sooo glad i did. Yes the labour was long (as with many first labours) being 27 hours but i think i had a very confident mw who basically could see that i was going to manage it and didn't panic into sending me to hospital - not all mw's would do this i reckon. I am only one mile away from the hospital and might have felt different if further away but I think it was as positive an experience as any labour can be! Think having a hugely supportive mw and doula and a birthing pool helped though! All the best

I can see the appeal of a homebirth, familiar environment, more relaxed etc. But I personally would never want to risk it. Problems aren't always spotted straight away and then every second does count. Just not worth the risk in my opinion, especially not for a first delivery.
But if it is what you want then I would definitly be checking up on transfer times etc. It's all very well to say look on the bright side and be positive but I would want to be well informed too - it is your babies (and possibly your own) life involved here.

Just logged on and read through all your posts. Big thanks for those - I'll show them to my DP too. He's been v supportive re the home birth thing, which has helped me feel comfortable putting a home birth as my preferred choice.

Several of you asked why I was seeing a consultant. I had v slightly raised AFP levels following my Downs test and the midwife suggested that this can sometimes indicate potential growth probs with the baby in the future (other stuff was ruled out). The consultant doesn't see any real reason to keep me on her care (hooray) especially as baby is doing fine for growth to date and that's when I told her I'd like to have a home birth and be referred back to midwifery-led care, after agreeing to two additional scans to monitor growth. So, unless these show up probs with that, I'm going to make preparations to have the baby at home.

Really useful to read first birth stories and thanks, Snaf, for the info about resusitation and blood transfusions. I started looking into the hospital stats on the Dr Foster site and found that there were higher than national average levels of intervention.

Also, there were 4497 births for 2005, of which only 42 were home births. Does that mean the midwives won't be experienced at home births or is that figure kinda average? I was told that there are a pool of about 7 midwifes in my area in Wales that do homebirths, of which I've only met one. Is there any way I can ask to meet them so that I'm not presented with a stranger at my door should the time come, or is that a bit of an odd request? Am seeing midwife this afternoon for my 25 week check.

loopymumsy, some hospitals do have teams of theatre staff sitting around waiting for emergency! My dh used to be one of them... they also then will have an "on call " team for if there is a further emergency and they are generally called in prior to being needed desperately. Ie there is an emergency case already on the table, something looks like it might escalate, they then call the on call people to get them in ready for further possible emergencies. This was always the case for the hospitals my dh worked at in the NW. Well worth checking for individual hospitals though...

Hi, I am a theatre practitioner and there is always staff on call for maternity. Our maternity unit is situated opposite the theatres. Sometimes, it can be minutes from the decision to do a cs and the baby emerging.

When my planned vaginal delivery turned to a section, I was in the theatre with medical team assembled around me and prepped for surgery in less than 5 minutes. I was in the hospital delivery suite... thank God. Now, I was induced and that never would have happened at home anyway.

But, medical teams do not take 30 minutes to assemble, and sometimes every second counts.