Positive home birth stories please

[Marbles321]

I'm 34 weeks and have (rather late in the day) made the decision to have a homebirth. This is my first baby. DP and I thought long and hard about it - I've had a very healthy, straightforward pregnancy and we live less than 10 minutes from the hospital in the event we have to transfer.
It definitely feels like the right decision for us, and while I am mostly excited, I have the occasional hormone-fuelled wobble
I'd love to hear your positive homebirth stories for inspiration, particularly if it was your first baby
Go!

I have had two amazing homebirths. First one I went into labour at 39+6, i had a midwife out to me at 10am and baby was born at 8pm, so not super quick but I coped with the pool, didnt like entonox. No tears, physiological delivery of placenta, baby fed straight away. Great experience! I'd say go for it, a midwife can always come out to you and if you decide you want to go in for addition pain relief you can. I hired a pool, couldn't have coped without it. I also had various aromatherapy oils and stayed as mobile as I could. Had quite alot of position changes to try to get baby out, but I had two fab midwives encouraging me.

Second birth was more intense as it was quicker, needed the entonox for that one!

I had my dd at home 3 weeks ago. Best experience, couldn’t have hoped for it to have gone better. Just felt really simple. Wish I’d planned a home birth with my ds too.

Hello.

I've had 3 amazing homebirths
2 of them were water births.

It's the best experience ever

First baby born at home 12 weeks ago! Loved it, hire a pool though!
I’m crap with pain and can barely stand getting my eyebrows done, but being at home made my 26 hour labour very relaxed, very safe feeling and I was well rested to cope with the sharp end!

Two amazing home births. Ds1 was slow, chilled and easy going. Ds2 came quicker than expected and was straightforward but an adrenaline rush. If I hadn't planned ds2 at home I would have had him in the car. Two very different but incredible experiences

To add. With ds1 midwives drank tea and ate flapjacks that I made when in early labour. Ds2 midwife didn't even manage to take off her fleece

I had a wonderful HB with my DC2. (I wasn’t brave enough for a HB with DC1, but in retrospect it may well have been a better experience than the hospital birth I had).

I felt calm and in control throughout the whole HB, in contrast to how I had felt in hospital with my first. Like you, we live a short drive from the hospital, which was reassuring but luckily not needed.

Wishing you all the best for the birth.

My home birth was absolutely wonderful and I'd do it again if I was going to have another (I'm not though!!). It was a long labour. It started 5pm on Saturday and I had her at 2am Monday morning.

I did hypnobirthing. I was calm the whole way through and I had 2 paracetamol until right at the end when I still had a tiny bit of cervix left and they basically forced me to try some gas and air as I wasn't allowed to push. I didn't actually like the gas and air so I just gave it back and carried on.

I had a pool, but in the end I got out to use gravity and she was born on the sofa!

I had no tears at all, and it was absolutely glorious being in my own home, getting in my own shower and my own bed.

The thing to be aware of, and accepting of, is that if something goes wrong you can transfer.

I was 2 weeks overdue and they wanted to induce me, but I declined this and my labour started on the day they wanted to induce. I knew she would come.

My original reason for choosing homebirth was because I have quite severe white coat syndrome. My blood pressure and heart rate rise and I panic and shake. I knew that if I went to hospital I would panic, baby would panic and I worried that would end in medical intervention which I desperately didn't want. I agreed to monitoring each day but I only needed to go in for 2 days - one of which I was in labour!

Through work I speak to many people who’ve had home births and overall the experiences are very positive - highly experienced midwives and much more relaxed mums often means a much better birth experience. I salute the bravery as I could never do it myself, and after an emcs I definitely couldn’t, but since you’re so close to the hospital in case of an emergency you’re in the same boat as many people who go to a midwife led unit (better than some actually - here it’s a 25 minute ambulance ride from the MLU to hospital).

My only word of caution to you is that if you’re advised to transfer, I would do so without hesitation. Home birth midwives are highly specialised and experienced, and if they say you need to go in, I would trust that they know what they’re doing. I dealt with a sad case recently where the baby needed to go to hospital for blood sugar monitoring due to high birth weight which is one of the increased risk factors for hypoglycaemia - the Mum refused as she really didn’t think it was that big a risk, but the baby became really unwell and potentially has long term health issues as a result. One of my twins had severe hypoglycaemia at birth so I understand the dangers, but many new mums have never heard of it and don’t understand the severity.

So like I say, go for it, relax and enjoy it... just trust your midwife to get you through it and take their advice, and hopefully you’ll have a wonderful birth.

My homebirth (with my second DD) was one of the best days/experiences of my life. I am also a midwife and have supported several first time mums to have their babies at home. Even if they have to transfer in for some reason, or things don't go exactly to plan, women are usually very glad they booked a homebirth and rate the experience positively!

I tried for home birth with my first dc and even though I had to transfer for emcs in the end it was still overall a really positive, lovely experience. I was 2 days at home in labour, had a wonderful team(s!) of midwives, and pool to push in, felt so relaxed and calm. I was just exhausted in the end and pushing for hours but even getting transferred to hospital and getting prepped for section I felt so, so calm and think that was down to spending most of the labour at home. We only lived 5 mins from the hospital anyway so felt really safe the whole time at home.

I had a home birth with my second. I had a textbook first pregnancy and easy first birth so a HB with my second felt very natural. As it happened my second birth was much trickier and I had a retained placenta and haemorrhaged. The reason I put this here is that I was blue lighted to hospital (also only about 10 mins away) was was totally fine. I have friends who have had to go in an ambulance from HBs and they have also been fine. My advice is if you live pretty close to the hospital and your midwife if happy and your medical history suggest you are low risk, there's no reason not to go for it. Sometimes a transfer form a midwife led unit can be more than 10 minutes and I do think the relaxing nature of being at home can outweigh many other negatives - DC2was eventually delivered in the bath after a three-day second labour! I'm pregnant with my third now and I'll have to deliver on a labour ward because I'm now old and because of the complications last time. I've never laboured on a ward before and I'm pretty gutted.

Thank you everyone these are all lovely and reassuring!!! Yes we are very open to transfer if the midwives suggest it. I don't necessarily have my heart set on giving birth at home - more that I am trying to enter this in the most relaxed and calm way possible, which for me means staying at home as long as i can and preparing for labour in a safe environment. Wouldn't hesitate to transfer if I needed to.
Thank you so much for all your lovely comments and stories!

Three homebirths, three very different but fab experiences here. First, midwives out at 9am, checked me over and went away again. Pottered about, had a nap, got midwives back about 3.30pm, she was born 5.45pm.
Second, niggled a bit in the evening, by 11.30pm decided it was the real thing, rang midwives about 1am, they arrived around 2am, was holding him by 2.30am.
Third turned out to be a BBA (born before midwives’ arrival) but being a planned homebirth and having done it twice before, it was ok. We had all the stuff ready anyway. I’d been contracting sporadically since v early hours of Tuesday and had resigned myself to a long long latent labour. By early hours Wednesday, cx still far apart but I was fed up and thought I’d get the midwives out just to see what was going on. Rang them about 5am, woke DH up, next contraction started feeling a bit pushy. Caught her by myself on the lounge floor at 5.25am. Midwives arrived about 20mins after she was born, in time to sort the delivery of the placenta.
Tiny 1st degree tears (no stitches) with first and second, nothing with third.

First time round we also lived really close to hospital, and my logic was that they tell you to stay at home as long as you can anyway, so we may as well give the homebirth thing a shot and then if we’d ended up in hospital, we’d be in the same position as we would have if we’d planned a hospital birth anyway, so nothing really to lose. The monitoring and quality of care you get at home is (IMO) vastly superior to hospital care, for many reasons.
I’ve come across (in a semi-professional context) quite a few women who’ve planned homebirths, and as a Pp said, even the ones who ended up transferring in felt really positive about their decisions, and all said they’d do the same things again.