Woman on Lorraine Kelly this morning who had home birth with her first baby.

[Eulalia]

Did you see her with her baby girl and husband. I just wanted to slap her smug face. "Oh I just did all the right research and everything was fine" then the doctor contradicted her of course but she just sits there looking so bloody pleased with herself.

Got nothing against homebirths of course but the woman wouldn't acknowledge that she was LUCKY to have an easy birth and it wasn't because she was so bloody clever.

Anyone else see this? I've forgotten her name, probably just as well.

has this week been particularly irksome??

Lulumama - I'm certainly not arguing that good midwifery practice / support during labour can reduce incidence of C/S but I think there's a bit of a risk in comparing CS rates as the groups of women using each service are self selected i.e. women who are known to be higher risk are probably less likely to use the ina may birthing commune, whereas the reverse is true for a major hospital. The world health organisation estimate taht 15% of the world population require C/S for valid medical reasons (although this figure is controversial). I think the UK is higher at about 20%????

it's about 13% inthe NEtherlands where home birth is commonplace
and about 24% here...

lulu, not irksome in particular, but I feel jaded and disillusioned. I am sure it will pass

that is true...but a number of the women there had issues that would have made them high risk in a obstetric setting

eg

breech & other malpresentations

multiples

also, they are a lot less quick to have labour augmented for failure to progress or hagve a c.s for the same reason

so, although small number of women, still includes ones that would have been managed as high risk

we need more birth centres, more access to home birth and more midwives !!

WHO says c.s level of around 10 = 15 % , and yes, lots of UK hospitals have higher rates,

Anyway have the right to keep a pregnancy completely secret and give birth on your own although at that point you have a legal obligation to register the birth. Would be fun if we could b ring up children completely unknown to the authorities, none of their DNA on the police and other databases, no records or anything. A free life never mind a free birth. I wonder how the registrar of births woudl know you'd had a baby if you didn't register it and brought it up and taught it at home etc.

My mother gave birth at home but my father was there (the midwife was late) and he delivered my sister (but my father's a doctor so that's not quite the same) although my mother would say she delivered us herself and the doctor/midwife were kind of superfluous. It is after all the woman who labours, does the work and bears the child.

Good points here. It wasn't that the woman had a natural 'free' birth that annoyed me - that is good and I like to hear about easy births. It was her attitude of 'just do some research and you'll be fine' which I felt was dangerous. Yes do more research and have less interventive births by all means but it was the way in which this women totally denied luck as having anything to play in her delivery.

I still don't know if my 3rd birth should have been so interventive, don't have any clear reasons for what went wrong, I think the medical staff perhaps were erring on the side of caution and agree that CS are too high definately. It's just about striking a balance between too much intervention and doing it all totally on your own which could work but on the other hand could be a disaster.

oh yes I agree luck plays a part in birth but there are lots of things you can do to help during pg and labour to increase your chance of a straightforward birth
staying at home being one of them

eh?

yeah, i've got to agree with harpsi, tbh about the perception of smugness.

i couldn't bf very well as it turned out, and i do remember feeling that some people were being smug about their ability to do so when they hadn't been through what i'd been through.

but now that i have some distance from it all i now see that they weren't being smug (which is a word so over-used as to be ridiculous on MN), i was being sensitive. not over-sensitive, mark you, becasue after all what does that really mean? you are exactly as sensitive as you should be, it's just that other people can't always work around that.

of course, it's the distance that's the key. you can't see it when you are in the middle of it.

i think freebirthign sounds amazing, personally. i'd never do it, in fact my medical circumstances mean i'll porbably never have a homebirth, but it does sound wonderful if everyone's happy and healthy. it's a risk, though, and not one i'd take in the end.

The problem I have with freebirthing is that the greatest risk is to the child, not the mother (whose choice it is). As a very rough rule of thumb a baby is about 10 times as likely to die as a mother during or as a result of birth. That doesn't include the risk to the baby of life-long disability caused by asphxia, birth injury. Thinmk women should have more imformed choice and options about how / where to deliver, and agree with Lulumama there should be more birthing centres / midwives rather than large hospitals, but think freebirthing is a step too far.

I do agree with those who have said people have forgotten how dangerous and life threatening childbirth can be. If I hadn't been in hospital to give birth to ds he almost certainly would have died and I probably would aswell, in a way it's amazing that the assistance of a doctor prevented that from happening. But no one should be made to feel that they have had a less worthy birth because they chose to have medical assistance.

Since seeing how hard it was for my SIL to recover from a caesarien (sp?) I am in no doubt that they are definately not the easy option. So well done to all you brave people who had to have them. I think you are very brave for recovering from major surgery whilst looking after a newborn.

Its a bit like the abortion issue. When do we in effect kidnap a woman and force her body through something. At the moment whilst you're in labour you have total rights over your body and what is done to it. Once the child is born it has rights - so e.g if you're a jehovah's witness and won't have blood for you or the baby once its born they can get a court order and force blood into it against your wishes but if you're a Christian scientist and accept no medical treatment before the baby is born you're allowed to allow it to die than have help whilst it's still inside you. I think that's where we draw the line legally and I think it's a good place to draw it although I would give father's some rights they don't currently have.

I think homebirths are fine if you want them, but after a ventouse first time then c-section for large breech baby 2nd time, well I might not have been here to have the 2nd baby if it weren't for medical assistance. And if he had come out ok, then I'm sure I'd still be there trying to push no 2 out (and he's 12m old now). Alternatively with homebirths thats twice I'd have had to stagger out into the ambulance in the final stages!
There was another story a year ago about a free birth. Couple didn't even know they were having twins. Just each other and a loada candles in the darkened delivery room. mother refused medical assistance. The 2nd baby was transverse and died after the father gave in and got the mother transferred to hospital.

It's an interesting question - what kind of birth would a baby choose?

I guess they wouldn't be all that interested in candles and lovely music and would prioritise being safe and healthy.

But at the same time they wouldn't want an overmedicalised birth, unnecessary interventions.

I thought about this when I was pregnant with my 2 - tried to separate out what I wanted and what the baby might want and give consideration to both. Mostly I thought our priorities would be fairly similar.

I doubt if a baby would choose a free birth though, nice as it is for the mother.

yes, interesting question.
the fact is that interventions like forceps, foetal scalp monitoring, csection are - to a greater or lesser extent - increasing the risk to the baby. anything that carries a risk of skin or tissue damage (in the case of FSM,as certainty) woudl increase the risk of infection. if I was a baby I would be prioritising avoiding infection in the early days, esp in hoospital with the current risks of MRSA.
I would also be prioritising not having drugs like morphine - pethidine (affects on breathing) and epidural.
and also increasing my mother's/my chance of bf - and any instrumental delivery/Csection/ pethidine/epidural will reduce my chances of getting the long term/short term benefits of colostrum / breastmilk.
these kind of risk set offs are not easy to judge I know

Just had a catch up on this - its really interesting to see your points of view. I admit I might have been rather too negative esp. re my perception of smugness.

I actually really wanted a home birth but got told by my midwife that there was no point because if someone wasn't available I'd have to go into hospital anyway. My family weren't massively keen on the idea either for all the usual reasons so I just gave up and went with the flow and agreed to be booked into hospital. I think I might still be a bit angry about it.

hhmmm, if it's something you still want, you can presumbaly ask again. or is it too late? [knows nothing about homebirths]

pennypops sorry I have to go but if you want a home birth then it is your right to have one.
[[http://www.homebirth.org.uk/ try this site for more info]

you mw is talking bollocks btw

sorry try again

Thanks for this Harpsichord - I don't think it is too late to change my mind - my bigger concern is everyone else freaking out asking me "what happens if something goes wrong? You wouldn't be able to live with yourself"

I'll have a good look at this site though - thanks for the response.

if i didn't have any medical problems i'd go for it. the funny thing was, though, that because i had high bp i was monitored all the time which meant that the midwife couldn't leave the room. she was an absolute darling, so despite having a 'medicalised' birth (in the sense that i wasn't moving around a huge amount, wasn't in the pool etc) i got wonderful care, absolutely perfect for me.
i think the thing is that presumably with a homebirth they err on the side of caution if something looks awry, so as long as it's not too long a journey to the hosp you're probably goiing to get 'emergency' care if you come through the door, whereas (maybe) if you were in a labour suite you'd have to wait for the docs to come anyway.

I think the "what happens if it goes wrong" thing is just one of those things. You can plan for the most likely things and have contingency plans in place for those. But at the end of the day there is a bit of a leap of faith you just have to take. Deep down you have to feel that the place you have chosen to give birth, be that home or hospital, is the best and safest choice for you. Whether that would be right or wrong for other people is not your concern. There is no evidence whatsoever that homebirth is more risky or more dangerous either for mother or baby, all things being equal. One of the problems is that the statistics for homebirths usually include unplanned homebirths i.e those where the baby came early/unexpectedly for some reason. If you factor those out, statistically there is no increased risk of maternal or fetal mortality or morbidity through giving birth at home. So the decision really comes down to what do you want and where would you feel the most happy and comfortable. Homebirths are not the right choice for everybody, but people who have homebirths should not be branded as smug or irresponsible. In my experience women who choose homebirth are often more clued up and better prepared.

ouch. i'm sure it wasn't 'incidentally'... "anyway there i was rolling out some scone dough, grandchildren, and ooops, an 11 lb-er just popped out as i bent over to open the stove door".