Planning homebirth - options if you change your mind?

[willowlondon]

Hi all,

I'm planning for a home water birth (for various reasons) but I'm only 21 weeks and it's my first baby and I wondered if anyone else has experience of planning for a homebirth and then changing your mind closer to the time, or when Labour begins at home.. if you decide you want to go into hospital would the Midwives still let you go to the birth centre to labour in a birth pool or would you be forced to have your baby on the labour ward?

Things are really unclear and half the appointments have been cancelled due to Covid so it's impossible to speak to a midwife and I don't really know what hospital policies are.

I'm at queen charlottes & Chelsea in london which is part of Imperial.

Keen to hear from anyone whose booked for a home birth and then changed their mind at the start of labour.

Thanks!

You can change your mind at any point OP and go into a birthing centre or similar but what you can't do is plan for a hospital birth and then change your mind last minute and stay at home.

I planned a home birth for DC1 and did stay at home for most of it, but transferred right at the last minute following advice from the attending midwife.

Just bear in mind that you might not get a pool, even in a birthing centre. With my DC2 I rang the hospital when I was ready to go in, asked if the pool was free (yes) and by the time I got there 20 mins later it was occupied.

It's always wise to have a plan B as no-one knows how their labour will go.