free birthing (please don't post if you don't like the idea)

[workstostaysane]

anyone done it, interested in it, read the books?
i'm only just pregnant for the 2nd time - had a totally drug free wonderful home birth first time around and now keep thinking i'd love to do it without a midwife this time. just interested to know if there is anyone else really.

[Flllightattendant]

I've only read the first 30 posts or so but just have one thing to add, that IMO birth is very much a question of 'luck' - no matter if you prepare to the hilt, things can and do go wrong.

I'm interested in the concept of freebirthing in the same sense as I'm interested in free rock climbing, I would love, love love to do it but I am just not sure that risking the baby's condition is something I would want to take credit for if something went wrong.

I had a great, if painful and sudden, birth last time - nothing was wrong and I laboured some of it 'alone' but right after he was born, I had a big bleed - nobody could predict it and I could have died without the right attention straight away. Therefore the baby would very likely have had no mother.

That's all I'm saying. Birth takes us all by storm, you can have a great birth or a crap birth and you have very little control over which, in some ways at least.

Good luck if you go for it

[Mintpurple]

Duchesse - 'Even the midwives don't enjoy the hospital environment.'

Actually, the majority of midwives do like the hospital system, and thats why they stay there. On mn, we are much more exposed to people (m/w and mums) who have a more natural and sympathetic approach to birthing the way nature intended, but I can assure you that even by just being on mumsnet, we are not entirely mainstream

Even on the unit where I work in central London, I am usually allocated to work with mums who want waterbirths, natural labours or have doulas with them, because most of the other m/w on the labour ward are 'not into that kind of stuff'

As for being gobsmacked, well, while I would not be involved with the freebirth, nothing surprises me in midwifery any more

[Slubberdegullion]

duchesse, my comm mw was absolutely gutted when she found out I'd had dd2 without her being there, but as she wasn't the mw on call she didn't have the "red"phone.

Her first words to me when she came round to see me 1 day pst delivery were "could you not have just hung on for one more day then?" said with .

fwiw I'm with lulumama with the 'what if' doubts. dd2's home birth was fantastic and 99.9% smooth going, however there was a small episode (during transition phase..think that's the right term) when I became crazed shouty and fraeking out lady. Poor Dh was sorely afraid. The midwife was just top notch, she just said a few calming, but with firm voice words and my sanity was restored.

In the spectrum of 'what ifs' during labour I'm sure a scared and irrational woman is very common occurance, but if it's the first time you have experienced such a thing then a calm word from someone you trust is priceless (said in barclaycard voice).

[Anna8888]

duchesse - you are obviously in admiration of the Dutch system where the percentage of midwife-led home births is the highest in the world.

However, for such a system to be viable it is critical to have a very dense and urbanised population that allows nearly all women to live within striking distance of a hospital, should things go wrong. The Netherlands is an unusally densely populated country.

[duchesse]

Anna- the women who give birth at home in Holland are also screened very carefully. While it is true that some problems can develop unforeseen in any birth, many more are utterly predictable given the right screening in pregnancy, and taking a careful history. And should unforeseens develop in hospital, you are clearly in a much better place to have them dealt with BUT is is 100% hospital delivery really worth the risk of the inevitable unnecessary interventions?

[Anna8888]

I don't think that hospital delivery need involve unnecessary interventions at all. In fact, when I had a hospital delivery, I had absolutely no interventions at all and felt under no pressure whatsoever to have any - quite the contrary. But I was extremely glad to have a paedatrician on site - the birth was totally straightforward for me but not, unfortunately (and entirely unpredicatably) for my baby, who needed vital and immediate attention from doctors within 10 minutes of birth.

Home births are much cheaper (around £500) for the NHS than hospital births (around £900 for an uncomplicated delivery). If you are motivated by saving the taxpayer money, they are the best way to go.

[belgo]

Anna - I got a payment from my insurance company when I had my home birth.

[duchesse]

When I had my two home births in 1995 and 1997, my midwife told me that home births cost the hospital £700 despite the full-time presence of two midwives, whereas hospital births were each funded to the tune of £2000. The extra £1300 was set aside for law suits, which did not apply in home births as all the parents sign a disclaimer for home births. I was shocked.

[Anna8888]

Belgo - indeed, if you are motivated by saving the insurance company money - how very nice of them to give it back to the insured .

[Anna8888]

duchesse - I gave birth in Kent in 2004 and possibly the figures I was given (by my midwife) were figures for that trust.

But it is generally true that home births are cheaper for the taxpayer/insurance company than hospital births. I quite bought into the idea that it was both safer for me and my baby and cheaper for the taxpayer to avoid medical intervention in childbirth - hence I had no pain relief bar hot baths and gave birth in a position I would not like anyone bar the midwife (whom I would never have to see again) to have seen me in .

[belgo]

money wasn't my motivation strangely enough but it was nice, a couple of hundred euros I think.

[duchesse]

Mine were born in Surrey dontcha know. Much much more expensive than Kent probably. Bloody Surrey.

[lisalisa]

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[Anna8888]

Interesting, lisalisa, and .

My (excellent) antenatal classes didn't teach any breathing techniques - they were all about empowering the woman, managing pain without drugs, listening to your body and trusting the midwife to be listening to your body too, so that she could best help you.

[lisalisa]

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[Anna8888]

Yes, in 2004.

The NCT has done fabulous work in that interval lobbying the NHS to change its practices to empower women during childbirth.

[Pruners]

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[Lulumama]

i don;t get the prescriptiveness of the breathing either

although hypnobirthing seems big on breathing the baby down, and i think that seems to work . i suppose it is more gentle than 'puuuuuuuuuuuuuuuush!'

i found G&A a godsend as it reminded me to breathe rather than hold my breath.

i think sheila kitzinger is quite big on breathing for labour and birth

i had a go at it, but after i had my DCs, so not that useful, but wanted to practice , in case anyone asked me about it.

WTSS.. have you talked about this in RL? what has the response of friends and family been?

[workstostaysane]

lulumama interesting you should ask. dh just came home to find 'unassisted childbirth' delivered by amazon today and had 1 word -NO. but he said that when i suggested a home birth the first time round and now he is the strongest advocate. i'm pretty sure i could not tell anyone in RL that it was my intention - they would really freak. the only way i can currently see of doing it is just not to call the midwife until all done and dusted.

it still seems exteme to me but the more i think about it, the more i like it.

re the placenta lulumama, the last time round, my midwife kept asking me to push it out (so that they could go home and have a cup of tea as i recall),although when i asked did i really have to get it out so quick, she said it was dangerous if it took longer than 30 mins and that i would have to transfer to hospital if it didn't come soon. but i just read somewhere that a woman who had a UC waiting an hour before passing her placenta. and in fact, i pushed and pushed trying to get it out for her but eventually i got a contraction and it came out easily and i realised even then that there was nothing i could do to get it out - i just had to wait for my body to do it.
anyway, this is a long way of asking if it is dangerous to wait to deliver the placenta.

[ChasingSquirrels]

re placenta - my mw didn't arrive until an hour after my unassisted birth, and I hadn't delivered the placenta, it was about another 30/50 minutes after she arrived as I recall - by which time I was getting a little stressed about it but she didn't seem at all bothered - but they she did say "well we normally give it an hour then think about whether we should do anything, so lets give it a little longer" - so maybe she didn't actually put 2 & 2 together re the baby actually being born an hour BEFORE she arrived.

[workstostaysane]

thanks lisalisa for your post which i found really moving.
i haven't dismissed the idea of a medical presence, its just that i find the idea of doing it alone very attractive.

also, the more i look into it, the more i seem to find that high mortality rates in the developing world are more due to malnutrition and difficult circumstances during the first year of life rather than childbirth itself. also, simple hygeine standards are infinitely improved since the days of not even washing hands before surgery and that is a major factor in reducing maternal mortality - rather than the act of childbirth being a hugely dangerous activity in itself.
i'm not at all saying it is without risk, just that a risk of 5% of something going wrong is vastly less than general anxiety about the whole process would have me believe.

what do you think?

[workstostaysane]

thanks lisalisa for your post which i found really moving.
i haven't dismissed the idea of a medical presence, its just that i find the idea of doing it alone very attractive.

also, the more i look into it, the more i seem to find that high mortality rates in the developing world are more due to malnutrition and difficult circumstances during the first year of life rather than childbirth itself. also, simple hygeine standards are infinitely improved since the days of not even washing hands before surgery and that is a major factor in reducing maternal mortality - rather than the act of childbirth being a hugely dangerous activity in itself.
i'm not at all saying it is without risk, just that a risk of 5% of something going wrong is vastly less than general anxiety about the whole process would have me believe.

what do you think?

[workstostaysane]

wait! chasingsquirrels, did i miss something? did you plan that or was it by accident? and how did it go?

[HappiesGlamore]

my last birth was a home birth. im v v lucky to have had super easy straight forward and quick births all 3 times and despite mw's and dp and my mother being there and abouts... i did it all on my own. it was a water birth and they cant touch you or the baby till hes out anyway so it really was me in the pool doing it on my own tbh.

didnt mind people being there to say/think how f'in marvellous i was tho
and to clean up afterwards
and get me lunch and run about after my 1 and 2yos for me so i could sit about with the new one

i respect the choice to freebirth. if you have nice easy uncomplicated births like me, i dont see any reason why not. good luck

[ChasingSquirrels]

I posted V early on (first few posts), I did have an unassisted birth (almost totally - at the point I gave birth dh was cutting some bubble wrap on the other side of the room) but I didn't plan it - I just had a very quick labour.
It went fantastically - BUT quick births are usually problem free I understand.