39 weeks - homebirth planned but a 3rd GP tried to put me off today!

[bigbadmom]

I'm 39 weeks today and all set to go for a home birth but once again have been thrown by GP's remarks. Went in today to pick up a prescription for pethadin (it's taken me two GP appointments, three phone calls to GP after he originally refused to prescribe as it's a controlled drug - despite it being on my AN notes that I had discussed with midwives and had booked GP appointment to get some, a letter from the midwives as further back up, and two trips to pharmacist who don't have it now 'til tomorrow - I can't believe the palava!). Anyway - GP number three used my visit as an opportunity to outline the risks of home births. His line (and the others) is that home births are basically a lottery. If you're the unlucky one in a thousand you may end up dead. Now my confidence is shot through again. I had really wanted a home birth, and now I'm in massive doubt and feel like I'm putting my and my baby's health at risk.
What each GP basically said was that "if you've seen as much I have then you wouldn't recommend them" - ie: 20 years of practice (in one case) has opened their eyes to the risks. Main ones cited were loss of blood and risk of there not being an ambulance / traffic being awful - therefore risk of death before getting to hospital.

Does anyone have any honest views here? Have I been unduely taken in by the Davina McCall school of homebirth evangelism? Should I just go and have the baby (at St Mary's Paddington - a great hospital 10 mins away form here in an ambulance) rather than push away at home with all the associated risks? I don't expect anyone to have the answer but I just need a bit of clarity here. I'm annoyed at how the midwives are all unanimously pro-home births and refuse to really even acknowledge the risks, whereas the GP's are so unanimously anti. It makes it very confusing for hormonal and expectant mums! I'm all set to go at home with birthing ball, TENS, hypnobirthing CD and birth bag etc...but now thinking about actually going into hospital afterall.
Any input much appreciated.
Thanks for your help,
BBM

I understood it as tangle did, but may be wrong.

I had a homebirth 10 days ago, bigbadmom. my first HB, my 4th child. The first hospital MW Is aw got really ansty with me about planning a HB, told me i couldn't have one due to having ahd eclampsia in my first birth- she even argued with me about how many children I already ahd FGS! i ended up in tears on the phone to my MW, who was great (I didnt know at the time but she'd had hers at home), and got lots of advice from here and from AIMs website.

I'm not having any more children, but if I were it would definitely be a homebirth again. It was almost a non-event- the boys went up to bed without a baby sibling and came down after midnight to meet him- no traumatic separation, no fraught journeys across the city, and dh to help through that first night when I needed torest as well as feed. And although i'd been worried about pain relief 9they won't allow pethidine at homebirths here now) it didn't actually occue to me to take any (despite a lot of pain) until I was fully dilated.

TuttiFrutti - possibly, they are saying that infant mortality was higher in general for the homebirth group. However, it comes back to how they took unplanned homebirths into consideration. Given unplanned homebirths are generally considered more risky the stats for those births are worse - but as there is no good data on the numbers, how do they know they've excluded them accurately? In which case how meaningful is the estimate?

Why do they do studies like this? Very good question...