When you can't get a midwife/SOM appt till two weeks after your due date - do you laugh or cry?

[whomovedmychocolate]

Had an appt with SOM today to discuss homebirth. Due to complications I was at the MAU this morning but no-one could find her to say perhaps we should reschedule, so my midwife called later to say 'really sorry but she's off sick'.

When I'd stopped laughing. I pointed out I had no mw appts booked in for the remaining six weeks of my pregnancy because said midwife said 'you'll have had the baby before then' and they are totally booked up. The world and his wife is having a baby here apparently.

They have reluctantly overbooked a clinic for me for 37 weeks but that's all they can do. So they have a ten minute shot to talk me out of a homebirth - together with doing all my bloods and reading me the riot act about what happens if I go overdue.

Ah bless. I'm finding it most entertaining. I know I can go to the MAU if I have any probs, and indeed I'm going in daily for a few days because they had a PET panic but I'd hate to be a first time mum desperately trying to get booked!

10 mins to talk you out of it? I don't fancy their chances!

Are you booked for a homebirth, if you don't mind me asking?

I told them at 24 weeks it was my intention. They have been formally notified twice. It's a HBAC as well. I've had two consultants and a CMW try and talk me out of it at regular appts in the past. The SOM midwife visit is their next level of menace persuasion.

On the schedule of appts the 36 week appt is the formal birth booking appt with the midwife, but round here at 34 weeks they try and send a SOM to visit you at home - but doesn't look like that will be able to happen now (oh dear ). Apparently for homebirthers you have to waddle out of the appt with the homebirth kit to take home.

My CMW has actually admitted she's hoping I'll have delivered before my next appt and because it'd be before 37 weeks I couldn't have a homebirth. Unfortunately the appt is for 36+5. So all I need to do is sit tight for two days afterwards and they are effectively stymied.

Oh my! What tactics! I'd hedge a bet that they wouldn't have such staffing issues if they didn't spend so much time threatening women out of talking through potential homebirth issues with women.

Shame on your CMW hoping for a prem birth to suit their system. What an extraordinary thing to say!

I wonder how deflated the SOM is feeling now?

Bet she thinks you've done this on purpose One of my friends eventually had NON COMPLIANT written just like that but underlined twice, on her mat notes. I've never seen a happier woman!

Over use of smileys. That time of the evening.

Fair play for going for HBAC, by the way. Nearly there now!

Shocking isn't it? But I've been treating them with an extra special sense of humour - TBH I was expecting them to be much more difficult and have treated it somewhat as an intellectual challenge to stay calm and factual rather than emotional about it.

I have 'I DO NOT RECOMMEND A HOMEBIRTH' written by one consultant and then 'Main risk is low risk of uterine rupture 1 in 400' by his boss underneath.

They've also taken to writing any anomalous results in red pen so they can easily refer to them (must be a real PITA for them to have to swop pens to write 'trace' every time). I think they realised I was taking the proverbial when I attached a choice of pens to my notes to help them out.

I wouldn't want to be my midwife though tbh. It must be easier with the more compliant mums!

wasn't a consultant obstructition was it, by any chance?

You have my respect WRT taking it on as an intellectual challenge. Calmness and balanced emotions don't tend to be a feature of my pregnancies, to date

I'm blessed with a like minded midwife at the moment, she's lovely. IIRC, she laughed heartily with me over my last birth plan in full (amused) support of my more, urm, eccentric statements? (I have a sneaking suspicion she knows exactly how to handle me and that in this case I am the one being humoured!)

I find myself in disagreement regarding the more compliant mums. Surely it becomes a little boring for midwives when faced with a human conveyor belt of apathy or blind faith and disconcern?

It was a consultant obstetrician but obstructition is a much better term for him

Ah now the secret to calmness is just treat absolutely everything as an option made by the insane. Yes, of course we could do that, we won't but, it's a thought.

I think the midwives are so snowed they are grateful if people don't turn up or don't care one way or another - at least round here. If you turn up and say 'I'm fine' they just agree with you and send you away.