I gave birth in my bathroom so why...

[foxytocin]

good one

At the risk of being flamed - the problem with risk and statistics is that it applies to a population not an individual. You may be high risk and need no intervention or low risk and need serious emergency intervention to save your life or the baby's. I agree that it should be your right to choose where to give birth but I do worry that the information is not being given in an unbiased manner. Human beings don't tend to be able to assess their own risks very well - or why would we buy lottery tickets? The odds of a serious problem in a low risk pregnancy are still higher than the odd of winning the jackpot.

I was hounded by a midwife who was horrified that I wouldn't consider delivering anywhere but a fully equipped hospital with a neonatal unit. I was low risk and she thought the birth centre would be better for me. In the end my labour went fine but my son would almost certainly have died or been brain damaged if we hadn't had emergency skilled help from the doctors (the midwives just flapped and paniced) after he was born.

"At the risk of being flamed - the problem with risk and statistics is that it applies to a population not an individual. You may be high risk and need no intervention or low risk and need serious emergency intervention to save your life or the baby's."

But the risks to a low-risk individual of hospital birth may be much higher than a home birth - due to the stress of the hospital environment slowing progress and leading to a cascade of interventions. And the risks involved in childbirth are not just those around loss of life (though it is good to use these stats as they are less likely to be determined by reporting policy). The level of care and attention in hospitals is often lacking, last week I watched as two women laboured in obvious agony in a hospital waiting room. Farmers value their livestock too highly to risk stressing them when in labour.

Now that I agree with - hospitals should be less stressful. The problems is you don't know until afterwards if you are one of the low risk people who will be fine or not. Normal labour is a retrospective diagnosis.

Snaf - this is why I thoroughly recommend hypnobirthing - it is designed to take the fear out of the process and remind us that our bodies are built to do this birthing job (95% of the time anyway) and if only we would relax and let our bods get on with it, then we would have an easier time of it.

Hypnobirthing might sound like a hippy option as well, but it really isn't. And I found the CD invaluable in sending me to sleep in the weeks preceding the birth . Can't praise it highly enough.

You do know if you are low risk - it is just not a guarantee of outcome. Someone in their twenties with a text book pregnancy and no known complications is low risk.

My risk of being struck by lightning is low since I live in the UK where that is rare - but of course it might still happen, it is just not worth worrying about. All we can ever do is make our decisions based on available information. It is a personal matter too, many women would feel safer in hospital even though they were classed as low risk.

thumbwitch - which hypnobirthing CD do you reccomend?

upwind - it was given to me by my hypnobirthing counsellor, as far as i know you can't just buy them, but I could be wrong! rampant commercialism rules and all that...

there you go, have just looked and rampant commercialism rules.
Can't recommend one then I'm afraid as mine was done by my hypnotherapist to the script she was trained in by the Hypnobirthing people.

info here

Thanks anyway! I might invest in the Mongan book...

mamain I am not surprised that it is Derbyshire. I had heard of this before. FYI the same thing was being told to women in Newham. That Newham had stopped them blah blah. She fought on iwth the help of AIMS and because she was treated so badly, by the end, Newham was slapped on the wrist by the Royal College of Midwives, made to pay for her to have an independent midwife and also told that they must also pay for an Indep. midwife for all women for the following 3 months and also must have a dedicated HB team set up by Jan 09. So it pays to challenge them and fight on.

If you want more details about fighting them on this, i'd be glad to provide more info and moral support.

The problems with a lot of hospital births is that they take many a low risk case and make them into one where one intervention follows another.

Then later on, the mums, dads, etc. interpret all these interventions as 'well if it wasn't for being in the hospital, me, my child etc. would have died.'

Many times we lack a lot of info to know what really happened, i am afraid.

As I have said before the first intervention is leaving your place of security and privacy, which no other mammal does except humans when they are about to give birth.

im a 'West Country hippies' who ended up with 3 csections.stoopid(smug smiling) woman.i think a woman should do what she wants -unless ofcourse told other wise,but no one has the right to say 'i did it this way why cant you?'.congratulations on her very cute baby though.

foxytocin - I'm a doctor. I have all the info on my son's care. His odds had we been even in the hospital car park rather than next to the big machines that go beep and the people who know how to use them would have been extremely poor.

i am not questioning anyone's individual story ummadam. i am saying that by the weight of numbers alone, hospitals do no present the best outcomes for mother and baby in low risk pregnancies.

as a dr then you are familiar with the WHO figure that a c/s rate above 10% as a target for all countries and why, i suppose. the uk's is currently 25%.

Foxytocin makes a fair point though, ummadam. It might not have been so in your case - and therefore thank goodness you were in the right place at the right time - but as a midwife I have seen many, many situations where low-risk women have been turned into high-risk cases simply by the fact of being in hospital. The negative effect on labour of merely stepping through the doors of a labour ward is something I see every day. There are policies and procedures in place that pay no heed to the needs of the individual and treat all women as potentially dysfunctional.

Whilst I understand the need to risk-assess and do so thoroughly, the attitude of 'childbirth is only normal in retrospect' is one that I would argue against vehemently. I would prefer to work on the basis of 'childbirth is normal until proved otherwise', as this is the only standpoint that protects women and baies from unnecessary and potentially damaging intervention, whilst still acknowledging the element of risk involved in all births.

Here is a silly question - why can't maternity hospitals be run like travel lodges with operating theatres attached and equipment on hand? They obviously don't cost much to run and are designed to be easily kept clean. That way each mother and her birthing partner(s) could have privacy and comfort in the same room during labour, delivery and recovery, combining many of the benefits of home and hospital births! It would also be efficient in terms of use of the midwives' time.

not above, i meant below 10%.

sorry, baby on lap.

Foxytocin, the midwife was horribly agressive and rude and told me I was risking my baby's life by having it in a hospital as I was low risk and the statistics show I would be more likely to have intervention if I was in hospital.

I agree that statistically home births are relatively safe for low risk births and maybe a better option for some women. The only problem as I said above is that we are not statistics. Even if the risks were only 1:1,000,000 Noone ever thinks they could be that one person in a million.

I would always encourage women to make an informed choice but to me that means hearing both sides of the story.

upwind, I have often wondered that exact same thing. Travelodges are probably cleaner and better maintained than most hospitals, as well, with much better parking!! And free TV!!

My unit was running at a section rate of just over 30% a couple of months ago.

How on earth have we got into the situation where 1 in 3 women 'need' surgery to have their babies? What does that say about us that one-third of women living in one of the most socio-economically advantaged areas of the UK are deemed incapable of having their babies without surgical intervention? These women aren't malnourished or ill or physically 'deformed'. For the most part they will have had normal pregnancies. They din't all start off high-risk, but we sure as hell helped make 'em that way...

Ummadam, pro-homebirth as I am, I can't condone your midwife's attitude. Rudeness and aggression should never play a part in any exchange between a midwife and her client, no matter how strongly either might feel. She was absolutely wrong to talk to you that way.

Snaf. I'm very happy to accept a "childbirth is normal until proven otherwise" as long as it isn't proven a long way from (as I have said before) "the machines that go beep and the people who know how to use them"

I agree that "The negative effect on labour of merely stepping through the doors of a labour ward is something I see every day." Although in quite a few cases I have experienced that this is actually just a long latent phase and that with encouragement and reassurance that they are not wasting anyone's time and it will happen when it happens, when active labour kicks off all is fine.

but THIS is what needs to change not taking people away from the interventions that might make a huge difference if needed.

ps. Sorry, I'm on my way out and really shouldn't have got into this conversation (the addictive powers of MN! )

I hope the births go well for all of you - whether at home or hospital. Please remember that this is not a crusade against doctors and we are on the same side! I encourage homebirth if that is what a woman really wants but there is nothing wrong with havign ALL the information.

'machines that go beep' - ahhhh, don't get me started on the way we are in thrall to those...

Oh I just can't leave - will have to hide the mouse!

thanks - I know how wrong she was, I'm still weighing up a complaint but I have to balance my fears for patients that I am referring to her team who I DO NOT want to be treated in that way - with the inevitable "she's just a doctor that is why she is complaining" which tends to happen in my experience

We're on the same side folks!