Homebirth - distance fom hospital

[HolyGuacamole]

Hiya

TTC so not even preg yet. However, since we have decided to ttc, have been looking at all aspects of childbirth as I am absolutely terrified a bit scared and want to inform myself of the best options. I asked on here about tokophobia and the fab answers I received made me read lots about natural homebirths/waterbirths and I love the idea of this and being more in control and hopefully not too much intervention.

Apart from being physically suitable for homebirth, is there a requirement distance-wise that you have to be from the hospital? My nearest hospital is only 10 minutes away but they don't have a maternity unit. The maternity unit is about half an hours drive away - does that mean a homebirth is not possible?

If something went wrong, would they use the nearby hospital or would I have to wait on an ambulance and have a 30 minute journey to the maternity unit? (scary!)

Also, can you have a waterbirth in hospital?

Have you come across the homebirth site? There's masses of info on there that you might find useful.

As an aside, there are no legal requirements for a home birth - there may be hospital policy, but as you're not their employee you don't have to follow it. (That's not to say there aren't situations where a homebirth would be rash or foolhardy, but it would still be your choice and not your MWs.)

I'm about 25 minutes from the nearest maternity unit / A&E. My biggest fear of labour was of being put in a situation that was out of my control (like being told "we have to augment you because you're not progressing fast enough"). Being at home, and using IMs that I had a chance to get to know before the birth, took that fear away for me.

Having done a lot of reading DH and I decided that the benefits of a homebirth outweighed the (very small) risk that something would go wrong so quickly we wouldn't be able to transfer in time. For a low risk mother there are, thankfully, few problems that don't have warning signs hence few problems that would necessitate a blue-light journey to hospital.

Thanks for the great replies

Hello!

We live in a pretty out of the way place in Cornwall and the nearest hospitals to us are 45mins to 1h15mins away. The mw's round here are extremely pro-home birth as it reduces the stress of the mother not having to make the journey! I am planning a water-birth at home, but I also know that my mw team are very experienced at picking up signs of distress or other problems and they always act sooner rather than later because of transfer times. I also know that if I did require a transfer it would be in and ambulance with blue lights and all to get me there asap. However, the number of emergency transfers are so few due to the mw's competence that I feel really comfortable being at home. My DD was born in hospital in Cheltenham (a very stressful experience) so I am really looking forward to a hopefully more relaxed birth!

I would say - check out all your options, think how you feel about the limited pain-relief options at home, the benefits you can think of of being at home - and remember you can always change your mind!!

HTH

xxx

I had 2 homebirths and one where I was transferred to hospital. My hospital is also 30 mins away but the ambulance was here really quick and I was there pretty quick. HTH