Homebirth service suspended in East Sussex

[sunriseanja]

Some of you may be aware that Sussex Hospitals Trust took a decision to suspend the homebirth service at the beginning of the week.

They quote staffing levels as the reason to have to redeploy midwives to cover the hospital and it has put local women in an unacceptable position having to leave their homebirth plans.

Various articles have hit the press so far: news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/england/sussex/8576115.stm www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/2896979/Shortage-of- midwives-deprives-mums-of-chance-of-home-birth-and-Caesareans-on-rise.html www.theargus.co.uk/news/5067977.Sick_midwives_force_cancellation_of_home_\ births/ And it has been covered on both the lunchtime and evening news on BBC Sussex.

AIMS has been very helpful in preparing a document to support local mothers. The document states a very important message:

' It is unacceptable when faced with staffing problems in an obstetric unit to disband the home birth service, and deprive needy women of the specialist midwifery care that was established to help them. The problems with staffing need to be addressed seriously, and this will only be achieved when a community midwifery service is established by a Primary Care Trust, so that community midwives can focus of supporting normal birth and not be seen as stop-gap measure to be used when the Acute Units have staffing problems.'

Please share this information with Sussex women and respond to this post if you want to help the campaign.

Many thanks, Anja
Homebirth Coordinator Uckfield NCT and Independent Midwife

oh gosh!

i am in west sussex and had 2 fabulous homebirths, the last one just 9 months ago.

i don;t know how i would have felt if the service had been unavailable.
That said, if there aren't enough midwives then there aren't enough midwives and i don't know what else can be done about that tbh

i am very, very pro-homebirth, but i think we also have to remember that as much as we would like to give birth at home, some people want to go to hospital and that they need midwives there as well!!! i don't think we can get all outraged at the service being suspended, all midwives i've ever met are just trying to do their best in an over-stretched and underpaid job

but funding independents would cost a HUGE amount of money, and the thing is, as much as it's important to give women a choice, they CAN give birth ok in a hospital.

The community midwifes are completely separate to the hospital midwifes though aren't they ? One shouldn't be detracting from the other as never the twain should meet.

i thought the same millymollymoo

i had community midwives attending both my homebirths, not hospital ones

and it appears that it is only a temporary measure at 2 hospitals while they have unexpected levels of absence

i really don't see what else they can do

"i really don't see what else they can do"

Easy hire bank staff until staff levels return to normal.

Hope AIMS helps the mother to be affected by this.

if it was so easy to just hire bank staff don't you think they would have done so already? rather than getting community midwives back into the hospitals???

as i say, i am a huge proponent of homebirth, i'd encourage anyone to do it!
and if i was in that situation i would be absolutely devastated. but when they're struggling to fund enough midwives to help the high risk women in hospitals I really don't think that people who have the choice of where to give birth should be whinging about it!

and yes, we could get into how the entire NHS needs an overhaul, but let's face it, that isn't going to happen.

there are people in sussex right now who are being denied cancer medications because they're too expensive

and youi think they should be spending thousands on independent midwives???

I'm in sussex and am due in may, this issue directly affects me as I was planning on having a home birth after two very stressful hospital stays with my first babies.

It's not only homebirths that seem to be cancelled, my antenatal classes are off and so are hospital tours.

I am not whinging about not being able to book my homebirth, I would feel awful to know I was depriving women of midwives in hospital so I could be at home, but at the same time I am terrified of having yet another bad experience in hospital. Particularly as this is my last baby.

The other issue I worry about, is that if women now don't demand the right to give birth at home, then the powers that be will never consider homebirths to be normal, when really they should be much more common than they are.

I am not sure what we will do yet, but I think if we refuse to go into hospital, then someone will come out. I'm just hoping that it will be resolved by my due date.

nubbins - I think that is exactly what I would do, if you refuse to go in they have to send out a midwife who will then be covered by bank staff which is what should be happening in the first place without you being intimidated into a situation you don't want.
It annoys me no end people are expected to put up with this nonsense, there is the money for midwifes and cancer drugs it's just being misused and if you let them get away with it, it'll continue.
Anyone for a new mug to celebrate the opening of our MLU at £8 a mug ? Every new mum is to receive one in the first month Not to mention an "i'm smoke free babygrow" we received last time, went straight on DD's doll.

Half of homebirths in my area are unplanned. Having a homebirth service is for unexpected homebirths as well as planned homebirths. I am so glad I do not live in Sussex. The lack of a homebirth service will endanger lives as women with fast labours will be forced to give birth unassisted.

I had a planned homebirth and there is no way that I could get to a hospital in time as it was so quick. The hospital is a 40 minute drive.

I was lucky enough to have a community midwife based at the local surgery who could get to me in five minutes. Even so I only had one midwife instead of the two you are supposed to have for the second stage.

i don't view it as a luxury per se, although i don't know how it can be cheap as you need 2 midwives with you?
compared to like, half a midwive in a hospital setting?
imagine everyone wanted a homebirth, they'd need thousands of midwives... how can it be cheaper?

i do appreciate a woman's right to choose, really I do. I had 2 wonderful NHS homebirhts and I am so thankful for that.
but then i think that sometimes we need to stand back and instead of getting outraged about it, say well yes, it sucks, but what's most important is that everyone who needs a midwife gets one, even if that means some people go to hospital who'd rather have had a homebirth

we're incredibly lucky to have the NHS, but people seem to want to push it and push it and push it

I think ALL wards/hospitals would use bank staff as the first resort. I can't imagine that they would be using the community midwifes instead of bank staff. maybe they've got all the bank staff they can get?? we haven't heard all sides of the story yet have we? They know that this is far from ideal, and due to unexpectedly high levels of absence... i would imagine they're doing everything they can to get it back on track. but when you have no money to do it then what to do??

Of course something needs to be done. money need sto be spent better. there needs to be less management and more nurses and doctors and midwives and all the people doing the actual caring.
But that isn't going to happen overnight.

We all need to campaign for better maternity services, ebtter health services overall in fact. Not just have a moan when the bit we want to use isn't working like we want it to

when are you due nubbins?

i really do feel for you. I know when i booked my homebirths I was totally ready to do the whole "i'm not coming in, will wait for someone to come out", but yes, i'd have felt awful if they'd had to take someone from the hospital.

as it was i was lucky that both times I had 2 community midwives available to come (though they took nearly an hour the second time and i'd already had the baby lol)

i;d liek to think that in this situation i could manage to scrape together enough for an IM, though clearly that just isn't feawsible for most people. i'd have taken a loan out or something. anything!

Totally agree with thisisyesterday, the NHS has been affected by the recession too and is being told to make cut backs, and this id one of the areas where cut backs are made. The midwives need to be in hosptal, its' the most efficient and risk free use of resources.

I'm not a midwife, i'm a mental health nurse, aside from the last 3 years having spent most of my career as a staff nurse/sister/ward manager of psychiatric in-patient units it SO isn't a case of "just getting bank staff in" . This can actually cause more problems than it solves, and I speak from experienece as being someone who would rather run a shift short staffed with a good, experienced but depleted team than with temporary staff who vart vastly interms of quality and experience.

Why should women who're at risk of complications or who want the safety and security of a hospital birth be forced to have poorer quality care so you can have your homebirth?

Homebirth midwives are usually senior (or they were years ago when I did my nurse training), and there are 2 of them. this is a huge resource, not to mention the cost of an ambulance which is MASSIVE when women need to be taken quickly to hospital.

I also work in the community now in CAMHS, aside from the risk stuff we would be classed as a "non essential service" and would have to be re deployed to the wards in extreme circumstances. I totally accept that.

Before cancelling the home birth service maybe hospital should look at cancelling midwife led units first.

The money saved by closing these wards can go to providing a high standard home birth service and the high risk mothers, transfers from home and emergencies still have access to the consultant led units in the hospital.

Just a thought.

So that should be the choice should it babieseverywhere? .

i find that quite shocking.

i gave birth to ds in a MLU. I had one midwife who popped in on me and then 2 right at the end. Paed on hand to check ds over when he arrived as had meconium in waters. i had to have ARM. Had I been at home I would have had the stress of going to hosp in an ambulance during transition due to meconium.

The reality is most wome want to give birth dafely in hospital esp with their first. resources should be deployed to meet these needs.

My suggestion would give all women the choice of home or hospital. Sussex hospital are preventing women from having any choice.

only temporarily.

people are so demanding these days. oh it's our right to do this that and the other, with no regard to how that affects other people

all i am saying is that yes, ideally homebirth would be normal. there would be enough staff to cover them and women could choose without all the scaremongering. and we can ALL work some way to achieving that.

but we have to accept that sometimes, things go wrtong. sometimes there aren't enough staff and that we have to say ok, right now this isn't going to happen, we'll go with the next best alternative.

a lot of people LIKE the choice of an MLU. perhaps they don't want to be at home because it's really far from a hospital, or because they would feel more secure in an MLU, but equally don't want to go into hospital

are you saying that they should just suck it up and choose one or the other??
if people have the right to choose HB then they also have the right to choose an MLU

The midwives on the home birth rota should not be supplementing the shortage of the staff in the hospital unit.

they are stealing from Peter to pay Paul.

When we know what our rights are and demand them, they will provide a decent home birth service.

If you are in Sussex write a letter to the Chief Exec. of the Trust and copy it to your MP and AIMS.