Extraordinary People - Outlaw Births (Is this legal??)

[yummymummy4]

I have just seen the following advert on C5:

Extraordinary People - Outlaw births:
Documentary following three womean as the prepare to give birth without medical care, midwife intervention or pain relief

I can understand trying to give birth without pain relief / Medical intervention but without a midwife?

I could not imagine going through it all without a midwife, it also appeared from the advert (though it could just be leaving parts out) that one pregnant womean at least had not had any midwife support as she was getting her blood pressure checked at a supermarket machine.

Is this legal?, what if something happens to the baby?.

I am not sure if the womean shown had even had a scan.

Have any other mums here come across this?

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i'll ask her pinktulips - you never know

in fact the current statistics show it's actually better for mom and baby to homebirth as there is statistically less chance of intervention and iirc less incidence of PND after the birth.

i know what's being discussed here isn't exactly the same as a MW attended homebirth but in yasmin and clairs case for example they went into it with previous medical knowledge and birthing knowledge so i sincerly doubt it was any less safe than a MW led HB, and was probably safer than a hospital birth

when looking at the HB statistics you have to take into account that mothers and babies who are high risk of some form of difficulty will be very unlikley to deliver at home. People who elect HB will tend to be at the lower end of the risk scale.

I would be interested to see any risk matched statistics

I am looking forward to watching this

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If Aitch is around I would be interested to know how much this programme might freak me out.

I've always be in the 'not in a million years' HB camp, but I hated giving birth and suspect I may be suffering from PTSD. I am wondering whether this programme might be a positive way forward for me to look at HB in a new light for next time (I think they are pretty supportive of them round here) or whether it will just freak me out.

why would it be illegal?
illadvised perhaps? but surely not illegal.

There was a risk matched study....I'll see if I can find it.

here it is

ib that is an interesting study, but the authors themselves say

'In Switzerland women wishing to deliver at home are a small minority. As this study confirms, they do not represent the childbearing Swiss population but are a self selected, low risk group with good health. Studying the outcome of home deliveries is important for quality control, but findings should be interpreted with caution. The number of participants was too small to detect differences either in maternal or perinatal mortality between the groups or in rare birth complications - for example, not one case of umbilical cord prolapse or abruptio placentae occurred. However, the low perinatal death rate was commensurate with the low risk status of the study population. '

Ie those women who chose to have HB are not representative and the study was too small to be sure.

Now, I would be the last person to gainsay them a HB, it seems utterly sensible for them, but you cannot look at a self selective group of women who are relatively free of complication an extrapolate to society as a whole.

For those women that it suits, HB is ideal and is the prefered option, but it is not necessarily the case for the whole population, and you cannot easily make comparisons on the safety of HB in a selected 'safe' population and the population that ends up in hospital (and I have a reasonable grasp of stats too )

I have not got a cluse about statistics but from a personal view I cannot see that much difference between a homebirth with some medical knowledge to giving birth to my two girls in a midwife unit, only having recusatation equipment (spelt wrong I know, its late), can you have that in a homebirth?

I used gas and air and normal painkillers and a bath, as anything else required 35 mile trip to bigger hospital. I might have been able to have pethidine but would nt want that again, I had it with my first and cannot even remenber the birth. It was a weekend both times so only had 1 midwife with another on call arriving for the birth but she was not in the room. There was a docter on duty in the adjoining casulty but as we only live half a mile away there would not have been a great difference in staying at home.

I am not 100% sure but in the nine years I have lived here I have not heard of any deaths at the unit, if there have been there has been no negative reflection on it and is well regarded locally and most mums who cannot birth there are devestated.

(As I said above the aftercare is like a private hospital.)

maybe this has already been linked but journal 19 no. 3 answers the question on whether a Free birth is illegal or not. click on 'journal' then the edition.

the book by Ina May Gaskin has an addendum of the outcomes of over 2000 births at The Farm Midwifery Center in Summertown Tennessee. They do a wide range of births including breech, twins, grandmultipara, premature and post date pregnancies which normally exclude women from having a home birth in this country. Their success rates would make the best hospitals proud.

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Yes, I agree mb, I never said it showed anything about the population as a whole (or about anything in fact), just that it was a risk-matched study.

I'd never advocate a hb for a high risk pg.

Prolapsed cords are way too rare to ever get decent stats on, but having had a case in the family, I'm very thankful for the existence of emergency cs.

re getting the baby registered etc (was it Prunners who asked), I am in England, so maybe different than Ireland, but after my unassisted (unplanned) homebirth the mw who eventually turned up just did all the paperwork and ds2 was in the system.
So I guess just call them after if you go down that route.
In my case ex called 999 in panic after I gave birth, but ambulance people did nothing more than look at me quickly, decide I was ok and retire downstairs to drink tea until the mw arrived.

HB midwives do carry resuscitation equipment and oxygen

Thanks Pruners, so there is not any real difference then between my "hospital birth" and a home birth.

What really got me thinking though was not the unassisted birth side but the whole thing being unregistered,Not ever telling a docter, midwife that you were pregnant and then self care and birth.

Does anyone have any experience of this, what happened when you had to register the birth which you would need to do to prove the baby was yours, register at a docters and enter school etc.

I agree Pruners that the women who birth at the Farm are motivated in doing so. It does require a certain approach to birth from the woman and the care team, be they mw, docs/obgyns, and family members. It is partially about a changing the prevailing cultural approach to childbirth.

However, I believe that at the moment there is more demand than there is supply of this sort of service within the health care system in most industrialised countries than there are the willing practitioners and facilities.

I for instance am currently not getting the support I expect for a water birth at home and have to write stroppy letters to the Supervisor of Midwives just to hopefully get the support for something i am legally entitled to. I don't need this stress in this pregnancy. I am afraid that I will reach a point where I will no longer trust any of them to attend my birth. It makes me feel like if I can't trust these people, I may find myself resorting to calling them as late as possible to attend my birth. And I have always considered myself 'normal' before.

It seriously makes me want to run away to The Farm. I have become very homesick which is a sign that right now this is making me very unhappy. I am acquainted with 2 of the founding members of The Farm in another life before children and marriage so I feel like i know who i would be running away to.

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It is not illegal. In the UK women own their own bodies. They don't break the law if they try to kill themselves. They don't break the law if they refuse a blood transfusion or abort their babies and they don't break the law if they give birth alone. That is as it should be. Once a child is born there are then duties to ensure it is safe which is why parents who don't feed a child or refuse it a blood transfusion then find the state interfering.

There was a court case about state of mind in labour just before the twins were born which I found comforting. The court said a woman in labour did have her faculties and could make an informed decision to refuse a C section against medical advice. I think the hospital applied for the court order to force her to submit to one whilst she was in labour. The court said the woman's choice prevailed even at risk of death of the child before birth.

I think if you take drugs whilst pregnant which kill or damage the child you aren't acting against the law either. In other words the moment of birth is the deciding time.

I never thought of it like that, that the mothers rights prevail up until a live birth, then the baby has its own rights.

I am not sure how I feel about the state "interfering" but I can understand avoiding services would set of alarm bells. I personally have had to fight for help for my Asd son from SS.

I know of a local mother who avoids every visit by ss and hv though a lot of neighbours were so concerned they got them involved in the first place and she is getting some help though she dislikes it.

I think that in some areas the watch lists are so long they do not mean a lot but that is a seperate dabate!

Pinktulips - I am in the west of Ireland, I have also experienced the "care" of the local maternity unit, I am not fabulously rich and I have booked a home birth for next baby. HSE grant and health insurance cover all of fee of midwife. Only problem is insurance issue needs to be sorted, which is not my issue. Can you talk to midwife and explain situation, perhaps circumstances will allow for fee reduction? I have spoken many times to the (very few) independent midwives who practise in this neck of the woods, and I can honestly say none of them struck me as money grabbing. Sorry to hijack. Programme sounds great though!

am on medical card so although i'd get the state grant i'd have to fork out the rest my self as have no health insurance.

how much is it costing you if you don't mind me asking? are you using the lady who's based in ballinrobe? i think i might be at the top end of the price range based on location, am at least an hour and a half away from any of the three based in the west.

will email a few though and see what they say, even if they could arrange some sort of steped payment it might be just about doable says she with loans coming out her ears!

insurance is extended til 30th of september apparently and after that HSE is expected to take over (oh goody )