Great to hear some positive news about home birthing in the mainstream media!

[norktasticninja]

Here. The findings are nothing new TBH but its great to see some positive news about home birth.

The study was conducted in the Netherlands (where I live) and there is just one tiny inaccuracy I feel I must mention as it probably has a lot to do with the relatively high rate of transfer to hospital stated (1/3 of births).

There is no pain relief available at home here. G&A isn't used at all (either at home or in hospital) and TENS is pretty much unheard of. The article mentions transfers to hospital "if the mother required more effective pain relief in the form of an epidural", in actual fact transfer is necessary for any form of pain relief.

Riven

I always think of you when I see homebirth threads.

How awful this must be for you. I can't even imagine.

see Riven, i am coming from the opposite angle.

i had a hospital birth with my first. i arrived in hospital in an ambulance. still, the care i received was so bad that there is no way i would ever go back to hospital to have another child except for a c/s.

for me it boiled down to the failure of not having one midwife to one woman that by the grace of God I did not lose my life (or my child's) or one or both of us be permanently injured. i feel like I had a lucky escape that time and i am not going to tempt lightning to strike twice on me. For me, all the medical equipment in the world was useless because no one was there to listen to me and realise that something was going badly wrong. I also feel that my story is not unique. Hence why I try to advocate on MN for women to really inform themselves. Not just rely on midwives and the NHS to provide information.

my birth notes in parts is complete fiction. it bears no resemblance to what occurred in many parts. i can only imagine that even when things go wrong in hospital, fiction like those would make a case impossible to win.

Fwiw my take on the "choice" is that, if I had the option of 1:1 care in hospital versus 1:1 care at home, I would choose hospital for the 1 in whatever chance that something went wrong and we needed a paed or a theatre or whatever.

BUT that's not the choice I will have - assuming I'm "suitable" I can have 1:1 care with a trained professional with some equipment at home OR, as I did last time, I can end up scared and alone for the majority of labour - but hey, at least I'll be in a hospital buildng.

Afterall, when the shit hits the fan, it's not the building that saves you, it's mainly the trained people. At the moment (wrongly IMO) you're more likely to get more access to a professional trained expert if you're at home so next time that's where I'll try and be.

It's an issue missing I think from a lot of homebirth coverage - women like me who aren't turning away from medical knowledge, we're turning TOWARDS it by staying at home rather than freebirthing in hospital as 2 of my friends (literally) were left to do. .

"...an issue missing I think from a lot of homebirth coverage - women like me who aren't turning away from medical knowledge, we're turning TOWARDS it by staying at home rather than freebirthing in hospital as 2 of my friends (literally) were left to do"

Koppar That is exactly what I felt I was doing. I barely saw the MW in hospital with DD1. Incidently I saw rather less of her with my homebirth but that was my own silly fault for ringing her to come and deliver the baby when I was actually about to have said baby.