Why was consultant anti birth centre?

[Zipitydoda]

Had a consultant appointment today at the hospital and said I intended to give birth at stand alone birth centre as long as preg remains low risk.
This is my 3rd and I have had 2 v good births, no complications. He was negative about using the birth centre 'why do you want to go there. You know if any comPlications occur they have to call an ambulance and it is very difficult' etc etc

Why so negative? This is a hospital that regularly closes its doors to women in labour as they do not have enough beds/staff. I would have thought they would want to encourage use of alternative places when a pregnancy is low risk?

He has been trained to deal with complications in pregnancy, and sees them routinely in his job. He has probably forgotton/not realised that this is the exception not the rule. If you are fit and healthy and everything is fine, then there is no reason not to go ahead and use the birth centre. Is there a reason why you had to see the consultant? If he is unable to give you specific reasons why a birth centre birth is not suitable for your particular case then why take any notice?

What you took as anti, was actually (as you have written it) a question and a statement of fact.

Perhaps it's as simple as making sure all pregnant women are aware of the services offered at each possible birth location.

The consultant may have had to frequently deal with the awful consequences of mismanaged deliveries from this particular unit, or be aware that the midwives from this unit gloss over the possibility of things going wrong and of just how long it takes to get to the nearest hopsital. In other words he may know something you don't about this particular unit.
On the other hand he may just be well aware of the risks of complications in childbirth and would prefer everyone had their babies safely in a centre where there is immediate support should things go wrong (despite most deliveries not needing any additional support)
If I were you I would look carefully into this unit's safety record and things like how far it is from the nearest decent-sized hospital and how long it takes them to transfer women out if there is a problem - the fact the consultant seems negative about it makes me a bit twitchy tbh as generally if it's a good unit they encourage it in uncomplicated pregnancies.

I completely agree with MummyAbroad. Consultants see the "bad side" of birth and not the (majority of) pregnancies and births which are normal, straightforward etc etc. Yes they may have had to see awful consequences of births from that birth centre, but they would have had to see them had those births started off in a hospital.

It is similar to the argument that "most consultants and their wives choose c-sections, so that must be the safest thing". Again, no it isn't, but if you saw horrible things that happen with natural births then I'm sure you wouldn't be that keen either. However if you were a midwife and saw hundreds of normal, natural births, then you'd be swung that way.

I agree, look into the safety record of the unit, but do bear in mind the consultant is going to have a perspective based on what they have seen in their career. There are loads of instances of how people run their everyday lives based on the things they see in their jobs - e.g. the policeman I know who would NEVER let his children travel in the front passenger seat in a car (the most dangerous place to sit apparently), the pathologist I know who doesn't let his children eat anything with bits of nuts in (not even crunchy peanut butter) because he has had to deal with the postmortems of children who have died that way. But I bet a lot of us would do both of those things without thinking too much about it, because we haven't had to see consequences - we just see the thousands of times they happen perfectly safely.

You have had 2 normal births which suggests you will be just fine, but at the end of the day you need to do what is right for you and your DH. Good luck!