What happens at midwife home visit? (31 week appt)

[greentshirt]

I have my midwife coming this afternoon to do my 31 week appt at home. I'm planning a homebirth if all goes well but just wondered what the purpose of them coming to my house is, do they have a good nosy round?! Nothing to see at the moment apart from mess and brick dust as we are up to our eyes in home improvements (I'm seeing it as a massive achievement to have nothing in the living room with a dust sheet on it in honour of her visit!) but are they looking for anything in particular?

She seemed mainly keen on meeting my husband, they do love to tick the 'unaccompanied' box at my children's centre for some reason, I get the impression she thinks he doesn't exist because I don't bring him to every appt to watch her checking my wee!

they need to risk assess your house for a home birth. It needs to be suitable (and with the brick dust they would say its not, so they'l probably need to come back)

That's not the impression I got, home visit is standard in the notes of how appts will be conducted for 31 weeks. I wondered if it was more 'checking you don't live in squalor' assessment rather than suitability for anything else or else why would everyone have one?!

in our area they don't do home visits for homebirths until 36 weeks. Maybe it is general 'what is your situation' stuff?

The unaccompanied box is not because they want to check to see of you actually have a partner but to check that they have had the opportunity to talk to you alone especially regarding domestic abuse (well that was my understanding anyway).

wombat is right about the unaccompanied box. They worry more if they don't ever get to speak to you alone.

With my home visit she asked where baby would be sleeping and asked questions about my dp such as if he was violent in any form and how I felt in myself and if I felt pressured by him. Same was asked after I had dd by my HV. HV asked if he ever pressured me into sex but HV didn't have a look around

Yeah I know why the do the unaccompanied thing, it's the raised eyebrow way in which she does it that I don't like!

She does know we are up against it on the home improvement front, I thought same as you Penguins that it's a situation check more than some kind of home assessment, just wanted to make sure as I'm not prepared for a full on assessment of whether I can have a homebirth or not, would have put it off otherwise until the work on the house is done.

We had our home birth home assessment at more like 36 weeks, the builders were still in and we gave her a mug of coffee on an upturned old door balanced on two cardboard boxes. In the kitchen that had nothing but a sink and a half tiled floor. She said that she wasn't here to judge our house, that we were clearly working on it (!), that it had potential(!!!) and that as long as we had running water, some form of electricity and clean towels (and a kettle & biscuits!) then it was fine by her to have a home birth.

As it happened the decorators left 4 days before my labour started, and we had just about managed to move a bed into the bedroom and a sofa into the lounge, which was actually great as there was loads of room for the pool and for me to roam the empty but very clean house!

So I really wouldn't worry if your lounge is full of brick dust at 31 weeks. If the baby came before 37 weeks then you'd be going to hospital anyway, and hopefully you'll be looking to have the work done by 37 wks.

Good luck with your homebirth!

Had our home birth assessment last week and the midwife was lovely. A lot of it was logistics - what's the parking like, can we get visitor permits, how easy to get their stuff down the stairs and me up the stairs if I had to be transferred, where we planned to put the birth pool and if there were electric sockets nearby that could be a hazard if it had to be suddenly emptied - that sort of thing. She also talked about things we might need to get if we hadn't already - plastic floor coverings, a step for the pool, clean old towels, good light source etc. She suggested moving the sofa to allow more room for the midwife to be able to access the pool from all sides.

She talked about when to get in touch with them, what they would do when they were there and under what circumstances a home birth might not be possible / why people get transferred to hospital. She also went through our birth plan (which we hadn't yet done so it was useful to answer her questions and think about it all).

She spent over an hour with us and it was all very reassuring and didn't feel at all as if we were being "inspected". It was at 36 weeks.
Oh, and we're also in the middle of building work...

Good luck with yours and the home birth!

Useful and reassuring thank you! Will update later!

Just to update, was as a few of you said, she just did the usual checks that she does at the normal appts then went through thd birth plan bit of the notes, discussed pain relief, who birthing partner would be etc. nothing unusual at all, and she only came into the living room so my DH is very disappointed at the amount if time he wasted scrubbing the bathroom in case she wanted to see if the bath was suitable for labouring!

I have another appt at 34 weeks then they do a homebirth appt at home at 36 weeks when they deliver all the gas and air etc.

Thanks for all of the input!