Anyone have a home birth with their first baby?

[chelle85]

I am a FTM currently 27+4 and seriously considering a home birth (I don't plan to have more children so this is kind of only shot of a home birth)

My pregnancy is low risk and I have been practising hypnobirthing and hoping for a drug free delivery.

But being a FTM there is of course this little niggling voice that keeps trying to persuade me it would be safer to just go to hospital. I intend to try to speak to midwife at my appt on Wed but so far she has not been particularly helpful with information.

I feel on the one hand at home I will have undivided attention of midwife (reviews of my local hospital rushing people onto delivery suite as they are crowning fill me with dread) and can be transferred to hospital if needed. I just worry of any 'emergency' reasons for being transferred and how long this would take (20mins from hospital plus wait for ambulance)

Anyone willing to share their home birth stories to help me decide

I did hypnobirthing and had a pool at home and an amazing team of midwives. I laboured for a couple of days with no pain relief but was pushing for hours and hours and getting nowhere so transferred to MLU (was exhausted and just couldn't eat anything!). Ended up having a c section - tbh it was absolutely amazing! The hypno and yoga kept me so calm throughout the whole birth, I felt so positive and well supported but completely ready to accept if things needed to change. I'm so glad I spent most of the labour at home, it was really lovely and even our cats were nice and calm and affectionate! And I remember absolutely everything so clearly. Even though the birth didn't go exactly how I'd hoped, it was still amazing and empowering.

The downside for me was the hands off approach which is so great for many - I was told at my debrief (by a surprisingly pro homebirth consultant) that had I started off in hospital it would have taken at least 24 hours off my labour which I would have appreciated in heinsight as it was an exhausting and unpleasent experience.

This is probably true, but those 24 hours would likely have been taken off by the use of syntocinon, which does cause more painful contractions, means you're less mobile with the drip, need monitoring (which also reduces mobility), more likely to need stronger pain relief, all of which means higher chances of instrumental delivery or c-section.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not a zero sum game is all. As others have said, there are pros and cons to both approaches. I was seriously freaked out by the thought of any intervention plus the delivery methods of any pain relief stronger than gas and air so I was much happier to avoid those even though I did feel that the experience was exhausting and took me a long time to recover from.

Despite being low risk throughout pregnancy I developed severe pre-eclampsia at 35 weeks and needed a highly-managed induction ASAP

It's a bit meaningless to talk about "empowering" TBH - I think any birth can be empowering, it's the feeling of going "Holy fuck I survived that, I did it", not "OMG, I'm so amazing for not having any pain relief! "

It is useful to talk about clinical factors, research, risk rates etc. This helps women to make an informed choice. In some cases the safest choice is a highly medicalised birth. You can't eliminate that possibility entirely.

Thanks all. Good to hear so many positive experiences. I am realistic about the possibility that I may have to transfer but feel like if I just went straight for a hospital birth and then everything went straightforward I would be kicking myself for missing out on the experience. Need to do a bit more research into what can go wrong because as much as I would like no interventions the most important thing is that baby and I are safe

That's the best approach

Also please consider that a homebirth doesn't have to be a 'drug free, hypnobirthing, pool in the front room with lights and candles' job either.

I had shitloads of gas and air, pethidine injection and (as I've been told) kept telling the midwife to bugger off when she wanted to check baby's HB. However the outcome was a healthy baby arriving safely.

I would add that because I was pushing for 2 hours the local hospital policy would have meant intervention after an hour (so forceps or ventouse) and my midwife made the point that in this case a home birth actually meant a better outcome for the baby.

Maybe empowering was the wrong word (it's certainly overused). In my case I Dec definitely meant fuck I survived that! I had this vision of a serene, drug free home birth, and actually getting transferred and having pain relief and a section was blissful and the recovery quick. I hada fear of hospitals but that experience totally changed my pov iyswim.

I knew beforehand there would be a high risk of being transferred to hospital, especially as a ftm. I was completely happy with that and lived really close to the hospital anyway. I think if I didn't I would have had second thoughts about the home birth personally.

I don't want to detrail the thread, but could you perhaps expand beyond an emoji Titty?

Obviously when there are medical problems then hospital is the best place to be.

In my case I was 2 weeks overdue, my midwife (who was very anti-homebirth) lied about me being in slow labour and told me my baby would die if I didnt go to hospital. I went, agreed to be induced only to be told that I was indeed already in labour. Instead of a calm homebirth where I was in control and comfortable I was made to push for 2.5 hours and ended up with an assisted birth that was very frightening, left me physically damaged and with PTSD. I had researched a lot and was still overridden on lots of points without clear information and basically not treated as a human at points. I wasn't fixed on a home birth, but I do regret the way DD's birth happened.

Good luck OP.

I really like the site Evidence Based Birth, it's really good for teasing out the truth without being biased towards either side. Sites like www.homebirth.org.uk are also good but definitely lean a bit towards "Anything medical is bad!" however I did appreciate the pragmatic stance on a lot of things. Worth noting that site hasn't been updated since 2010 and contains a lot of references to stuff which is over 10 or 15 years old. So double check any claims in case more modern research is available. For example when I had my son in 2008 I made a decision about vitamin K which I'd probably make differently now based on newer information.

'Even in an emergency, it can take time to track down anaesthetists, prepare the operating theatre, etc, which they can do while waiting for you to arrive so in reality not much quicker than you'd get this help from being in hospital already.'

In an emergency in hospital the reality is that of course time of management will be quicker and it's a little irresponsible to suggest otherwise.
The Birthplace Study is a good read OP.

Interested in reading replies. Very early days for me and am a first timer. when we had our first midwife appointment, she gave an overview of process. When she was asking about what hospital (so could book scan) she asked if we'd considered homebirth. I was surprised as though right now I count as low risk, I'll be 37 when I give birth and I thought that made me more risky. Looks like they're really going for supporting homebirth in my area, so I'm letting the idea percolate. We're not that far from the hospital, about 15mins drive. It's all a ways off though still. I'm guessing the best idea is to not get too attached to a certain way of it happening - plan and then roll with what happens..

Info is old but was from here: www.homebirth.org.uk/whatif.htm#cs

They reckon it takes around 30 minutes to get a woman into surgery even when it's a life threatening emergency. So if you're 20 minutes from the hospital you don't lose that much time. It's not like you turn up and then they start preparing, the midwife would phone ahead and they would start to make the necessary preparations.

Also as the article says most emergency cesaereans are not crash cesaereans and so timing is not as key as it would be in a crash situation.

I appreciate the Birthplace study is much more up to date than one from 2001. I'll have a look at that and refresh my knowledge.

My mum had me at home she said it was like a blood bath , it was everywhere. And my first labour was in hospital and that went wrong ending up with an emergency section, so I would never want a home birth

I had my first at home in a hired birth pool. Placenta slipped out of mws hands and I needed a new carpet. No issues at all apart from that.

I Had my second at the bc and had complications and was rushed to hospital after the birth.

Two pages and nobody has mentioned that even the (in my opinion, biased) Birthplace Study concluded home birth for first time mothers has a significantly increased risk of death for the baby? Did none of your midwives tell you this? How on earth are you supposed to give informed consent?

To the 37-year old poster, yes your age does make you higher risk, as does your first-time status. Your midwife is deeply irresponsible not to have told you this.

If the advantages of home birth outweigh the risks for any individual, go right ahead. But it is despicable to think people are not being given accurate information to make these decisions.

Oh and in a life-threatening emergency in a major hospital, decision-to-incision time can be single-digit minutes if necessary. It is nonsense to pretend otherwise.

Sycamore you haven't mentioned that actually it's extremely rare for a life threatening emergency to occur in a home birth on the basis of significantly greater monitoring and supervision. As soon as the baby's HB dips whatsoever then the mother is transferred.

Ok. Your baby is almost twice as likely to die but Peppatax says (on the basis of no evidence) that this is very rare. So you probably shouldn't worry about your baby being almost twice as likely to die.

Do you not hear how ridiculous you sound? Midwives are lying by omission to first time mothers about the risk of their baby dying if they choose home birth. Midwives in someone's home do not have the tools to detect "as soon as" - they only have intermittent monitoring. The bottom line is that some babies of first time mothers will die at home and those babies would not have died if born in hospital. People should be told this. Midwives should not be telling high-risk people like the advanced maternal age poster above that they are low risk and they should not be hiding from first-time mothers the very real increase in risk their babies face.

Sycamore - whilst I appreciate views from both sides I think stating that homebirth makea it twice as more likely your baby will die ia a bit blunt and misquoting the study

Yes the risk of serious complications increased from 0.5% to 0.9% (which is still classed as a small risk) but that included 30% of those cases inhaling meconium and complications such as broken clavicle etc. It is difficult in a study like this to show that those 9 women in a 1000 that suffered those complications would not have been the in the same group of women that suffered complications in a hospital setting

While it is important to be informed I find your post quite scaremongering.

@peppatax that may be the case but with an increasingly stretched ambulance service, you will not be able to guarantee an ambulance within the time frame you desire.

I wanted a home birth with DD but circumstances meant we had to move out of our flat and ended up living with my parents for the end of my pregnancy and they weren't happy for me to have a home birth at their house. We were due to move into our new house when I would have been 39+3, I went into labour at 39+1 despite trying my best to hold on (was on sex strike for a few weeks but DP was understanding) so had to go to hospital. I stayed at home for the vast majority of my labour with no pain relief, started at 4am got to hospital at 7pm was 7-8cm dilated and baby was born at 11pm with gas and air. The birth itself was great, but the stay in hospital after was awful so I discharged myself after one night as I was absolutely fine. I only plan to have DD and no more children so I am sad I didn't get my home birth as it would have been wonderful. I hope you get yours OP.

@sycamore I wonder if you're thinking of the daily mail headline re the birthplace study. In which case here's what the NHS said about the risk:

'An important point to note is that even though the risk associated with home births seems greatly elevated in women going through their first pregnancy, the absolute risks were still relatively low. To put this into context, they occurred in 39 of the 4,488 women who delivered their first child at home, and 36 of the 4,063 women who delivered their first child at home without complicating conditions at the start of labour.

It is important to highlight that the Daily Mail’s headline that first-time mothers who opt for a home birth ‘triple the risk of death or brain damage’ may be misleading: the study had used a composite score of a variety of birth-related injuries. Overall, of the 250 events they saw in this study, early neonatal deaths accounted for 13% of events, brain damage 46%, meconium aspiration syndrome 30%, traumatic nerve damage 4% and fractured bones 4%. Some of events these would be treatable.'

The midwife merely gave me an option. I'm at least 25 weeks away from making a plan! I was surprised. But because of my age, the advice is to consider on an individual basis. Obviously there's the chance I will develop other risks. However my other risk factors are low. She was doing her job in highlighting an option, I'm giving it consideration and I'll make up my mind when I need to. I'll do it with consideration of the risks, not scaremongering. And also with a knowledge that opting for a home birth doesn't mean I'll end up with one. Women are quite able to make decisions about this kind of stuff.

I live in the Netherlands and a lot of people that I know have had home births. Everybody here lives close to a hospital so you might want to check that out.

It wouldn't be for me because I'm too scared of the "what if"s but I have seen it go well a lot of times. I have to add that I also know of people that had a hospital birth but in hindsight would have been in trouble with a home birth.

Please get all the information you need and also prepare a bag for a hospital birth and keep an open mind about that. With the slightest doubt you will be transferred so you do need to prepare for that as well.

I did it! With a high risk pregnancy too, did the same second time round. Both easy births, if that's a thing? Can recommend a birth pool.

Read lots, know your rights, good luck!