Newly upduffed and laden with questions. Homebirth, cloth nappies?

[Sundaylunchhappy]

Hello.

Can't quite believe I've graduated to this board after years of lurking on conception.

Dh and I are thrilled to bits to know we've got a new human on the way, excited, scared, happy... you name it I'm feeling it.

This is the first baby for both of us and it's been quite a journey to get here. However now we are here I've realised that for all my useless knowledge about pram types, I have no idea what happens next.

My booking appointment is scheduled on the 21st August, so I'm around 4.5 weeks... very early days I know.

Questions as follows:

I'm really interested in home births, everyone I know who has had babies have said I'm mad/irresponsible especially as we live about 30 minutes away from the hospital. Any experiences on home birthing a first baby?

Cloth nappies, totally get the savings to both our coffers and the environment. Can I use these from the get go? If I had to give birth in hospital will they refuse cloth on hygiene grounds?

Baby equipment, we live in a very old cottage, has a lovely Belfast type sink that doesn't require leaning over. Also a big bouncy coach pram from family that could double up as day bed/bouncer. Do I have to have all the other stuff too? Baths/bouncers etc?

At the moment I'm happily tending my veg patch day dreaming about what life will be like a year from now. However as soon as I talk to baby gurus (which is apparently everyone) I'm a bit arrghh.

Thanks again for the replies, very helpful to hear lots of different view points.

Lots of the questions raised I feel I can confidently say "yup, got that covered".

Dh and I fancy ourselves as a bit of a Tom and Barbara so we are very homemade/homegrown types. I work very pt currently and will not need to return to work afterwards. I think this may make our grand plans for cloth nappies etc a little easier long term.

Also realise the support we have around us makes us stupidly lucky as I've read many posts by people who don't have the benefit of nearby family/friends who will be queuing down the garden path wanting to help out.

I appreciate everyone has their own opinions, however I'm keen to explore our options as this pregnancy progresses.

Thanks again for your input

Bear in mind that a lot of people's impressions of cloth nappies are 70s/80s era, with soaking in buckets and plastic pants. So you get a lot of "that sounds like SO MUCH WORK!" In reality we found modern cloth nappies very straightforward, and not much more work than disposables at all (& we were both back at work by 5 months, DC in cloth nappies until toilet trained at 2.5).