Has anyone free-birthed?

[Chalkybee]

Hi, please don't jump on me as I know this can divide opinions but I wonder if anyone has experienced free birthing and would mind sharing their experiences.

I'm pregnant with my 3rd, the first two births were fine, no complications. The first was a planned home birth but there was only one midwife on duty and she didn't want to deliver on her own so I ended up in hospital. The second baby was born in London, where I had an amazing dedicated HB team and baby was born at home with 3 wonderful midwives and the experience was exactly how I wanted it. Now we're back living in In the same area as we were with baby 1, but even more rural. There's one midwife who covers our village and I don't like her much. They've already mentioned that I might have to go into hospital if there aren't enough MW to cover and that it something I definitely do not want unless there is a medical reason for it. Hospitals make me anxious and feel out of control. So I am genuinely considering the option of free-birthing if there is no MW available.

Not only that, I'm also wondering about free birthing to be prepared incase there is a MW available but baby arrives before they do, given our rural location!

I'd love to hear any experiences, positive and negative to help me with this decision.

I had 3 fast vaginal labours. All under 1 hour. No complications etc with my 4th I was worried as also rural but was sure all would be ok again. No, I was wrong. I ended up being blue lighted to hospital due to baby being stuck....so please think about it all that it may go differently.

@chalkybee
Actually not only have I read the full thread I have had real life experience of people like you.
I have also seen both women and babies die, despite all that modern medicine can offer. I am not against home birth at all... I had one myself.. attended by 2 skilled midwives, and have attended many in my professional role.
As a midwife it is both my professonal and personal opinion that to free birth is a highly selfish act... driven by a narcissistic vision if ‘the perfect birth ‘.

It is much riskier than a home birth! A midwife can tell if there are signs that you or the baby is in danger, can phone the hospital for advice, can save you or babies life if needed.

Please have a hospital birth. If something happened to you or your baby you could die. Think of your other children. So incredibly selfish.

I'm not questioning your transfer time. That's fairly irrelevant, though do remember its 30 mins from you being in the ambulance...how long for an ambulance to get to you? You can be dead from a pph in 2 minutes unless you have someone there who knows what they're doing. That's the difference between a free birth and a home birth.

@Chalkybee it was scary. We knew DS1 was going to be complicated so were a bit prepared for that.

But I'll never forget hearing the midwife asking for a paediatric crash cart with DS2 (thankfully not needed in the end) and saying they needed to speed up getting him out. Thankfully once they broke my waters he was out very quickly.

I hope you manage to have a straightforward birth in the way you would prefer

Thank you @Dreamingofkfc. I've finally found the number for the MWs so I'm going to call them and go from there. Hopefully they can put my mind at rest. :)

And your snooty midwife might not be on call the day you go into labour. Or she might be lovely when you're in Labour.

I had 2 lovely natural births which could have easily been home births. Had my 3rd and chose another hospital delivery after a lengthy chat about home birth. Good job I did as I had a huge PPH due to retained placenta and almost died. Even if I'd of had a home birth with midwives, it's likely I'd of died. Please don't risk it, the thought that I could have left my 3 children with no mother haunts me!

I wasn't suggesting you choose a hospital birth, what I was saying is what would you do in those circumstances if you couldn't have a midwife present? Even if a midwife was present, if an emergency arose being rural and not able to quickly access a hospital is putting you and your baby in danger. Surely that's not worth the risk.
A freebirth is really playing Russian roulette with you and your baby's welfare.

The problem with asking for people’s experiences is that you could talk to a dozen people who had a fantastic experience of freebirth but that doesn’t mean yours would be the same.

I think the best way to make an informed decision about this would be to research what the risks of various complications are and how these could be managed if there was nobody other than your partner present to help you. As other posters have said, midwives do a lot more than just call an ambulance if things go wrong. For things like shoulder dystocia, cord prolapse, post partum haemorrhage, baby needing resuscitation etc. there’s a lot they can do to help whilst waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

It would also be worth thinking about the worst case scenario of if something did go wrong and you and/or your baby were harmed as a result of not having a midwife there how would you cope with that going forward? Is that something you would be able to live with?

I appreciate you are in a difficult situation and I’m really not trying to give you a hard time but I do think a decision like this should be made on the basis of accurate information rather than “experiences”.

Hmmm, I had child #3 at home and it was bloody marvellous. That said, he came out with his cord round his neck and the lovely calm MW just slipped a finger under and pulled it off before either DH or I really had a chance to register what was going on. I'd advocate a home birth any time (esp with #3) but I wouldn't plan to be without a MW.

Exactly what Darkstar said. You can hear 1000 positive stories of freebirth but that doesn’t mean yours will be. Surely as much as you don’t want to be jumped on you don’t want to be falsely reassured?

OP it is really important to weigh up all the risks, as you are doing, and also remember hospital doesn't equal safe.

I accidentally freebirthed the first of my twins as my labours don't follow standard textbook patterns so they didn't believe I was in labour. I delivered him myself. He was blue and not breathing and his cord snapped. I had to carry him out of the loo, down a short corridor and into the delivery room to summon help. When I reached the delivery room a crash of about 10 paediatricians etc rushed in.

And do you know what? They had forgot to restock the cord clamps in that room. So all that fancy equipment, all those highly trained people..... what a bloody farce. A junior MW held DS cord stump tightly between her fingers and she was a damn sight more use than anyone else in that room.

I am not saying this to scare you, more to illustrate that there are risks everywhere and you need to weigh them up. Personally I believe a HB would have been safer for my DS although they are considered stupidly high risk for a multiple birth. But hindsight is 20/20 eh!

In your shoes I would seek a personal appt with the head of midwifery and seek her advice.

@Darkstar4855 - my motivation for tasking for experience was precisely that I hadn't found any negative stories and wanted to get a better idea. It's easy to google free birth and only find the positive ones, but I know that's unlikely to be representative.

Thankfully, speaking to everyone here -
Planning to free birth is not something I am now willing to consider as an option, and am waiting to speak to the midwife team. :)

@JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff - wow, sounds lucky the junior was there! I do think about the risks for hospital birth too, I def don't have faith in them just because they're a hospital. From my experience, staff in a hospital are very over stretched and I got left alone a lot when I was there, whereas my home birth I had constant one-on-one.

For my second my waters broke before labour and they wanted to induce because of infection risk - this was said to me in a ward which was filthy, with splats of mop water up the walls, grubby fingerprints over the doors etc. We refused and opted to go home and wait it out, in our much cleaner house! I went into labour the next morning. (Ironically though, despite having a pile of freshly washed blankets for the baby, the midwife grabbed the cat's sleeping blanket and wrapped the baby in that 🙈😂).

OP, I think you've made the right decision to not free birth. Birth is wonderful and magical but can also be a bloody dangerous and unpredictable beast. Good luck, enjoy the rest of your pregnancy.

Thank you everyone! I thought the stories online were too good to be true and after hearing from some of you on here, I won't be planning a free birth! :)

I will be pushing for a homebirth instead, with whatever midwife it may be, and am waiting to get through to speak to the local team to be sure of my options.

Yes good luck OP i sent that mw chocolates afterwards!

@CaMePlaitPas

☺️ Thank you. It's suddenly feeling really close to being over and this is my last, so I'll definitely be doing that! (In between huffing and puffing and complaining my back aches 😂)

Good luck with whatever you decide. Fwiw, I had my dd3 last December, earlier 2 births were absolutely textbook including no pain relief with dd2 whatsoever. We live very rurally and I almost had a home birth, I decided against it and thank goodness I did as I had a pph, I never ever thought it would happen to me, particularly with two textbook births and a breeze of a pregnancy. I shudder to think what would of happened had I chosen a home birth. I realise that this is rare though, particularly with no complications with previous birth.

I bought my midwives a mug with

‘Midwife calling...’

On one side and

‘AT YOUR CERVIX’ on the other

Sorry if I’ve missed it somewhere upthread but have you visited the hospital midwife led unit? I only ask because I was very set on a stand-alone unit or home birth for my second (currently overdue!) delivery. Due to previous retained placenta they really weren’t happy and wanted me on labour ward. I’ve negotiated a compromise with the midwife led unit within the hospital and I was so pleasantly surprised by both the facilities and the atmosphere. I really feel I’m going to get my best chance at an intervention-free birth there, so if you haven’t seen it maybe organise a tour before you totally rule it out? Wishing you all the best whatever you decide.

I had a planned HB for no 3. I did have to push my DH to agree with me but the other 2 had been very quick labours so was worried is deliver in the car with the third.
Thank goodness I did as I was so quick, I ended up having a kind of free birth the paramedics arrived for the 2nd from last push the midwife for the final push.

I did a lot of research on HB and they are safer than hospital for subsequent children but not your 1st.