Why homebirth?

[Castanet]

I have been reading different threads on MN and the number of people who insist on having a homebirth is astounding. What is so great about it and why are so many people willing to take a chance with the wellbeing of their baby, because if things go wrong, and they do, sometimes, wouldn't you want to have all the medical help and expertise of the best consultants at hand? Just wondering.

I would never have a homebirth (not that I am planning any further births, no farkin way)

you do not know what will happen

I had an emergency section with dd1 and if I wasn't in hospital I wouldn't have a dd1 as she would have died

fairly black and white to me

had dd2 in hospital, all fine

I had midwives all the way through, was never left alone and more importantly HAD MEDICAL CARE AT THE END OF THE CORRIDOR TO SAVE MY DAUGHTERS LIFE

so you can take your water pools and own beds and oooooh nice cup of tea and shove them imo

thomcat, my mil had 7 kids, all at home on her farm in the middle of the sticks! This was only in the 60's too, funny how quickly things change.

oo, are you castanet's best friend?

You bloody stirrer!

casanet you really dont seem able to answer my questions do you?
maybe thats because you cant?
maybe a part of you realisies that a hb may be SAFER and you fel a tad selfish for having a hospital birth

casanet i gave birth 8 weeks ago tomorrow
i was left alone in labour for four and a half hours
no one even checked on me at all
not even a head poked round the door to see if i was ok
they babys heart beat wasnt checked or anything
so anything at all could of happened in those four and a half hours
thank god my baby was ok
so being in hospital is certainly not safer

this is not uncommon
this is the state of the maternity services
there is not the staff to go round in hospital

i am talking from experience

i also had to have a massive repair op after the birth and i also had a massive pph
i had to wait over 3 hours for this major operation
so if theres not enough staff
what good is all the medical equipment in th world

Ohhh 7 kids! WOW!
My nana had 6 in the same bed she died in at home.

Glad you had a good hospital experience OO.

Nobody was there when I was having DS1 in hospital - just my mum, who was falling asleep like me (just had a top up of epidural) when she realised his heart rate was dropping dramatically on the monitor. The Mw was off having a cuppa, I think - no idea.
Mum ran to get someone and they came running and eventually he was born unassisted but with an episiotomy. Cord round neck - not uncommon but nearly life threatening due to the lack of presence of staff.
Had that happened at home, the Mw would have been on top of it as it would have been obvious I was fully dilated, and obvious there was a problem.
Having had an epi I was blissfully unaware of my own body's desperate struggle, the baby was put at risk - it was all wrong.
I was lucky, Ds was unharmed bt only thanks to my mother being around. Nobody else had a CLUE anything was even going on!
It makes me furious to think how naively I trusted I'd be in the safest environment. I actually looked forward to going into hospital and being cared for, but after the birth I could not wait to leave.
Add to that being totally ignored during and after labour, being done loads of 'things' to without being asked (two women came in to 'wash' me after the delievery, with a bucket and sponges, they were rude and callous, treated me like i wasn't even there...stuff like that. It wasn't the lovely luxurious experience I somehow expected, of feeling safe and looked after. It was like a conveyor belt.
And being threatened with formula, literally, if Ds didn't feed by evening - he already had after birth but had missed a feed in between as I was being sick and nobody would bother to get a doctor for an hour to give me anything to stop it - meanwhile Ds just cried himself to sleep.
I wasn't allowed him in the bed because of 'insurance', or to walk around the room with him for the same reason. In case I dropped my own baby!
Talk about angry. Some of the people there were b*stards, they really were, and though some others were kind, or tried to be, I never, ever want to go through such treatment again as long as I live.

You see more people tell of horror stories regarding their hospital birth. OO was lucky, thank God.
With my local hospital responsible for leaving 10 children without mothers, completley due to negligence, i'd rather have 2 midwives and a doula attending me at home thanks.

and they taught me to b/f

maybe you should all move to Manchester, ha, grim up north my arse

Castanet, I didn't have a homebirth, but I totally understand why people want them.

I would want one for the following reasons:
-I really like and trust my midwife
-My midwife would be able to provide constant care and monitoring, which does not happen in hospitals as midwives are split between labouring women - most of the time in hospital it was just DH and me
-Because of this I suspect that potential problems would have been picked up earlier at home rather than in hospital

• Being in hospital once the baby was born was exhausting and pretty awful despite the good quality of care - I would have much preferred to be at home

The reasons I didn't choose a homebirth this time even though I was offered it

• I wanted an epi last time and can't get that at home (baby was back to back)
• I am a long way from the hospital (country area) if I did need to be transferred
• I am an engineer, so having medical equipment around me I find weirdly comforting
• I would not feel comfortable having DS around while I was giving birth so we need to drive him to a friend's place which happens to be right next to the hospital

Also, from what I understand, emergency c-sections still require a reasonable time to prep for (crash c-sections are something different)

I certainly don't think it is selfish to want a homebirth.

flight attentdent couldnt agree with you more

oo you must of been v lucky that there was enough staff avalible when you had your baby
what would of happened and there wasnt enough staff to attend to you ?

Some hosptals are probably really cool. Mine was shite. The moral was low, nobody wanted to be there, let alone help with anything that wasn't on their strict remit. Nobody seemed to care.
Just lucky if you get a place where people want to work, want to do the best for the mothers and babies...but that seems to be getting rarer these days.

I was told by my midwife in hospital that if this were the caveman period, if I couldn't feed my baby by the breast she would die. And that was supposed to encourage me to b/f!

Sorry to hear about your dd OO, must have been bloody awful! For a completely balanced view we now need to hear from someone who had a planned homebirth that went wrong and how they feel about it now.

I would have been very worried about having my first labour at home as you don't know what it is going to be like and you don't know if you are going to have difficulties. For example, I have a friend who had an emergency CS because her hips were too small to give birth to her 9lb baby. You wouldn't know that before you tried to give birth for the first time. I notice that a lot of those who advocate a home birth had the comfort of knowing that they could give birth before trying a home birth for their second. Very few are brave enough to try a homebirth first time around when labours are naturally longer and therefore more tiring and painful and more likely to be medicated just to get you through the experience.

My first birth was in hospital with an epidural. It ended with a forceps delivery which is not ideal but I would have been too scared and worried to have laboured without midwife attention at home and I wouldn't have been able to have the epidural which took so much of the pain and the fear away. You get one-to-one midwife attention with an epidural and apart from the last 1/2 hour I would have said it was a positive experience. The hospital stay afterwards was not nice but that was because DS1 had jaundice and they wouldn't let us out for 4 nights.

My second birth was at home although it was by accident as DS2 came quite quickly in the end. I had no midwife with me and for some reason I wasn't scared at all - just concerned about DS1 who kept coming upstairs to see what was happening and DH who didn't know whether to be downstairs with DS1 or upstairs with me! I think that I didn't have the fear as I knew what it was like to give birth and I had done the research so I knew that I wasn't going to make the 30 minute ride to hospital and called an ambulance. The rapid response paramedic arrived 3 or 4 minutes before DS2 was born and it was great to be able to have a shower in my own bathroom an hour later. It was a fantastic experience and I am very glad to have had it.

The quesion is would I have ever taken the chance to have a planned homebirth and I am not sure that I would have done. I think that I would have had too much time to worry about the lack of medical support. A lot of the reports of homebirths that I have read have the midwife popping in and out over the course of the labour and only staying when the birth is imminent. They are too far away if you have a problem arises suddenly - what if the baby passes meconium or you begin to bleed and the midwife is not within calling distance? You might well argue that that doesn't happen often but it is enough to make me worry and get in the way of a homebirth.

It might well have been said before (I haven't read the whole thread) but part of the reason the homebirth stats look like they are safer is because mother's with any risk factor are encouraged to go to hospital, whether they arise before labour begins or once it is started.

thomcat i also know a woman from school that had a stillborn thanks to not being attened to in hospital
another women and baby just left to get on with it

this makes me so mad

the inquest proved that the death of her lovly baby boy could have been avoided

this happend due to lack of staff

Well Rhuby mine was planned - not that I'd have had a choice as it was so fast - but as I said, even though it very nearly went very tits up with the PPH, I would not want to have a baby in hospital. This is after being incredibly scared, staring down at the blood pouring from me, thinking, 'this is it, I am going to die'.
Someone where it really did go wrong, would be able to offer better perspective though. I was lucky.

yes, it was quite foul at the time, like an episode of ER (but without the glamour)

my friend recently had a baby and bought a pool etc

and had a section in the end, pool gathering dust forlornly in the corner

at Oldham too Rhub, said care was fab

Castanet, after reading all the posts and posting my views at the beginning. I think I need to get personal. Why did you bring up this topic if you are not interested in having a home birth. Surely you should just get on with your pregnancy and birth in your own way.

As another poster said, you are very blinkered, and you didn't answer the question about whether you are from the UK. I presume from your attitude you are American, and that will make up for your views, as the American medical system is very doctor lead.

I would be interested to read any research you have into how hospitals are safer in childbirth.

Ah but most of my relatives work in Oldham hospital so obviously the level of care has risen!

And I have the scar of having Oldham on my passport too. Years of therapy still haven't worked.

castanet

you really are clueless if you stupidly think hospital birth is safer ,as has been mentioned many many times on this thread you will not more than likely be left to labour on your own in hospital
what is safe about that ?

can i ask you a personal question here?
are you planning on breast feeding ?

Haven't had a chance to read everything, but having given birth in the car last time, I wish I'd opted for a homebirth - in some cases, travelling while in labour strikes me as one of the most foolish and unnatural things to do!

Ooh, pregnantbabyelephant, you are picking a fight!
Mind you, I think castanet was as well, so fair game.

maybe as your having twins you will be given more care you be given more medical attention

but as has been said many times most women are often just left ?
so how could that possibly be safe?

you have no intention of having a hb so why do you think you can say all this shit about people wanting hb are selfish, is just trying to start an arguement

fyi i had a hospital birth and i was also just left to get on with it because there was only 1 midwife to 5 women
and i had a v complicated birth
do you not realise this is what its like in hospital
if i had of know how long i would of been left alone during labout i would of never had a hospital birth
you are totally clueless and ill informed

thursday next,

Can I not ask a question simply to get a reasoned answer to it, for the sake of understanding the different points of view?
Again, thanks for the answers and much luck with whatever is your choice of birth.
I have learned a lot about the homebirth through the sensible and reasoned replies. Hysteria and horror stories are not the way to convince anyone.
It was an interesting board to visit however, I don't think I'll be doing it again as there's too much spite and venom stirred up way too easily. A calm and reasoned discussion where ALL points of views were aired and has turned into hysterical slinging match. Sad, really.
Thank you and all the best with your pregnancies.

Castanet - it's your blinkered posts that have been the ones to incite "spite and venom" as you put it. You have not answered people's questions put to you for some bizarre reason.

You simply cannot come onto any board and say why this and why that and then when people give you VALID reasons, you simply dismiss them or ignore them and call people selfish and accuse them of endangering their babies!

If you wanted a fair and unbaised discussion, you have certainly gone the wrong way about it!