Disappointing homebirth a week ago [Title edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

[Lookingfortheanswers]

Please be gentle with me. My baby is a week old and I haven’t stopped sobbing.

My husband & I have 4 children; DD14, DS9, DD7 and now baby DS. Children numbers 2 & 3 were born at home with midwives present, all went fine and I know how blessed I am.

We had a homebirth planned again this time and I wanted the children present as they’d been involved in our decision to have one more.

I woke at midnight last Sunday morning to my waters breaking and instant contractions only 2-3 mins apart. We called the Birth Centre to request midwives and were told there were none at the moment but I could go in to Labour Ward, or wait for them to find midwives. They advised to call an ambulance for the birth if still at home with no midwife attendance.

I decided to carry on and my husband got setting things up. We woke the children and they were excited. We also had a tripod set up to film the birth.

90 mins later by 1.30am, it was unbearable and I knew it was close, so we called an ambulance. I had no idea that two would arrive, to cater for me and baby. I had 3 male paramedics and 1 female crowd me in in my living room, all asking me questions during contractions. Naturally, this chaos slowed down contractions and I felt so vulnerable. I could hear my husband making small talk with all 4 paramedics and from watching the video back, our children were invisible to all adults including my husband.

I took myself upstairs to get away from the noise, but they all followed me to my bedroom. At no point did my husband speak to me or the children, just got busy making friends with the paramedics. One was on the phone to Maternity keeping them updated and they were desperately trying to find staff. I could have been transferred in but it was my 4th labour and I felt we wouldn’t make it. I didn’t want to have a baby in an ambulance on my own.

From 2am - 3am when baby was born, I laboured on my bed and was out of it. This goes against everything I wanted for birth- I needed dim lighting, space, quiet and to stay mobile. From watching the video, I was on my bed legs wide open, no underwear on and the big light on. The 3 children were sat beside me on the floor. The 4 paramedics and my husband were stood chatting at the foot of my bed with my vagina on full display. Not one adult thought to ask if I was happy with an audience or to place a towel over me until I began pushing.

As I began pushing, you can hear one paramedic who had gone to fetch something from downstairs, being yelled by the others “Simon!! Quick Simon,
you’re going to miss it!”. I was a zoo animal in a cage on that bed, putting on a show for them all. My husband was still casually asking them how long they’ve been in service etc.

Baby came out safely thank goodness and was eventually passed to me, and 3 midwives arrived 5 mins later. I now had 4 paramedics, 3 midwives, 1 husband and 3 children around my bed during golden hour, watching me feed baby. They all carried on chatting like I wasn’t there and all talking about me but no one to me (except the kids who were darlings).

An hour went by and no placenta- obviously, as I was very stressed. It was the most surreal moment laid there naked with a baby on my chest, with 8 adults stood around my bed like some kind of ritual was about to start. I had to advocate for myself and asked “what is going on?”. A midwife replied that they were waiting for my placenta to come out. I said “do all 8 of you need to watch? Please can you leave me alone?”. Then all except one midwife
went downstairs.

Placenta still didn’t budge even with the injection, so I had to be taken in to hospital by ambulance with my baby in his car seat. It was easily removed by a midwife in a quiet room at hospital and I was then stitched up and allowed to go home.

I can’t stop re-living it and I feel so let down. My husband’s response to me being upset is; “yeah,
I’m such an arsehole, it’s all my fault” and stropping off. He also says I just need to be grateful baby is here and healthy. I don’t want to keep crying in front of my children but I feel so let down and so violated and exploited. One of the young trainee paramedics even exclaimed “woo hoo my first baby catch”.

Is it my fault? Should I have not planned a homebirth? Should I have gone to hospital and risked ambulance birth? Should I have been clearer with my husband? But I couldn’t plan for an eventuality that I didn’t know existed.

This was our last and was supposed to be magical. It was awful. I don’t know I get over it. I keep telling myself far worse things could have happened and I am so lucky to have my children. I know I am.

Has anyone been through similar and could offer some words of solidarity, or give me some perspective so I can stop crying? To add to this, I have bleeding, cracked nipples which is a first for me and isn’t helping my sadness.

Sorry this is long. Thank you so much for anyone who reads and replies.

Well it does happen. I have a few friends that have given birth in A&E or the back of an ambulance because there was no free bed in the maternity ward and no time to transfer to a hospital with a free bed.

They don’t allocate you a bed until you arrive at the hospital. So anything said over the phone about there being a MW available if you come into the hospital is not a guarantee.

It depends on the trust. Many trusts have a dedicated homebirth team and you would call them directly. Some have a homebirth team that are contacted via triage/labour ward, some don’t have a dedicated team but have an on call service for homebirths.

The OP said on the first post We called the Birth Centre to request midwives and were told there were none at the moment.

There was nothing ‘excellent’ in yhd response.

Thix was a planned homebirth. Thd NHS seevice failing to ensure ig had enough staff is in no way excellent. The services lack ig planning for a birth that was planned as being at home with the home birth service caused a far greater response than should have been needed.

There may have been no on call/homebirth midwives available. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t other midwives available, which there clearly was because they found 3 shortly after:

There will have been a senior midwife on call, who should have been called when the homebirth service was being “suspended” and all possibility’s should have been exhausted before saying nobody was available to attend.

But you surely understand they have other patients and cannot be available immediately for every single patient. They came soon enough and in the meantime paramedics were taking care of her.

Honestly, OP - births are never what you expect. I was tod I will have e problem free birth in a "birthing room" but ended up in the operating theatre, with baby delivered by forceps and a 4th degree tear. But, my baby is healthy and overall that's what really matters.

One of my friends was going to have a hospital delivery but ended up delivering at home, by herself, with her husband being told what to do on the phone by paramedics on their way to help.

I remember another friend telling me that giving birth is like being rescued after a car crash: everyone around you doing stuff while you are just there, feeling like a piece of meat. I doubt its ever dignified or pleasant.

But op didn't choose whi came or how many. If you trust the process you need to trust dispatch followed procedure due to risk.

The more we except a service is shit the more we give permission to let it get shitter. But at the same time we resent that others can get a queue jumping private service. That's a race to the bottom where we all just accept crumbs. It's paid by someone. It really isn't free. It's free at source. So why not expect a reasonable service for your money? Deciding to give birth isn't a luxury. It is was humans will be extinct in 100 years. Making the nhs moot I guess.

There should be on call midwives for homebirth 24/7.
And this is the job of the senior midwife on call, who in the event of there genuinely not being anybody available to attend, should attend themselves.

There of course are on call midwives but if they are with one patient they will need to travel to another, it isn't like a labour ward obviously where they pop from room to room. Maybe the senior midwife was at a home birth? There aren't infinite resources

Again, sorry op that this upset you but you had an excellent response and congratulations on your healthy baby. Maybe draw a line and focus on the positives .

Sorry, I thought we were talking about the birth videos that are made public, not the unedited ones made for private memories that are never published.

The videos of homebirths that are publicly available do in fact give rise to unrealistic expectations.

Her children likely (in my view) didn’t find it traumatic because apart from OP who was out of it to an observer (her trauma was internal to her), all the adults including dad were calm and relaxed.

You have missed that the op couldn't deliver the placenta and was taken to hospital in the ambulance. Had the midwives shooed away the paramedics when they got there then they would have been deployed elsewhere and no ambulance would have been available to take the op to hospital

Focus on your healthy baby and the joy it brings your completed family and try to put the birth behind you. So long as you are healing well and have support at home, look to the future. Perhaps when you are more settled and healed, drop a line to the ambulance service to make an observation. Don't make a complaint. These people do an amazing job and I have seen all too often how they are challenged in some situations where 'the family' are not happy. I hope you and your baby are both making great progress. I did not have the luxury or choice of a home birth but had an emergency caesarean. People were unkind to me and asked me if I felt like a real mother not being able to give birth naturally. At the end of the day you and your baby's health and future life together are the most important. The rest is all ephemera.

It was more likely that they didn't want to send any one out.

One time I was working in a hospital with a decent homebirth team. It was a cold, stormy night and there was a homebirth going on of a breech baby. A known breech baby where mum decided to go ahead with a homebirth with the support of her team. Of course, when a high risk birth is going on, everyone needs to know about it just in case so the hospital were aware that "breech baby" was due at home around that time.

Anyway, the day comes and this homebirth midwife finds herself at home with this mum in labour. She called the ward and everyone she should have for backup but the truth was that those in charge that day thought midwife and mum had brought this on themselves so they weren't about to mess up their shift going out to help.

Luckily the mum had a textbook straightforward birth and the midwife handled everything just fine. All by herself. She got back to the hospital at about 1am to do the notes and dispose of placenta. She was rightly seething and escalated the matter but nothing came of it.

My point was not that trainee midwife should have know what was respectful for me because I was not a stranger to her. It was more if I had been asked beforehand if I would be ok with a bit of a back rub and verbal encouragement if labour got difficult, I would have likely said yes please. Likewise, I would have indicated to my DH it would be fine.

But my reaction in the actual moment was not only totally unexpected to myself it was an overwhelming “stop touching me!!” in its strength as a gut reaction.

Rereading my post back, I didn’t express it well, I hope this describes my thoughts better.

How on earth do you expect the NHS or any other organisation to get something completely unpredictable staffed correctly all of the time? Genuinely if you have some magic idea of how this should be done, I suggest you get in contact with somebody.

Sadly I think its real. I don’t think OP is telling the truth when she says there was no intention of posting the birth on social media, had it gone well.

Youtube has many videos of such birth setups. The ones I’ve seen are mostly Christian American ‘homesteaders’ who have lifestyle vlogs and presumeably earn quite a bit from them. They usually have DH, a doula, Mum, a friend/photographer and children all involved.

I can see how OP maybe thought filming at home with kids present was normal if she’s watched a lot of these (although I think 14, 9 and 7 is too old - they’re usually toddlers and pretty oblivious to the proceedings) and how it would be comforting to think of yourself in that kind of safe, home scenario.

In suburban Britain with no advance planning except the expectation of NHS midwives turning up on time it was never going to work.

When I was young older women loved to regale me with their horror stories. Birth is a scary, dangerous thing. You survived OP, and you need to move on now - I dont know what you want us to say as there’s no real redress to be had.

Don’t watch the video again.

Sorry, you do realise that a planned home birth isn’t like a planned C-section?

You cannot predict the week, day or hour of a planned home birth.
So the demand for midwives experiences surges if a lot of women go into labour at once. Sometimes it can exceed the supply of midwives.

Well it’s done right where I work. We have not had to cancel a planned homebirth due to staffing reasons in at least 3 years.

I agree it was a substandard response. Sadly the NHS crisis is a reality that should be part and parcel of any planned hospital or home birth.

A close friend of mine just attended her daughter’s birth of a grandchild. It was in hospital and went horrendously bad due to poor infection control on the part of the hospital. Even after mum and baby were stabilised, my friend and her sister had to do 24/7 shifts at the daughter’s bedside because her daughter wanted to breast feed so badly but couldn’t even hold her baby. Not only were they doing the nappy changes and holding their newborn grandchild, but she had to hold the baby to her daughter’s breast both to feed and cuddle.

No staff available to help.

This is an appalling level of care and families all over are suffering as a result.

Surely if you are an experienced hcp you understand that unexpected things can happen and no-one can be in 2 places at once. That is the risk with homebirths. Fortunately there is the <very overstretched> ambulance service to fall back on.

That's a race to the bottom where we all just accept crumbs.

Is having 4 paramedics and 3 midwives there to assist in your home birth accepting crumbs, though?

The OP’s complaints seem to be that the paramedics didn’t set the ambiance she was expecting, nor did they include her older children in the way she was expecting.

I’m not sure anyone would consider that to be part of the service one should expect from paramedics. It isn’t their job.

But three years ago you did have to. There may have been more women than expected labouring someone could have called in sick, half the team could have called in sick. A birth plan can not be an immovable object.

No you fall back on your on call staff and your scheduled midwives.