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.

Agree with this. Also, 4 paramedics were in attendance for something they shouldn’t really be involved with, depriving other people in need of their care.

You can be grateful all went well and you & baby are safe AND wish the experience had been better. I don’t think it’s idealistic or selfish to have a preference for birth, it doesn’t mean you won’t adapt or change if the situation needs you to. However what you’ve described is a lack of kindness and understanding, I’m very angry at your husband as his role should have been supporting you/your kids and keeping things calm. The paramedics didn’t need to stand all 3 of them at the foot of the bed watching you, as a former midwife myself I felt so sad reading your story and how you were made to feel. It wouldn’t have taken much to make you feel safe & calm.

How you feel is how you feel, don’t let anyone diminish your own experience. Big hugs xxxx

What have i just read.
I mean congrats on the baby, but op it sounds all a bit much its like you had this fantasy planned.
You say you felt like a human zoo but you wanted them their, and a tripod.
I wouldn`t want to watch my mum give birth or watch a video of it.

Is this even a real post did it really happen ?.

That does sound like a horrible experience and about as far as possible from what you had wanted.

I think you are entitled to feel let down by your husband - his role should have been to advocate for you and he didn't do that. I wonder if he fully understood this or if you had been "lucky" with your previous 2 births when midwives had arrived as planned.

With the benefit of hindsight, you would have been far better going onto Labour ward when told there were no available midwives. Or to have hired a doula to be with you at home and advocate for you in a way that your DH didn't.

I do think that your "dream birth" of a video with DH and your 3 children watching is about as far as possible away from anything I would have chosen and that you should have made some back up plan choices in advance. And agreed with your DH what those would be if things weren't going to plan.

I would suggest you get some counselling- alone and then with DH to work through this. And that you should destroy the video. And check in with your DC as they may also have been affected by this whole experience.

In an ideal world eh. Why on earth would you want your dc to view something potentially traumatising. Is this a new thing that I've missed.
Congratulations on your new baby btw
Enjoy

I think your husband was the weak link here, sorry OP.
He should have been advocating for you, and concentrating on your children.

re: 4 paramedics, arguably you didn’t need all 4 in the room, but if something had gone very wrong you may have needed all 4- 2 for you, 2 for baby.

The midwives should have taken control of the situation on arrival, but they walked into a very advanced situation and seems like they probably were still trying to get to grips with what had happened.

i can only imagine how big your bedroom is to fit all you!

I think you need to speak with your husband, really, and make peace with this with him, and possibly with a post-birth counsellor. At the very least husband needs to apologise.

Genuine question, is the NHS set up to provide the birth that you had hoped for? I only ask because I thought they were there to provide a safe delivery rather than an experience, which is what they seemed to have done.

I think that you might have been set for failure really and you might have been better looking into options to pay privately for what you were looking for.

That being said, I hope that you’re on the road to recovery now and settling well with your baby.

I think you've set up your idea of labour to be like an Instagram story. Women and babies die in childbirth every second of the day. Why would you want to film it? Why let your dc see it, waking them up like it's Christmas morning? It seems madness to me.

I think you have consider that you were lucky to have two ambulances attend, you received medical care and your baby arrived safely.

If you wanted 'an experience' then you should have paid a private midwife team to be on call.

I'm sorry it wasn't how you wanted.

I feel sad reading this - it's so very different to my own first baby's birth. Which was a 4 hour emergency section with a 5 litre bleed and multiple transfusions. I was very scared neither of us would survive and didn't get to hold my baby until he was 2 days old following SCBU / ITU admission. Birth is unpredictable, before you even add in unpredictable staff availability

I think all you can do is focus on your baby and children now and making these first weeks as close as possible to what you'd like.

I think the thing is paramedics are for emergency situations. They are not typically going to events where they would check on the patient and then wait downstairs until needed. They will come to births if midwives are not available, as it can easily become an emergency, but it isn't their speciality, and their priority is alive and safe baby and alive and safe mother. Midwives are specialists. That's why you would usually have only one or two.

Four paramedics is probably needed when all four are not specialists.

I think your husband also didn't know how to handle four paramedics there, it's a different dynamic, which it sounds like you didn't really discuss as a possibility.

I think with the benefit of hindsight going to the hospital once you knew the midwife wasn't available would have been a better choice. But what's done is done.

I opened this thread hoping this wouldn't be a horrific story of a stillbirth. I'm glad it wasn't. This doesn't erase your experience, and you're allowed to feel traumatised by it, but considering this birth was handled without a single midwife present I think it was very fortunate it went safely.

I would delete the video, seek counselling for the traumatic birth, and reassure your children you are okay. You are very hormonal and vulnerable right now and it will be making you feel much worse about things. I do hope when you are physically recovered you will be able to reframe the experience to be slightly more positive.

I get how you feel OP. I had a home birth and at one point DH and the midwives were having a nice chat while I stood there panicking. I hated feeling like I was just a distraction in their little get-together.

Your DH's reponse is seriously shit - stropping off like a child rather than recognising you had a tough time and you're emotional and hormonal.

You will feel better about this. It's hard to process when you're so overwhelmed with a newborn. Congratulations on your lovely new baby and well done on getting him into the world, despite the total incompetence of the people around you.

I always said if I had a third (I didn't) I would labour entirely alone until absolutely necessary. People are too shit to be trusted - it's like they don't get what it's like to be in that moment, despite a lot of them having been there themselves at some point.

Same here to be honest.
OP, you’d already set yourself up as an exhibit by wanting your whole family around you, and the moment capturing on video!

That’s just really odd to me.

The paramedics would have been expecting an emergency home birth. Not an elective pre planned one.

'A whole new level of batshit', as said by a pp, describes this shit show perfectly.

I find the horrendous waste of NHS resources quite appalling...and your concern is that it wasn't magical enough 🙄 Why not complain op, you can waste even more precious NHS time and resources then.

Sorry OP but the whole thing sounds odd. Why on earth were you waking your (presumably) young children up at that hour of the night to watch you give birth?! As for setting up a tripod to film the whole thing?!

I’m sorry you didn’t have the birth you want, I think personally when I learnt there would be no midwives available, I’d have gone into hospital.

It does sound like you had a v specific birth in mind and given it’s not your first, you know it can all happen so differently to expected.

I’d delete the video, maybe talk about some counselling/ support to talk through your birth experience and try and focus on your new baby.

Ahh some sense!! Totally agree with everything you've said.

My first birth didnt go to plan at all, ended up in the operating room with the doctor shouting at me that if didnt push down like i needed a big poo he was going to do a c-section!! Even waved the forceps at me. But once my boy was handed to me i didnt care about anything else.

Cant cotrol everything in life.

I would add, and sorry if I'm over interpreting here OP, that it doesn't seem like you wanted a fairytale birth and didn't get it, it's that you saw plain as day on the video how utterly useless your husband was and it really upset you. It's hard to know that about someone you depend on.

I’m sure this isn’t a real thread.

you wanted your children to watch you giving birth?! You filmed it just for you?! When you were told there were no midwives available you decided to use two ambulances? Surely not

@GoldBalonz couldn’t agree more

I'm so sorry, that sounds so far from what you wanted and were expecting. As others have said I would absolutely give feedback to the paramedics about their lack of sensitivity for what is such a significant experience.

I had similar in that I made the mistake of ticking "students allowed" on my birth plan at a hospital and a whole lot trooped in for the forceps delivery - I have no idea how many were there but I know that feeling of being violated.

It does go away but you will need to process it by talking to someone who will give you empathy and letting the paramedics know that they could have done a lot of things very differently.

Maybe - and I say this very gently - watching the video is not helping. Can you rest, have lots of skin to skin with your baby and give yourself lots of time to recover and process what happened.

It will go away in time, it still pisses me off but only in a very distant past kind of way.

What happens in childbirth matters, it's not a spectator sport and it should not have happened like that, it's really not hard to do better than they did and you are absolutely right to feel as upset as you are.

I think once you have more than two kids, there is a presumtion that your very comfortable with birth and being a bit of a teaching tool for some medical staff. So there's a bit of a presumtion you have to get past or prejudice I guess from the off. I'm really sorry it didn't go to plan. My first birth didn't go to plan due to preclampsia which set very low expectations for the rest. The only thing I had on my birth plan was to ask me questions even if my choice had to be ignored so I felt I had some control. But we never do fully have control do we?

Your husband let you down. He is trying to make himself the victim here and in so you the bad person. That's not attractive and I'd try to explain that to him. That way of dealing with criticism might become his "go to" method so I'd address that as maybe its the only thing you can control. Talk to the hospital for a debrief and maybe think about the letter to pals. But I'd not send one until your debrief. It's all very raw with a tiny baby full of hormones too right now

I think you're being unrealistic about how far the NHS can and will go to faciliatate your carefully curated experience, which you're getting for free.

They did their best under the circumstances and you were delivered of a healthy baby/ All's well that ends well.

The responses on this thread are really interesting - they reflect the messages women are given about childbirth, which essentially amount to: Your feelings don't matter, you could die, you know, be grateful and shut up.

I'm sorry it went wrong. I think you had an ideal in your head that may have worked in 1950 but not now.

Home birth with one known and familiar midwife is one thing, but calling an ambulance means an emergency when resources are as stretched as they are. At that point, their only focus is to see you and baby physically ok. Paramedic training on childbirth is limited.

It sounds like your dh, having seem three smooth births, has missed how vulnerable you are, because everything went well last time. He too seems to think that you and baby being in one piece is all that matters.

Having tired and excited children there sounds like a nightmare to me. Has your dh checked that they aren't traumatised, having seen you struggling & distressed?

I think you need to offload to dh, explain your true extent of distress, and write it all out on paper. Ask that a copy is sent to the paramedics and to the ambulance trust. Being heard may help.

Exactly. So much hatred for women on this thread.