Why I had a homebirth
I’m not a whimsy, spiritual yoga mum.
There’s nothing wrong with that if you are but I need to make this clear straight away as I talk about why I had a homebirth – because I find it weird, me, Little Miss Worries-About-Everything had one.
It all started during my first experience of childbirth. It was one of those frustrating pregnancies where I needed scans every three weeks to check the baby’s size which culminated in being pushed into an induction I didn’t want as a membrane sweep caused my waters to leak.
After a long, arduous 23 hour labour, where I was refused a room several times due to a lack of midwives, I was left alone for six hours with my baby (my partner sent home due to COVID restrictions), with no idea how to feed her, change her or move with catheter pipes coming from a very sore, sewn-back-together orifice between my legs. To this day, I have no idea where my midwife went, but after two days experiencing more overwhelmed NHS service, I was pleased to be back at home.
But it was always in my mind that if I wanted a bigger family, I would have to go through that experience all over again. Luckily, I managed to drown it out, and got pregnant with my second daughter. But as soon as I saw that wee-stained stick I knew the clock was ticking on another childbirth experience.
Everyone knows what a homebirth is and it conjures up ideas of giving birth in your own bed before drinking a cup of tea and cuddling a baby. Then your ‘sensible’ brain takes over and reminds you that this scenario is for Call the Midwife characters only. Hospitals have drugs and tools and life-saving surgeons – why wouldn’t you want to be away from that?
Still, I was reading a lot during the early stages of pregnancy to distract me from neverending morning sickness – and one statistic stood out to me. It was safer to give birth at home than in a hospital for your second birth. How could that even be possible? I spoke to my midwife at my next telephone appointment about it and she pointed out that if labour was even beginning to look difficult at home, you’re immediately taken to hospital. And you have two midwives with you the whole time.
Two midwives.
That’s two more than I had last time.
At my next midwife appointment, I found myself muttering, ‘I’m considering a homebirth but I’ll probably still be in the delivery suite anyway. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.’ And, after reassurance that I can change my mind at any time, I was referred to a homebirth team and found myself preparing for giving birth… in my living room.
That’s not to say it didn’t buzz around in my mind in the whole lead up to the big event. At first I felt guilty that I would be tying up two midwives and costing my local hospital lots of money until I found out homebirths cost the NHS the least amount of money (£780 per planned birth if you must know, compared to £1142 for a planned birth in an obstetric unit). I was also still convinced that I would bottle it at the last minute because I would want lots of doctors and consultants nearby. But I did lots of research and found out that being at home was likely to make me birth faster, therefore reducing the risk of complications. And sadly, I felt it couldn’t be any worse than my first experience of childbirth.
During my maternity appointments for both my first and second child, I had never seen the same midwife twice so I found myself repeating the same information during each rushed meeting. Once I’d joined a dedicated homebirth team, each midwife in the small team knew me personally and I could tell you their kids’ and pets’ names. Plus, I got home visits to assess the homebirth environment. In short, I had got used to a John Lewis service and I didn’t want to go back to Primark so with each appointment I found myself propelled along the homebirth route.
The birthpool was booked. The TENs machine was booked. I had done all the homebirth prep. At 37 weeks, I realised this was happening.
