Thank you so much as well Cherubim for fighting for your rights!!! I’m so grateful that there are strong women like you.
I am facing some staffing issues in my local area of Bournemouth, and I’m totally saddened after having experienced such an amazing, fulfilling, happy, comfortable, extremely professional, experienced and looked after outcome for my first birth in Hampshire, that I might have services cut short at the very moment in labour when I call for support.. Actually, saddened doesn’t cover it - I’m appalled!
I’m a fighter naturally, and I wish that every women shouldn’t have to fight for their rights for an equal, totally safe, and amazing experience, and many don’t, thankfully. But for those of us that do, we need to support each other and especially for those women who will come after us, and also importantly for the midwives that should be enabled to do the job that they really want to do - they don’t want to see medicalised birth, they want to see women having normal birth.
I have talked to many MW in my area that are equally disheartened with the pseudo-way that maternity services are turning alarmingly towards what America is currently doing - midwives don’t want it, government doesn’t want it, and women certainly don’t want it… so how is it still slowly creeping up on us, with section rates in some areas reaching 30%? Personally I think there is a decreasing confidence that MWs have of their abilities (the numbers of MWs for instance that are assisting in birthing at home, twins, and breach etc are dwindling, as increasingly it is POLICY rather than good evidence based practice that limits their skill set), and also women’s confidence in themselves.
I am so very shocked at some of the responses you have had in the second tri !!!!
I also just feel really sad for these women that are so fearful, and have views entrenched in thinking that hospital “must” be safer, and have little or no faith in themselves, or evolution to be able to birth safely - it is so strange that this is the only place where evidence just goes out of the window!? (you wouldn’t even choose a school for your child based on hearsay) It has only become part of our society for the last 30-40 years that hospital “must be safer” because of our reliance on technology, and the best place for the cutting-edge technology must be hospital? This is the rhetoric that is banded about willy-nilly with no evidence to support it.. As though they think what the majority do do, must be the best thing to do - without question. Little do they realise that their fear, and then acceptance of interventions might lead to a potentially adverse outcome for their birth and their own wellbeing. Which IS evidenced.
These particular women are, for want of a different word, ignorant..(in the true sense of the word, and not in anyway an insult)… and these assertions (certainly in my view) are dangerous, and help to propel their own held beliefs and myths to themselves and other women. A self-fulfilling starting point, when you hear women talk about how if they hadn’t been in hospital, they or their babies would have died, and they are “lucky” that the interventions were there to save them. “thank goodness the doctors were there!“ But they give little thought to perhaps how these interventions… lead into a emergency situation, where the emergent interventions BECAME a necessity. They haven’t even started to look into the choices available to them.
But have to make it clear; I’m not all about homebirth, I would equally defend a women’s right to have an elective c-section if that is what SHE felt is right for her. This isn’t about right or wrong choices, this is about HAVING choice. Choice is what we all want, but it isn’t choice if you can’t make informed decisions because of individual prejudice prohibit particular women from even wanting to question their prevailing assumptions.
Of course, it should go without saying, that I don’t want consultant led obstetric services to not be available to women; I’m saying that on evidence the increase in maternal interventions is NOT increasing beneficial outcomes for both mother and baby and this is documented evidence in both infant and maternal mortality rates, which has been slowly on the rise in the UK, despite our technology.
And it is really important to say that normal birth is the norm (just), but even the government recognises that there is a worrying increase in the medicalisation of birth (Evidence at: https://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmhealth/796/79605.htm), AND let alone this is costing the NHS £760 extra for each hospital birth, and for every 1% increase in c-section costs an extra £5millon pounds. So to talk about a homebirth service in terms of resources is counter-intelligent. Let alone the legal implications of taking away a primary care need.
You have already chosen that you want to have a home birth, so it’s not for me to convince you, that is for sure! ;-) …. Or anyone else for that matter, either way. I would defend you to the end the right to YOUR choice - whatever that may be.
But how sad it is that some of these women are so afraid and blinkered in their views so far, that they would blindly agree to any intervention offered… without a thought as to how it might have a compound effect on their long term heath or the health of their child?
I really had to get that off the chest! It was boiling up while thinking about where our birth services are heading if we don’t act, and we should all be acting now, before our freedoms are restricted. This is an intrinsic part of a healthy and free society and I can't stress enough how important this is to all our future generations.
xXxXx
P.S - Think I might start a thread in the second tri along these lines.. I'm interested to see how deep these prejudices and fear against homebirth go? As your thread responses CB has infuriated me so much! ;-)
oops, I've done it in your thread! Lets see what happens!? ;-)
about everything now.
I think it's really bad they are saying you won't have a choice about it, because surely you always have a choice. I'm not sure about the legalities of it all.
