Hey girls, hope you're all doing well today!!!
I've been lurking on here again, waiting til I got to see my MW to make our plans yesterday.....and what a bloody crap meeting it was! She was the head of the team at my local surgery, and she basically did everything to make sure we knew she wasn't happy with us having our home birth!
She firstly greeted us by saying it was very late for us to be deciding this, 'these things take months to organise' and that she was gonna have to work extra, and draw in resources from other areas, so she could have it planned in time. Then she said, oh well there's another woman due the day before you, and she's been booked in from the start, so we can't be on call for you both, if you go into labour on the 28th (the day before) you WILL be going to hospital......at this point I just sat and nodded, was aware of how things were going to pan out...she went out the room to get the diary and I said to Chris I think we're gonna have a fight on our hands here.
So she came back with her diary and list of things to tell me, asked why I wanted to deliver at home etc etc, and seemed to be quite happy with everything I was saying. Told us about pain relief, how I can have diamorphine, which I declined, so she then told me that I would not be able to change my mind in labour, if things got too much for me, I wouldn't be able to go to hospital.....I don't want to go, but I KNOW that this IS an option, they won't bloody refuse me! Then came the list of everything that can go wrong - Chris's face got whiter by the minute - I sat nodding my head, I've done my homework and know the risks. And if something happened, it would be 1-2 hours before they got me to hospital...WTF, it only takes 20 minutes by car, surely a blue light ambulance wouldn't take 1-2 hours?! I said this, and she just kept saying about the number of women who had said to her 'I wish I'd known this before I chose my home birth and it went bad'. So basically she's saying that she has a list of women who's births had gone wrong? I must admit, I felt quite sick at this point.
Next was the pool...I said that I would be labouring in the pool all being well. Her reply to this - well that's Chris's job to maintain the temperature, he wont be able to help you much as this is his most important role, she was almost shouting at him!!!! Again, I just sat nodding, while squeezing his hand, if I opened my mouth I was going to say something I regretted. And how it HAD to be a rigid-side pool, not an inflatable one.....I didn't tell her this is what we're getting, what they gonna do at the time, tell me to get out? I don't bloody think so!
So this was the basis of the whole meeting, not ONCE did she say anything positive about the whole thing, and I know they have to cover everything, and was expecting to hear all the cons, but she did nothing to boost our confidence about it. Chris is a natural worrier, and I've spent a while explaining things to him so that he's happy with how it'll be here, and in less than an hour she brought him back to square one. She actually asked if he was sure he wanted to sign the form! I could've smacked her.
But we signed, and she made a fuss again about having to organise things in 3 weeks. Had I been a weaker person, I would've told her to forget it, but I stuck to my guns and being the stubborn creature I am, it's made me even more determined. I'm seeing my usual MW next week and I'll be bringing it up, I don't want to be going into this feeling negative!
Sorry I'm rambling on a lot, it probably doesn't seem such a big deal after all, I would just like to feel my team of midwives are behind us 100%!
!!!
it's meant to be solid concrete...as per some...regulation things....but that doesn't stop me worrying!!
