summer rain
Mum of 5
- Joined
- May 5, 2010
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I am booked in for a home birth and in this area there is a specialist home birth team so my usual community midwives have referred all my care over to them-though both teams are under the same hospital and hospital trust. Due to various reasons I am just not feeling any sort of rapport with the home birth midwives and they are considering me higher risk than the community midwives and hospital are (who are not classing me as remotely high risk at all) therefore they are expecting me to have a consultant appointment at this late stage, have extra blood tests and possibly even have the GTT just to tick certain boxes which is something I am not happy with.
Also because they are worried about these supposed risks which include things like this being my fifth, my BMI in the overweight but not obese category and having a previous 'big' baby who didn't meet the official definition of big by quite a few oz, I feel I would be pushed into a transfer to hospital at a drop of a hat and they have said if my baby is jaundiced which all mine are due to hereditary and other factors which are not helped by the usual steps, they would push for the hospital to give phototherapy to the baby at 3-4 days old which is not something I actually want and also I would have to go up to the hospital at least twice for the newborn paediatrician test and newborn hearing test. I had a previous homebirth and things were nothing like that, the midwives seemed to have a greater degree of autonomy and were less gung ho about medical interventions.
I was going to transfer back to the community midwife team and have my baby in the hospital that is nearest, preferably the birth centre as they don't class me as high risk and would be happy to have me. However it is a smaller birth centre and they only have two staff on most of the time despite them putting more funding into it recently therefore they often send women up to the normal labour ward which I have heard is pretty horrific. Also due to staffing issues it's not uncommon for ladies to be stuck on the post natal ward for up to 48 hours just waiting for the paeds to do the post birth checks. I really couldn't handle that at all. I have only heard one good birth experience there at all and even then the friend in question said 'but the post birth care ruined it'.
I was in a similar situation many years ago while having my second eldest and I ended up having my second eldest at my parents' nearest hospital 200 miles away. I did have to transfer my care up there at 37 weeks and ended up having to stay there for over 6 weeks because I had him at 42 weeks and the midwives made me stay up there for a further 10 days because they wanted to keep an eye on his jaundice. This time my in laws who live in another borough are offering for me to stay there and for me to have the baby in another birth centre which has 8 delivery suites and is much better staffed and brand new, it is in another borough but interestingly is under the same NHS trust as the hospital I am with now. So I would presume it would be easier to transfer there than to a completely different trust? I am just a teeny bit worried though that they will tell me it's just for local women and I have to give birth in the nearest consultant led unit to there which is a death trap and I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. I don't see why or how they could say that but it's just a worry I have. Anyone done a transfer like this at this late stage and how did it go? Xx
Also because they are worried about these supposed risks which include things like this being my fifth, my BMI in the overweight but not obese category and having a previous 'big' baby who didn't meet the official definition of big by quite a few oz, I feel I would be pushed into a transfer to hospital at a drop of a hat and they have said if my baby is jaundiced which all mine are due to hereditary and other factors which are not helped by the usual steps, they would push for the hospital to give phototherapy to the baby at 3-4 days old which is not something I actually want and also I would have to go up to the hospital at least twice for the newborn paediatrician test and newborn hearing test. I had a previous homebirth and things were nothing like that, the midwives seemed to have a greater degree of autonomy and were less gung ho about medical interventions.
I was going to transfer back to the community midwife team and have my baby in the hospital that is nearest, preferably the birth centre as they don't class me as high risk and would be happy to have me. However it is a smaller birth centre and they only have two staff on most of the time despite them putting more funding into it recently therefore they often send women up to the normal labour ward which I have heard is pretty horrific. Also due to staffing issues it's not uncommon for ladies to be stuck on the post natal ward for up to 48 hours just waiting for the paeds to do the post birth checks. I really couldn't handle that at all. I have only heard one good birth experience there at all and even then the friend in question said 'but the post birth care ruined it'.
I was in a similar situation many years ago while having my second eldest and I ended up having my second eldest at my parents' nearest hospital 200 miles away. I did have to transfer my care up there at 37 weeks and ended up having to stay there for over 6 weeks because I had him at 42 weeks and the midwives made me stay up there for a further 10 days because they wanted to keep an eye on his jaundice. This time my in laws who live in another borough are offering for me to stay there and for me to have the baby in another birth centre which has 8 delivery suites and is much better staffed and brand new, it is in another borough but interestingly is under the same NHS trust as the hospital I am with now. So I would presume it would be easier to transfer there than to a completely different trust? I am just a teeny bit worried though that they will tell me it's just for local women and I have to give birth in the nearest consultant led unit to there which is a death trap and I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole. I don't see why or how they could say that but it's just a worry I have. Anyone done a transfer like this at this late stage and how did it go? Xx
