Would you ever have/consider an Unassisted Childbirth?

[tristansmum]

no i would not consider it. each to there own but for me i want someone there who knows what they are doing cause i certainly dont

 

[9babiesgone]

I would definitely do it, if I end up pregnant again.

I am so sick of the way the doctors treat me here, bc of my beliefs. Bc I do believe in homeopathy, and every time I have ignored my gut instincts I have miscarried, and bc doctors dont listen to intuition. I am so sick of it all. so if I do get pregnant again. probably an homebirth/waterbirth. without doctors. if I can find a good midwife I will do it assisted, but after my hard search for a good one, I dont think I could.

 

[aliss]

I'm having a scheduled C-section next time but part of me wishes to go unassisted as well. I don't have the medical knowledge to do it (as I am at a high risk of repeat shoulder dystocia) but I feel like if nobody or nothing bothered me, maybe my body would surprise me. Maybe!? Who knows...

 

[Nikki_d72]

I wouldn't for the simple reason that I think that no matter how well-educated I could become about it all, when I'd just given birth and was all full of lovely natural painkilling labour hormones and oxytocin, I doubt my responses would be fast enough or sharp enough to deal with any potential problems. I also think it would be really hard to stay rational and objective enough to deal with any problems if they arose with my own baby. Maybe I would prove myself wrong but I would never be able to relax enough during labour worrying about the possibilites, I don't think. I'm not trusting enough to rely on my partner and I wouldn't want to give him that burden, but it may be different if he was medically-minded. That's just my situation though, that's not to say others shouldn't or couldn't do it.

My friend here has HB all three of her children and told me herself that her first wasn't breathing at first and the midwives had to really direct her to talk to her baby etc while they were encouraging her to breathe, as she was so zoned out. She'd had a completely lovely natural drug-free birth. The baby was fine but it is an example of how affected she was by natural endorphins etc.

I am pretty lucky to be living in New Zealand though - we can choose our own IM who will see us through our whole pregnancy and be there at the birth (or their colleague, in the rare event of 2 women labouring at the same time), be it home, hospital or birth centre and it's funded for us through maternity care. My first MW was part of a small practice but they are quite conservative so wouldn't support a home VBAC, but my new MW works a bit more outside the box and she would. Given what's just happened to me though I don't think I could even go the HB route if there is ever a next time for me, well not where I live (4hrs from base hospital) as I now realise just how long a helicopter transfer takes from here to base in the event of a problem, having had to go that way. t I would still consider MW assisted HB if I could be near to the hospital. Anyway, my views may be a bit skewed by our recent loss, is what I'm saying - my faith in my body is shot.

I can completely see why many women would choose the IC route due to the systems they have to work with, to avoid hospital etc. I think it's a sorry state of affairs that women are forced to choose this due to factors like that, it should be a choice made for personal reasons, not because it's the only way to get a HB. I hate that insurers get to dictate your birth choices in the US, they are so risk-averse it can only get worse. What is the difference between a birth centre and home anyway? You would have to transfer to hospital for the same reasons from either, it's ridiculous.

 

[Guppy051708]

I hate that insurers get to dictate your birth choices in the US, they are so risk-averse it can only get worse. What is the difference between a birth centre and home anyway? You would have to transfer to hospital for the same reasons from either, it's ridiculous.

First off, my condolences for you loss

Secondly, i couldn't agree more! insurance is so insanely ridiculous here! Some arnt, but mine certainly is. I directly asked insurance, why they would cover this MW for this particular birth center, so why would they not cover that SAME provider who also does HBs?!?!?! No reason, other than "HB is NEVER covered unless its an unplanned emergency" It makes no sense! It's very unfair how insurances decide on what they decide. They literally sit down with hospital staff, mainly OBs, and then the OBs chat with the insurance ppl and obviously, OBs believe you should be in the hospital and how "unsafe birthing outside of the hospital is" thus insurance doesn't want to cover the "risk" ...there is way too much power ....

 

[Nikki_d72]

I hate that insurers get to dictate your birth choices in the US, they are so risk-averse it can only get worse. What is the difference between a birth centre and home anyway? You would have to transfer to hospital for the same reasons from either, it's ridiculous.

First off, my condolences for you loss

Secondly, i couldn't agree more! insurance is so insanely ridiculous here! Some arnt, but mine certainly is. I directly asked insurance, why they would cover this MW for this particular birth center, so why would they not cover that SAME provider who also does HBs?!?!?! No reason, other than "HB is NEVER covered unless its an unplanned emergency" It makes no sense! It's very unfair how insurances decide on what they decide. They literally sit down with hospital staff, mainly OBs, and then the OBs chat with the insurance ppl and obviously, OBs believe you should be in the hospital and how "unsafe birthing outside of the hospital is" thus insurance doesn't want to cover the "risk" ...there is way too much power ....

Thanks hon.

You're right, they will be swayed heavily by the Ob's who are also risk-averse and protecting their own position so it just goes round and round.

Regarding the highlighted bit above, could you use this to your advantage? Labour at home and say you just called your MW out to check if it was time to go to the Birth Centre and Oh no, you've left it too late, you're already at the pushing stage, we wouldn't make it there, safer to deliver here, I'll just get my stuff from the car... Maybe a bit risky if they can refuse to pay out afterwards, but maybe worth asking your MW if anyone has done that and gotten away with it? I feel really devious now, but it makes me so angry that your choices are dictated by these idiots!

 

[Guppy051708]

I hate that insurers get to dictate your birth choices in the US, they are so risk-averse it can only get worse. What is the difference between a birth centre and home anyway? You would have to transfer to hospital for the same reasons from either, it's ridiculous.

First off, my condolences for you loss

Secondly, i couldn't agree more! insurance is so insanely ridiculous here! Some arnt, but mine certainly is. I directly asked insurance, why they would cover this MW for this particular birth center, so why would they not cover that SAME provider who also does HBs?!?!?! No reason, other than "HB is NEVER covered unless its an unplanned emergency" It makes no sense! It's very unfair how insurances decide on what they decide. They literally sit down with hospital staff, mainly OBs, and then the OBs chat with the insurance ppl and obviously, OBs believe you should be in the hospital and how "unsafe birthing outside of the hospital is" thus insurance doesn't want to cover the "risk" ...there is way too much power ....

Thanks hon.

You're right, they will be swayed heavily by the Ob's who are also risk-averse and protecting their own position so it just goes round and round.

Regarding the highlighted bit above, could you use this to your advantage? Labour at home and say you just called your MW out to check if it was time to go to the Birth Centre and Oh no, you've left it too late, you're already at the pushing stage, we wouldn't make it there, safer to deliver here, I'll just get my stuff from the car... Maybe a bit risky if they can refuse to pay out afterwards, but maybe worth asking your MW if anyone has done that and gotten away with it? I feel really devious now, but it makes me so angry that your choices are dictated by these idiots!

Well, what i should have said is, they don't cover ASSISTED HB unless in the case of emergency...their exact words...but if it's an emergency then how the heck would it be assisted?!? haha.
We actually did think about having the MWs attend our HB, then if anything went wrong we would go to the hospital ourselves (not with MWs) and act as if we were going unassisted (remember its perrfectly legal to have "UCB" even though really it wasn't but what they dont know want hurt em ). The only thing is the MWs are still going to want to get paid. We live an hour away from the birth center, obviously if i were birthing at the birth center, i wouldn't be going to the hospital near my house ha. so in which case they were going to let us pay them back over time....the younger MW (there are two) was ALL for it, but the older MW (i like her) but she didn't want to (it wasn't because of the "fraud") just that she didn't want to travel an hour, thats was way too far for her...even though they expect me to drive and hour when im in labor haha. but anywho we were totally gonna do it. And of course 97% of the time (in a low risk woman) birth goes normal, without complication, in which case if everything went fine, they would be able to charge insurance and lie and say it was at the birth center even though technically it would have been at the house lol Then everything would work out peachy, our HB would be covered by insurance (even though they think its a BC birth lol) and we wouldn't owe money to the MWs.

 

[Rmar]

I considered it but I'm very glad I didn't. I had a PPH and neither DH or I could have ever managed it by ourselves. We needed someone who had managed it before and could do it with complete confidence. The midwife and doctor did it very well and they respected every choice I had made. They knew I did not want to cut the cord so the midwife told me I had a choice of cutting the cord to have the injection or give it a couple of pushes so the cord did not have to be cut it the placenta came out. It did and all was fine.

My DH however, was a mess. He paced around the house with the sight of all of the blood. I was too distracted to do anything, he couldn't do anything.

No matter how much I know myself being a student midwife, I still had too much to do with my baby to sit there massaging my uterus to keep it contracting.

Regarding cost of homebirth, I don't mean to sound pushy or anything but DH and I are on a really low salary and we saved and saved for our birth in just a few months. There is nothing in the world I would have rathered pay for. It wasn't cheap (I payed about $6000) but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

 

[Rmar]

Oops double post.