A perfect balance of practical information, compelling personal stories and research evidence, "Home Birth" is essential reading for all couples considering the alternative to a hospital birth. Leading childbirth educator Nicky Wesson dispels many common myths about home birth and shows how giving birth to your baby in your own home can be the most exciting and fulfilling thing you'll ever do.
For many adult independent women, pregnant for the first time, their treatment antenatally comes as a great shock. They complain bitterly of being expected to wait long hours for routine tests, of never seeing the same person twice, of being unable to establish a relationship with someone who will be present at the birth, but most of all as being regarded as stupid – “I think they think you leave your brain at the door when you come in.” They are disbelieved about the date of conception, not credited with feeling as they do, ‘reassured’ instead of listened to, patronised by doctors younger than themselves and generally told not to worry about things as they will be taken care of for them. For many, all this grates but they are prepared to tolerate it for the sake of the baby who is thought to benefit from this type of care. Others, although initially undecided about the place of birth, realise that similar attitudes may prevail during labour unless they take themselves out of the system.
“I dreaded the hospital visits, and if I’d had any doubts about having my baby at home those visits certainly dispelled them.”
“When I started having children I assumed that the very best I could do for myself and my babies was to do as I was told. I trusted the professionals, believing them all to be wise and caring experts with a profound understanding of, and respect for, pregnancy, birth and motherhood. I was an ‘easy patient’, but bit by bit this touching faith was chipped away until, by halfway through my third pregnancy, I had become well and truly terrified of having another baby in hospital.”
“I felt strongly the need to be at home and in control of the situation.”
Of course there are sympathetic and kindly midwives and doctors who will agree to be led by the parents’, especially the mothers’, wishes: but sadly, there are many more who, for reasons of training and their place in the hierarchy as well as for those of personal convenience and emotional comfort, will not listen to the mother. It is on these occasions – for example when restrictive or invasive monitoring of the fetal heart is insisted upon (despite many studies showing its lack of benefit and potential harm), when labour or its second stage is only ‘allowed’ to last a limited length of time without intervention, when pain relief is pressed upon the mother, when her requests are ignored because they do not comply with hospital policy, or treated with ill-disguised contempt – that women know they would be far happier had they stayed at home. However, such is the power of the propaganda that they may not even admit it to themselves. It is often these women who suffer not only at the time of birth but also after it. Loss of control in giving birth is a strong predisposing factor in subsequent postnatal depression, blighting the early period of motherhood and affecting the relationship with her new baby. (One study discovered a rate of postnatal depression of 60 per cent in mothers who had been delivered in hospital, compared with 16 per cent in women delivered at home.)
Tragically, previous bad hospital experiences often motivate women to have subsequent babies at home.
“My third baby was born at home after two hospital labours that I had no wish to repeat. On both occasions I was given drugs I’d rather not have had and both labours were spent immobile on the delivery table from two and a half centimetres onwards, resulting in more disorientation for me.”
“I had a strap placed round my middle to monitor my contractions. Without consulting me the nameless doctor placed a wire up my vagina to monitor the fetal heart. I meekly protested, to which he replied ‘Why not?’ I felt assaulted and undermined by his attitude as more wire straps and belts were placed around me, inside me and next to me, thus immobilising me to the bed. I lapsed further into deferential. My labour was to be artificially controlled throughout and I felt powerless to protest.”
Having a baby at home gives control back to a woman. Not only are the professionals on alien territory, a very significant alteration in the balance of power, but in most cases nothing will be done to her routinely or against her wishes. She is in a far better position to listen to her instincts and do exactly as she wants. She will not be inhibited by her surroundings. She will not have to make a decision to cut herself off from her everyday life and leave for hospital, removing herself from all the commonplace distractions and comforts that might take her mind off any pain she may be feeling. (One Canadian study found women giving birth at home reported feeling far less pain than their counterparts in hospital. 10 ) She can more easily decline electronic monitoring; in fact the most restricting or invasive types, the cardiotocograph belt monitor and fetal scalp electrode, used for monitoring a baby in the absence of a midwife, are not yet available at home.
A woman at home will be able to labour slowly, there being no easy access to pharmacological methods of accelerating labour. In fact intervention is likely only to be used when there is a true indication as it generally involves a transfer to hospital, a situation which nearly everyone is keen to avoid. “He was born at teatime, after a 15-hour labour (just as well we were at home, where no one could suggest spoiling it with Syntocinon).”
In fact labour at home is often shorter than it would be in hospital. Not only can you be more relaxed about the whole process, comfortable in the knowledge that the midwife will come to you, but you can eat and drink freely and share your birth with anyone that you choose, including your children. Having friends with you can greatly increase the amount of physical and emotional support available to you; it has been shown to be superior to pethidine as a form of pain relief. Trusts vary in their policies as to who, apart from the father, you may have with you at a hospital birth. Moreover, although the father is allowed to be at the birth, he often feels redundant in hospital and can end up merely being used as a channel for conveying unwelcome information, as in ‘Just tell your wife that we are going to do X, Mr Bloggs.’ In accounts of birth at home, fathers are usually described as having plenty to do and in no way feeling superfluous.
Together you are on your territory and able to welcome your child into your home, a feeling which can be overwhelmingly ‘right’.
“Having my baby at home kept birth in its normal place, alongside conception and pregnancy. Having to go away to hospital breaks up the experience dreadfully and its place in the normal sequence of family life is irretrievably lost. I felt whole, complete and happy – not disoriented and fragmented as in hospital.”
Women often describe the anxiety and distress they feel at being parted from their husbands or partners right at the start of their life as a new family (see Jo’s account of the first hours of her daughter’s life on page 179). For many women it is the first time they have been parted from their partner and it comes at the very time when they most want the comfort of their company and need to share and discuss their feelings about the labour and their new baby.
“I also wanted to be with my family after the baby was born, to share this emotional and joyful event.”
Fathers too experience a sense of anticlimax and loss when they are cast out on their own after sharing one of the most emotional moments of their lives. They are unable to get to know their babies immediately and miss most of their very earliest hours or days.
“Although he had been present at the birth of our daughters he had always felt somehow left out and inhibited and afterwards very deflated when he had to go home. In fact, we had always joked that it was him who had the ‘baby blues’ instead of me!”
Consideration of existing children is another reason given for having subsequent children at home. Women choose to do this rather than submit them to the double disruption caused by suddenly leaving them to go to hospital and then introducing them to the new baby there. Many mothers say this is their chief reason for home birth.
“I decided on a home birth for my third baby because I feel that a normal birth should be a part of family life. I saw no need for a hospital delivery in my case and I wanted my two older children, Hanna (six) and William (four), to view childbirth as a natural family event. They had been involved during the pregnancy and I didn’t want to be separated from them when they had to cope with gaining a new brother or sister. As it turned out things went perfectly and they accepted Alexander into the family without any fuss.”
“I thought they would benefit greatly by seeing their sister almost immediately after the birth.”
“When I became pregnant for the second time, we decided we would like this baby to be born at home, mainly because we felt the atmosphere would be more relaxed, but also because I didn’t want to be away from Sam.”
“I felt a tremendous amount of resentment at having to leave my first child at home. I felt this baby has put me in hospital and it took me a long time to get to love him because I had been forced apart from my first.”
Women whose babies have been born at home really do seem to find that it makes it easier for the other children to accept. A toddler’s feelings at meeting a new brother or sister in hospital can only be guessed at. It must be daunting not only to find your mother in bed in totally strange surroundings in a room with a lot of other women, but also that the baby has her all to itself. It must be easier, if not necessarily more welcome, if the baby arrives without interrupting a child’s routine. It is also far simpler for fathers if they do not have to take the whole family to a hospital for visiting twice a day, there to have to try and control the children while also giving attention to their wives and new baby.
Not only can brothers and sisters of home born babies see their new sibling just after the birth but, if you wish and it seems appropriate at the time, they can be present at the birth. This is simply not an option in hospital. Being at home means that, provided you have made prior arrangements to have them cared for at home or elsewhere if necessary, you can have them with you if it is what both you and they want at the time. As a mother of a seven-year old daughter wrote, “It meant a lot to me to have her there”.
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