Lobster wrote:

couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. No way of knowing if the final
outcome would have been different at home, but I am sure the leadup
would have been far less distressing for all.

I just don't get why that experience wouldn't turn you into a rabid
anti-home-birth campaigner, though.

Well, I have left out much of the harrowing detail of what seemed like
days of fumbled interventions that really served no purpose but caused
much distress at the time. It certainly was not an experience that made
one think, I am glad we are here.

"Fortunately" the baby was OK, you say - what would have happened if it
hadn't been, and you'd been stuck at home waiting for the ambulance
rather than SWMBO being whisked in for a rapid section?

Well we were 15 mins from the hospital, so I can't see it would make
much difference in the total time to theatre - at the time it was
decided that c section was the way forward, there was a 20 min wait
anyway[1]. Midwives doing home delivers usually carry adequate
monitoring equipment to identify problems of foetal distress.

[1] Then began the saga of the comedy anaesthetist who could not seem to
administer a spinal block without half a dozen attempts and insisting it
must be that the operating table is not level!

In our case, my wife was in labour in hospital (there was never any
intention to do otherwise); she was hooked up to a foetal monitor and
being watched routinely by the midwife when there was an obvious 'oh,
****' moment and the midwife rushed off for help: within 2 minutes the
room was filled with all manner of scrubs-clad staff and within a couple
more minutes - the scariest of both our lives - a very blue baby arrived
and was whipped off to the incubator by the neonatal paediatrician.
Fortunately the baby was absolutely fine, but I genuinely don't believe
that would have been the case had SWMBO not been right there in the
hospital when the baby suddenly went 'off'.

IIUC, that sort of turnaround is relatively rare... obviously one can
never know if had circumstances been different, the outcome would
change. It is worth bearing in mind though that usually once labour is
established they only monitor for 10 - 15 mins out of the hour or so to
allow mum to move about a bit - so even in hospital you could have gone
40 mins or more prior to an event like that being noticed.

All anecdotal I know; but then there's the friend of SWMBO who wanted
her baby to be born at home and tragically ended up with a stillbirth.
Then a wife of a former work colleague of mine had a massive haemorrhage
during birth at home and was scant minutes away from the final curtain
when the ambulance finally got her to the hospital. In both cases, the
women went on to have uneventful births for their subsequent children...
and were very happy to do so in hospital.

Indeed - if there have been complications in the past, then it is not
worth the risk.

Typically in this area they don't recommend home birth for a first one.
They often offer the "DomINO" system (Domestic In Out) when at the onset
of labour the midwife comes round to your house, then accompanies you to
hospital for the actual delivery and then assuming all is well brings
you back again. That keeps total hospital time down to as little as a
couple of hours.

--
Cheers,

John.

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