Home Birth

Home birth, is it for Anyone?
Nowadays you can opt to have your child birth at home. You are not obligated to give birth in hospital. This needs to be planned and booked in advance so that health professionals can be allocated for this task. Some mum-to-be may find that their health care trust may be against home births and in the few cases like this in which you may need to be more assertive and adamant about it.

Because of mixture of opinions amongst health professionals about where a birth should be and it should not be, you may come across biased opinions against it but if this is not your first child and you have had previous complications or you are expecting twins then your best bet is to stick to having the birth take place in hospital. On the other hand if you are not sure you could opt for a home birth and perfectly within your right to change your mind at any time right up to the final minutes as with any medical process that requires consent. It is better to choose this route if you are not sure as to deciding that you want a home birth at twelfth hour or sooner (how late is cancellations can be has not been quantitatively defined by the Department of Health) after stating otherwise as you may not get this due to staff non-availability.
Getting an independent midwife to carry out the antenatal procedure for you but this would be at a cost of around £2500, I expect that the experience would be the same as doing it public.

What if you decide to go for a home birth and it is found or recommended that you should go to hospital due to foreseeable complications?
If there is a need to go to hospital, then the midwife will call an ambulance round. You may think that this is dramatic, but it is usually precautionary measure although it could be that your labour has slowed down or you are getting the contractions but you have not dilated as much as required. An ambulance has a range of medical equipment and can facilitate a number of medical procedures than getting driven to hospital using a car or taxi/cab.

Who can be present at the home birth?
At your home, you could have anyone you wanted or the bare minimum, i.e. you and the midwife and possibly an assistant. The equipment or 'birth pack' required for a home birth will be brought in by the midwife, and if necessary, you maybe asked to provide a table lamp with a flexible neck that can be repositioned. An angle-poised lamp could be used to check if you have dilated far enough or to check the status of your perineum (i.e. the area between the vagina and back passage).

After the baby has been safely delivered the placenta too needs to be delivered. Any waste and bio-waste will be taken away for careful disposal. Then your new born baby will be weighted and checked over, all information such as the time the birth took place will be documented. You are normally presented with this information and method of birth choice will be on a card.

The midwife will usually visit you and the baby everyday for a couple of days to check health and to provide advice along with any questions you may have. Your GP may visit to make sure everything is ok, and then you will be required to visit your local health centre for baby weight check and documentation. A health centre will be allocated to you which is usually quite close to where you live.