Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

Why there's no place like home

Telegraph writer Rowan Pelling has written this excellent article about having her second son at home last month. The decision to go for a home birth followed a traumatic delivery first time round in which Pelling got to 9cm dilated - and still ended up under the surgeons' knives with an emergency C-Section. Personally, I just managed to escape a section when giving birth to my daughter. But I did have a tough time delivering a baby who weighed well over 10lbs - so I can  sympathise with Pelling (pictured).

As Pelling jokingly points out, home birth in the UK has an unfair reputation  as the preserve of 'masochistic, tree-hugging yoga freaks'. Just 1.8% of new mothers in the UK give birth at home. But research suggests home births are as safe as hospital deliveries - indeed, possibly even safer, since there's less risk of contracting MRSA. And birth is less stressful in a familiar environment, studies suggest. There's also less risk of intervention; birth is allowed to take its natural course. There are no doctors rushing in to speed up labour artificially, which can lead to all sorts of problems. There's no pressure to agree to using forceps or ventouse if mothers overshoot hospital guidelines for permitted length of the second stage of labour.

Since I decided on a home birth for my second child, due in July, I've had to put up with acquaintance who have a) sneered at my decision  b) suggested I might die in the experience. Friends, especially those who had easier deliveries with their second children, have been more positive. But my mother still looks terrified at the mention of home birth and refuses to acknowledge I'm serious in my plans for one. My husband's hands shake slightly when I discuss it with him and he starts discussing the engineering behind our hot water system - always, I suspect, the first defence of a man troubled by what he's hearing. So it was good to read a positive account of home birth from another woman (also, at 40, a slightly older mum like myself) who felt empowered by the experience.

Pelling attributes some of the success of her home birth to hiring an independent midwife (for around £3,000). I have a fantastic community midwife - but unfortunately there's no guarantee of it being her who comes out to me when I'm in labour - and I'm trying to decide whether it would be worth the expense of hiring an independent midwife. That way, at least, I wouldn't have the stress of wondering about what the midwife will be like.

By the way - here is a useful tip for any woman about to have a baby or looking after a newborn. I've learnt recently that every woman has the right to insist on a change in the medical staff looking after her, including midwives, obstetricians, anaesthetists and health visitors. This would have been nice to know when I was giving birth to my daughter, and I suffered at the hands of a midwife who was like one of my old PE teachers at school. I will never be able to cleanse my brain of her instructions. "Push down through your bottom," she kept telling me, like I was a lazy army recruit who needed whipping into line.

If I'd known back then I had a legal right to tell her to push off and get a replacement, I'd have done so. So, if anyone reading this finds themselves suffering from authoritarian medics who act as if they have the god-given  power to tell them what to do, remember: you have the power to ditch them. There's a small but potent minority of medics who take advantage of their perceived power to bully women. And let's face it, who's more vulnerable than a pregnant or newly-delivered mother? 

Posted 28 April 2008 12:47

Childbirth Home birth New baby Older mother

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