Mum-to-be here again.
I'm sure that Dad-to-be will be along shortly with his own observations but I thought I'd tell you a bit about our trip to look around the maternity services at the hospital last night with our ante-natal class. Although we're planning a home birth, following the recommendation of a friend who had to go in at the last minute, we decided that it would be a good idea to go along and familiarise ourselves with the services just in case.
We were told to meet by the main entrance and people walking past must have thought there was a pregnant lady convention in town or something - so many bumps in one place!
Anyway we were split into 2 groups and each went off with one of our 2 community midwives for a tour. Call me childish if you will, but I elected to go off with the one that didn't call me fat last week :)
Up to the second floor and we were in baby land. There are a variety of services available, from clinical type standard delivery suites (which we decided were not half as cool as they looked on Gray's Anatomy, one of our current fave shows) and 'home from home' style rooms which are designed to be more welcoming. Amazingly the home from home rooms don't get used very much because apparently the hospital midwives are not keen on them. They like people to be in 'proper' delivery suites, on beds, laying down and pushing, so these rooms tend to be used by the community midwives for Domino deliveries.
For the uninitiated, Domino deliveries is not just about deciding whether you want garlic bread with your double pepperoni with extra cheese (having looked back to Dad-to-be's previous post on the subject I see that he also did the cheap and obvious pizza gag - we are obviously made for each other). Domino is where your midwife comes to your home for the early part of labour, transfers with you to hospital for the delivery and then after a few hours transfers you back home again. Our personal decision has been to skip the middle bit where you have to go to hospital and just get her to deliver the baby at home!!!!
The home from home facilities were nice - a brass double bedstead with old fashioned quilt instead of a hospital bed, pictures on the walls, mood music and lighting and an aromatherapy oil burner. This was all good but I have all that at home. The main thing that would possibly persuade me to go down this route would be the birth pool that was also in the room. I quite like the idea of a water birth and know a few friends that have done this but the thing that has stopped us is that we live in a first floor flat. Although we have been told that it's fine as long as you put the pool by an external wall, I don't relish the prospect of crashing through the floor and ending up naked and legs akimbo in the living room of the pensioners that live downstairs, so maybe this will have to wait until baby no 2 when hopefully we will have our very own downstairs!
So, although the facilities seemed nice, they didn't seem as nice as my own flat. Dad-to-be asked me whether I would go in here if I needed to be transferred into hospital but I pointed out that if I did need to be transferred it would be for medical reasons and so I would probably end up in one of those clinical rooms.
It seems that all the other people in our class were looking to go down the hospital or Domino route and we seem to be the only home birthers. It is horses for courses and I totally respect the decision of anyone to have their baby wherever they personally feel comfortable. It is important that the expectant Mum is in an environment where she feels safe, whether this be home or the hospital. Our particular reasons for wanting a home birth are:
I'm sure that Dad-to-be will be along shortly with his own observations but I thought I'd tell you a bit about our trip to look around the maternity services at the hospital last night with our ante-natal class. Although we're planning a home birth, following the recommendation of a friend who had to go in at the last minute, we decided that it would be a good idea to go along and familiarise ourselves with the services just in case.
We were told to meet by the main entrance and people walking past must have thought there was a pregnant lady convention in town or something - so many bumps in one place!
Anyway we were split into 2 groups and each went off with one of our 2 community midwives for a tour. Call me childish if you will, but I elected to go off with the one that didn't call me fat last week :)
Up to the second floor and we were in baby land. There are a variety of services available, from clinical type standard delivery suites (which we decided were not half as cool as they looked on Gray's Anatomy, one of our current fave shows) and 'home from home' style rooms which are designed to be more welcoming. Amazingly the home from home rooms don't get used very much because apparently the hospital midwives are not keen on them. They like people to be in 'proper' delivery suites, on beds, laying down and pushing, so these rooms tend to be used by the community midwives for Domino deliveries.
For the uninitiated, Domino deliveries is not just about deciding whether you want garlic bread with your double pepperoni with extra cheese (having looked back to Dad-to-be's previous post on the subject I see that he also did the cheap and obvious pizza gag - we are obviously made for each other). Domino is where your midwife comes to your home for the early part of labour, transfers with you to hospital for the delivery and then after a few hours transfers you back home again. Our personal decision has been to skip the middle bit where you have to go to hospital and just get her to deliver the baby at home!!!!
The home from home facilities were nice - a brass double bedstead with old fashioned quilt instead of a hospital bed, pictures on the walls, mood music and lighting and an aromatherapy oil burner. This was all good but I have all that at home. The main thing that would possibly persuade me to go down this route would be the birth pool that was also in the room. I quite like the idea of a water birth and know a few friends that have done this but the thing that has stopped us is that we live in a first floor flat. Although we have been told that it's fine as long as you put the pool by an external wall, I don't relish the prospect of crashing through the floor and ending up naked and legs akimbo in the living room of the pensioners that live downstairs, so maybe this will have to wait until baby no 2 when hopefully we will have our very own downstairs!
So, although the facilities seemed nice, they didn't seem as nice as my own flat. Dad-to-be asked me whether I would go in here if I needed to be transferred into hospital but I pointed out that if I did need to be transferred it would be for medical reasons and so I would probably end up in one of those clinical rooms.
It seems that all the other people in our class were looking to go down the hospital or Domino route and we seem to be the only home birthers. It is horses for courses and I totally respect the decision of anyone to have their baby wherever they personally feel comfortable. It is important that the expectant Mum is in an environment where she feels safe, whether this be home or the hospital. Our particular reasons for wanting a home birth are:
- I think I would feel more comfortable in my home environment - my own belongings etc. I am sure I would feel more relaxed being able to do what I wanted to while away the hours of labour.
- Less medical intervention - our own hospital has a scarily high caesarean rate but hospital birth generally also has higher rates of episiotomy and assisted delivery such as forceps or suction.
- I was born at home 30+ years ago and it never did me any harm! I have also got lots of friends who have gone down the route of home birth and had positive experiences
- The experiences of my sister and others have put me off hospital birth, where the timetable, positions etc. seem to be more dictated by what is convenient for the medical staff than the birthing woman. My sister was not allowed to get off the bed, even though she asked repeatedly if she could be in a more upright position. The end result was that after several hours of pushing to little effect she eneded up getting too tired and had to have forceps. My nephew came out with a squished head and later had to have cranial osteopathy.
- I don't like hospitals. Admittedly I have only ever had one hospital stay of 3 days and it was in another part of the country but the experience didn't particularly make me relish the opportunity of a repeat stay. The food was totally dire and, as I don't eat meat, my options were very limited. Short staffing meant that you couldn't always get the attention you needed. I wasn't allowed to leave my bed at first and was told to ring for a bed pan if I needed to 'go'. This was fine but when I did ring it could be up to 45 minutes before anyone actually came to bring one, by which time I was almost wetting myself. I then found that trying to go to the loo sitting up in bed with only a curtain separating me from my fellow patients and their visitors was not an easy thing. The ward was also VERY noisy at the best of times and was not helped by a crazy (literally - she was transferred to psych once they had treated the injuries sustained throwing herself through a plate glass window on the ward) woman who screamed all night and slept all day. In the end, I was literally crying and begging them to let me go home. I don't blame the nursing staff as I am sure that they are all dedicated and doing their best under extremily difficult circumstances. Mr Blair if you are reading this how about sorting out staffing levels in the NHS - just a thought!
- Visiting hours at our hospital are extremily limited for visitors other than your partner.
Anyway, all this adds up to me personally being happier at home than in hospital. I'm not stupid, I will go if there is a medical need for me or the baby, but otherwise I'll stop where I am. Nothing I saw or heard yesterday at the maternity ward has changed the way I feel. I would be interested to see if anyone else in our class changed their mind - who knows maybe we now have a few more homebirthers or Dominio deliveries?
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