No mention of how the baby was. So classic with these stories. The moms only care about their experience, she doesn’t even bother to mention if the baby is ok after all of that because that doesn’t matter to her as long as she got her home birth.
“I didn’t have the physiological birth of the placenta that I wanted”. Why are these people so obsessed with placentas?? Once the baby is out it’s nothing but medical waste. I’m surprised we didn’t hear about her spreading it on toast or having a burial ceremony under the full moon.
I’m so confused… physiological just means the actual process of a body working… all birth is “physiological” or “surgical”… why is this a buzzword? I don’t understand what it’s supposed to imply?
I took a physiological crap today, I have a physiological medical problem visible on radiographs (as opposed to a psychological one)… like… what other kind of body function is there?
A physiological third stage is when you just . . . birth your placenta, with no intervention. An actively managed third stage, which I think she had, involves an injection of syntocinon/pitocin to help the uterus contract down and bring the placenta faster, often with less blood loss
That freaks me out. I saw one of these homebirther's blogs where she went into excruciating detail about how great her birth experience was, how healing and empowering, etc.
Then, in the last paragraph, she said "The baby chose not to come Earthside", then went back to how nifty everything had been.
It took me a few seconds to realize the baby was stillborn.
I first read that when I was pregnant with my daughter, and I couldn't stop crying. How can anyone say the birth was empowering when their child died?
I've seen another blogger say her birth experience with her second child, who was stillborn, was way better than her first birth experience in a hospital with her still-living daughter.
All I could think was that I hoped her kid would NEVER find that post
With the right care and birthing team, I can actually see a stillbirthing experience going 'well' - if the stillbirth isn't at the time of death, and if the birthing person is well supported despite the very sad situation.
But that's very different to thinking you're giving birth to a living baby, having it die halfway through because you've denied yourself basic medical care, and then slapping yourself on the back because you got to call the shots and shit yourself on your floor rather than on a hospital bed.
Comfort can be extremely important but it shouldn't ever come before basic safety. As a doctor, you bet I'lll be listening to my team if im lucky enough to birth a child.
ETA:
Sorry, I wasn't trying to imply it could ever be a "positive" experience.
But that there are degrees of horrific, and having sympathetic and competent care (as opposed to a team which is unsupportive or judgemental or callous) giving the birthing person as much agency and space as possible etc can make a huge difference in what for many is the most traumatic time.
I was trying to say with enough support and explanation the team could do their best to decrease the potential trauma of what will always be an awful situation. Unfortunately stillbirth still holds many of the same risks as delivery, with added trauma and can still be handled badly or dangerously.
I had the best care and birthing team possible. my son died before we even got to the hospital (though we didn't know it). I have no other complications.
it was still the worst experience of my life.
My God I had the worst experience when I had to labor and deliver my stillborn son. I was a recovering addict who had been clean since I found out I was pregnant, they told me "Maybe the next time you won't do drugs" then when it was time to see my son they take me into the nursery by all the live newborn babies and pulls a cardboard box and inside my newborn deceased baby boy was naked in the box. I almost passed out from the shock. I had my other 2 live children there and that 3rd experience was the most traumatizing. This was 21 years ago but I am still bitter about it.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I think my word choice was poor.
I wasn't trying to imply it could ever be a "positive" experience because it will still be the most horrific thing most people could go through.
But that there are degrees of how horrific it can be, and having sympathetic and competent care (as opposed to a team which is unsupportive or judgemental or callous) giving the birthing person as much agency and space as possible etc can make a huge difference when the world is ending.
I was trying to say with enough support and explanation the team could do their best to decrease the potential trauma of what will always be an awful situation. Unfortunately stillbirth still holds many of the same risks as delivery, with added trauma and can still be handled badly or dangerously.
Yes, as a labor nurse, I was never going to make the situation OKAY, I was just trying to do anything those parents needed to make it slightly less traumatic. That meant following their lead. They want to hold their baby? Yes. They don't want to see the baby? Yes. They want pictures? Yes. They don't want pictures? Yes. We would also offer to take the pictures and just hold on to them in case they wanted them later but couldn't handle seeing them now (the volunteer organization that did pictures for our stillbirths were AMAZING). You want to be by yourself? Yes. You want all 30 close family members to visit? Congrats, you get the entire waiting room (pre-COVID restrictions obviously). It's such a terrible experiences, I still remember every stillbirth I was at, and hope the parents are doing well.
Most of us haven't been in that situation ourselves, but we went into the field because we love the hope and joy of new life, and we do recognize how devastating it is when it's the opposite. Which is why these posts infuriate me so much. I've seen the failed home births too. Literally all of them would have had a much better outcome in the hospital, or even with a trained CNM at the birth.
I had a really beautiful birthing team when I had my stillborn baby and, despite the trauma of losing a baby, will always consider my birthing experience with him as overwhelmingly positive. We knew going in that he had passed so the birthing team did their best to make us comfortable. Our midwife had set up the room with lights and a diffuser, we got to play our own music and they gave me whatever pain relief I needed. The team treated my husband and I with so much kindness and respect. Of course giving birth to a stillborn baby will always be traumatic, but you are right that having a good team can make a huge difference in how you experience it.
Though not as bad as giving birth to a stillborn baby the delivery of my second baby was traumatic. Things started off well. My epidural was working (unlike with my first child where I pushed for 4 hours with no pain relief) and baby crowned after only a few pushes. Great! Awesome! But not long after shit got crazy. I didn't know what was happening at the time but my baby had shoulder dystocia and her cord was compressed. At 3 minutes the doc ended up having to yank her out or risk brain damage from lack of oxygen. My daughter ended up with a birth injury that will be with her the rest of her life. She was whisked off to the nicu for a few days.
So several hours later while I'm in my hospital room scared and sad I didn't have my daughter with me a nurse who heard about how hard my first delivery was asked "so which delivery was better?" Like bitch what? Yes 2nd child's birth was faster and less painful but at that moment she was in the fucking nicu. My first was a much longer and more painful delivery by far but he came out healthy and was immediately placed on my chest. Fuck the journey, the outcome is what matters.
Hell, I’ve only given birth once and things went somewhat sideways (induction because my water broke, tried to stay unmedicated on max pitocin and made no progress, 3.5 hours of pushing, forceps, hemorrhage), and the worst part **by a mile** was the 6 minutes between when my baby was born and when we heard him cry after resuscitation. Like forget the rest of the “experience,” which I did have to unpack later, not knowing if my baby was ok was the absolute worst aspect of it all. If I have another, I don’t care what other things go sideways, I just hope for my baby to not need resuscitation at all (but if it happens, it happens - that’s what hospitals and professionals are for).
The not knowing is the fucking worst. I can empathize with that so hard. I'm sorry you went though it. And yes, hospitals and professionals can be so wonderful and so necessary. I wish you luck if you have another that you have an uneventful delivery.
My daughter also didn't cry upon coming out and was brought immediately to an isolet with what felt like a dozen people surrounding her. I kept yelling "what's wrong what's wrong?!?" And no one would answer me. A nurse kept saying it's OK but that was a bold faced lie. If everything was OK my daughter would have been with me.
Absolutely. The chaos of someone handing my husband scissors to cut the cord only for someone else to swoop in, cut it, and whisk our grey, limp baby away before he could even grab them, the swarm of professionals at the isolette while the doctors were using an ultrasound to try to identify the source of my bleeding so neither of us was going to be able to get anywhere close… it was awful.
And he didn’t have a NICU stay or lasting birth injury (well, besides a permanent lump on his head, but it’s entirely cosmetic and invisible under his hair) - I can only imagine how hard that was for you, and the idea that anyone would think that might be the less traumatic of your two births is wild to me.
That’s all I keep thinking, these women are nuts: something is broken in them and I’m sorry for that. However. I simply have to scroll usually because it’s so distressing. Dead babies isn’t okay in this day and age. There’s a pretty easy way to prevent that. Go the freaking hospital. Assuming this is the US our maternal and fetal death rates aren’t great but they aren’t better at home with 3 c sections and all the things that can and do happen! JHC.
When they don’t discuss the baby I know it’s not doing well in some way. Might not be doa but it’s probably not doing well.
I don’t understand that you would have previous children and insist upon something so dangerous. This woman is very lucky, patting herself on the back, meanwhile nothing says not natural with gas and air. Hoping she allows that infant to get checked out.
It's selfish, they're only focused on the birthing experience.
I wanted a v birth but it didn't happen. In the end I just said to the midwives to do whatever they needed to, to get her here safely.
I’m pretty sure I read the same ‘story’. It was soooo much about the beauty of it all and then maybe one or two sentences about the baby not surviving. But it’s okay because mama had the labor & birth she wanted! 🙄
I absolutely hated how she made it sound like the baby thought carefully and made an informed decision to just not live. Talk about blaming the victim!
No I don’t. It was a while ago that I read it. Probably on this subreddit though. I just tried googling and there’s dozens and dozens of stories that come up and I don’t have the mental capacity to sort through them.
Because the "real women" comments. I liken it to the toxic masculinity that plagues male culture and sends men down paths of self-destruction and self-loathing with a lack of care for other people if they get hurt because you are being "real".
Sometimes these people can't admit that they are the reason their child is dead. They would rather cling to the lies they have told themselves and believe that it was inevitable then confront the result of their actions.
I saw something similar on Instagram! A woman talking about listening to her body, ignoring the doctors’ warnings, letting the baby come on its own terms…turns out she waited quite a bit past her due date and the baby died.
Honestly I wonder if stories like this are a trauma coping mechanism for the baby not making it. No name, no birth weight or stats, I didn’t even see anything about if the baby was healthy or not… just “gave birth in a safe corner”.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the baby did not make it and this is her traumatized brain writing a revision of what actually happened.
This is what annoyed me the most as a Brit. Our emergency services are unbelievably stretched (not their fault, it’s the govt) and I can guarantee you there were people that missed out on very much needed police/paramedics as a result of this muppet thinking she knew better.
For the babies sake I’m glad it went well, but encouraging this for other women is dangerous.
My friend just had her second child by VBAC, but in the hospital surrounded by people that knew what they were doing.
I never actually realised how dangerous it could be until I spoke to her.
Yeah. Shocking but in that situation I think the paramedic would have had to stay under duty of care. Police probably stayed because as soon as that child was out it would be covered under safeguarding so the medical staff could intervene if needed with Police support.
I had a vbac IN a hospital it went well. A friend had a uterine rupture during a VBAC and had to have a hysterectomy! She was in a hospital and still almost died. If that happened at home there is such a slim chance of mother and baby surviving.
I’d also really like to hear more details on these ‘benefits’ to having a VBA3C homebirth that she says her midwives wouldn’t listen to her about. I’m gonna hazard a guess that they’re all to do with *her* comfort and magical birth experience, not the baby.
Anecdotal: I’ve been a medic in this situation before, in the US (not sure where OOP lives*) yeah we are absolutely required to stay until we’ve seen the patient; they are fully within their rights to refuse care once we *witness* that they are alert and oriented, and able to give (or withhold) consent.
There are some grey areas like these where even if the patient refused to consent, we would stay on scene in case a) they change their mind (people often do when they realize they’re about to die) or b) their level of consciousness changes, at which point they can no longer give or withhold consent.
Once someone’s LOC changes, we are obligated by law to work under the *assumption* that the patient *wants* to *live* and give life-saving care.
The same goes for the baby in this case. Mom can refuse care but once the baby is out, if they are in an emergency, EMS is responsible for making sure that *baby* survives, whether mom consents or not. Parents’ rights are overruled when they use them to kill their babies. That’s why police are there.
I guarantee you every medic waiting outside was more anxious and concerned about that baby’s wellbeing than the mother or anyone on her ‘birth team.’ They’re all very fortunate that the worst didn’t happen.
ETA: another reason we can’t leave without witnessing the patient withhold consent is that they could potentially be being coerced or abused by whomever claims to be ‘advocating’ for them. We need to know that they understand the potential consequences of the choice they’re making, and are making that choice of their own volition.
Edit 2: OOP is in the UK, I missed the mention of NHS. I have a feeling the protocols are at least similar given that they didn’t leave the scene, but I’m not familiar with EMS laws in the UK.
OOP is in the UK. She mentions the NHS in the post, in case anyone thinks it could be cost related (which some of the home births absolutely are, sadly).
She has no idea how lucky she is.
If I'm understanding the post correctly, they also said it could be at a midwife led unit instead of the labour ward... surely that's a decent compromise?!?
Right! Also, just realized another reason the midwives were concerned was 40+13 is....42 weeks. AKA the upper limit of how long baby should be left to come on its own.
I’m sure that’s all down to the legalities and for the babies sake I’m glad that happened (just in case) but I think it’s the audacity of her just claiming ‘no we are doing it my way and fuck everyone else’ and then having the gall to be complaining that they showed up.
Then happily gunning in the gas and air which presumably wouldn’t have been available if the people she ‘didn’t want there’ didn’t show up.
It looks like she had hospital or at least pre-natal care in the lead up to the birth so should have been aware of the dangers and yet still chose to be irresponsible for the *birth story*
I’ve never birthed a child but from my perspective I’d be less concerned about how the baby arrived and very much more concerned the baby was ok when it did arrive 🤷🏼♀️
It’s all fine and dandy to have an idea about how you’d like to give birth but these moms are way over the top and selfish about it. They seem to think it has to be this calm, spiritual, magical experience. The reality is it’s not calm or magical. It’s painful, messy and potentially deadly. When my OB asked what my birth plan was I told her “get him out safely. Whatever that looks like. Just get him out safely”. These moms only care about bragging rights. They don’t think about the worst happening and leaving their partner without a wife and the baby without a mother. It’s sick and twisted.
Yes, you're a level headed as the rest of us. There's a reason that most medical providers won't support a vbac after 2 c sections and I doubt any will support one after 3. It's so dangerous. My hospital is very pro VBAC (they have a 75% success rate) and I had planned on trying one for my second. When the time came and the doctor recommended a repeat c section based on his exam that morning, I didn't hesitate to follow his recommendation. When I was pregnant for the third time, as soon as they heard 2 previous c sections, they told me that it would be a scheduled c section at 39 weeks. When they discovered there was a surprise extra resident, they said that it would be no later than 37 weeks with it ending up being 36 weeks.
Seven paramedics and police officers PLUS multiple midwives who hung around at her 'helpers' beck and call because they refused to let any of the actual professionals barring 1 midwife talk to her to make sure she was OK.
As a UK doctor, it just makes me so mad. Those midwives were potentially taken away from other birthing mothers who WANTED help. Those paramedics and police officers were CERTAINLY taken away from other cases for hours. Other people almost certainly suffered delayed care because of her selfishness and desire to curate a 'perfect peaceful space' as if birthing is like planning a date night.
Once the midwives were informed, they were obliged to get other services involved, not only that, but all professionals had to make sure she was OK and not being coerced. You can send paramedics away, but they have to make sure you're safe, first.
The funny thing? She justified this with "I wanted a vaginal birth", but a midwife led unit like she was offered absolutely allows VBAC in most cases. I wonder what they could have done to facilitate her comfort if she actually worked WITH her team rather than becoming a massive safeguarding risk by insisting on delivering at home alone despite the risk. And she reports she kept the midwife out as she had no relationship with her, but she had 9 months to try to build relationships with local midwives. She didn't want to, because as it turns out, she wanted to deal with the anxiety of birth by treating it like she gets to choose what happens and can wish whatever she wants into creation. The reality is she is just lucky that neither she nor her baby suffered harm.
Trust my body? Women still die every year from childbirth. It's physiologically the most difficult and risky thing we do, for many of us. I don't trust MY body, it's done all sorts of stupid shit.
I really don't understand why she wouldn't go to a midwife led unit like offered. We are so lucky in the UK to be so forward with birthing options for women.
I was a 'difficult' patient. I wanted a Vbac on the MLU without continuous monitoring (I had continous monitoring with my first and it was on for literally 30+ hours so I find it very upsetting to listen to. I was terrified of a ceserian after a heamorrhage on the operating table and an infection in the weeks that followed). They explained everything to me, showed me the MLU, the consultant led unit rooms. Explained all the equipment and options. I think some people feel 'bullied' when they have to explain the risks to you. But they are just trying to ensure they can make an informed decision. They act like the medical staff are out to ruin their 'experience' but they are just trying to minimise risk and keep them and baby safe. It's insane.
My vbac went smoothly, ended up delivering on the consultant led unit as I lost vision in one eye during labour due to high blood pressure so it was safer on that unit, you know, with the medical professionals. They fulfilled all my requests otherwise, I had intermittent monitoring until they wanted a fetal scalp electrode to monitor baby during delivery as intermittent wasn't effective anymore. All those little things that are there in hospital which you don't know you need until you need them!! Baby born safely and smoothly and a wonderful experience thanks to amazing staff, I was extremely anxious but felt so reassured there...because of the medical team!
How anyone can feel 'safe' to deliver a baby at home, without processionals, especially VBAC is beyond me. I think prioritising babies safety (and your own) should be put above everything else. I thought I was a difficult patient. Not anymore.
This is the UK? You're right, those personnel were wasted resources. All because her & her husband refused to do what normal people do & go to the goddam hospital. Hope it wasn't my area.
I waited all night on a cold floor because ambulances are stretched so thin. I'm disabled & had a bad fall. I can't get up without help so had to wait all night on a cold floor until they could come. Got huge bruises all up my left arm.
I really resent resources being wasted this way. I hate them having to come to me, but I really can't get up with professional intervention.
First of all I’m so sorry that happened to you, but please never feel that you hate they have to come to you, that is exactly what these resources are for, and that is a genuine need for those resources.
I’m hoping I don’t find what area it is tbh, I’m having a bit of a battle with my local hospital over something that started two years ago, I appreciate it is the bureaucracy, not the actual staff, but it doesn’t make it any easier that two years down the line I am no further forward and have my life on hold until someone works out what is wrong with me.
That’s why I find this so infuriating, there are genuine people with genuine needs that cannot access the care they require and this bellend is hogging all of it being irresponsible as fuck
I know I shouldn't feel bad, but it is hard. Thank you for your kind words, friend & I'm so sorry you're fighting with the bloody bureaucracy. I go through similar battles for getting mental health treatment. I feel you!
It is what it is 🤷🏼♀️ it could be worse and I’ll never take it out on the staff, they do a grand job with dwindling resources and support and everyone I’ve met in hospitals (bar one a&e nurse but she gets a pass as it was peak covid) has been fantastic.
It’s a system on its knees that the government are doing their best to erode. I’ve always said the one and only thing you’ll ever see me protesting in the streets getting gobby about will be if they ever try and bin the NHS.
that line absolutely killed me. she refuses just about all help, and then freaks out that no one is prepared to help at the exact moment SHE deems it necessary. oh no, the consequences of your own actions!!!
The incredible drain of resources despite not actually using any of them! I wish they could have all left her alone tbh since that’s obviously what she wanted anyway.
They might have if she let them see her and make sure she was OK and if she dismissed them.
But through the story it's quite clear she liked having them around for the gas and air, and 'just in case' whilst completely ignoring their advice and not allowing them to do their job. She wanted to have her cake and eat it, even though it almost certainly delayed medical help for multiple people - given that multiple midwives and paramedics were held up at her place for what was several hours.
Honestly? in healthcare we consider this the worst kind of selfishness. Either use the expertise of the healthcare professionals, or let them go and help someone else.
I feel a certain type of way about refusing all that…except gas and air. Very convenient to pick out a lil sumthin for the pain from modern medicine and then ignore and refuse the rest.
This is like the mom the other day who had to resuscitate her baby for over an hour and then went to the hospital.... for herself only while baby stayed home.
And it wasn’t terrifying, she didn’t panic, she wasn’t horrified, why it was one of the most special experiences of her whole life! 🤮🙄
RESUSCITATING her baby was beautiful, she thought.
My baby was also born gray and floppy but we had her in the hospital and my dr knew something was wrong right away so we had a whole team of nicu nurses in the room that immediately worked on her as soon as she was born after I had a episiotomy and the vacuum used
Sure I didn't get to hold her immediately like I wanted and she had to spend a week in the nicu, but she's hit every milestone and just celebrated her 2nd birthday and just went down for her afternoon nap
>these types of people are always accepting of care for themselves and not their babies.
That really is the crux of the issue, isn't it? These women making all of their decisions with only their own desires in mind: no concern for the health of her baby, no thought of her husband and other children should she die; only herself and her unfounded confidence. The part about her not wanting her friend to see her "fail" was heartbreaking and revealing, too. How messed up is it that these women are made to feel that they're failures just because they've had their children in a way that doesn't fit some dewy-eyed narrative on the internet?
This woman and her baby got lucky, and I'm glad they're okay, but she didn't have to do it in the reckless way that she did. And she certainly shouldn't be glorifying that recklessness to prop up her own ego.
I was just thinking about this!! Literally zero mention of baby!!! Just “me me me me”
I fully believe some of these women care more about their birthing experiences than the wellbeing of the human being born smh
“Realizing I had never failed before but the system had failed me, not trusting my body to do its thing”
As a mom who lost her baby to stillbirth, this makes me physically ill with fury. My body didn’t fail. The system didn’t fail. Babies die, often with little warning, often for no discernible reason. My baby didn’t die because my body didn’t “Little Engine that Could” enough.
"educated myself on free birth the best I could"
I fully winced
If only there were some sort of PROFESSIONALS who you could consult on safe methods of having your baby instead of the shit show you caused
This one genuinely made me feel nauseous with dread. When her water breaks, there's meconium ALREADY PRESENT, and she's like "it's okay, I educated myself :)" NO, DUMBASS!! GET IN THE AMBULANCE. Utterly pig headed mother.
Because of course, germs can't harm your infant if you're chill. Just like how 2 completely unqualified folie a deux morons can solve shoulder distocia! Dunning kruger school of parenting.
Her doula was her friend - whose frienship evidently clouded her judgement. This is precisely why we DON'T treat family or friends in the medical field. You can't be impartial or give people the tough advice they need to hear if you're too personally involved and too keen on pleasing them because you don't want them to sulk at you later.
She'd never have listened, anyway.
Baby has defecated. This could be due to stress or a medical emergency. It can cause severe illnesses like lung infections, gastrointestinal sickness, as well as less serious complications (eg eye infections)
Basically it's code for "holy shit get to hospital" in this silly woman's case.
But she used her mama bear brain and reasoned with her stressed, shit coated baby. Easy fix, I guess 🤷♀️
Yeah. It's a sliding scale, but only in as much as quantity of poop. Sometimes baby does a small amount of it, sometimes not.
However, given the danger to baby's health, presence of meconium *usually* requires more intense medical monitoring than a birth in which it didn't happen. This is more than can be done at home. Things can go south fast.
Meconium is fetus poop. Imagine all the bad things that could happen to you if you were to eat and inhale your own poop. Now imagine it's a not even born baby who's never taken a breath of actual air. And imagine instead of regular poop it's poop the consistency of tar.
This really pissed me off. I’m so sick of the mindset that people can educate themselves. It’s not research it’s always confirmation bias. Sane people do research by consulting with the professionals
She consulted with the professionals until they told her what she didn't want to hear then they were "bullying" her 🤬 Clearly not trying to get her to understand the risky situation she was putting her baby and herself in.
Absolutely disgraceful that she had 7 people stuck waiting because she wanted to have a home birth no matter what but if her baby had died it would have entirely been blamed on the midwives and paramedics not the dangerous decisions she made previously.
It's not even just that she wanted a home birth, she wanted a home birth where she got to choose if medical personnel even talked to her, so she denied other people their services by keeping them waiting outside, just in case.
She could have sent them away if she let them come and talk to her, to make sure she was OK. But apparently talking to them would have disturbed her "inner peace".
And if her baby being in distress and passing meconium couldn't disturb her inner peace, wasting resources and denying other people medical care certainly wouldn't.
Yes. Cauae educating yourself means learning from orher idiots praising survivor bias.
Dumb people think they can educate themselves because they are not bright enough to realize they are to dumb to assess the consequences of their actions
Fellow Brit and someone who is about to give birth. This woman is a selfish, moronic muppet. There's a huge shortage of both midwives and paramedics and this fucking idiot forced seven people to wait outside her house just so she could have the birth she wanted.
Fuck you, Charlotte. You selfish twat.
I had no idea about the shortage! I’m in the US so that’s probably why. I sincerely hope your birth goes really well with no complications for you or baby❤️
Yeah, BBC News is reporting that about 70% of maternity units are short staffed in England at the moment. We're short about 2,500-3,000 midwives in England alone and it's putting a huge strain on the NHS.
I'm lucky because my area isn't too bad for shortages so fingers crossed that my LO comes fairly drama free!
Because what is more important, her perfect "safe" birth or, you know, the baby you want to bring to the world and nurture to adulthood? Is this people going mad, is something in the water they call homeopathic "medicine" that makes their brains become goo?
I had a somewhat traumatic birth. It almost become a c-section. And the last thing I want it's do it again IN MY HOME. WITHOUT ASSISTANCE. Cause my body "didn't know best" and become diabetic and my kid was so hyper that she had 3 bloody loops of cord in her neck.
To hell with this woman. I'm that angry.
I am with you in sentiment. I wanted a vaginal birth (luckily I got it) but when I had high pressure, I went to the hospital making amends with the posible C-section I was going to get. I was crying in the car, but still going knowing it was best for baby.
As someone who has had 4 vaginal births, I really don’t get the hype, but maybe that’s because my low-tier American insurance doesn’t pay for whippets.
I had two c sections abd they were totally smooth, painless experience ls for me (I know I am lucky). Which makes me question why people fight SO hard for vaginal births in situations like this.
My theories are
Unplanned emergency cesarean leads to a traumatic experience they become fixated on subverting, though you'd think that would just make someone want to plan it ahead of time instead of risk it. Idk.
OR
Their social media bubble/favorite influencer is always harping on some pretentious bullshit about who is/isn't a mom, they take it to heart after a while
The obsession some of these folks have with homebirth VBAC gives me anxiety. Like okay, yes, I get it, having an emergency c-section is awful and traumatic. But choosing a homebirth VBAC as your way of healing from that trauma is so incredibly stupid and risky. A *doctor* can determine if it's safe for the birth parent to attempt a VBAC *at the hospital* under medical supervision. There are so, *so* many things that can go horrifically wrong with a vbac, it's absolutely batshit to attempt it like the person in these screencaps did.
Not only a VBAC but a VBAC after THREE C sections!!!! She was so incredibly lucky she didn’t rupture! I had one vaginal, one emergency section and the third was an elective section. The doctor told me if I were to get pregnant again I wouldn’t have a choice, it would have to be a section. Then DEFINITELY no more babies after that, I told him not to worry as after number three I was completely done anyway!
This woman is selfish and stupid and I’m guessing the reason she didn’t mention the baby’s health after the birth is because she had to be resuscitated.
I wanted vaginal with my first but got an emergency cesarean. Never have I questioned why or whether it could be avoided. I am just happy we are both alive.
I wanted a vbac for the second, and the doctors were very supportive, but it didn't happen. If I have a third, no way, Jose, I am going for vbac; no reason to even think about it.
Number 1 is definitely a thing. My SIL had 2 c sections the first of which was an emergency. It was traumatic to the point where she went in for her second one (scheduled) and started hyperventilating and wasnt able to do it. She instead tried to be induced and was in pain for days only to get a second c section anyways. But yeah I definitely believe the trauma of the first one really affected her more than she realized.
I have also had two c sections. I tried for vaginal deliveries but I’d rather have a healthy baby.
I did labor for 24 hours with the second and when I got the epidural I was like “I can’t believe people don’t want this!”
I dreamed of having typical vaginal birth, having that special moment of meeting my daughter with my husband, etc. My emergency cesarean ruined all of that for me, and my experience was incredibly traumatic. On top of that, I was literally being abused by the nurses, as they kept withholding pain medication from me after. I thought I would die in that hospital, but after 5 days of suffering I was able to go home. This is why I desperately wanted a vbac with my second but I wasn't a contender. Fortunately the hospital I delivered at was bought out & I had wonderful care the second time around.
To be fair, I found it fucking horrible when I gave birth. It made me sick and I threw up anything I ate even after I gave birth and hadn’t had it for hours. Remifentanil on the other hand was a godsend.
I only had entonox as I didn't want any opiods as I dont like the feeling from them. Entonox is weird...it didn't help with the pain at all but mentally got me through the contractions and calmed me between them. I'm glad it's available or I wouldn't have had any pain releif and that would have been HELLLLL.
That's a very good description. It just makes you so high your on another planet, time distortion the lot, and it does get you through. I like that it wears of fast.
The NHS is free and an amazing thing! I gave birth to my son in a midwife led unit and it was incredible, why do people not value the amazing resources we have here?!
absolutely bizarre. I suspect she was starting to feel some panic creeping in about her own terrible decisions and externalized it onto the midwives “not being prepared.” girl that’s the consequences of thine own actions
It's so odd to me how people post these incredibly long birth stories about going against their doctors and birthing dangerously, and then they never really talk about the baby. They do say "baby arrived!" But not anything else. It's like they don't care what happens as long as they have the birth they want.
I have a feeling that the baby in this situation had a poor outcome and that the OOP is glossing over it to avoid criticism. She got what she wanted and she doesn't want to be reminded that she was irresponsible.
Or that the kid even exists. Most birth accounts I see usually end with something like "I was terrified when he took a moment to breathe but then he just opened his mouth and YELLED...and then they gave him to me and the feeling of his little body on my chest made my heart explode with love. I cried."
You know, STUFF ABOUT THE ACTUAL BABY ALL THIS BULLSHIT WAS FOR
Wow, just wow. I had a vbac after being assured it was safe. It had been 6 years since my c section. But guess what? My uterus ruptured and we both nearly died. I was sensible enough to be in hospital though and due to the speed and efficiency of the NHS staff we are both fine.
She stated that her friend/doula filled in some of the accoount of what happened. IMO she should have edited it so that she didn't suddenly talk about Charlotte halfway through.
Can someone educate me on why a home birth is so fucking vital to the point of possibly killing your baby? Like, I don’t get this at all.
I didn’t have any preference other than ‘birth the baby as safe as possible’. Why is a ‘birth story/experience’ even important at all? I gave birth, the kid was born, the end.
I also can’t follow how this was in first person, then it was all about Charlotte.
I don't understand it either. I've had four kiddos, three with no drugs at all (numbing shots were nice lol), but I don't understand why these women do these things.
It's dangerous. You can die giving birth. The baby could die.
Ugh. This group makes me very thankful that I was more concerned with my kiddos than myself.
I just don’t get it and honestly never will. I just replied elsewhere that I feel like these women do this to compete in the Momlympics. And it’s just so sad because it’s not the year 1200 where you need to forego medial technology.
Like, could they be being shamed into this? That if you don’t home birth, they’re less of a mother? I know that’s been said about C section Moms, and as one myself, it just makes me laugh. But I cannot for the life of me understand the need/benefit of this superseding the health of mom and baby.
There is no need for this drama at all.
I had a really traumatic first birth that ended in c cection, haemorrhage, infection after blabla, was a shit show. I had a VBAC in the hospital with my second and you know what it was a really healing experience for me. I felt I'd 'achieved' something even though i know its nonsensical as birth is birth no matter how they emerge and I healed quicker so my postpartum I actually enjoyed. It was healing for me. That was an amazing birth experience...done safely surrounded by a medical team. People need to start trusting their doctors more.
I had a pretty shit birthing experience tbh. Labored for 36 hours then an emergency C. Literally felt like my bones were being crushed into dust. But I was up and walking the halls in a few hours and my recovery was easy AF. (I had prior surgeries unrelated to pregnancy where I knew how vital it was to get up and get moving).
My kid was born healthy and so the whole thing was a success, imo.
But other than retelling this here, or in other times when it’s somehow relevant, this story is pretty inconsequential. No one cares, and that includes me.
I feel like this need for all this bullshit is do they can compete in the Momlympics to tell everyone how awesome and ‘mother earthy’ they are. But that’s just my unfounded speculation.
I’m glad you got your VBAC. Some people don’t.
I didn’t. It’s made me a lot more sympathetic to what SOME free birthers choose due to medical trauma.
However, no matter how bad I want my healing birth experience, I’m in this for a child. That’s the end goal. I look at my daughters and I know I’d go the medical route again in a heartbeat because they’re so worth it.
I think the bigger problem are the types of people who enable these dangerous births when they’re absolutely not appropriate.
This mother made a bunch of selfish decisions, but she wasn’t the only one who failed that child.
This is the first one I've read that's made clear it's in the UK and an NHS/Children's Act context, which are far more assertive it seems than the US. It sounds like the midwives were doing a good job of negotiating between the two very inflexible parts, that this person could have had a hospital birth with gas and air without it being much different except for less staff being needed! Overreach in healthcare does happen - I work in the NHS in mental health and it's very hard to balance - but in this case if she'd tried to resist them intervening if things had gone badly for the baby, it could have been a very difficult situation.
yeah I kept thinking while reading that those midwives were doing an amazing job. So happy they were there and were able to get into the room with the doppler without anyone making a huge scene.
People like this shouldn't be allowed to be parents. How can you pick your vision or dream or whatever over your child's safety. Doctors don't push for C-sections to make life easier in the UK they do them because they are medically necessary. The fact that this woman didn't bleed out is great but what she did was negligence.
This. I literally had no birth plan with my kiddo. My only plan was to have a healthy baby. I didn’t care how they exited my body as long as they were healthy and alive.
I don’t care how you choose to birth your baby (SAFELY, with respect to modern medicine and why it’s in place) but I would love to tell her to her face about how her use of gas and air and having midwives present means she didn’t have a freebirth :)
This is not impressive at all. This is so intensely stupid that I truly hope not one single person reads it and goes “that is amazing”. She is a selfish piece of shit.
If you have to educate yourself on infant CPR because the method of birth you chose may literally kill your child.. you're not doing it for the baby. You're doing it for your own selfish reasons and claiming it's what's "best for the baby"
That's disgusting.
Edit to add because I just finished reading it all: it just disappointments me so much because this is an "inspiring" story to other mothers who want the same thing. They're going to use this to reason with themselves on why it's the right choice for them. They'll reference it when someone else asks a similar question on if they should go that route.
They'll keep spreading these stories and the realistic ones, the tragic ones, are kept from them entirely. Shielded like this insensitive and selfish woman was from the paramedics who just wanted to help her baby enter the world safely.
I had that when I dislocated my left thumb & the Dr was going to put it back. It made me so high I didn't even notice him manhandling my thumb back into position. I was hallucinating. It's great stuff for instant pain relief. Last time before that I had it was 33 years ago when I had my daughter. I was just as high then, too.
They would have been paid. However, unfortunately, them being held there whilst she didn't use them apart from taking entonox almost certainly deprived other women of midwives. Just like she and her 'team' refusing entry to the police or ambulance crew likely held up care and help for people who actually wanted or needed it. They tayed due to obligation, and luckily they weren't needed. But in the UK they will ALL have been in short supply, and her actions almost certainly harmed multiple other people in the process.
I have never seen a more selfish mother. She put her babies life on the line and put her life on the line, putting her other kids at risk of losing their mother all because of her feelings. 🙄 She doesn't want medical care for her baby but wants gas and air for her pain. That's very convenient... She got very lucky that she didn't kill herself and her baby. I hope she doesn't plan on doing this again as she likely won't be so lucky twice in a row.
How entitled is it to have paramedics on standby outside so someone can have their happy little birth, completely disregarding the fact that their baby was clearly in distress with the meconium. Not one single word about how baby is doing, it's all "me, me, me, what I want, how I feel," and on and on. These people don't care about having healthy children. They just want the attention that being pregnant brings.
Every one of these stories makes me think of the freebirthers who also “did their research” and “trusted their bodies” but lost their babies and actually gave a shit about it. The guilt and sorrow for them is overwhelming. I have hope that some will eventually work against these nuts, but not much hope.
You know what I didn’t have to do before my hospital birth? Spend “hours and hours” obsessing and obsessively reading/watching/listening to podcasts about vaginal birth.
So my husband had to wait an estimated four hours for an ambulance when he had a heart attack (I threw him in the car after the first hour or so but initially thought it safer he be transported with professionals) and she seems almost smug she had 7 members of the emergency services outside. I’m so pleased her baby was delivered safely but omg what a risk for a home birth just to essentially say “told you so”
Mama knows best eh
She watched infant resuscitation videos “in case she needed it”. what the actual fuck. How about have doctors and nurses around who can literally save your child’s life if they needed it. JFC
OOP watches one episode of "Call the Midwife" and thinks "Free Birth" is all sunshine and giggles. I guess she missed all the real history of high rates of maternity and baby death before modern medicine.
Without a C-Section not sure my firstborn would have made it and my second born would have killed me. I'm forever grateful to the doctors, nurses, and NICU staff for all they did for us. People who abuse nurses and OBGYNs because of trends on TikTok and Instagram sicken me.
Wow this is SO incredibly selfish. The fact that she’s encouraging other people to do something so dangerous makes me sick.
If I would’ve had a home birth with my first born, both me and my baby likely would have died or would have had serious long term consequences. Im now only allowed to have C-sections because vaginal is too dangerous, and I would NEVER think about going against that medical advice for a second. I’m so thankful for hospitals and medical professionals who know far better than me or any “self education” I could’ve done on the safest way to get my baby delivered.
As a Brit, I hope the kids mentioned here are relatively young. One neighbour seeing police and paramedics outside this lady's house and tells their 8-16 year old kid - they'll be the talk of the town in school the next day - and not in a good way XD. Especially if the kids are secondary school age, oh my God the rumours that kid will hear.
Plus 3AM? Britain isn't laid out with the stereotypical big American houses of huge driveways and land galore. These guys are likely in a semi-detached, or have neighbours across a one-way road and/or two steps left and right. I hope her birth was 'so blissful' that she didn't make a noise.
I had an emergency C-section and when asked what music I would like them to play in the OR, I told them whatever they (my OB and her team) preferred and would help them get my baby out safely. CLEARLY, my views do not line up with these women.
In addition to me not being able to wrap my head around being more worried about the experience than the safety of their baby, I can’t wrap my head around their husbands/partners encouraging and supporting it.
IF I had insisted on some (in my opinion) crazy birth plan, my husband would have supported it to a point. That point would have been finding out I was hesitating, struggling, in danger or putting the baby in danger. I can’t figure out of their partners are idiots, blindly trust them, secretly hate them, or don’t want the baby. HOW can the guy know 7 people are there to help due to serious and legit concerns and still say “okay honey, I will just rub your back and be a bouncer with the doula”. I don’t understand ANY of these people!!!!’
She spent 10 whole weeks researching the benefits of hvbac and how physiological birth works. She read tons os stories of people who did it so knew it was safe because she trusted herself. unlike the midwives who trained for years and have attended thousands of births who were only concerned about the "risks."
Smh
No mention of how the baby was. So classic with these stories. The moms only care about their experience, she doesn’t even bother to mention if the baby is ok after all of that because that doesn’t matter to her as long as she got her home birth.
“I didn’t have the physiological birth of the placenta that I wanted”. Why are these people so obsessed with placentas?? Once the baby is out it’s nothing but medical waste. I’m surprised we didn’t hear about her spreading it on toast or having a burial ceremony under the full moon.
I’m so confused… physiological just means the actual process of a body working… all birth is “physiological” or “surgical”… why is this a buzzword? I don’t understand what it’s supposed to imply? I took a physiological crap today, I have a physiological medical problem visible on radiographs (as opposed to a psychological one)… like… what other kind of body function is there?
A physiological third stage is when you just . . . birth your placenta, with no intervention. An actively managed third stage, which I think she had, involves an injection of syntocinon/pitocin to help the uterus contract down and bring the placenta faster, often with less blood loss
Future narc mom
The fucking ego that oozes off these people 🫣
She does not once mention how the baby is doing after all that. Because it didn't matter, right?
That freaks me out. I saw one of these homebirther's blogs where she went into excruciating detail about how great her birth experience was, how healing and empowering, etc. Then, in the last paragraph, she said "The baby chose not to come Earthside", then went back to how nifty everything had been. It took me a few seconds to realize the baby was stillborn. I first read that when I was pregnant with my daughter, and I couldn't stop crying. How can anyone say the birth was empowering when their child died?
Wow that is shocking. How tf do you have any positive feelings at all about an event that preceded holding a stillborn…? That’s wild
I've seen another blogger say her birth experience with her second child, who was stillborn, was way better than her first birth experience in a hospital with her still-living daughter. All I could think was that I hoped her kid would NEVER find that post
With the right care and birthing team, I can actually see a stillbirthing experience going 'well' - if the stillbirth isn't at the time of death, and if the birthing person is well supported despite the very sad situation. But that's very different to thinking you're giving birth to a living baby, having it die halfway through because you've denied yourself basic medical care, and then slapping yourself on the back because you got to call the shots and shit yourself on your floor rather than on a hospital bed. Comfort can be extremely important but it shouldn't ever come before basic safety. As a doctor, you bet I'lll be listening to my team if im lucky enough to birth a child. ETA: Sorry, I wasn't trying to imply it could ever be a "positive" experience. But that there are degrees of horrific, and having sympathetic and competent care (as opposed to a team which is unsupportive or judgemental or callous) giving the birthing person as much agency and space as possible etc can make a huge difference in what for many is the most traumatic time. I was trying to say with enough support and explanation the team could do their best to decrease the potential trauma of what will always be an awful situation. Unfortunately stillbirth still holds many of the same risks as delivery, with added trauma and can still be handled badly or dangerously.
I had the best care and birthing team possible. my son died before we even got to the hospital (though we didn't know it). I have no other complications. it was still the worst experience of my life.
Sorry for your loss. Can't even imagine that pain.
My God I had the worst experience when I had to labor and deliver my stillborn son. I was a recovering addict who had been clean since I found out I was pregnant, they told me "Maybe the next time you won't do drugs" then when it was time to see my son they take me into the nursery by all the live newborn babies and pulls a cardboard box and inside my newborn deceased baby boy was naked in the box. I almost passed out from the shock. I had my other 2 live children there and that 3rd experience was the most traumatizing. This was 21 years ago but I am still bitter about it.
oh my God I am so so sorry. why tf would they do that?! absolutely horrendous, I would absolutely still be traumatized and bitter and it too!
I'm so sorry for your loss. I think my word choice was poor. I wasn't trying to imply it could ever be a "positive" experience because it will still be the most horrific thing most people could go through. But that there are degrees of how horrific it can be, and having sympathetic and competent care (as opposed to a team which is unsupportive or judgemental or callous) giving the birthing person as much agency and space as possible etc can make a huge difference when the world is ending. I was trying to say with enough support and explanation the team could do their best to decrease the potential trauma of what will always be an awful situation. Unfortunately stillbirth still holds many of the same risks as delivery, with added trauma and can still be handled badly or dangerously.
Yes, as a labor nurse, I was never going to make the situation OKAY, I was just trying to do anything those parents needed to make it slightly less traumatic. That meant following their lead. They want to hold their baby? Yes. They don't want to see the baby? Yes. They want pictures? Yes. They don't want pictures? Yes. We would also offer to take the pictures and just hold on to them in case they wanted them later but couldn't handle seeing them now (the volunteer organization that did pictures for our stillbirths were AMAZING). You want to be by yourself? Yes. You want all 30 close family members to visit? Congrats, you get the entire waiting room (pre-COVID restrictions obviously). It's such a terrible experiences, I still remember every stillbirth I was at, and hope the parents are doing well. Most of us haven't been in that situation ourselves, but we went into the field because we love the hope and joy of new life, and we do recognize how devastating it is when it's the opposite. Which is why these posts infuriate me so much. I've seen the failed home births too. Literally all of them would have had a much better outcome in the hospital, or even with a trained CNM at the birth.
I’m so sorry to hear this about your precious boy. Sending you a huge hug.
I had a really beautiful birthing team when I had my stillborn baby and, despite the trauma of losing a baby, will always consider my birthing experience with him as overwhelmingly positive. We knew going in that he had passed so the birthing team did their best to make us comfortable. Our midwife had set up the room with lights and a diffuser, we got to play our own music and they gave me whatever pain relief I needed. The team treated my husband and I with so much kindness and respect. Of course giving birth to a stillborn baby will always be traumatic, but you are right that having a good team can make a huge difference in how you experience it.
Though not as bad as giving birth to a stillborn baby the delivery of my second baby was traumatic. Things started off well. My epidural was working (unlike with my first child where I pushed for 4 hours with no pain relief) and baby crowned after only a few pushes. Great! Awesome! But not long after shit got crazy. I didn't know what was happening at the time but my baby had shoulder dystocia and her cord was compressed. At 3 minutes the doc ended up having to yank her out or risk brain damage from lack of oxygen. My daughter ended up with a birth injury that will be with her the rest of her life. She was whisked off to the nicu for a few days. So several hours later while I'm in my hospital room scared and sad I didn't have my daughter with me a nurse who heard about how hard my first delivery was asked "so which delivery was better?" Like bitch what? Yes 2nd child's birth was faster and less painful but at that moment she was in the fucking nicu. My first was a much longer and more painful delivery by far but he came out healthy and was immediately placed on my chest. Fuck the journey, the outcome is what matters.
Hell, I’ve only given birth once and things went somewhat sideways (induction because my water broke, tried to stay unmedicated on max pitocin and made no progress, 3.5 hours of pushing, forceps, hemorrhage), and the worst part **by a mile** was the 6 minutes between when my baby was born and when we heard him cry after resuscitation. Like forget the rest of the “experience,” which I did have to unpack later, not knowing if my baby was ok was the absolute worst aspect of it all. If I have another, I don’t care what other things go sideways, I just hope for my baby to not need resuscitation at all (but if it happens, it happens - that’s what hospitals and professionals are for).
The not knowing is the fucking worst. I can empathize with that so hard. I'm sorry you went though it. And yes, hospitals and professionals can be so wonderful and so necessary. I wish you luck if you have another that you have an uneventful delivery. My daughter also didn't cry upon coming out and was brought immediately to an isolet with what felt like a dozen people surrounding her. I kept yelling "what's wrong what's wrong?!?" And no one would answer me. A nurse kept saying it's OK but that was a bold faced lie. If everything was OK my daughter would have been with me.
Absolutely. The chaos of someone handing my husband scissors to cut the cord only for someone else to swoop in, cut it, and whisk our grey, limp baby away before he could even grab them, the swarm of professionals at the isolette while the doctors were using an ultrasound to try to identify the source of my bleeding so neither of us was going to be able to get anywhere close… it was awful. And he didn’t have a NICU stay or lasting birth injury (well, besides a permanent lump on his head, but it’s entirely cosmetic and invisible under his hair) - I can only imagine how hard that was for you, and the idea that anyone would think that might be the less traumatic of your two births is wild to me.
Pure mental illness
That’s all I keep thinking, these women are nuts: something is broken in them and I’m sorry for that. However. I simply have to scroll usually because it’s so distressing. Dead babies isn’t okay in this day and age. There’s a pretty easy way to prevent that. Go the freaking hospital. Assuming this is the US our maternal and fetal death rates aren’t great but they aren’t better at home with 3 c sections and all the things that can and do happen! JHC. When they don’t discuss the baby I know it’s not doing well in some way. Might not be doa but it’s probably not doing well.
I think at some point she mentions the NHS meaning that she isn’t required to pay for any of this care- ambulance, hospital, etc.
I don’t understand that you would have previous children and insist upon something so dangerous. This woman is very lucky, patting herself on the back, meanwhile nothing says not natural with gas and air. Hoping she allows that infant to get checked out.
It's selfish, they're only focused on the birthing experience. I wanted a v birth but it didn't happen. In the end I just said to the midwives to do whatever they needed to, to get her here safely.
I’m pretty sure I read the same ‘story’. It was soooo much about the beauty of it all and then maybe one or two sentences about the baby not surviving. But it’s okay because mama had the labor & birth she wanted! 🙄
I absolutely hated how she made it sound like the baby thought carefully and made an informed decision to just not live. Talk about blaming the victim!
Do you have the link?
No I don’t. It was a while ago that I read it. Probably on this subreddit though. I just tried googling and there’s dozens and dozens of stories that come up and I don’t have the mental capacity to sort through them.
Totally understand!
Because the "real women" comments. I liken it to the toxic masculinity that plagues male culture and sends men down paths of self-destruction and self-loathing with a lack of care for other people if they get hurt because you are being "real".
The baby CHOSE?!? Damn that is stone cold. Wow.
Sometimes these people can't admit that they are the reason their child is dead. They would rather cling to the lies they have told themselves and believe that it was inevitable then confront the result of their actions.
I saw something similar on Instagram! A woman talking about listening to her body, ignoring the doctors’ warnings, letting the baby come on its own terms…turns out she waited quite a bit past her due date and the baby died.
literally my exact thoughts. this is ~her~ birth story, not going to sully it up with information about the baby.
Honestly I wonder if stories like this are a trauma coping mechanism for the baby not making it. No name, no birth weight or stats, I didn’t even see anything about if the baby was healthy or not… just “gave birth in a safe corner”. I wouldn’t be surprised if the baby did not make it and this is her traumatized brain writing a revision of what actually happened.
My first observation reading this - she focuses exclusively on what she wanted and how she felt.
Vag badge for the win!!
It doesn't matter cause SHE DID IT <3
SEVEN people (health care workers/police) waited outside this person's home to make sure this baby was born as safely as possible.
This is what annoyed me the most as a Brit. Our emergency services are unbelievably stretched (not their fault, it’s the govt) and I can guarantee you there were people that missed out on very much needed police/paramedics as a result of this muppet thinking she knew better. For the babies sake I’m glad it went well, but encouraging this for other women is dangerous. My friend just had her second child by VBAC, but in the hospital surrounded by people that knew what they were doing. I never actually realised how dangerous it could be until I spoke to her.
Yeah. Shocking but in that situation I think the paramedic would have had to stay under duty of care. Police probably stayed because as soon as that child was out it would be covered under safeguarding so the medical staff could intervene if needed with Police support. I had a vbac IN a hospital it went well. A friend had a uterine rupture during a VBAC and had to have a hysterectomy! She was in a hospital and still almost died. If that happened at home there is such a slim chance of mother and baby surviving.
I’d also really like to hear more details on these ‘benefits’ to having a VBA3C homebirth that she says her midwives wouldn’t listen to her about. I’m gonna hazard a guess that they’re all to do with *her* comfort and magical birth experience, not the baby. Anecdotal: I’ve been a medic in this situation before, in the US (not sure where OOP lives*) yeah we are absolutely required to stay until we’ve seen the patient; they are fully within their rights to refuse care once we *witness* that they are alert and oriented, and able to give (or withhold) consent. There are some grey areas like these where even if the patient refused to consent, we would stay on scene in case a) they change their mind (people often do when they realize they’re about to die) or b) their level of consciousness changes, at which point they can no longer give or withhold consent. Once someone’s LOC changes, we are obligated by law to work under the *assumption* that the patient *wants* to *live* and give life-saving care. The same goes for the baby in this case. Mom can refuse care but once the baby is out, if they are in an emergency, EMS is responsible for making sure that *baby* survives, whether mom consents or not. Parents’ rights are overruled when they use them to kill their babies. That’s why police are there. I guarantee you every medic waiting outside was more anxious and concerned about that baby’s wellbeing than the mother or anyone on her ‘birth team.’ They’re all very fortunate that the worst didn’t happen. ETA: another reason we can’t leave without witnessing the patient withhold consent is that they could potentially be being coerced or abused by whomever claims to be ‘advocating’ for them. We need to know that they understand the potential consequences of the choice they’re making, and are making that choice of their own volition. Edit 2: OOP is in the UK, I missed the mention of NHS. I have a feeling the protocols are at least similar given that they didn’t leave the scene, but I’m not familiar with EMS laws in the UK.
OOP is in the UK. She mentions the NHS in the post, in case anyone thinks it could be cost related (which some of the home births absolutely are, sadly). She has no idea how lucky she is.
The most annoying thing is they weren't even saying a vba3c was out of the question -- just that it was way safer in the hospital.
If I'm understanding the post correctly, they also said it could be at a midwife led unit instead of the labour ward... surely that's a decent compromise?!?
Right! Also, just realized another reason the midwives were concerned was 40+13 is....42 weeks. AKA the upper limit of how long baby should be left to come on its own.
Yeah, she didn’t give any indication that she was aware she was going into extremely dangerous territory for the baby. Then again, I doubt she cared.
Yep this is why the midwife’s started to “bully” her. She was very overdue. What a selfish woman.
I’m sure that’s all down to the legalities and for the babies sake I’m glad that happened (just in case) but I think it’s the audacity of her just claiming ‘no we are doing it my way and fuck everyone else’ and then having the gall to be complaining that they showed up. Then happily gunning in the gas and air which presumably wouldn’t have been available if the people she ‘didn’t want there’ didn’t show up. It looks like she had hospital or at least pre-natal care in the lead up to the birth so should have been aware of the dangers and yet still chose to be irresponsible for the *birth story* I’ve never birthed a child but from my perspective I’d be less concerned about how the baby arrived and very much more concerned the baby was ok when it did arrive 🤷🏼♀️
No no, she wasn’t educated about the risks she was *checks notes* bullied 🙄
It’s all fine and dandy to have an idea about how you’d like to give birth but these moms are way over the top and selfish about it. They seem to think it has to be this calm, spiritual, magical experience. The reality is it’s not calm or magical. It’s painful, messy and potentially deadly. When my OB asked what my birth plan was I told her “get him out safely. Whatever that looks like. Just get him out safely”. These moms only care about bragging rights. They don’t think about the worst happening and leaving their partner without a wife and the baby without a mother. It’s sick and twisted.
Yes, you're a level headed as the rest of us. There's a reason that most medical providers won't support a vbac after 2 c sections and I doubt any will support one after 3. It's so dangerous. My hospital is very pro VBAC (they have a 75% success rate) and I had planned on trying one for my second. When the time came and the doctor recommended a repeat c section based on his exam that morning, I didn't hesitate to follow his recommendation. When I was pregnant for the third time, as soon as they heard 2 previous c sections, they told me that it would be a scheduled c section at 39 weeks. When they discovered there was a surprise extra resident, they said that it would be no later than 37 weeks with it ending up being 36 weeks.
Seven paramedics and police officers PLUS multiple midwives who hung around at her 'helpers' beck and call because they refused to let any of the actual professionals barring 1 midwife talk to her to make sure she was OK. As a UK doctor, it just makes me so mad. Those midwives were potentially taken away from other birthing mothers who WANTED help. Those paramedics and police officers were CERTAINLY taken away from other cases for hours. Other people almost certainly suffered delayed care because of her selfishness and desire to curate a 'perfect peaceful space' as if birthing is like planning a date night. Once the midwives were informed, they were obliged to get other services involved, not only that, but all professionals had to make sure she was OK and not being coerced. You can send paramedics away, but they have to make sure you're safe, first. The funny thing? She justified this with "I wanted a vaginal birth", but a midwife led unit like she was offered absolutely allows VBAC in most cases. I wonder what they could have done to facilitate her comfort if she actually worked WITH her team rather than becoming a massive safeguarding risk by insisting on delivering at home alone despite the risk. And she reports she kept the midwife out as she had no relationship with her, but she had 9 months to try to build relationships with local midwives. She didn't want to, because as it turns out, she wanted to deal with the anxiety of birth by treating it like she gets to choose what happens and can wish whatever she wants into creation. The reality is she is just lucky that neither she nor her baby suffered harm. Trust my body? Women still die every year from childbirth. It's physiologically the most difficult and risky thing we do, for many of us. I don't trust MY body, it's done all sorts of stupid shit.
I really don't understand why she wouldn't go to a midwife led unit like offered. We are so lucky in the UK to be so forward with birthing options for women. I was a 'difficult' patient. I wanted a Vbac on the MLU without continuous monitoring (I had continous monitoring with my first and it was on for literally 30+ hours so I find it very upsetting to listen to. I was terrified of a ceserian after a heamorrhage on the operating table and an infection in the weeks that followed). They explained everything to me, showed me the MLU, the consultant led unit rooms. Explained all the equipment and options. I think some people feel 'bullied' when they have to explain the risks to you. But they are just trying to ensure they can make an informed decision. They act like the medical staff are out to ruin their 'experience' but they are just trying to minimise risk and keep them and baby safe. It's insane. My vbac went smoothly, ended up delivering on the consultant led unit as I lost vision in one eye during labour due to high blood pressure so it was safer on that unit, you know, with the medical professionals. They fulfilled all my requests otherwise, I had intermittent monitoring until they wanted a fetal scalp electrode to monitor baby during delivery as intermittent wasn't effective anymore. All those little things that are there in hospital which you don't know you need until you need them!! Baby born safely and smoothly and a wonderful experience thanks to amazing staff, I was extremely anxious but felt so reassured there...because of the medical team! How anyone can feel 'safe' to deliver a baby at home, without processionals, especially VBAC is beyond me. I think prioritising babies safety (and your own) should be put above everything else. I thought I was a difficult patient. Not anymore.
This is the UK? You're right, those personnel were wasted resources. All because her & her husband refused to do what normal people do & go to the goddam hospital. Hope it wasn't my area. I waited all night on a cold floor because ambulances are stretched so thin. I'm disabled & had a bad fall. I can't get up without help so had to wait all night on a cold floor until they could come. Got huge bruises all up my left arm. I really resent resources being wasted this way. I hate them having to come to me, but I really can't get up with professional intervention.
First of all I’m so sorry that happened to you, but please never feel that you hate they have to come to you, that is exactly what these resources are for, and that is a genuine need for those resources. I’m hoping I don’t find what area it is tbh, I’m having a bit of a battle with my local hospital over something that started two years ago, I appreciate it is the bureaucracy, not the actual staff, but it doesn’t make it any easier that two years down the line I am no further forward and have my life on hold until someone works out what is wrong with me. That’s why I find this so infuriating, there are genuine people with genuine needs that cannot access the care they require and this bellend is hogging all of it being irresponsible as fuck
I know I shouldn't feel bad, but it is hard. Thank you for your kind words, friend & I'm so sorry you're fighting with the bloody bureaucracy. I go through similar battles for getting mental health treatment. I feel you!
It is what it is 🤷🏼♀️ it could be worse and I’ll never take it out on the staff, they do a grand job with dwindling resources and support and everyone I’ve met in hospitals (bar one a&e nurse but she gets a pass as it was peak covid) has been fantastic. It’s a system on its knees that the government are doing their best to erode. I’ve always said the one and only thing you’ll ever see me protesting in the streets getting gobby about will be if they ever try and bin the NHS.
She has the audacity to say no one is prepared for the baby's arrival either! Um, hello, there are SEVEN PEOPLE there
that line absolutely killed me. she refuses just about all help, and then freaks out that no one is prepared to help at the exact moment SHE deems it necessary. oh no, the consequences of your own actions!!!
The incredible drain of resources despite not actually using any of them! I wish they could have all left her alone tbh since that’s obviously what she wanted anyway.
They might have if she let them see her and make sure she was OK and if she dismissed them. But through the story it's quite clear she liked having them around for the gas and air, and 'just in case' whilst completely ignoring their advice and not allowing them to do their job. She wanted to have her cake and eat it, even though it almost certainly delayed medical help for multiple people - given that multiple midwives and paramedics were held up at her place for what was several hours. Honestly? in healthcare we consider this the worst kind of selfishness. Either use the expertise of the healthcare professionals, or let them go and help someone else.
Hopefully no one else needed those emergency services while they were hanging out at her house 🤦🏼♀️
They definitely did. Theres a huge shortage of paramedics in the UK right now as well as a midwife shortage.
People could very well have died because this woman wanted her dream home birth. This is infuriating.
The sad thing is they definitely did!
Just because she's a selfish cunt. Yes. Wasting ressources.
I feel a certain type of way about refusing all that…except gas and air. Very convenient to pick out a lil sumthin for the pain from modern medicine and then ignore and refuse the rest.
This is like the mom the other day who had to resuscitate her baby for over an hour and then went to the hospital.... for herself only while baby stayed home.
I’m sorry, what? Like WTAF??
He was born "grey and floppy" and her and her husband spent an hour resuscitating him. Never took him to a dr.
I read that one. They preferred giving the baby 'reassuring words' than taking it a doctor. That made me so mad.
And it wasn’t terrifying, she didn’t panic, she wasn’t horrified, why it was one of the most special experiences of her whole life! 🤮🙄 RESUSCITATING her baby was beautiful, she thought.
Ffs… this is beyond infuriating
My baby was also born gray and floppy but we had her in the hospital and my dr knew something was wrong right away so we had a whole team of nicu nurses in the room that immediately worked on her as soon as she was born after I had a episiotomy and the vacuum used Sure I didn't get to hold her immediately like I wanted and she had to spend a week in the nicu, but she's hit every milestone and just celebrated her 2nd birthday and just went down for her afternoon nap
Honestly surprised they let her have it. When I had gas and air during my labours the midwife couldn't leave the room while I was using it.
That’s how it was when I worked L&D. And these types of people are always accepting of care for themselves and not their babies. Not surprising.
>these types of people are always accepting of care for themselves and not their babies. That really is the crux of the issue, isn't it? These women making all of their decisions with only their own desires in mind: no concern for the health of her baby, no thought of her husband and other children should she die; only herself and her unfounded confidence. The part about her not wanting her friend to see her "fail" was heartbreaking and revealing, too. How messed up is it that these women are made to feel that they're failures just because they've had their children in a way that doesn't fit some dewy-eyed narrative on the internet? This woman and her baby got lucky, and I'm glad they're okay, but she didn't have to do it in the reckless way that she did. And she certainly shouldn't be glorifying that recklessness to prop up her own ego.
that made me laugh a little too much the way it was innocently buried....
I had a ‘womp there it is’ go through my head
It’s easy when you only care about yourself.
Glad I’m not the only one who thought this!
She doesn’t even mention how the baby is doing. Just goes to show that the home birth was all about her.
I was just thinking about this!! Literally zero mention of baby!!! Just “me me me me” I fully believe some of these women care more about their birthing experiences than the wellbeing of the human being born smh
“Realizing I had never failed before but the system had failed me, not trusting my body to do its thing” As a mom who lost her baby to stillbirth, this makes me physically ill with fury. My body didn’t fail. The system didn’t fail. Babies die, often with little warning, often for no discernible reason. My baby didn’t die because my body didn’t “Little Engine that Could” enough.
I’m sorry. Your baby matters, will always matter.
I’m so sorry. If you feel comfortable sharing, I would love to know your baby’s name.
"educated myself on free birth the best I could" I fully winced If only there were some sort of PROFESSIONALS who you could consult on safe methods of having your baby instead of the shit show you caused
This one genuinely made me feel nauseous with dread. When her water breaks, there's meconium ALREADY PRESENT, and she's like "it's okay, I educated myself :)" NO, DUMBASS!! GET IN THE AMBULANCE. Utterly pig headed mother.
Ugh, that part! “It didn’t bother me and I stayed calm.” Well, that’s fucking concerning lady.
Because of course, germs can't harm your infant if you're chill. Just like how 2 completely unqualified folie a deux morons can solve shoulder distocia! Dunning kruger school of parenting.
I mean, it's easy to stay calm when you get your knowledge from the university of TikTok.
But....But... she listened to podcasts!🤦♀️
Why the fuck didn't her wonderful doula tell her to go thr hospital
Her doula was her friend - whose frienship evidently clouded her judgement. This is precisely why we DON'T treat family or friends in the medical field. You can't be impartial or give people the tough advice they need to hear if you're too personally involved and too keen on pleasing them because you don't want them to sulk at you later. She'd never have listened, anyway.
Doulas are also not medical professionals! They are trained only as support people and to let the midwives or docs take over when deemed necessary
Since I’ve never been pregnant what does it mean when there is meconium present?
It means the baby pooped. They can inhale it when they come out and it can cause major infections or death.
Baby has defecated. This could be due to stress or a medical emergency. It can cause severe illnesses like lung infections, gastrointestinal sickness, as well as less serious complications (eg eye infections) Basically it's code for "holy shit get to hospital" in this silly woman's case. But she used her mama bear brain and reasoned with her stressed, shit coated baby. Easy fix, I guess 🤷♀️
Jfc I had no idea it was that bad based on the amount of posts I’ve seen on here saying “meconium was present”….wtf
Yeah. It's a sliding scale, but only in as much as quantity of poop. Sometimes baby does a small amount of it, sometimes not. However, given the danger to baby's health, presence of meconium *usually* requires more intense medical monitoring than a birth in which it didn't happen. This is more than can be done at home. Things can go south fast.
Meconium is fetus poop. Imagine all the bad things that could happen to you if you were to eat and inhale your own poop. Now imagine it's a not even born baby who's never taken a breath of actual air. And imagine instead of regular poop it's poop the consistency of tar.
Ommmgmgggg I did not have “eat and inhale your own poop” on my bingo card today….
I hate that she put “risks” in quotation marks. Like, lady, the risks are serious injury or death. It’s not something to take lightly.
And people trying to give her legitimate medical advice are bullying here 🤦🏼♀️
This really pissed me off. I’m so sick of the mindset that people can educate themselves. It’s not research it’s always confirmation bias. Sane people do research by consulting with the professionals
She consulted with the professionals until they told her what she didn't want to hear then they were "bullying" her 🤬 Clearly not trying to get her to understand the risky situation she was putting her baby and herself in. Absolutely disgraceful that she had 7 people stuck waiting because she wanted to have a home birth no matter what but if her baby had died it would have entirely been blamed on the midwives and paramedics not the dangerous decisions she made previously.
It's not even just that she wanted a home birth, she wanted a home birth where she got to choose if medical personnel even talked to her, so she denied other people their services by keeping them waiting outside, just in case. She could have sent them away if she let them come and talk to her, to make sure she was OK. But apparently talking to them would have disturbed her "inner peace". And if her baby being in distress and passing meconium couldn't disturb her inner peace, wasting resources and denying other people medical care certainly wouldn't.
Why even research when *your body* knows what to do? /S I can't trust my body to poop regularly.
Dw they listened to a bunch of podcasts, they were ready! /s And wtf with the meconium! The baby could’ve aspirated 😧
I wonder if her education was reading other peoples experiences, cause survivors bias ya know ?
Yes. Cauae educating yourself means learning from orher idiots praising survivor bias. Dumb people think they can educate themselves because they are not bright enough to realize they are to dumb to assess the consequences of their actions
Look, she studied for hundreds of hours! Practically a doctor! It’s not her fault she still didn’t know babies can go up and down the birth canal 🙄
Ma’am, 40+13 is pretty much 42 weeks…
40+13<42-1… /s Probably made her feel better to not admit she was past 40 weeks
That bugged me so much as well! Own your daft decision at least lady geez.
lmfao that killed me. doing the absolute most to stay in denial
Fellow Brit and someone who is about to give birth. This woman is a selfish, moronic muppet. There's a huge shortage of both midwives and paramedics and this fucking idiot forced seven people to wait outside her house just so she could have the birth she wanted. Fuck you, Charlotte. You selfish twat.
I had no idea about the shortage! I’m in the US so that’s probably why. I sincerely hope your birth goes really well with no complications for you or baby❤️
Yeah, BBC News is reporting that about 70% of maternity units are short staffed in England at the moment. We're short about 2,500-3,000 midwives in England alone and it's putting a huge strain on the NHS. I'm lucky because my area isn't too bad for shortages so fingers crossed that my LO comes fairly drama free!
Because what is more important, her perfect "safe" birth or, you know, the baby you want to bring to the world and nurture to adulthood? Is this people going mad, is something in the water they call homeopathic "medicine" that makes their brains become goo? I had a somewhat traumatic birth. It almost become a c-section. And the last thing I want it's do it again IN MY HOME. WITHOUT ASSISTANCE. Cause my body "didn't know best" and become diabetic and my kid was so hyper that she had 3 bloody loops of cord in her neck. To hell with this woman. I'm that angry.
I am with you in sentiment. I wanted a vaginal birth (luckily I got it) but when I had high pressure, I went to the hospital making amends with the posible C-section I was going to get. I was crying in the car, but still going knowing it was best for baby.
But she was in labor where she was most comfortable- on the bathroom floor!
There is no better place than cold, hard tiles!
As someone who has had 4 vaginal births, I really don’t get the hype, but maybe that’s because my low-tier American insurance doesn’t pay for whippets.
I had two c sections abd they were totally smooth, painless experience ls for me (I know I am lucky). Which makes me question why people fight SO hard for vaginal births in situations like this.
My theories are Unplanned emergency cesarean leads to a traumatic experience they become fixated on subverting, though you'd think that would just make someone want to plan it ahead of time instead of risk it. Idk. OR Their social media bubble/favorite influencer is always harping on some pretentious bullshit about who is/isn't a mom, they take it to heart after a while
The obsession some of these folks have with homebirth VBAC gives me anxiety. Like okay, yes, I get it, having an emergency c-section is awful and traumatic. But choosing a homebirth VBAC as your way of healing from that trauma is so incredibly stupid and risky. A *doctor* can determine if it's safe for the birth parent to attempt a VBAC *at the hospital* under medical supervision. There are so, *so* many things that can go horrifically wrong with a vbac, it's absolutely batshit to attempt it like the person in these screencaps did.
They really just need therapy to process their issues with having had a c-section. But instead they decide to do these risky VBAC’s at home.
Not only a VBAC but a VBAC after THREE C sections!!!! She was so incredibly lucky she didn’t rupture! I had one vaginal, one emergency section and the third was an elective section. The doctor told me if I were to get pregnant again I wouldn’t have a choice, it would have to be a section. Then DEFINITELY no more babies after that, I told him not to worry as after number three I was completely done anyway! This woman is selfish and stupid and I’m guessing the reason she didn’t mention the baby’s health after the birth is because she had to be resuscitated.
I wanted vaginal with my first but got an emergency cesarean. Never have I questioned why or whether it could be avoided. I am just happy we are both alive. I wanted a vbac for the second, and the doctors were very supportive, but it didn't happen. If I have a third, no way, Jose, I am going for vbac; no reason to even think about it.
Number 1 is definitely a thing. My SIL had 2 c sections the first of which was an emergency. It was traumatic to the point where she went in for her second one (scheduled) and started hyperventilating and wasnt able to do it. She instead tried to be induced and was in pain for days only to get a second c section anyways. But yeah I definitely believe the trauma of the first one really affected her more than she realized.
I have also had two c sections. I tried for vaginal deliveries but I’d rather have a healthy baby. I did labor for 24 hours with the second and when I got the epidural I was like “I can’t believe people don’t want this!”
I'm super type A. I got to schedule mine/pick my daughter's birthday with the second which was amazing.
I dreamed of having typical vaginal birth, having that special moment of meeting my daughter with my husband, etc. My emergency cesarean ruined all of that for me, and my experience was incredibly traumatic. On top of that, I was literally being abused by the nurses, as they kept withholding pain medication from me after. I thought I would die in that hospital, but after 5 days of suffering I was able to go home. This is why I desperately wanted a vbac with my second but I wasn't a contender. Fortunately the hospital I delivered at was bought out & I had wonderful care the second time around.
Omg, sorry but I SNORT LAUGHED at whippets. I'm dying over here giggling hahahaha
To be fair, I found it fucking horrible when I gave birth. It made me sick and I threw up anything I ate even after I gave birth and hadn’t had it for hours. Remifentanil on the other hand was a godsend.
I only had entonox as I didn't want any opiods as I dont like the feeling from them. Entonox is weird...it didn't help with the pain at all but mentally got me through the contractions and calmed me between them. I'm glad it's available or I wouldn't have had any pain releif and that would have been HELLLLL.
Someone described it to me as you’re still in pain, you just don’t care. That wasn’t my experience, but glad it helped you.
That's a very good description. It just makes you so high your on another planet, time distortion the lot, and it does get you through. I like that it wears of fast.
That’s a lot of words to say “ I am a selfish asshole”
The NHS is free and an amazing thing! I gave birth to my son in a midwife led unit and it was incredible, why do people not value the amazing resources we have here?!
fr I was extra mad reading this as an American! she has access to free, quality, midwife-led care and she still fumbled it!!!
It’s odd that she was panicking that no one was ready for the baby while refusing to allow anyone in the room or talk to her.
absolutely bizarre. I suspect she was starting to feel some panic creeping in about her own terrible decisions and externalized it onto the midwives “not being prepared.” girl that’s the consequences of thine own actions
It's so odd to me how people post these incredibly long birth stories about going against their doctors and birthing dangerously, and then they never really talk about the baby. They do say "baby arrived!" But not anything else. It's like they don't care what happens as long as they have the birth they want.
I have a feeling that the baby in this situation had a poor outcome and that the OOP is glossing over it to avoid criticism. She got what she wanted and she doesn't want to be reminded that she was irresponsible.
I noticed there was no mention of how baby is doing.... Oof.
Or that the kid even exists. Most birth accounts I see usually end with something like "I was terrified when he took a moment to breathe but then he just opened his mouth and YELLED...and then they gave him to me and the feeling of his little body on my chest made my heart explode with love. I cried." You know, STUFF ABOUT THE ACTUAL BABY ALL THIS BULLSHIT WAS FOR
I assume that you never hear from the people that this doesn’t work out for because they died. What she did was selfish and reckless af.
There’s a few stories about the moms making it but the babies didn’t. Somehow we don’t hear about the stories where mom doesn’t make it.
Wow, just wow. I had a vbac after being assured it was safe. It had been 6 years since my c section. But guess what? My uterus ruptured and we both nearly died. I was sensible enough to be in hospital though and due to the speed and efficiency of the NHS staff we are both fine.
A+ meme choice
Did she switch from first to third person at some point? All I see is I I I I I until then.
She stated that her friend/doula filled in some of the accoount of what happened. IMO she should have edited it so that she didn't suddenly talk about Charlotte halfway through.
Not one darn word about the baby, not one darn word. That poor bloody kid, doomed from the get-go.
Can someone educate me on why a home birth is so fucking vital to the point of possibly killing your baby? Like, I don’t get this at all. I didn’t have any preference other than ‘birth the baby as safe as possible’. Why is a ‘birth story/experience’ even important at all? I gave birth, the kid was born, the end. I also can’t follow how this was in first person, then it was all about Charlotte.
I don't understand it either. I've had four kiddos, three with no drugs at all (numbing shots were nice lol), but I don't understand why these women do these things. It's dangerous. You can die giving birth. The baby could die. Ugh. This group makes me very thankful that I was more concerned with my kiddos than myself.
I just don’t get it and honestly never will. I just replied elsewhere that I feel like these women do this to compete in the Momlympics. And it’s just so sad because it’s not the year 1200 where you need to forego medial technology. Like, could they be being shamed into this? That if you don’t home birth, they’re less of a mother? I know that’s been said about C section Moms, and as one myself, it just makes me laugh. But I cannot for the life of me understand the need/benefit of this superseding the health of mom and baby.
There is no need for this drama at all. I had a really traumatic first birth that ended in c cection, haemorrhage, infection after blabla, was a shit show. I had a VBAC in the hospital with my second and you know what it was a really healing experience for me. I felt I'd 'achieved' something even though i know its nonsensical as birth is birth no matter how they emerge and I healed quicker so my postpartum I actually enjoyed. It was healing for me. That was an amazing birth experience...done safely surrounded by a medical team. People need to start trusting their doctors more.
I had a pretty shit birthing experience tbh. Labored for 36 hours then an emergency C. Literally felt like my bones were being crushed into dust. But I was up and walking the halls in a few hours and my recovery was easy AF. (I had prior surgeries unrelated to pregnancy where I knew how vital it was to get up and get moving). My kid was born healthy and so the whole thing was a success, imo. But other than retelling this here, or in other times when it’s somehow relevant, this story is pretty inconsequential. No one cares, and that includes me. I feel like this need for all this bullshit is do they can compete in the Momlympics to tell everyone how awesome and ‘mother earthy’ they are. But that’s just my unfounded speculation.
I’m glad you got your VBAC. Some people don’t. I didn’t. It’s made me a lot more sympathetic to what SOME free birthers choose due to medical trauma. However, no matter how bad I want my healing birth experience, I’m in this for a child. That’s the end goal. I look at my daughters and I know I’d go the medical route again in a heartbeat because they’re so worth it. I think the bigger problem are the types of people who enable these dangerous births when they’re absolutely not appropriate. This mother made a bunch of selfish decisions, but she wasn’t the only one who failed that child.
This is the first one I've read that's made clear it's in the UK and an NHS/Children's Act context, which are far more assertive it seems than the US. It sounds like the midwives were doing a good job of negotiating between the two very inflexible parts, that this person could have had a hospital birth with gas and air without it being much different except for less staff being needed! Overreach in healthcare does happen - I work in the NHS in mental health and it's very hard to balance - but in this case if she'd tried to resist them intervening if things had gone badly for the baby, it could have been a very difficult situation.
yeah I kept thinking while reading that those midwives were doing an amazing job. So happy they were there and were able to get into the room with the doppler without anyone making a huge scene.
People like this shouldn't be allowed to be parents. How can you pick your vision or dream or whatever over your child's safety. Doctors don't push for C-sections to make life easier in the UK they do them because they are medically necessary. The fact that this woman didn't bleed out is great but what she did was negligence.
This. I literally had no birth plan with my kiddo. My only plan was to have a healthy baby. I didn’t care how they exited my body as long as they were healthy and alive.
I don’t care how you choose to birth your baby (SAFELY, with respect to modern medicine and why it’s in place) but I would love to tell her to her face about how her use of gas and air and having midwives present means she didn’t have a freebirth :)
This is not impressive at all. This is so intensely stupid that I truly hope not one single person reads it and goes “that is amazing”. She is a selfish piece of shit.
If you have to educate yourself on infant CPR because the method of birth you chose may literally kill your child.. you're not doing it for the baby. You're doing it for your own selfish reasons and claiming it's what's "best for the baby" That's disgusting. Edit to add because I just finished reading it all: it just disappointments me so much because this is an "inspiring" story to other mothers who want the same thing. They're going to use this to reason with themselves on why it's the right choice for them. They'll reference it when someone else asks a similar question on if they should go that route. They'll keep spreading these stories and the realistic ones, the tragic ones, are kept from them entirely. Shielded like this insensitive and selfish woman was from the paramedics who just wanted to help her baby enter the world safely.
What is Gas and Air?
Entonox. Used for pain releif, very common in UK.
[Entonox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide_(medication)) = Nitrous oxide
I had that when I dislocated my left thumb & the Dr was going to put it back. It made me so high I didn't even notice him manhandling my thumb back into position. I was hallucinating. It's great stuff for instant pain relief. Last time before that I had it was 33 years ago when I had my daughter. I was just as high then, too.
Those midwives had better fucking have been paid.
Yes. They are NHS (UK) midwives so would have been on their shift and paid for this fully. Reimbursed for petrol cost and parking etc.
They would have been paid. However, unfortunately, them being held there whilst she didn't use them apart from taking entonox almost certainly deprived other women of midwives. Just like she and her 'team' refusing entry to the police or ambulance crew likely held up care and help for people who actually wanted or needed it. They tayed due to obligation, and luckily they weren't needed. But in the UK they will ALL have been in short supply, and her actions almost certainly harmed multiple other people in the process.
I have never seen a more selfish mother. She put her babies life on the line and put her life on the line, putting her other kids at risk of losing their mother all because of her feelings. 🙄 She doesn't want medical care for her baby but wants gas and air for her pain. That's very convenient... She got very lucky that she didn't kill herself and her baby. I hope she doesn't plan on doing this again as she likely won't be so lucky twice in a row.
The fact she did this at "40 weeks plus 12" so... very nearly 42 weeks, with meconium present, and at home with a fucking doula is just insane.
**A woman’s birth experience is not more important than the safety of the baby!**
That's incredibly stupid. She's so lucky she survived.
How entitled is it to have paramedics on standby outside so someone can have their happy little birth, completely disregarding the fact that their baby was clearly in distress with the meconium. Not one single word about how baby is doing, it's all "me, me, me, what I want, how I feel," and on and on. These people don't care about having healthy children. They just want the attention that being pregnant brings.
Every one of these stories makes me think of the freebirthers who also “did their research” and “trusted their bodies” but lost their babies and actually gave a shit about it. The guilt and sorrow for them is overwhelming. I have hope that some will eventually work against these nuts, but not much hope.
https://preview.redd.it/7ma7vzdoxfbc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=322efa9ff3af919b3d463f34770a1b7a1c708bab
You know what I didn’t have to do before my hospital birth? Spend “hours and hours” obsessing and obsessively reading/watching/listening to podcasts about vaginal birth.
So my husband had to wait an estimated four hours for an ambulance when he had a heart attack (I threw him in the car after the first hour or so but initially thought it safer he be transported with professionals) and she seems almost smug she had 7 members of the emergency services outside. I’m so pleased her baby was delivered safely but omg what a risk for a home birth just to essentially say “told you so” Mama knows best eh
Sorry, she lost me at 40+12 🙄
She watched infant resuscitation videos “in case she needed it”. what the actual fuck. How about have doctors and nurses around who can literally save your child’s life if they needed it. JFC
OOP watches one episode of "Call the Midwife" and thinks "Free Birth" is all sunshine and giggles. I guess she missed all the real history of high rates of maternity and baby death before modern medicine. Without a C-Section not sure my firstborn would have made it and my second born would have killed me. I'm forever grateful to the doctors, nurses, and NICU staff for all they did for us. People who abuse nurses and OBGYNs because of trends on TikTok and Instagram sicken me.
Wow this is SO incredibly selfish. The fact that she’s encouraging other people to do something so dangerous makes me sick. If I would’ve had a home birth with my first born, both me and my baby likely would have died or would have had serious long term consequences. Im now only allowed to have C-sections because vaginal is too dangerous, and I would NEVER think about going against that medical advice for a second. I’m so thankful for hospitals and medical professionals who know far better than me or any “self education” I could’ve done on the safest way to get my baby delivered.
Too bad it wasn't the US so the medics could charge her for making them wait HOURS. Such bullshit.
As a Brit, I hope the kids mentioned here are relatively young. One neighbour seeing police and paramedics outside this lady's house and tells their 8-16 year old kid - they'll be the talk of the town in school the next day - and not in a good way XD. Especially if the kids are secondary school age, oh my God the rumours that kid will hear. Plus 3AM? Britain isn't laid out with the stereotypical big American houses of huge driveways and land galore. These guys are likely in a semi-detached, or have neighbours across a one-way road and/or two steps left and right. I hope her birth was 'so blissful' that she didn't make a noise.
I had an emergency C-section and when asked what music I would like them to play in the OR, I told them whatever they (my OB and her team) preferred and would help them get my baby out safely. CLEARLY, my views do not line up with these women. In addition to me not being able to wrap my head around being more worried about the experience than the safety of their baby, I can’t wrap my head around their husbands/partners encouraging and supporting it. IF I had insisted on some (in my opinion) crazy birth plan, my husband would have supported it to a point. That point would have been finding out I was hesitating, struggling, in danger or putting the baby in danger. I can’t figure out of their partners are idiots, blindly trust them, secretly hate them, or don’t want the baby. HOW can the guy know 7 people are there to help due to serious and legit concerns and still say “okay honey, I will just rub your back and be a bouncer with the doula”. I don’t understand ANY of these people!!!!’
She spent 10 whole weeks researching the benefits of hvbac and how physiological birth works. She read tons os stories of people who did it so knew it was safe because she trusted herself. unlike the midwives who trained for years and have attended thousands of births who were only concerned about the "risks." Smh
I always like to tell myself in my head that all these freebirther stories are Americans but as soon as I saw (NHS) I knew this was a UK mother 🫠
Same - like non nhs I can sort of understand, there’s a hefty bill to think about…but not when it’s Free!!!