Natural Birth
Home Birth with GBS
Has anyone out there done it - had a home birth after testing positive for Group B Strep? How does it work, with having to be on the antibiotics? Did your midwife have the medication and an IV? Just curious. I've been going to a regular OB and planning to birth in a hospital up until this point, but for a variety of reasons we are trying to switch over to a midwife/home birth at the last minute, and I'm wondering how that will work out. Thanks!
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Re: Home Birth with GBS
There are other things that midwives often do to deal with GBS (from what I understand midwives don't do the antibiotics). I know one is using hibiclens at some point in the birthing process to kill the bacteria. I don't know the details, as it was only mentioned as an option by a doula for me and I've seen it on here.
Talk to your midwife about how she'd handle GBS. Honestly, the liklihood of your child catching GBS is fairly low, and there are ways that (at least at a hospital) they can test for it before it is an issue. Not that I'm advocating not doing anything, but just to put it into perspective. I ended up only getting 3 1/2 hours after my antibiotics dose so DS was tested and he was A-OK.
I tried Hibiclens to rid myself of GBS, but it didn't work. (I was retested and was still positive.)
Anyway, my midwife only insists on antibiotics during labor if you have a fever or prolonged rupture of membranes or there may have been one other instance. You can request them if positive and you don't meet those requirements.
However, we chose to not use them. I never had a fever and my water didn't break until late in labor (while I was pushing). We were totally okay with this. In our opinion, it doesn't make sense to treat all GBS+ women in labor with antibiotics when only a small fraction pass it on to baby. And so we were fine with only using them if I had a fever or prolonged rupture of membranes.
Since neither applied to us, we didn't use them.
Definitely ask your midwife about his/her policies. But it's definitely possible to have a HB while GBS +.
It varies by state law and probably per practice. Some midwives need an OB to write the RX for you.
I just posted a GBS positive birth story above- William's birth.
There are things that you can do to try to get rid of the GBS and alternatives to antibiotics like Hibiclense
I tried different homeopathic treatments but still tested positive. (I was positive for my first birth as well.) My husband really wanted me to do a round of antibiotics so that's what we did. He's been so supportive of all the other things so I wanted to compromise on something he felt strongly about. The risk of a baby getting GBS is 1 in 200 without antibiotics. That's a relatively small risk, unless it's your baby. That was his sticking point.
The midwives brought the antibiotics to me, inserted a small butterfly needle, taped it down, and I continued to labor as I had before. I only had one dose and it dripped in quickly. She then removed the butterfly needle and it was done.
I had a home birth after testing GBS+. We did the hibiclens wash every 4 hours while in labor. We would have had to consider alternatives had membranes ruptured early or I developed a fever of course, but none of that happened. My water broke right when I got to at 10.
My midwife also left instructions to count the baby's breaths a few times a day and to take her temp just to be extra prudent. Everything was fine!
Here are some articles that helped me with the whole thing.
https://www.aims.org.uk/Journal/Vol15No4/WarOnGroupBStrep.htm
https://mothering.com/pregnancy-birth/treating-group-b-strep
Good Luck!!
I used a birthing center, but honestly, it was the same deal as if I had a home birth. My midwife opened an IV line, pushed the antibiotics in, then took out the line. It made my arm feel weird (mostly cold from the antibiotics going in), but other than that it was fine. I didn't have to get a second dose b/c my labor moved quickly and a second dose would have been hard to put in during transition.
GBS should not effect a home birth at all. GL
*note* My waters broke at the beginning of labor and it was 12 hours of labor after that. I got the antibiotics about 3 hours into labor...If my water had broken late in labor, I would have gotten nothing.