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Natural Birth
hollandmama
member
BTDT home birth - hospital transfers
hollandmama
member
Hello, I'm considering home birth and I wanted to know if any of you tried one and ended up at the hospital.
What was the reason?
Was it too soon/ too late to transfer?
How did you transfer? Car, ambulance?
Did you end up having a natural birth even after transfer?
If you had a c/s, do you think it could have been avoided by laboring at the hospital?
I live around 10 minutes drive to the hospital but I want to avoid an emergency c/s so if transferring means c/s then I would prefer to be in the hospital from the beginning... however, I'd love to have my baby at home because there I feel relaxed and cozy, plus I don't love hospitals in general...
Surprise BFP on 11/02/12 EDD 07/06/13 --> Express wedding on 12/29/2012 --> G was born on 07/15/13
*Multicultural family raising a multilingual toddler: Spanish, Italian, Dutch and English
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Re: BTDT home birth - hospital transfers
Sorry, after re-reading that part I realize it was indeed confusing...
I meant that I want to avoid a situation in which the doctor tells me "You could have delivered vaginally if you would have been here from the beginning" if I end up having a c/s. That is why I ask if things would have been any different for you if you'd have been at the hospital already.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear that at the end everything went well with your home birth. I think I wouldn't mind transferring afterwards, I just don't like the idea of going to the hospital after or during transition...
Great, this is exactly what I needed to hear
my common sense was telling this to me, that if I'll need a c/s I will need it regardless of where I am... I am quite confident that my MW knows when to transfer and I don't feel at risk being so close to the hospital... It's just that my mom is freaking out about going natural, let alone birthing at home.
My friend attempted one and did transfer when she started feeling an irresistible urge to push at 6 cms. The midwives did everything to get her to stop but she couldn't and her cervix started swelling shut from the pressure. They ended up taking her to the hospital for an epidural, thinking that with one she wouldn't feel the urge to push anymore and she could start progressing again but even after the epidural the swelling didn't go down and her water had been broken for a long time so she got a csection. She went on to have two successful vbacs, including one at home.
She transferred by car.
Statistically I think you are more likely to end up with a csection if you start in the hospital. Here is a study that looks at the outcomes of planned homebirths compared to low risk, planned hospital births that met the criteria for homebirth. There are dramatically fewer csections in the planned homebirth group, 13 per cent vs 22 per cent in first time mothers, and with better outcomes for both mom and baby across virtually all measures when compared to a matched sample of low risk women who chose to give birth in hospital.
I love this study because it was commissioned by the province of BC when they decided to start covering midwifery care under public health. They tracked every single midwife attended birth and then compared that group to matched, low risk women who chose to deliver with physicians in an attempt to determine if midwife attended women received equal care. The results showed that being seen by a midwife was at least as safe as being seen by a physician.
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/181/67/377.full
My stepmother was a planned homebirth that ended as an emergency C section at the hospital. She was disappointed of course, but it was totally necessary due to a number of factors, and there was no question that they tried everything possible first.
Like the previous poster pointed out, if you start at a hospital you are more likely to end up with a C-section or other interventions before they are truly necessary. When your homebirth midwife thinks you need intervention, you probably REALLY need it for your health or health of the baby.
Personally, a 10 minute trip to the hospital and no other risk factors, I think you should definitely go for the homebirth if that's what you want.
What was the reason?
I transferred for two main reasons. 1) the midwife practice requires transferring if you are not on the verge of delivering after 24 hours of water broken and 2) there was a ton of meconium in the fluid, which the midwife was fine with, but I was not and I had a sense that my midwife's intuitions about my labor were really off. I wanted different care.
Was it too soon/ too late to transfer?
Are you asking whether I delivered on the side of the road? No.
How did you transfer? Car, ambulance?
Car. We would have called an ambulance if I or the baby were dying, but not for any other reason. We were both stable when we transferred.
Did you end up having a natural birth even after transfer?
No, but I knew my labor was not normal when we transferred and going natural was not in the cards for me anymore. I hoped for a vaginal birth, at least, but it wasn't meant to be.
If you had a c/s, do you think it could have been avoided by laboring at the hospital?
I highly doubt that. I think I could have lasted longer at home if the midwife & doula had been more supportive; I think I would have dilated faster without their pressure (I did in fact dilate once they finally left me alone) and I don't think I would have gotten as dehydrated if they hadn't pressured me to exert myself to the point of exhaustion. So, maybe maybe maybe things could have gone differently, but I doubt a c-section was avoidable in our case because of the way my daughter was positioned.
But if I had been in the hospital since the beginning, they would have put me on Pit sooner and my daughter would not have handled it well, due to her positioning, and I would have been sectioned sooner. I think the process would have been more relaxing though, which I never thought I would say since I majorly inconvenienced myself to plan a home birth, but through the whole thing, I found that I'm just more at ease laboring alone in the beginning and then in a hospital. Not what I expected, but it's true for some of us and we should labor where we'll be most at ease. I've found a new practice of hospital-based midwives who have a vbac success rate of 96%, so I'll be with them for baby #2.
What was the reason? My situation is a bit different. We transferred post-birth from a freestanding birth center to a hospital due to baby breathing somewhat fast and me having mild bleeding that wouldn't stop because my ute wouldnt' clamp down.
Was it too soon/ too late to transfer? I don't really get the question...
How did you transfer? Car, ambulance? An ambulance picked us up at the birth center, no lights or sirens though.
Did you end up having a natural birth even after transfer? I had my med-free birth before we had to transfer.
If you had a c/s, do you think it could have been avoided by laboring at the hospital? N/A
This time we chose the local hospital to deliver at for a multitude of reasons, but it does factor into my mind that we had to be the unlucky percent that has to transfer. I'd hate to have that happen again. My old MW is coming down to be our doula though so I think we will have the best of both worlds
Loss #6 2014 Loss #7 (chemical) 2014
~DS Born! 2009~
~DD Born! 2013~
Thank you all for your stories. As I understood, it's not the most terrible thing to transfer, I will continue preparing my list of questions for the MW as I have to decide home birth or hospital in 2 weeks from now.
I live in Holland, so home birth is covered by insurance while hospital is not. However, even if Holland has the highest rate of home births in the developed world (25%) they also have the highest perinatal mortality rate in Europe and it's also higher than in the US. They haven't been able to confirm/disprove that this is related to home births. It could also be related to average age of women or problems identifying complications (like GD, etc). Who knows... the fact is that they treat pregnancy is a very different way, for example, they don't do the GD test to all women, they only do it when you're presenting a symptom (like a bug baby or a lot of AF)...