Would you consider a home birth?

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As a NICU nurse? I personally would not (on purpose that is) given my experiences in the NICU. The homebirths we see are the ones with severe MAS who end up on ECMO or on cooling blankets. I know our view is skewed. Wondering what others thought.

Specializes in A little of this, a little of that.....

IMHO, I would not want a home birth. Like a previous poster said, too many things can go wrong at the last minute.

True, there have been many successful home births...but historically, how many women have lost children at birth?

"Mac"

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Specializes in NICU.

Thank everyone for responding. I have been attacked (!!!) an another discussion board where they call hospital birthers "mindless masses" and "idiots". They advocate things like refusing GBS testing and prophylaxis, ultrasounds, glucola screening. I guess the theory being, if you don't know you're high risk it doesn't count? I'm tired of having to defend myself. I'm not anti-home birth, I just don't want one for myself.

I'm all for preparing for the worst and being really happy when the worst doesn't happen. That's what we do everyday in the NICU.

And I really don't care how "statistically" safe birth is. Some of The deliveries I've been to and the aftermath of "low risk" deliveries gone awry make me want to be where the interventions are!

"Curly"

Happily having my 2nd hospital delivery soon.

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It would be nice to be "blisfully ignorant" again. ;) You know... those days when you really didn't know that babies die. :o But those who have never experienced it or been close to it really don't realize that it can happen and that it does happen... hundreds of times each day. :o I would like one of those parents who had a horrible outcome to come forward and just say "what if?", but then again there would still be those who think "it can't happen to me". :mad: All I can say is that I hope it "doesn't" happen to them. :o

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Specializes in Psych, Med/Surg, LTC.

Home birthing is not for me. I had a pretty uneventful pregnancy. I delevered at 38 weeks. Im not sure if my daughter would have survived if there weren't several staff members available to help her. She had a tight nuchal cord. She came out blue and floppy. Thanks to immediate intervention by several staff members she is perfect and laughing at the moment...

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, educator.

Yes, in my opinion, and all of my co-workes equaling over 100, we do think that delivering at an outlying hospital can be risky, especially if they don't have peds in house at all times.

I believe Chayan that you aren't in nursing yet, you are in school...and when you start doing more in clinicals and then you are working, you see things in a very different light and your views on a lot of things change. Many nurses that work rehab or trauma won't get on a motorcycle, lots of PICU nurses won't let their kids have trampolines, the list can go on and on.

2Curly...many people think that they are educated and informed, but sadly, they really aren't. They really don't get the implications of having and IDM kid or the defects that it can cause, many don't think that GBS can affect them. It is sad for those babies and those parents.

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I could pose the same question to trauma nurses: Given what you've seen, how do you feel about taking your car out of the driveway?

To be honest - I'm glad I'm done having babies! As a NICU nurse, the blissful ignorance is gone - I have seen the bad outcomes of birth. Bad outcomes of hospital births and bad outcomes of home births. And if you look at the research, you have a higher percentage of having a bad outcome in a hospital than you do with a well managed well screened home birth. (Obviously some of this is because high risk deliveries aren't home births!)

I've read this thread with great interest. I was a momma before I was a NICU nurse - had 2 babes in the hospital and my last in a free-standing birthing center with a CNM and RN in attendance. My birthing center birth (5 miles from a hospital) was amazing and beautiful and something I wouldn't trade for anything. I would have had a homebirth but my partner was not comfortable with the idea. It is often difficult for me to witness the bad outcomes that we see in the NICU and reconcile them with my supportive views of homebirth and birth in general as a normal life experience rather than a medical procedure.

It is only because of my NICU experience that I personally could not be comfortable giving birth at home or in a freestanding birthing center again. This is a very personal statement, because it's not based on research or my support of the homebirth experience, but because having seen bad outcomes, I would be (irrationally) terrified that something would go wrong. I'm glad that I finished having babies before I became a NICU nurse for this very reason. I feel sorry for my coworkers who have to wrestle with these fears (regardless of where they give birth) and realize that it is certainly one of the downsides of the job...

Thanks for starting this thread! Good food for thought!!

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I think a lot of us realize homebirth is statistically as safe as hospital births for low risk women. That's why I don't have a problem with it for other people. My problem with it would be for myself. I know the outcomes if something goes wrong are going to be better in a hospital and it doesn't matter how seldom that happens if it happens to me. Statistics and percentages are meaningless when it's your baby completely brain damaged. 8 minutes? Yes, it matters. Every single second matters. If it didn't, the nicu team would just leisurely stroll to bad deliveries.

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Specializes in Pediatric Pulmonology and Allergy.

All of you are right and I can't really argue with your logic. And yet, and yet, what I experienced with my homebirth is something that I could never get in a hospital. The relaxation, feeling of total control, being *inside* my body and so aware of what was happening. Doing the things that I needed to do to manage pain -- not the things someone else thought I needed to do. That absolutely amazing adrenaline rush after the birth, the feeling that I could run a marathon, the exclusive bonding time with baby - these are things I did not and could not experience in a hospital birth. I have 2 healthy homebirthed babies, and I strongly believe that my relaxed state of mind during labor contributed to the healthy outcome for them. Of course there are all kinds of reasons why babies go into distress but distress in the mother does affect the baby!

If my baby was in the 0.001% that had problems because of my decision to homebirth (meaning a problem that shot out of nowhere and became critical in seconds, which is an extremely minute risk) I would of course be devastated, but I don't think it's that different than the what-if of things going wrong because of hospital interventions. Homebirthing is my epidural. Women take the risks of epidural because they want to minimize the pain of labor. For me, giving birth at home in a stress-free atmosphere helps me keep on top of the pain more than anything else.

OF course I'm one of the homebirth success stories and the amazing experience I had is part of the reason why people do choose it. But like skiing and skydiving it has its risks.

You're right that I'm still learning and I am respectful of your knowledge and experience. Maybe if I found this site 4 years ago you'd have talked me out of homebirth, and I would have missed out on something very special.

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I am just a lurker - a pre-nursing student, however I think this is a fantastic discussion. I am a homebirther - or I tried to be, and I am a little shocked at how many babies you guys have seen from the failed homebirths. You don't really hear about that ever in my circles. You never hear the stories from when things go wrong.

I ended up transferring when I started pushing at 8cms and swelled up my cervix really bad - at that point I had been 16 hours since PROM, I was GBS+ and had some meconium. So it really was time to throw in the towel and get moving. Baby was doing fine - and did just fine. But it was a very stressful experience (imagine hitting rush hour while pushing - it was a scene from a movie!)

The difference between laboring at home and the hospital was night and day. I LOVED being at home, and would do it again in a heartbeat, but next time husband insists on something a bit closer - so we will do a birth center.

I question why more people don't combine the strenghts of both medical and holistic birthing. My friend ended up sectioned after 36 hours of labor (homebirth transfer) and it turned out that she had a low-lying placenta that would have been easily detected in an ultrasound. She still maintains that she is so glad she never had an ultrasound and she is glad she went through those 36 hours of labor blissfully unaware..... yet she could have been spared so much pain just with that one minor medical intervention. It just would not have been worth it to me.

Its my goal (someday - providing I pass all these crazy pre-reqs!) to combine both into a place where women can be autonomous and powerful, babies can be welcomed into a warm, loving, gentle environment, AND we can have back-up just around the corner for when things go wrong. Utopia exsists, right??? :wink2:

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Specializes in Maternal - Child Health.
I am just a lurker - a pre-nursing student, however I think this is a fantastic discussion. I am a homebirther - or I tried to be, and I am a little shocked at how many babies you guys have seen from the failed homebirths. You don't really hear about that ever in my circles. You never hear the stories from when things go wrong.

I ended up transferring when I started pushing at 8cms and swelled up my cervix really bad - at that point I had been 16 hours since PROM, I was GBS+ and had some meconium. So it really was time to throw in the towel and get moving. Baby was doing fine - and did just fine. But it was a very stressful experience (imagine hitting rush hour while pushing - it was a scene from a movie!)

The difference between laboring at home and the hospital was night and day. I LOVED being at home, and would do it again in a heartbeat, but next time husband insists on something a bit closer - so we will do a birth center.

I question why more people don't combine the strenghts of both medical and holistic birthing. My friend ended up sectioned after 36 hours of labor (homebirth transfer) and it turned out that she had a low-lying placenta that would have been easily detected in an ultrasound. She still maintains that she is so glad she never had an ultrasound and she is glad she went through those 36 hours of labor blissfully unaware..... yet she could have been spared so much pain just with that one minor medical intervention. It just would not have been worth it to me.

Its my goal (someday - providing I pass all these crazy pre-reqs!) to combine both into a place where women can be autonomous and powerful, babies can be welcomed into a warm, loving, gentle environment, AND we can have back-up just around the corner for when things go wrong. Utopia exsists, right??? :wink2:

I admire your level-headedness and desire to combine the "best of both worlds". You will be an asset to our profession, and a great source of comfort to your clients:balloons: !

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I am just a lurker - a pre-nursing student, however I think this is a fantastic discussion. I am a homebirther - or I tried to be, and I am a little shocked at how many babies you guys have seen from the failed homebirths. You don't really hear about that ever in my circles. You never hear the stories from when things go wrong.

I ended up transferring when I started pushing at 8cms and swelled up my cervix really bad - at that point I had been 16 hours since PROM, I was GBS+ and had some meconium. So it really was time to throw in the towel and get moving. Baby was doing fine - and did just fine. But it was a very stressful experience (imagine hitting rush hour while pushing - it was a scene from a movie!)

The difference between laboring at home and the hospital was night and day. I LOVED being at home, and would do it again in a heartbeat, but next time husband insists on something a bit closer - so we will do a birth center.

I question why more people don't combine the strenghts of both medical and holistic birthing. My friend ended up sectioned after 36 hours of labor (homebirth transfer) and it turned out that she had a low-lying placenta that would have been easily detected in an ultrasound. She still maintains that she is so glad she never had an ultrasound and she is glad she went through those 36 hours of labor blissfully unaware..... yet she could have been spared so much pain just with that one minor medical intervention. It just would not have been worth it to me.

Its my goal (someday - providing I pass all these crazy pre-reqs!) to combine both into a place where women can be autonomous and powerful, babies can be welcomed into a warm, loving, gentle environment, AND we can have back-up just around the corner for when things go wrong. Utopia exsists, right??? :wink2:

There are places out there like that. I have worked in 3 hospitals that I feel were excellent in that respect and I've seen some great birth centers... though we could certainly use more!

I think the reason you don't hear about the bad outcomes associated with homebirths is that the parents often feel too guilty to discuss it and the midwives certainly have no incentive to discuss them with others either. Your friend was lucky not to have a true placenta previa, the results could have been very bad if baby had made his way down into that.

Chaya, I'm glad your deliveries were great. Different strokes for different folks:) I couldn't do it. Part of being a good patient is taking responsibility for your own care and what you want and don't want. Some of us want a homebirth experience, some of us don't. It's nice that we have the options and we should be supportive of eachothers' choices.

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Specializes in NICU, Telephone Triage.

:o

Never in a million years! I've seen way too many that have gone bad. It can happen so quickly and help can't arrive fast enough.

Then, what's so ironic is when some of these babies end up in the NICU, the parents are so angry because baby needs our medical help to "recover".

The baby would probably not be in the NICU if it wasn't birthed at home!

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