By Robert Virtue.
While giving birth in a hospital remains the most popular option for mothers in New South Wales, a few hundred women choose to give birth in their homes each year.
Anne Turner is the mother of three children, one of whom was born at home, and is a committee member of the Hunter Positive Birth Support Group based in the Newcastle area.
The group aims to offer peer support, information, and an opportunity for pregnant women and mothers to share their experiences.
“We want women to feel allowed to enjoy that [birthing] experience, and to find ways that they’re going to be able to enjoy that experience, rather than being frightened of it or having it over-medicalised,” Ms Turner said.
“A lot of women feel that it’s a normal life event, and where they live is where they want to birth.
“It’s a very big difference for women who’ve birthed in hospital and home.
“[They] will talk about how different it feels to just be in your own space; you feel often a greater sense of control, more relaxed, safer.”
Homebirthing regulated to ensure safety
In the Hunter Valley, Hunter New England Health (HNEH) operates the Belmont Midwifery Group Practice (BMGP), which in turn runs a publicly-funded homebirth program.
It is open to women who have no identified birthing risks and are booked into the BMGP.
The group said it followed strict guidelines and was in constant contact with obstetricians.
In NSW in 2014 there were 228 planned homebirths and 30 homebirths that ended in hospital admissions.
In the HNEH district in 2014, there were 72 planned homebirths and nine homebirths that resulted in hospital admissions.
In the same year, there were 9,728 hospital births in the region.
Women share experiences in support group
The Hunter Positive Birth Support Group helps mothers to share their experiences and offer advice.
Ms Turner had two of her children in hospital, but her third child — a daughter named Aisling — was born at home.
“It was just the most beautiful day in our family’s life,” she said.
“The environment of birthing at home is indescribable. Before I did it, I was very pro-homebirth as an option, but I didn’t understand how different it would be until I did it.
“Aisling was born just before dinner time, so my mum just fed the kids [their] dinner, and they popped in and out to visit the baby and go back to their pasta.
“When it was their bedtime, I just passed the baby over to someone else and put my other two children to bed.”
Ms Turner said having a midwife at the birth who she knew well helped her feel more at ease.
“The great thing with homebirth is you have the one midwife looking after you the whole time,” she said.
“So you would tend to develop a good relationship with them and ask a million questions along the way that come up.
“You do need to prepare the house a little bit — just having lots of warm towels and a warm blanket for the baby, maybe a waterproof mat or something in the home. But it’s not as big a deal as people often think it might be.
“Continuity of care has been shown by research to be one of the biggest factors in ensuring a safe and satisfying birth.”
Women with high-risk pregnancies are not advised to have a homebirth.
While she was committed to having her baby at home, Ms Turner said she would have rethought her decision if her baby was at risk.
“I was just concerned that something would risk me out of being able to stay home, and I really, really wanted to stay home,” she said.
“Obviously [you would] rethink it if it’s not safe to be at home; and if it wasn’t safe, then of course I would’ve gone to hospital.
“I just wanted it to be as relaxed as it ended up being.”
Mother of two Stina Oftedal had her first baby in hospital two-and-a-half years ago.
“That was mostly a positive experience, but there were a few things that I was hoping to avoid this time around,” she said.
“When I realised I was pregnant, I looked up what options were around in Newcastle.”
Ms Oftedal said her homebirth went to plan, and she preferred that experience over being in a hospital.
“They try to make the birthing rooms at the hospital less clinical, but it’s still a hospital and there’s still the equipment around,” Ms Oftedal said.
“It was less disruption to the whole labour process [birthing at home]; I sort of didn’t have to think too much.
“I didn’t feel that the risks were any higher than in hospital really. I felt like they were on the ball of transferring me to hospital if there was any chance of anything going wrong.
“I felt very safe … I felt very relaxed about staying at home. Everything just flowed naturally.”
This post originally appeared on ABC News.
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Top Comments
Even though home birth was never an option for me due to being high risk, I still would have opted for the hospital.
I was lucky enough to have all of children in a private hospital, the ob was amazing and believed in the 'natural way' preferring to only get involved if medically necessary.
I'm greatful she was there as her skills were needed twice.
I would never have felt comfortable birthing at home. I loved knowing that I was safe in hospital, that a major hospital was next door fully equipped with everything needed to intervene in a crisis.
'In the HNEH district in 2014, there were 72 planned homebirths and nine homebirths that resulted in hospital admissions' - Not sure if I am reading that correctly, is that there were 72 planned home births and of those 9 resulted in hospital admissions? Or is it 9 births that occurred outside a hospital that then required hospitalisation? (You do hear about people giving birth in taxi's, etc)
Assuming it is the first one, that is 1 in 8 low risk pregnancies that had a home birth ended up in hospital. Too risky for me.
I read it is 72 born at home and nine transferred (81 total), but could be wrong. Either way I agree, it's too high a risk for me too
It doesn't say when they transferred over to hospital care though, it could have been any time during the pregnancy. Even so, the vaaaaast majority of transfers in labour aren't for emergency situations, they are as a precaution. Of all the homebirths that I've attended where we did transfer in labour it was almost always because the woman was requesting pain relief that is unavailable at home eg. an epidural. A transfer to hospital rarely involves a serious emergency, or worst case, the need to ring an ambulance, you all go in cars.
Anyway, wouldn't you prefer that they go to hospital, rather than being idiots and staying at home?
Of course they should go to hospital, my point was that so many of them go to hospital, you should go to hospital to begin with.
That's just my opinion of course, and it worked for us. For many the benefits of a home birth outweigh the risks and I'm okay with that too.
I hear what you are saying about the non-emergency situations that go to hospital, I just think it adds another variable to what is already a huge situation.
That part of the article was lacking some clarity, I see Hobgoblin had a different interpretation than I did.