Homebirth hui/conference

hey kakapo, not going, but just thought I'd post to say if it tickles your fancy go for it! it looks awesome

We had a homebirth and I wouldn't want to have a baby any other way. If there are no complications, it's truly a magical experience. Missymoo entered the world, we had skin to skin immediately, placenta was birthed, we went to bed, she suckled, then we slept. Bliss

I know you will have such an experience too!

Yip I'm going I'm a student midwife and really looking forward to it

I'm not going cos I've shut up shop but... if you're over on that weekend and have time I'm sure we could arrange a catchup...

I'm going (as with Rach... student midwife)... but I'm not going to the hui on friday.

Looking forward to it! Should be a good weekend :)

Hi T_Rex - just remembered you'd asked to hear about highlights from the conference .  The whole weekend was AMAZING, and very emotional ... so glad I went.  For me, the main highlights were listening to other women tell their birth stories.  I learnt so much and it made me think in more depth about my own journey to date.

They should have put huge warning signs on the programme to pregnant women .."bring loads of tissues along to the birth story presentations".  One woman, Emily, told us Maia's birth story - the story of her second child who died unexpectedly in utero at 41 weeks. She went ahead with her planned homebirth anyway a few days later, after being induced. She was so brave, talking about her experience to 200 women. She had put together this immensely moving slideshow with photos of Maia and the family and the burial and unveiling a year later and then photos of her gorgeous daughter Tui, born a year after she lost Maia, with her older son.  We were all sobbing uncontrollably ...it was heartbreaking...but I felt so privileged to hear her story. It put things into perspective for me - I finally feel a connection with this little one growing inside me and realise I do have the capacity to love two children ... how could I have ever doubted that?

And the conference helped me to put any fears I had of homebirth to rest - in fact I came away wondering "what was I thinking ...why wouldn't I want a homebirth this time around?"  Jimmy's birth was in hospital, as planned, and was a wonderful experience ... natural and drug free. Yes, hard work and yes, at times painful - I remember at one stage near transition wailing "I just want to die!" and feeling like I can't do this. But then it was time to push, and before we knew it he was out - so quickly nobody had time to catch him (luckily I was only kneeling on the bed, so not too far to fall ).  His birth was probably the most empowering experience I've ever had in my life. 

Going back a step, at my first midwife visit I'd said "Is it true you can't have elective C-sections on the Coast?" ... I was terrified of the thought of giving birth.  Luckily for me, I met wonderful women on my journey through pregnancy who encouraged me to explore different ideas to the common perception that labour and birth are things to fear.  The day my waters broke I felt a little nervous but mainly excited to know we'd be meeting bubs soon. I even went along to my babyshower at midday, in a cafe, having contractions 5 minutes apart (closer when my friends made me laugh too much) before heading off to hospital later that afternoon.  I spent most of my labour reminding myself "just relax" and it had become such a habit by the time I had to push I got a bit of a shock "oh yeah, now its finally time to actually do some work!". 

One magazine that I found really helpful, during my last pregnancy, was 'TummyTalk', which anyone can buy at $10 per copy.  I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the choices available to pregnant women. Here's a bit of info for anyone interested: 

TummyTalk is a magazine for pregnant women and those around them, produced by Active Birth Taranaki Inc. It outlines some of the choices women can make about birth, and includes a range of positive birth stories from local women.   TummyTalk is a celebration of pregnancy, labour and the birth of a new life. The magazine is free for pregnant women in Taranaki, and is distributed by Lead Maternity Carers (midwives and obstetricians.)  Ask your LMC for a copy at your next visit!  If you live outside of Taranaki, you can email orders@h2ohbaby.co.nz and we will send you an order form.  Bulk orders from midwives and childbirth educators are also very welcome!

All of the presentations at the conference were fantastic - if you have questions about anything on the programme I'll try my best to answer them for you. I was also impressed with the amount of research into homebirth - seeing the stats comparing homebirth to hospital birth outcomes was very interesting to say the least.  One "statistic" that stood out to me was that the Christchurch homebirth midwives collective had only had one instance of foetal distress resulting in the need for transfer to hospital in the past 20 or so years (with thousands of babies born at home during that time - sorry, can't remember the total figures).  The presenters posed a question along the lines of "And yet how often do we hear 'foetal distress' given as the reason further intervention is prescribed for women already in hospital?".  That really got me thinking .

I also found it fantastic. I'll try remember the stats off the top of my head. I think there were 440 (or was it 540?) babies in one of the studies. These were woman who were planning a home birth at the start of labour.

They had a 5% C-section rate
5% forceps or vontouse rate
I think one baby had to be transeferred for fetal distress
80% had a vaginal homebirth
20% were transferred, around 20 had a cs, 20 had an assisted delivery and 10 had a vaginal birth in hospital.
95% of the babies had a 5 minute apgar of over 7
Can't remember the postnatal transfer rate but it wasn't very high, think there was one for a baby that needed extra help, one for a retained placenta and possibly one for a PPH?

The thing that really stood out for me was that most people had a physiological third stage but the ones that chose an active third stage had a HIGHER average blood loss than the ones who did not. The ones who had a physiological third stage and had a bleed so the ecbolic was given as a treatment still had less blood loss (on average) than the ones who had an active third stage.

I did not see the home birth vs hospital birth talk but Kakapo may have and may remember the stats for that. I think at the moment NZ has a CS rate of just over 20%.