Thursday 14 January 2010

Happy New Year...and lots of home births coming soon we think!

Happy New Year to all homebirth families and their supporters. It's just a hunch but I think we are in for a very good homebirth year in 2010.

For a start we had a capacity crowd at our first meeting of the year, despite rain and slush and weather misery, at Katie Wallace's in Chiswick.

OK I admit in Homebirth Group terms "capacity crowd" does not mean quite what it does at QPR but a group comprising two twice-time homebirth mothers, five would-be first time home birthers, three dads or dads to be and two doulas (me and Sarah Birtles, who is a postnatal doula) is actually as big a group as we have ever had I think.



Questions which arose from the meeting were:




  • Does anyone know of an independent midwife who will take on a VBAC mum in West London?

  • What are the current protocols in our area, around home birth for mums who test positive for Group B Strep? I have found a very clear description of the way some people use garlic clear themselves of GBS in pregnancy here. I can give absolutely NO guarantee that this works.

  • What is the best course of action for a homebirth mum who haemorrhaged in 3rd stage labour?

Good news from Chelsea and Westminster - ever since a wonderful midwife called Ann-Marie Mathews began looking into why the hospital and its community teams' home birth rate has been so lamentable it has actually begun rising. Ann-Marie says that since she began the project every mum who had booked a home birth was attended at home by a midwife and NOT forced to transfer in because of staff shortage.

Queen Charlotte's on the other hand isn't covering itself with glory at the moment, which is surprising. One of our mums was told she wasn't in their area for home births - funny since she hadn't moved since they agreed to cover her home birth last time around!

Sarah

14/1/2010