Birth Pool Upstairs??

[n0tail]

exactly!

[John Rumm]

Its odd that the (modern) countries that have the lowest incidence of interventions (of any type), seem to also have the lowest rates of infant mortality. So access to hospital services does not seem to be that much of a benefit.

Given it is the only one of its type in the world that would not be difficult. To give it its due, maternity care is often one of its better abilities amongst the sea of mediocrity that is much of the remainder.

[John Stumbles]

Yup. We'd planned a home water birth for the first but between inexperience of the medical system and lack of midwifery support ended up in the hospital as described. Second time round SO was even less keen on the hospital option and we'd found a couple of excellent midwives specialising in doing homebirths who supported us to the hilt and helped make it a stress-free and (for SO, relatively) painless experience (no doubt contributed to by it being stress-free).

[dennis]

You are wasting your time.. he doesn't want to believe and he wont. The same as he always ignores the costs of smoking related illnesses that aren't a part of the NHS budgets, things like disability payments, etc. All of which make the pathetic amount paid in smoking tax look rather, well, pathetic.

[John Stumbles]

She said "based on statistics". Challenge her to produce the statistics, and produce some of your own if you like, but please don't swear at her and wave around your unsubstantiated saloon-bar "obvious innit" type excuse for an argument.

It's quite possible that for those who choose home births the experience is less stressful than hospital based delivery and that the reduced stress results in fewer complications and therefore reduced burden to the NHS, and that this more than compensates for the increased burden of ambulancing to hospital the few that do have complications. I'm not saying this is the case - this is, if you like, my own "obvious innit" pseudo-argument - but I'm suggesting that it's a real possibility that voluntary homebirths are a net benefit to the NHS in terms of resources.

For what it's worth if we had had for our first sprog the midwives who attended at the second we might well have had a homebirth first time round and not needed to be blue+2ed to hospital when SO went very suddenly into labour.

Ad hominen attack.

Plonk!

[The Medway Handyman]

[The Medway Handyman]

Not my figures Dennis. The taxation income from smokers is an indisputable fact. Even you can't argue with that. It's in excess of £7 billion.

The figure of £1.5 billion is the 'official' NHS figure for treating 'smoking related disease'. Bearing in mnd that they include every possible thing that could plausably be caused by smoking and are wildly exagerated. Do the math.

[YAPH]

correct some of the plumbing-related errors!

FWIW what was useful with our home waterbirth was having a length of garden hose to syphon out water with it and vacuum out the little Mr Hankies that appeared in it while SO was straining (I guess it's hard to control what comes out of one orifice when you're trying to get a baby's head out of the one next door!). The hose should obviously be clean, preferably sterile, so maybe a new one, or soaked in bleach before use. We simply ran the far end out of the back door so its end was lower than the bottom of the pool, then to use it my job was to submerge the pool end plus an extra 3-4 feet of it into the pool, put my thumb over the end then draw the extra length back over the edge and take my thumb off. The water in the extra length (now outside the pool and running away from it) is enough to start a syphon action sucking water out continuously. As I say you can use it as a vacuum or just to take some water out if the level's too high or to make room to top up with some more hot water. As soon as you raise the pool end above the water the syphon stops.

Funnily enough I have no recollection at all of where I took the hot and cold fill connections from, but if I were doing it again I might run lengths of (sterile) garden hose from hot and cold washing machine connections, or make temporary connections into the pipework to e.g. washbasin taps with push-fit (e.g. Speedfit) plumbing connectors which can be easily reconfigured back to a normal arrangement when no longer needed. In our case I think I had them connected somehow off a washbasin and were controlled from there, but with good quality hoses and secure connections to fixed pipework one could always have hot and cold "taps" (e.g. handle-operated valves) at the pool itself.

(If you're in the Reading area and want some help with these aspects drop me a line.)

[The Medway Handyman]

Lets look at the amazing, dreadful, shock horror figure shall we? Lets be generous, for they say 'at least' 35,000 deaths per year. Lets assume 'at least' means twice that number, 70,000.

The population of the USA is around 305,000,000. That works out at 0:0229% of the population.

By the way, the UK Govmint has published figures - printed on cigarette packets, so it must be true - which state that 11,000 deaths per year are caused by passive smoking. The EU claim that 16,000 Europeans die each year due to passive smoking, again printed on cigarette packets.

Do the maths FFS. Look at the percentage of smokers in the UK & Europe compared to the total population.

The population of Europe is around 728 million, so thats 0:0022% of Europeans, the UK is around 60 million, so thats 0:018%.

Wildly different figures, none of which are statistically significant.

Typical anti smokers attitude, any anti smoker can find information to back up his claim. Trouble is the information is a complete bunch of crap and anti smokers allow their prejudice to overcome their common sense.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Dennis is one of those wot don't do math

[The Medway Handyman]

That must be the perfect example of why home births are a bad idea.

[Kevin]

you are just a wimping out rather than trying to give up a known dangerous drug you chose to try and justify that its your right to "kill you self" bollocks see the light & give up the weed an prove you are a man

[Rod]

It is such a shame that causes of death are horribly inaccurate. Even if, by some miracle, the doctor writes a reasonably accurate cause, by the time that is translated into statistics, it has been grossly corrupted.

For example, a person my partner is in contact with lost her husband fairly recently. The immediate cause was heart failure of some sort. But there is lots of evidence that the heart condition was a direct consequence of thyroid disease. And who knows what caused that thyroid disease?

Unlikely, but the certificate just might mention thyroid, however the OPCS 'cause of death' will be heart failure.

This will contribute precisely zero to our understanding of what really caused his death. Thyroid disease is rarely cited as a cause or even a contributory factor.

Similar applies to smoking. There are the 'obvious' cases in which lung cancer (for example) is held to be the direct consequence of smoking. But there are probably far more cases in which smoking has had consequnces which contributed to demise.

[dennis]

As I said, refuses to add in anything not in the NHS budgets. The NHS doesn't treat disabilities so they are not in the NHS budget. The NHS pays to amputate a smokers legs but it doesn't pay the maintenance costs of that smoker later, that 20 year cost comes from other sources which we tax payers have to foot the bill for. Do the math, if you dare.

[dennis]

You are wasting your time talking about smoking related diseases... it has to be a lie that smoking harms anyone..

no normal person would inflict such problems on others so it must be a lie.. its the only way the addicts can get a clear conscience.

The same as they will manipulate the figures to claim they pay more tax than it costs to treat them, usually by ignoring all the after care required (its not treatment so they aren't lying in their opinion) which is paid by social services and not by the NHS. The NHS will only pay for the treatment of the illness while the social services have to pay for disability conversions, sending in care workers, etc. all of which makes the NHS bill look cheap. The consultants and doctors know which patients are smokers without asking.. they are the ones with bits missing. I know someone that lost a foot a few weeks ago, he was told it would happen if he didn't stop smoking a couple of years ago, Now who is going to pay disability pay for the rest of his life as a result of a self inflicted injury? And the stupid idiot still smokes.

[John Rumm]

Had exactly this chain of events with first born... 40 hours of (intermittent) labour later, induction, and various other interventions, we ended up with an emergency c section. Fortunately sprog was gruntled throughout, but mum looked like she had just done a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. No way of knowing if the final outcome would have been different at home, but I am sure the leadup would have been far less distressing for all.

[mail]

Re this "debate" of hospital v home, the obvious risk no one seems to have cottoned onto is that if something goes wrong, either with mother or baby, then you need to get to hospital pdq. So the answer is that there is absolutely nothing *wrong* with home births and much to commend them in terms of happiness of the mother and family provided that you have.... had a competent risk assessment from the antenatal specialists for both and baby and that, if there is any evidence of risk, it is assessed then you balance the 'good feeling' *advantages* [not life-significant] of home birth for high risk patients v the known medical and life-preserving advantages of a quick medical response in case of an emergency. Were, for example, the home to be 2 mins from the local hospital then the risk is much reduced as she could get to hospital easily. If, however, the homebirth was in the middle of the Lake District 90 mins of winter driving from the nearest hospital the risk factors are increased and one would question the benefits.

An intermediate solution is to make maternity wards much more like home where you are provided with the full spectum of choice for birth so it becomes more attractive to mothers to be.

Chris (whose 'SWIMBO' happens to be a paediatrician who takes in the results of some ill-thought-out home births with concommitant O2 deprivation - not a good gift to impart to your baby on starting life!) PS put the birth pool near a wall bearing not in mid span!

[Dave Liquorice]

Yep all deliveries should be M-F 9-5 so they can have the weekends off to play golf.

The woman isn't in control the baby is via hormones IIRC. Our two were both induced hospital births but that was down to the mother being rather old >40 and suffering high blood pressure. The 1st was a long hard battle with about the only thing not used being a cesarian. The second was much easier, one shot of pethidine early on and gas & air for the rest.

For a young healthy mother with a normal pregnancy there is no real reason to go to hospital, pregnancy and child birth are not an illness. FFS if it was routinely life threatening we would have died out eons ago and there wouldn't be the big families and huge population grown in the third world where they don't have our "essential" medical care.

[John Rumm]

You seem to be adopting the view of some in the medical profession that pregnancy is a medical condition that needs treating...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well in todays crowded world, it probably is..