"My planned homebirth"

My planned homebirth. Mostly wonderful, until the point of delivery, the midwife panicked and called an ambulance in my earshot, which in turn made me panic. My daughter was born but I suffered a 3rd degree tear and was taken to hospital. I was told multiple times there was meconium in the waters (once is sufficient) making me panic even more and push outside of contractions, which I’m sure contributed to me tearing so badly. 

Part of what made the delivery so awful was the loss of my midwife an hour before. Having a shift change at midnight seems like insanity when most babies arrive in the middle of the night. The loss of the continuity of care was particularly dreadful for me as I lost a midwife I trusted to be replaced by two total strangers, while transitioning. All the conversations I had with my midwife were useless and pointless as trying to hand over a woman in labour at the point of transition in the middle of the night is just super stressful for everyone. I feel that if my original midwife had stayed the whole thing would have been less stressful, an ambulance (resulting in two strange men in the house) would not have been necessary and the baby might have been born more slowly in a calmer more controlled environment and a tear might not have happened. She was back to back (as my other two have been) with a hand over her face and I had talked to my original midwife about this in some detail but I’m not sure the new midwives were aware and this would no doubt have affected their judgement and decision making. I would strongly recommend scrapping a middle of the night shift change - both for the sake of continuity of care and to save dragging staff out in the middle of the night to an unknown location  in the dark which they may struggle to find, thereby adding another layer of stress. 

The surgical team were phenomenal, cannot fault them. They listened to me and did everything in their power to help me get home quickly. My experience on the ward was not so good. Constant, constant interruptions from doctors, nurses, multiple medical students, endless people coming in picking up the baby - information about contraceptives, immunisations, hearing tests etc etc etc - all part of the reason I wanted to have the baby at home. I would like to suggest that if a planned homebirth has to be admitted that the hospital try to respect the privacy we would have had at home. I found it massively intrusive and upsetting. I had to practically beg to be allowed to go home and in the end I almost had to threaten to leave ama. I felt held hostage, in the most uncomfortable chair I’ve ever sat in, totally unsuitable for nursing with a ridiculously bright light shining in the babies eyes. 

I’m glad my daughter was born at home, and I experienced some truly amazing care throughout my delivery and after. Any not-so-great care I experienced was largely due to the circumstances care givers found themselves put in by poor practice and procedures and was not due to them being anything other than professional. 

In disappointed that my birth experience didn’t turnout the way I wanted it to but hope my experience will allow NHS highland to consider making changes so that no one else has to go through what I and my baby did.