Karen achieves her dreams of a home birth but not without some drama.  She describes from the first contraction to the birth. The support of the midwives and pain management techniques. It was the birth she hoped for. Following the third stage, delivery the placenta, Karen describes how she started to feel dizzy shortly afterwards and ended up being transferred to hospital with a postpartum haemorrhage.

1-5% of women have PPH and the risks are actually slightly higher if you give birth in a hospital. Karen had no particular risk factors that would indicate she bleed heavily postpartum.

We talk about the evidence supporting the decisions she took and in hindsight what she would do differently. Namely have the active delivery of the placenta with the injection syntometrine.

She describes her experience as a positive birth where she got the best of both worlds. A calm home birth and due to her hospital transfer, excellent after care from the midwives.

This story is to show you that you can have a positive experience even when things don’t quite go to plan. It’s important to be educated about all things that can happen during a birth to help you make informed decisions that suit you.

Resources:

https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2393-12-130

Comparing the odds of postpartum haemorrhage in planned home birth against planned hospital birth: results of an observational study of over 500,000 maternities in the UK (2012)

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg190/ifp/chapter/Delivering-the-placenta

NICE guidelines for delivering the placenta

https://www.rcog.org.uk/globalassets/documents/patients/patient-information-leaflets/pregnancy/pi-heavy-bleeding-after-birth-postpartum-haemorrhage.pdf

Royal college of obstetricians and gynaecologists leaflet about postpartum heamorrages