Case study: ‘I had a horrible experience … it felt like a production-line’

WHEN I was pregnant with my first baby I did not really consider any option other than a hospital birth.

That was the way I had always imagined giving birth – in the safe surroundings of a hospital, surrounded by experts.

Now that I’m expecting my second I feel entirely differently. The idea of going back to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary does not appeal at all. I had a horrible experience there, in what felt like a production-line environment. My baby was the fifth delivered by my midwife that night and I spent approximately half an hour in her care. For the rest of the time I was alone with my husband.

So this time my husband and I are hoping, all going well, to have a home birth. Instead of being given the minimum of care due to a hospital system that seems desperately over stretched, I will have a midwife with me the entire time.

She will be the lovely midwife who I have got to know and trust during my care during my pregnancy, instead of a stranger who I meet when in the midst of labour. And I will be in the comfort and familiar, reassuring surroundings of my own home. If there is an emergency, the hospital is a ten- minute journey away. To me a home birth is not just safer but more appealing in every way than another hospital birth.