Wirral Home Birth - News
Sheffield
Homebirth Conference
Saturday 29th March
Janet Lacey &
Jackie Rickman
Following the successful launch of our Wirral Homebirth Support group at the beginning of the year, we decided to venture across the
Pennines
to this Conference. The venue was excellent and there were a number of stalls to peruse at lunchtime. These included birth pools, osteopathy, AIMS (Association for Improvement in the Maternity Services) baby slings, Association of Radical Midwifes, Natal Hypnotherpay, the local NCT branch and an excellent raffle which we almost won.
Throughout the day we were able to attend various presentations and workshops on a variety of subjects. Speakers included:
Professor Mavis Kirkham
of
Sheffield
Hallam
University
Nadine Edwards
- Vice Chair of AIMS and author of the book “Birthing Autonomy: Women’s Experiences of Planning Home"
Dotty Watkins
– Head of Midwifery for
Sheffield
A number of NHS and Independent Midwifes
Presentation topics were:
Focus on safety – Women’s perspectives
Let’s Get
Normal
Focus on the Mother
Why women don’t have homebirths
Homebirth Service in
Sheffield
– Local Update
Stroppy Women
Waterbirth
Of the workshops on offer Janet chose to attend Waterbirth by NHS Midwife Dot Parry.
Dot Parry is an NCT teacher turned midwife who works at a Birth Centre alongside the Consultant Unit in
Salford
. She supports women birthing in water at home or in the Birth Centre, she also supports colleagues and students who are developing their waterbirth skills.
At the conference a group of 30 or so met to discuss the value of waterbirth. We looked at the various hormones released in late pregnancy and labour and their usefulness or not in helping a woman give birth to her baby. We designed a “money no object” pain relieving fantasy drug to show what we would like from a super-drug and then compared that to the usual drugs on offer, Entonox, Pethidine and Epidural. There were few matches with our wish-list, however when we discussed waterbirth apart from water not relieving really severe pain for some women it seemed to hit the spot for most of our wishes. Funny that we don’t use it so often!
We then discussed the practicalities of waterbirth and this gave a chance to people with burning “what if” questions. We must have been a chatty group because the smell of lunch was wafting through before we completed the last group discussion. Dot has a warm, relaxed, grounded approach whilst appearing to have all the latest research at her finger-tips. Impressive!
Breech or Twin Birth
Jackie attended a workshop on Breech and Twin Births by Independent Midwife Jane Evans. Jane explained that although many women and midwifes would prefer to birth babies under these circumstances in hospital, they are forced to choose a homebirth to allow themselves the opportunity to give birth without intervention. Hospital policies and procedures are usually too rigid and expect women to opt straight for a caesarean section. With this in mind there are less opportunities for midwifes to gain experience in such births which leads to them rapidly becoming deskilled and lowering of confidence levels. As a consequence of this Jane, and her colleague well known Independent Midwife Mary Cronk, get as many as 6 phone calls a week each from women looking for support to achieve the least intervention possible for the birth of their babies. Following numerous requests Mary Cronk has made guidelines available on her website for breech and twin births (address below).
Conclusion
Of particular interest was Dotty talking to us about raising the number of homebirths in
Sheffield
. After making the decision to do this great effort was channelled into reorganisation including addressing rotas, equipment, logistics and attitudes. Within a year the total number of homebirths had increased from 80 to 96 and Dotty hopes to continue this upward trend. We were also given an update about the One Mother One Midwife Campaign, for more information see the website detailed below.
We were that inspired by the conference that we are even murmuring about running our own homebirth conference… watch this space!
Useful links:
www.wirralhomebirth.co.uk
www.homebirth.org.uk
www.marycronkmidwiferyservices.co.uk
www.onemotheronemidwife.org.uk
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