My very good friend began to hemorrhage immediately after delivering her son, who was born in a very low risk, non eventful hospital birth.

They had to inject her immediately with Vitamin K to induce clotting. She needed an IMMEDIATE intervention. I can't even tell you how many times I've heard her say how thankful she was for that Vit K, because she knows she probably wouldn't have survived without it. We work in a family physician clinic together, and see lots of scary stories that happen even IN hospitals.

IMO, when dealing with LIVES, why chance it? What if? What if something does goes fatally wrong, because it does happen...I bet for those of you that opt for homebirths, and something DOES go fatally wrong, you'll feel regret for the rest of your life that maybe a different scenario could have been chose. Scary!

Once again, my opinion for sure, just scares me to think about, especially when it could affect innocent babies lives.

I don't know if this is widely known but homebirth midwives carry meds to deal with hemmorhaging with them to every birth. Not related to UC, but it should be clear that hemmorhage is something that can be treated at home.

It drives me nuts when people believe hospital birth is always safer. Yeah, there are times when it's best, but don't go in believing the docs are knights in shining armor. My first was born in a hospital and it was a nightmare. (Actually all of mine have been hospital births.) I got the on call doc the first go round- his name was Dr. Cruel. Not kidding! He lived up to that name, too. Because of HIM and his decisions, I almost lost my life and my son's life. There was an overdose of medications, the birth NEVER should have happened in that hospital as it wasn't equipped with the correct neonatal rescussitation equipement, etc. My baby was whisked away and taken by special NICU transport to a large regional hospital. I didn't get to see or hold or touch him for the first 4 days of his life because the doctor had made me so ill, I was unable to be moved. He spent 2 weeks on life support because of that doctor's decisions. And I have NO recourse. My son still suffers problems due to his birth. Since then, I've been much more careful about care providers I choose. If it weren't for my medical history, I'd definately have a homebirth- even uc. God knows it's safer than with another quack on call!

BTW, this was a lovely birth story. Thank you for sharing it.

I had an unplanned unassisted home birth with my last child. We had planned a home birth, but she came so quickly the midwives did not get there in time. The paramedics were there very quickly - just as shoulders were being born. Then about 10 midwives descended (or that's how it seemed!).

I had a fairly serious postpartum bleed (1.5 litres), in part probably because of the speed of delivery. The midwives had syntometrine to make the uterus clamp and stop the bleeding and we had lots of time to transfer to the hospital where they could make an assessment of whether I needed a transfusion.

The bleeding was managed at home in exactly the same way it would have been in the hospital. The only difference is that they have blood products in hospital, but that takes time to administer even in the hospital because they don't have blood in your delivery room ordinarily.

As for shoulder dystocia, my research when I was planning for a homebirth convinced me that a shoulder dystocia is handled in the hospital in exactly the same brutal way the midwives are trained to deal with it at home, legs in the air and the attendant breaks the baby's collarbone.

You know, with birth we always tell these horror stories and then aggregate them to "prove" birth is dangerous. Life is full of freak accidents and horror stories, yet we take these calculated risks all the time. Why not in birth?