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Do I need a birth plan?

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    #32
    fiona-f
    Registered Users Posts: 332 ✭✭fiona-f


    SanFran07 wrote: »
    As a midwife I very much encourage parents to write down their birth preferences and to see it as a communication tool rather than a contract or guarantee. Ideally parents should expect their care to be evidence based and if half of what passes for appropriate care for healthy women and babies was found to be happening to children in Temple Street there would be a national scandal and political uproar.

    Birth preferences help parents have safer births - they really shouldn't have to ask for best international practice with written requests - it should be a given.

    That's a pretty alarming statement, can you be more specific please?


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    #33
    vibe666
    Registered Users Posts: 13,016 ✭✭✭✭vibe666


    fiona-f wrote: »
    That's a pretty alarming statement, can you be more specific please?

    There's a huge difference between internationally accepted best practices for childbirth and what is hospital policy in most Irish hospitals.

    Have a look at the Nice guidelines for childbirth (posted earlier in the thread afaik), you'll find quite a disparity between what is recommended and what you'll experience in a maternity hospital here.

    My wife had a similar experience to Catastrophe's with our first in holles st with and as a result of their 12 hour turnaround hospital policy, it was 6 months before she was able to walk right and a full year before she was fully physically back to normal and it took a second (amazing) birth using the gentlebirth technique to fix the mental wounds completely.


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    #34
    SanFran07
    Registered Users Posts: 230 ✭✭SanFran07


    It should be alarming Fiona. As I said if it was happening in other areas of medicine it wouldn't be tolerated. AIMS Ireland and others have been campaigning for years to have this publicly addressed but it continues to fall on deaf ears but women and their partners are starting to ask more questions and adopt a more curious attitude about what they're being offered (specifically in the absence of any compications).

    Midwives want to give evidence based care - international best practice....we want to support you to have the safest birth possible but hospital policies often prevent us from doing so. Midwives are caught between a rock and a hard place. If a mum gives us written birth preferences on which routine procedures you want to avoid we can bypass most of the hospital policies and provide you with quality, personalised care. Without written birth preferences we have to follow the local policies/guidelines which can include breaking your waters on admission, speeding up your labour with synthetic hormones..time limits, admissions CTG, refusal of food....etc etc. Help us help you! Find out what's routine in your hospital and then have a look at the NICE Guidelines as mentioned earlier to see what's actually medically necessary for a healthy mum and baby (not a lot really!).

    Birth preferences don't tell us how to do our jobs - they help us do our jobs better. If there's a complication then it's no time for debating NICE Guidelines but when all is well the majority of mums (and dads) need is reassurance and support to have the best birth possible as defined by them.


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