"Home birth Queen Elizabeth University Hospital"

This isn't a complaint about the home birth team, as they were excellent before, during and after the birth of my daughter, but a suggestion as to how the logistics of the service could and should be improved. While no danger came to me or my daughter this time, it could easily have been a very different story. 

This was my second planned home birth but, unlike in England where I was given the mobile numbers of all the midwives in the home birth team, in Scotland I was told to call Maternity Assessment Services when I went into labour and they would alert the home birth team. It sounded a bit clunky as a process beforehand, but on the day it felt a hundred times worse than I could have imagined.

Having had a quick first birth, I begun to call Maternity Assessment pretty soon after my contractions began, but their number was engaged for over 40 minutes. I eventually got through to someone who said they would let the home birth team know. They didn't say who from the team would be coming, although they must have known who was on call. An hour later my waters had broken, I was fully dilated, ready to push and still no midwife. I called back and was asked for my CHI number which I obviously didn't have to hand as I was in labour. The person I spoke to said I needed to go and find it. I couldn't move by this point so just kept asking where the midwife was. I was told I would need to call an ambulance as she wasn't sure when the midwife would arrive. This was extremely distressing, and the fact she couldn't even send an ambulance (I would have to call one myself), made me feel very alone and frustrated. It is incredibly difficult to use the phone when you are in the later stages of labour. Luckily this was my second birth, so I knew more about what was happening to me and my body and my partner was very good at staying calm and telling me that we were going to do this ourselves without a midwife and that was going to be OK. However, the midwife finally arrived and my daughter was born 10 minutes later. From the minute the midwife arrived she was incredible. We'd never met before, but she put me instantly at ease, she bossed my husband around in exactly the way we needed and she caught my daughter as she came out. She didn't immediately cry, so after a few minutes of rubbing her with a towel, she gave her some oxygen, and she immediately started to cry. But this is where it could have gone very differently. If she hadn't been there, I wouldn't have been able to give my baby the oxygen she needed and she only made it by ten minutes. While terrifying, the idea of giving birth without a medical professional, was something I knew I could do, but had that been my first birth I think the whole experience would have been extremely traumatising. For me, it was mainly frustrating as I couldn't use my hypnobirthing techniques as I was calling maternity Assessment every two minutes, but if that was my first birth, I think I would be seeking counselling right now. 

I want to share my story as there is such an easy fix and I don't want any woman to experience what I did (the fear that you'll be left alone to do it yourself, the frustration that bureaucracy means I have to call my own ambulance or find a CHI number in order to be helped, and the terror that things could have gone very differently had the midwife been just ten minutes later). All that is needed is that women can call the On Call Home Birth team mobile directly and ideally be given everyone on the team's mobile. That way, I would have been able to alert the midwife 40 minutes earlier, I would have known who was coming and when and I would have relaxed into my labour, got into my zone, safe in the knowledge someone was coming in good time, so if my baby needed medical assistance, as she did, a professional would be there. 

Midwives are incredible human beings, and I will be eternally grateful for their care, support and love, but it seems like they are being forced to provide a lesser service due to this bureaucratic decision to make all women phone Maternity Assessment. And at the very least, if that's the way it needs to be, get multiple phone lines.