Архив февраля 2013 года

Whether you plan to work full or part time, child care will be a vitally important part of your life and is another piece that should be arranged well before coming home with a baby in your arms. There are many options, and each one fits someone’s needs. The possibilities include professional child-care centers, relatives, immediate family who work different shifts, in-home nannies, and other mothers who finance staying at home with their own children by sitting for other people’s children. You can find a safe and comfortable arrangement with any of these solutions, but take nothing for granted and do your homework ahead of time.

You need to define your needs and criteria...

On rare occasions — statistically more rarely than in hospital — a baby delivered at home dies, either before it is born or shortly afterwards. This is always a tragedy and there really is no consolation. However there are aspects of stillbirth or neonatal death at home from which bereaved families draw some comfort. (If you feel that your baby would not have died if you had been in hospital then the following considerations will be of no help at all.)

If his or her death seems to be inevitable or unpreventable, you may prefer that your baby is born at home...

Opting for delivery by your community midwives is not necessarily straightforward. Local health trusts vary in their enthusiasm for providing a home birth service, so that near neighbours may get a completely different service. The midwives, from the most senior, the director of midwifery services, downwards may feel obliged to deter you, either as a result of their own beliefs or because they are so instructed by their health authority policy. It seems likely that there would be many more home births if women were given a real choice in the matter, but all too frequently they find it difficult to ask for one or find that, if they do, they are further put off by the attitude of the midwife they first speak to.

It may be that the policy in your area is one of discouraging home birth and tha...