I am just not clear about what there is to be gained from having it at home... is it just the reasons I said above? Or is there something that I am missing.
For both my mother and my sister hospital birth was extremely stressful... I suppose it is different if you live in Dublin but when she was having my brother and me the hospital was 60 miles away... for my sister it was 40 miles. Having a group of complete strangers standing around talking about her in the third person did nothing to dissipate the stress my sister was feeling... as for my Mum being told that my Dad couldn't be with her only added to her stress levels.
Having your baby snatched from you the moment it's born, is, so I have been told, also not the nicest feeling in the world.
I know about a dozen women who have experienced both hospital and home births. All of them, were they to have another child, would go to the hospital only if it was absolutely the last option.
I have seen a fairly convincing arguments that its easier for the mother to give birth without epidural. The contractions work better etc apparently. With the epidural its possible that the body just doesn't really know what's going on, so certain queues / responses dont go through properly.
But, I have heard that having a child can sting a bit. So... yeah. I dunno.
Two of my friends were given too much epidural and lost the ability to push, resulting in forceps assisted births... just the thought of that makes me cringe.
I absolutely hate hospitals... even going into one relatively relaxed and healthy stresses me out. Add to that the stress of wondering if the birth will go ok and my natural ability to focus on the worst case scenario and they'd have to put me in a white coat after the birth