Like many parents planning a home birth, one of the most likely questions you’ll have is just how messy does a home birth get. Read on to find out what midwives and other home birthing mums think and to get some practical clean-up tips.
Minimising mess
Childbirth in general and home birth in particular is surprisingly less messy than you might think but there are ways to help minimise the amount of clearing up after the delivery. Mary Cronk is a midwife who has helped over 1500 babies to be born. She specialises in helping women to have babies at home and through experience has found what she believes is best
for containing any mess from childbirth and despite what you might have heard, it’s not shower curtains.
“Not all shower curtains are actually waterproof. Some plastic ones are of course, but many are designed not to let a shower of water hitting them vertically through, but will leak fluids through if on the floor. ”I have found a good waterproof (and comfortable) protection is a couple of metres of that waterproof table cloth that can be bought by the metre at good hardware or kitchen shops. It has a cloth backing and, used cloth side up, it is comfortable to walk on, an inco pad stays put on top of it and the midwife does not slide around all over the place. “Any blood, liquor, gunge, poo or meconium, that escapes the inco pads is easily sluiced
off and it can go in the washing machine on a warm or cool wash.”
Practical clean-up?
If despite all your plans and preparation you still end up with blood on your carpet, it is possible to remove it, thanks to a few tips from the experts. Stain experts at Learn-how-to-Remove suggest two ways to remove blood.”
- Not dried in - If the stain is still fresh, you can neutralize the blood by spraying with a solution of one teaspoon of household ammonia in 1/2 cup of water and blotting away the excess moisture with a clean dry cloth. Rinse with a weak solution of detergent and blot dry.
- Dried in – If the blood has dried and the stain is proving a little tougher to shift, you can spray with 5 per cent hydrogen peroxide, and then wait an hour before rinsing and blotting. Repeat until the stain has gone but always remember to test on an inconspicuous area first.
The Carpet Buyers Handbook makes an additional suggestion for removing dried in blood. As well as stressing the need to use only cold cleaning solutions to prevent setting the stain, they say a good rust remover is effective in removing blood stains from carpets.
What other mums say
When it comes to advice and tips, where better to turn than others who have first hand experience? Here’s what some babyworlders had to say about their experiences.
No drama
“Childbirth is not the blood-soaked drama you may imagine. Midwives carry large soaker pads which they place strategically under you. These soak up almost everything. I had a waterproof sheet on my bed, and some old towels down, but these were hardly marked at all. There was another old soft towel that was bloodied by cleaning the baby immediately, but
the midwives supervised my husband by putting everything in the wash before they left, so I didn’t have to deal with any of it.”
Angela
No blood on the ceilings!
“The amount of mess depends on how much you walk around when in labour!
I stayed mainly in one room and gave birth on something old that was thrown
out. Everything comes out below you – you won’t be getting blood on the
ceilings!”
Jessica
I didn’t really see it
“There was no mess at my home birth. We put a waterproof sheet and an old bedsheet on the bed and covered the floor in old towels. After the birth, the midwives loaded my washing machine with the towels and sheets saying the blood would come out of them, and they were right! Apart from some blood on the sheets, there was no other mess as they brought disposable pads and threw them away after the birth. There was literally
no mess within about half an hour of the birth, they cleaned it away so fast I didn’t even really see it.”
Kelly
Where to next?
- See more information about home births
- Visit our comprehensive Labour and birth section
- Join your antenatal club
- Talk with other mums-to-be and parents on our Labour and birth discussion forum
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