Pregnant Katherine Ryan has said she’ll ask to go to her nearby vets if her home birth doesn’t work out.
The comedian is expecting her third child, her second with husband Bobby Kootstra, and recalled having both her kids, Violet, 13, and one-year-old Fred, so quickly she hasn’t even made it to the consultant or had the option of an epidural.
After a news report about a woman being forced to have her baby at home due to overcrowding at her local maternity ward, Ryan said she’s opted for a home birth.
However, she’s been warned to prepare for a potential hospital birth due to her lupus diagnosis.
Lupus occurs when your body’s immune system mistakenly attacks your own tissues and organs. It can cause problems with your skin, joints, kidneys and other organs.
Speaking on her podcast, Katherine Ryan: Telling Everybody Everything, Ryan shared: “So basically, my birth plan is to have this baby at home. We have a midwife, who is a private midwife.
“It’s actually very affordable and she’s on hand to come to the house and do blood tests and do the things she needs to do then they book in private scans for you, and you go elsewhere to have those private scans but mostly you stay at home for all the tests.
“Because I have lupus, they’re like, ‘well you should go to your local hospital just in case and give them a blood sample in case we have to transfer you there. A home birth always has a risk that we’ll have to transfer you to hospital’”.
“And apparently if they do a blood transfusion, they need to know your blood type, I was like, ‘well good news I know my blood type’. And they’re like, ‘no, no they need their own blood test’ and I was like, ‘what?’ I didn’t even know that was a rule.”
However due to her past experiences, Ryan admitted she doesn’t have much trust in the medical community and said should she need to be transferred anywhere, she wants to go somewhere she trusts – and that place? Her local vets.
She continued: “But I don’t want to, I don’t have any faith in anyone understanding me or lupus or anything that has had anything to do with my healthcare and I feel bad about that... but they [doctors and nurses] have happened to pretty much all made many mistakes with me, and I feel like I can have this baby at home.
“I’m happy to have the midwife but I’m also feel like I could coach Bobby through the twisting it out when its crowning because I’ve watched it happen a couple of times and my babies are born really fast. I just love being at home, so I want to try having it at home.
“… I want to do it here, but if I can’t do it here and have to be emergency transferred to my local hospital, I’m going to ask if they will divert to the vet cause the dogs go to a vet real close and I really trust them,” she added.
“I think they give a great service; they are private vets so my first port of call will be, ‘please, please take me to the vet’ and if they say ‘no’, I’ll ask again.
“And then if they want to take me to my local hospital, where anything could happen then fine, I’m just going to have to make peace with it.
“But that is the birth plan for those who have asked, and I think having a baby at home sounds like a nice idea.”
