Why you should pack a "The Hospital Bag" for your homebirth

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Permalink Reply by Erica Wiswell on May 2, 2009 at 8:23am

Great point!

My first birth was at a birth center. I was completely convinced that my baby would be at least a week late, and I was majorly procrastinating with getting my bag ready. Well, lo and behold, he came two days early, and I had NOTHING packed! I had a short and intense labor, so my poor husband was trying to throw the bag together and support me at the same time, which was not fun for either of us. He ended up only bringing a fraction of what we needed, which included baby clothes that were the wrong size!

Needless to say, I learned my lesson. My second was a homebirth, but I had a just-in-case bag packed too (and it was packed weeks ahead of time!). I actually had two bags; one was full of the things that I only needed for the homebirth (chucks pads, washcloths for compresses, towels for the baby [we were planning a waterbirth], all of the thins that our mw asked us to have on hand, etc.), and the other one was full of things we'd need at home and in the case of transfer (baby clothes, diapers, extra clothes for me, etc.), and a couple of things that we'd only need in a transfer situation (like our in-case-of-transfer birth-plan). Thankfully, we didn't need to transfer, but I felt better being prepared.

Permalink Reply by Heather Meyer on May 3, 2009 at 6:47pm

While reading this it just occured to me that I never packed a hospital bag nor did my midwife suggest it. Thankfully I did not need one as we had a successful (albeit very long) homebirth.

Permalink Reply by Linda Llone Hinchliffe on May 7, 2009 at 2:18am

I packed a hospital bag for each of my 5 booked homebirths - solely so my hubby knew exactly where things were...

When I did go into hospital as an emergancy at 31 weeks (severe pain at top of bump) with suspected placenta abrupto (turned out to be polyps in my gall bladder) my husband brought in some very inappropriate things for me...

Knickers and PJ's belonging to my teenage daughter
No wash bag or bath towel
Dressing gown that was waiting to be washed (rather than the clean one from back of bedroom door)
No hairbrush or comb (at the time I had hair down to my bottom...)

Thankfully my teenager sorted out the right things for me and the staff at the hospital had bathing essentials that I could use (disposible knickers, soap, towels, toothbrush, toothpaste & comb...)

I was only in hopsital for 2 days but since then I have a bag packed from 24+ weeks pregnant - it was also a god-send when my toddler was admitted to hospital (when I was 6 months pregnant with the next one) I just had to grab the bag from under the crib and could get back to her bedside as quickly as possible...

Regards

Linda - Mum of 9 (22 yrs -to- 6months)

Permalink Reply by Kaiya on May 10, 2009 at 4:38am

Thanks for the tip!

Permalink Reply by Genevieve Overy on May 13, 2009 at 2:11pm

I didn't have a just in case bag. I was just so positive that my hb would be as I planned. However, I did have a box of useful items, such as fresh knickers, pads, t shirts, lip balm, baby's first outfit etc which could be hauled around from room to room with me... if we had needed to transfer, this could have been emptied into a bag very easily. Having it all in once place also meant that DH knew where everything was.