Peek inside the birth kit of a Homebirth midwife.
In this Midwife At Your Door video interview, Danae and Janine take viewers inside the equipment a homebirth midwife brings to support birth at home. The conversation explores the clinical supplies, comfort measures and emergency equipment that form part of a midwife’s preparation, helping families understand how safety, planning and professional care are carefully integrated into the homebirth setting while still supporting physiological birth.
Topics explored in this video
This interview provides an inside look at the equipment and preparation involved in supporting a safe homebirth. Janine O’Brien walks viewers through the clinical supplies and comfort measures she brings to support families, explaining what is delivered to the home around 36 weeks of pregnancy and what equipment arrives with the midwife when labour begins.
The conversation explores how birth pools, TENS machines and other comfort tools are used to support women during labour, alongside the medical equipment midwives carry to monitor wellbeing and respond to unexpected situations. Janine also explains the emergency medications and resuscitation equipment that are part of a homebirth midwife’s clinical preparation, emphasising that while these items are rarely needed, they are an essential part of ensuring safety.
Throughout the discussion, viewers gain a clearer understanding of how carefully organised and well prepared homebirth care is. The interview highlights that behind the calm environment of a homebirth is a structured system of professional planning, clinical equipment and experienced midwifery care designed to support both physiological birth and the wellbeing of mother and baby.
Video Transcript
So you’ve arrived here today with all the equipment that you bring prior to the birth and the birth itself. Should we go through everything?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Awesome.
So it’s 36 weeks. We bring along a birth pool and this is all included in the fees and everything like that. We bring along the birth pool and the birth pool liner.
Yeah.
A thermometer for maintaining the temperature. Water temperature is really important so that babies are coming from that one temperature into the same temperature. So those babies don’t know they’re being born until mummies bring them airside.
So we’ve all seen those in all the pictures and things online, these beautiful soft birth pools.
Yeah. So lovely.
This one’s actually one of our new ones with an electric pump and a liner.
Yeah. Beautiful.
And we also have the TENS machine.
Yeah. The TENS machine was my go-to as my comfort measure in my labour, so I felt really strongly about embedding that. And that is incorporated in our fees as well.
And these are brought at 36 weeks as well — our emergency medications.
Yeah. So a lot of our people who inquire are concerned about the risk of bleeding, because that tends to be probably one of the most common emergency transfer reasons.
So at 36 weeks, when we bring along the birth pool and the TENS machine, we also bring along emergency medications just to pop in the couple’s fridge.
The second midwife also knows where they’re located in the fridge in case we need to get to them in a real hurry.
So we bring along a whole host of them. And it’s not to fear, because in most cases we actually take them back away unopened.
So it’s not that we’re expecting emergencies, but when you’re not close to the hospital it’s really important that we make sure our women are safe.
This is the safety aspect of homebirth — that you’ve got everything you could potentially need to manage an emergency at home.
So we bring along syntocinon, which is artificial oxytocin. We bring along five of those. We bring along some tranexamic acid. We bring along additional medications as well.
Each of those works very differently in a postpartum haemorrhage, which is why we carry them.
But like we say, most of the time we actually break the ampoules, put them in our sharps container having never used them.
Because we’ve not actually needed them in normal physiology, which is beautiful.
So that’s what we bring for 36 weeks so that it’s all ready and dropped off with the family so that women can have their homebirth from 37 weeks if babies decide it’s time to come.
So this stays at home with the family. The dads can practise blowing up the birth pool if they want to.
We do encourage that.
We encourage them to have a play with it, and if they have children, allow the children to have a little jump in it.
Just not with the liner or the water.
Sometimes families put fairy lights in the pool. The fairy lights can go between the pool and the liner and create a beautiful ambience.
It also makes for really good photography and videography.
Okay. So then what comes with you on the day?
So we bring resuscitation equipment for the newborn. We also have resuscitation equipment for mothers in our bag as well.
Basically we have a bag and mask for an adult, although it would be extremely rare that we would need to use that.
Then we have bag and mask ventilation for a newborn. It also has a CPAP function, which means continuous positive airway pressure to help keep the baby’s lungs open.
It’s really unlikely we need to use this in homebirth because babies have not had drugs and births are generally physiological.
We’ve used it a handful of times.
We would start ventilation in air, and if needed we can attach oxygen and provide oxygen for the baby.
We also have maternal oxygen masks.
Have you ever had to use that?
Once, yes. Once we used it.
If a woman is feeling very unwell with blood loss we can give oxygen.
It’s very rare.
But you can manage that at home if needed.
In that situation we actually kept that woman at home.
Something different about resuscitation at home is that we do it with the baby’s cord intact.
Every time.
Which is evidence-based practice.
The baby continues to receive oxygenated blood from the mother.
Evidence shows babies do much better when the cord remains intact because they continue receiving oxygen and blood.
If you cut that lifeline, it’s gone.
So we keep mother and baby together.
We resuscitate with the baby on mum’s lap while the cord is still attached and the placenta is still inside the uterus.
That’s very different to hospital practice.
We also carry a newborn airway, although it is very rare we would use it.
We also have suction for newborns.
Again, rarely used.
The most common situation would be meconium.
If a baby is not breathing and there is meconium present, we might gently suction the mouth and nose.
Most babies can clear this themselves, and routine suction can actually cause harm.
So again, evidence-based practice means we only use it when a baby is struggling.
Meconium, for those who don’t know, is when the baby has done a poo before birth.
If inhaled, it can irritate the lungs and affect breathing.
If that happens, gentle suction can help.
We often set all the resuscitation equipment up when we first arrive.
This doesn’t mean we expect to use it.
We simply like everything to be ready and completely foolproof.
If we needed to use it, we are not scrambling to set things up.
The second midwife checks all the emergency equipment when she arrives.
She checks the oxygen, that the tank is full, and that everything is organised and ready.
So what’s in here?
This is the grab bag I use if things are happening very quickly.
If we need something immediately for the birth everything is ready to go.
Usually when women are in the water we don’t use much of this.
But if birth happens on dry land we might use some absorbent pads just to keep things clean.
There are gloves, scissors, and episiotomy scissors.
I’ve never had to use them at home, but we carry them just in case.
There is also a cord clamp, although we usually use cord ties.
Parents sometimes like to keep the clamp so we leave it with them and collect it a few days later.
There’s also a torch.
I think I have about four torches in here.
This bag is really just for situations where things are moving quickly.
Blueys are essential.
For families, blueys are large absorbent pads similar to puppy pads.
There’s also a heat pack.
And another important item is a mirror so we can see into the birth pool.
We also have curved mirrors.
The bag also contains immediate emergency equipment, all clearly labelled.
Everything is organised so it is easy to grab quickly if needed.
The best part is that we all know each other’s kits very well.
And if the second midwife wasn’t from our team, they would still be able to locate equipment easily.
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