Lorini
1821
C-sections have more to do with malpractice suits than anything else. Births are the #1 most likely surgery for hospitals to be sued on, and they lose these suits more often than any other suit because the jury always feels sorry for parents who lost a child at birth (not that that’s wrong!). So hospitals do C-sections because they are less risky than natural births.
That being said, I had my baby at a Kaiser birthing center. I never saw a doctor and was assisted by a Certified Nurse Midwife. I was very happy with the experience and would recommend it. Back then, Kaiser was adding CNW’s at a rapid rate, but I don’t know if they’ve changed their approach.
13 hour flights are the best kind of flights.
Leah_C
1823
A friend of mine did three unassisted home births (“unassisted” meaning she did it entirely on her own, no help from the father or anyone). They took classes, had great prenatal care, had a midwife on call, were very near a hospital, and they bought home birth kits that had monitoring equipment and things for common problems. Home births now aren’t like home births decades ago. There’s more information, more equipment, etc.
The unassisted thing scares the crap out of me, but I’d do a home birth with a competent midwife if I was close enough to a birthing center/hospital.
tiohn
1824
Leah, your friend is hardcore.
Leah_C
1825
You should read the birth stories! Or maybe not.
I’m sure they are very interesting, and now she has three great kids. But imagine the stories if something went wrong and a doctor could have been helpful in restoring the baby’s health. “We had two unassisted childbirths, and one baby died in childbirth.” Imagine if your friend bled to death because she started hemorrhaging and couldn’t fix that herself. Something as simple as the cord being around the baby’s neck . . . how does the mother effectively deal with this? Does she bend over, reach up inside herself, and straighten things out? Loss of blood due to hemorrhaging? If you’re by yourself how deal with these things? Plus, while having a hospital nearby or midwife on call is great, the hospital has experience with thousands of births and things that go wrong, and if they do, it’s right down the hall, not a 5-10 minute process that could mean the difference between life and death.
If makes an interesting anecdote, but to me this seems pretty dangerous. I guess by engaging in these questions I’m passing judgment on your friend, which I don’t mean to do, but if I was at a party and she started trying to convince any of my friends what a good idea this was I’d certainly step in and say something.
Leah_C
1827
Those are a few of the reasons why it scares the crap out of me. I’d panic. She can deal with that stuff. It’s not for everyone, that’s for sure. She could never convince me to do it and I’m pretty hippie/crunchy.
Also to clarify, the husband and midwife were in the house, just not in the room. They were seconds away if something went wrong, and the hospital’s about a mile away. Small town, ambulance would’ve been there in no time. The first birth did have some complications that required a trip to the hospital, but that didn’t sway their decision to do it 2x after that.
There’s absolutely no need for having a doctor at childbirth. Having one close by is fine and by close by the nearest hospital in most of the civilized western world is plenty close.
Birth centers attached to the hospital is great. There’s no doctors, but they’re on call if the need arises and an urgent C-section (as happened to my wife) is only a few doors away.
But if you’ve been checked underway in the pregnancy and have somebody skilled assisting you, that’s enough.
My bosses wife is a professional midwife and I don’t know about the US, but here that’s a harder education than nursing and she only does home births. Nothing wrong in picking that method if the pregnancy is uncomplicated.
My mother is a nurse who is a qualified ER, psychiatric, geriatric, midwife and paediatric nurse who has almost fourty years of experience (fifteen as a midwife.)
I trusted her judgement when she said she has seen enough deliveries go wrong to justify having an ob/gyn running the show. I guess after needing to use a decapitation hook a few times because the mother thought they could go it alone your perspective changes.
I have no objection to that stuff, if the medical attention it close at hand if stuff goes wrong. I think it’s fruity crap and pointless, but it’s a free country. The people who get into the fruity crap and permanently damage their children (and I know at least one case from personal experience) because the birth went bad and immediate medical intervention wasn’t possible, those people need a slapping.
I consider a needlessly high cesarian section rate to be a trifling problem compared to kids with permanent disabilities who would not have had them if their mothers hadn’t been into alternative hippie shit.
EDIT: I think I’m coming across as more confrontational than I mean to be on this topic, not because I’m angry at anyone in this thread but because as a parent I’m easily enraged by preventable damage to children.
Decapitation Hook? What the fucK?
Just out of curiosity, are her children vaccinated?
In the case of a breach delivery gone badly wrong a decaptitation hook might be needed to get the foetal corpse out quickly enough to save the mother’s life. This sort of thing can often be avoided if you have an ob/gyn on hand to perform an emergency caesar.
fire
1834
Unmedicated childbirth can happen in a hospital. It can happen in a birth center. It can happen in your home. All of these places can and should have a midwife or doctor delivering the baby. Maybe you don’t know, but even for a home birth, the medical professional brings many tools with her, should the need arise to use them.
In a normal, low-risk pregnancy, the need for intervention is actually very low. Here’s a study of women that wanted a home birth. Only 3.7% c-section rate, even though 12% were transferred to a hospital after the onset of labor. Compare that to 31.1% (2006). Studies show that c-section rates over 15% lead to a higher maternal mortality rate.
I think that what a lot of people are missing in all the arguing going back and forth is that midwives are witches and you need a doctor or barber standing by during the birthing process primarily to keep an eye on her so she does not abscond with the baby’s caul, else she will own the baby’s soul for its life and for years beyond.
fire
1836
What’s the barber for? Many babies are born bald…
The barber is for the blood-letting of course! Personally I prefer using leaches…
Barber or dentist. Their professions often involve blood or bone-setting, so they’re accustomed looking at peoples insides, and their professions being male dominated so that they aren’t tainted by the devil’s touch the way the midwife (and all women) are.
…and this is why women shouldn’t be involved in the birthing process at all.
