Letters to the Editor
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For wonkazoo
Statistics show that home birth is safer by far than a hospital birth as measured by infant mortality.
At the risk of laziness, I will simply say that there are many obvious ways that that statistic could be flawed.
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For My Friend...
Don't let your laziness deter you!! Show me the myriad ways that a hospital birth is safer than a non-hospital birth as it relates to infant mortality!!
Ohh, you can't beacuse ummm.... you can't!!
As you are apparently lazy let me elucidate: Chilbirth in hospital more likely to kill baby than childbirth not in hospital.
Can't get any simpler than that!! (Laziness be damned)
Cheers!!
dce
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Newsflash Wonkazoo: women and babies naturally die in childbirth
Let's not romanticize 'nature' too much here. historically, yes, women have given birth at home. And historically also, women and babies have died in great numbers from complications ranging from breech position to haemoraghing to simply having the umblical cord wrapped around the neck for too long.
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natural childbirth
Thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting the natural childbirth alternative. Nothing makes me angrier than the Hollywood cliche of childbirth in which the woman claims she's going "natural" only to stand up in the stirrups and scream for drugs.
I have had two children through natural childbirth, after an initial caesarean when my first son was discovered to be in a breech position.
I had two wonderful doulas, one of whom, Henci Goer, has written a great book on natural childbirth that every pregnant woman should consider before she considers the usual medical and pathologized approach to childbirth.
I have never felt so proud and so stoked as I did the morning after I gave birth vaginally to my second son. I had gone through 15 hours of labor without any pain medications and even my facial muscles ached, but I felt as if I had run a marathon.
My third son arrived after only about 30 minutes in the hospitals, and the toughest part of his birth was getting out of the hospital and back home, which I only managed by fighting the bureaucracy. It was worth it to be back at home in my own bed with my newborn son and his two older brothers and my husband beside me. I will never forget the peace of that first day at home with the sun streaming into my room, and everyone I love together with me. The bonds between this baby and his brothers were palpable from that moment and just as strong today.
I admit that natural childbirth can be oversold and that it's not for everyone; nor should any woman who has to opt for a c-section, as I did the first time around, be made to feel guilty about that outcome.
But it's clear that hospitals have a "one size fits all" approach to birth, and the determining factors are fear of lawsuits and an assumption that something will go wrong.
For example, with my last birth, I had tested postive for some signs of elevated staph so they wanted me to come in "six hours before giving birth" to get antibiotics. Never mind the absurdity of calculating six hours before birth, unless you assume a birth by c-section or induction; in my case, the amniotic sac didn't rupture until I pushed giving my son about three seconds of exposure to whatever infection I might have harbored. Yet the hospital felt compelled to send nurses, doctors, and a social worker to talk to me about giving him extra tests before they would let a perfectly healthy baby go home with an experienced mother. I finally agreed to have blood drawn from my infant and to go to the pediatrician the next day to have him checked out. I kept my part of the bargain, but the hospital tests that had raised such a tempest in the teapot never made it to my pediatrician.
What this told me was that the hospital was far more concerned with protecting itself from a potential lawsuit than in protecting my child's health.
Call me cynical but I would trust my life and the life of my baby to a midwife or doula any day over the soulless bureaucracy of the modern hospital in all but the most critical situations of birth.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Wahl
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funny, "i want to", once just *seeing* that, you think of things
like, the folks who have natural childbirth most likely have a helicopter ready to take them (and their personal obstetrician, not to mention, lawyer) to the hospital pronto should anything go wrong. i'd just like to mention someone who had *something* to do with this, Rob Sussman. i saw him on TV. i wondered how rikki could have gotten such a catch. he was good looking and easy going and (supposedly an artist, well, maybe not - but a very nice guy, you'd have to be to put up with that ball of neuroses). anyway, they were married for 9 years, i'm sure it will prove a record)
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It's not an easy question
Both my children were born at home, midwife attended, but with prenatal supervision and evaluation by a obstetrician. My wife and I had two very powerful experiences together, and were able to have our children home with us, immediately, closely and peacefully. I sincerely believe this was very good for both us and our children.
However, friends of ours embarked on a similar journey, except the umbilical cord got ahead of the baby in the birth canal, cutting off the blood flow to the fetus. They made a frantic trip to the hospital, with the midwife's hand inside the mother, trying to hold the baby head away from the pelvic floor so it wouldn't cut off its own blood flow and die.
It didn't work. The baby died. A hospital caesarian would have routinely saved that baby.
This is a rare complication, but it presents itself. When I heard the horrible news, my heart dropped to my stomach. I couldn't imagine how I would have felt if that had been one of my children (both were born at the time).
If I had to do it all over again, I would do things the same way. Yet, I would never condemn someone else for making a different choice.