I had some experience with women who wanted midwives and home deliveries in the 70s when I was more adventurous and considered the go to open minded physician. I am a little less open minded now.
A number of the women I agreed to play back up for failed their home delivery efforts or had complications of labor and had to move to hospitals, but some had their babies at home. Naturally and all, sometimes including the initial warm bath thing that was supposed to make the baby less stressed.
I must say usually deliveries are routine catch proceedings, but when things go bad, it’s better to have resources and equipment of a hospital.
http://voiceofrussia.com/uk/news/2014_01_24/Giving-birth-at-home-morally-irresponsible-says-new-report-7407/
I have given birth to four children. Four C-Sections. First one had fetal distress, and they had me prepped and into surgery within 4 minutes, and 2 minutes after that I was a mom. Next two were pretty normal. Last one was a breech. The doctor who delivered the last one looked me in the eye and said it was a good thing that the C-Section was planned, because that baby had a huge butt, and it would not have gone well with a normal delivery.
I tend to be a very independent and stubborn woman, and I really hated having to go into a hospital to have babies. But if any woman that I know plans on a home birth, I will do all that I can to talk her out of it.
Some hospitals do have rooms set aside for women to come in with a midwife, with approval from a doctor. But then the woman/baby is just a quick ride down a hallway to get higher-level medical attention.
Daveburton: It was a long time ago now, but the destructive ramifications of that one decision last a life-time. I would never have been convinced to go along with it except that our previous experience giving birth in a hospital had been so awful that I relented. No matter how awful the hospital experience, however, it’s done and over with after a short time. A damaged baby is for life.
“things” indeed. Both of my children would have died had we not been in a hospital. My second one flipped in the last hour and got his cord around his throat. Sometimes even a textbook perfect pregnancy can go bad at the last minute.
Can i possibly expand on my original statement that i am not so adventurous now as i was. There is a reason–things happen.
“Quick access to the best resources” means you need to be able to get the mother into an operating theater within 5 minutes, if the baby is in distress. That is impossible outside of a hospital. “Home birth” is incompatible with sufficiently quick access to a facility where an emergency C-section can be done. Intentional home birth is playing Russian Roulette with the baby’s life & health, and, to a lesser extent, with the mother’s life, as well.
Of all the deadly quack medical fads, home birthing might just be the worst.
Frank Lee MeiDere, I am very sorry for your son’s and family’s ordeal, but I am grateful for your testimony. Perhaps it will prevent someone else from making a catastrophic mistake.
My youngest was born at home. This was in the mid ’70s. I’d been against it, but my wife showed me lots of books written by people promoting home birth and our doctor was eager to go along with it. We had a midwife, oxygen tanks and the whole kit. On the night of the birth there was a terrific snow storm. The doctor made it to the house, but it turned out the baby was breech. At one point there was fear of my wife dying from an inverted uterus. In order to get the baby out its neck and arms were broken.
He was born black and dead.
We called an ambulance, but nothing could get through the storm. About ten or so minutes later the doctor, who had been working on the baby, called downstairs to tell me that the baby was alive.
He lived. He also has severe cerebral palsy. Through enormous effort he can walk. Due to the advent of computers he is able to have a social life — although he operates the mouse with his feet.
Home births? No. No. No. Nobody should have to live with the guilt of knowing that if they’d only gone to the hospital their child would have been fine. I was born breech — back in 1952. In a hospital.
They do it a lot in Africa as well … sans “the husband … trained in the process … “
When we moved here, there was a practicing midwife and all of the traditional Doctors (at that time, men over 50) were having a great angst over it. Men in “midwife crisis”.
Home births? Yes, they do it a lot in Holland. Key thing is – there must be competent professionals in charge, and quick access to the best resources if things “go wrong”. A good hospital is best, so long as the husband as well as the wife can be involved and treated with dignity. The husband should be trained in the process, and ideally see the delivery.
I’m passionately opposed to the midwifery / home-birth movement. A couple of years ago I held a baby who never smiled, never looked at me, basically does not interact with the world around him. He is very severely handicapped because he was born at home and something went wrong. Every baby needs, if at all possible, to be born in a hospital, where an emergency can be handled quickly, before he is permanently harmed.