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| No. 30 | 
Sep 06, 2009, 12:39 PM
 Re: ACOG requests unsourced anecdotal home birth "data"
BabyRN:
I believe that your research on HOME BIRTHS is bias somewhere along the lines and NOT for the truth of it all. I have found far more good coming out of a home births where the family are all in their own environment which leads to a much more relaxing labor and birth. Midwives don't show up at homes without 02, pitocin or other such necessary tools in case of an emergency. They have the necessary tools they need in case there is an emergency. People in this country have become so PROGRAMMED to believe that the ONLY WAY for a woman to safely give birth is through an MD in the hospital. But the reality is, it's false information that has been drilled into our heads over the years b/c the AMA wants a tight hold on their OB's scope of practice. How do you think children were born before hospitals came about and someone in the world of business figured out that birth is a major profit making business?
 | | Advertisement Sponsored Links | | | | No. 31 |
Sep 06, 2009, 12:39 PM
Re: ACOG requests unsourced anecdotal home birth "data" Originally Posted by babyRN.  Respectfully, I think you misread my post. I was talking about HOME deliveries. Not birthing centers or hospitals where midwives are present. I've also done extensive research on the elective c-section issue and so have read a lot about the unnecessary interventions as a side topic--I agree that there are too many unnecessary interventions.
PS- and don't forget- when a CNM is practicing within the hospital, many of them become "demi-docs", and follow the same protocols as the physicians that back their practices. Hence, it equals almost the same process as any other hospital delivery, in my experience.
| | No. 32 |
Sep 06, 2009, 01:50 PM
Re: ACOG requests unsourced anecdotal home birth "data"
Ladies (or gentlemen, if appropriate), I think you're mistaking the fact that I stated that it was "just my opinion." Perhaps I should've stated more clearly that this is also only what I would choose for myself. You're free to disagree and I don't think we'll agree on this issue. I admit that I am probably biased because of the nature of my job, working at a regional children's hospital where I see broken cases all the time. Additionally, as this is my first professional job as an RN, I don't see all the healthy babies that come into this world, the 90% or so of them or even the fact that the majority of NICU cases are just r/o sepsis and the infant is fine or is just a feeder/grower.
But, as a NICU nurse, I've been trained to expect the worst. It's hard to take that film away from my eyes and in my own comfort zone, I would not want a home delivery because of it. Maybe I'll change my mind down the road, but at this point, I can't see myself doing that. I would probably be more stressed out if I had a home delivery because of all the things I know that could go wrong.
Thank you for your service to the women and families you have helped  | | No. 34 |
Sep 06, 2009, 07:57 PM
Re: ACOG requests unsourced anecdotal home birth "data" Originally Posted by babyRN. Ladies (or gentlemen, if appropriate), I think you're mistaking the fact that I stated that it was "just my opinion." Perhaps I should've stated more clearly that this is also only what I would choose for myself. You're free to disagree and I don't think we'll agree on this issue. I admit that I am probably biased because of the nature of my job, working at a regional children's hospital where I see broken cases all the time. Additionally, as this is my first professional job as an RN, I don't see all the healthy babies that come into this world, the 90% or so of them or even the fact that the majority of NICU cases are just r/o sepsis and the infant is fine or is just a feeder/grower.
But, as a NICU nurse, I've been trained to expect the worst. It's hard to take that film away from my eyes and in my own comfort zone, I would not want a home delivery because of it. Maybe I'll change my mind down the road, but at this point, I can't see myself doing that. I would probably be more stressed out if I had a home delivery because of all the things I know that could go wrong.
Thank you for your service to the women and families you have helped
babyRN: I think most folks can respect your opinion to want to birth in a hospital-type setting where you feel most comfortable.  Shoot, if my experience with the "birthing world" was confined to a NICU - i'd probably feel pretty nervous about birthing outside of the hospital too. I would never want to limit your (or anyone's) choice to birth in the hospital. When I read your original post where you stated "I think this sector needs to be tightly regulated, as ACOG suggests" - I thought, why does this person want to limit choice when evidence is showing that there is more than one safe option for women and their babies? If ACOG could have its way, regulation of homebirth would = illegal and non-existent. Maybe you meant something else by "tightly regulated" or didn't realize what ACOG is trying to do? Maybe we don't agree on what ACOG is trying to accomplish with its new campaign? I'm honestly not sure. As I see it, this newest ACOG activity is just another attack on our reproductive rights.  | | No. 36 |
Sep 06, 2009, 10:08 PM
Re: ACOG requests unsourced anecdotal home birth "data" Originally Posted by babyRN. But, as a NICU nurse, I've been trained to expect the worst. It's hard to take that film away from my eyes and in my own comfort zone, I would not want a home delivery because of it. Maybe I'll change my mind down the road, but at this point, I can't see myself doing that. I would probably be more stressed out if I had a home delivery because of all the things I know that could go wrong.
You say that being a NICU nurse, you're trained to expect the worse. I really encourage you to watch the film "the business of being born". It shows the "other side" that you may have not been introduced to, as well as the side you HAVE been introduced to. When I hear stories from women that had their children at home on a bed, without pain meds and only a nurse to deliver their healthy babies (these are personal stories from people I know and have also read about), I then have to ask myself what else it out there and open my mind to other possibilities.
A woman with a normal pregnancy can have a much calmer AND safer birth at home than in the hospital. While this may be hard to believe, the majority of problems that come out of normal healthy pregnancies are caused from being born in a non-natural setting and not allowing the mother to go fully and patiently through the birthing process on her own without the assistance of medical doctors and drugs.
| | No. 37 |
Sep 07, 2009, 09:40 PM
Re: ACOG requests unsourced anecdotal home birth "data"
I'd like to see midwifery restricted to APRNs. Nurse midwives have the same amount of education and training. Non-nurse midwives have a wide range of education, and are unregulated in some states.
I'm a nurse in a family full of lawyers, so I hear about quite a few malpractice cases. A lot of "unnecessary interventions" during childbirth are about avoiding lawsuits. As one OB said, "You get sued for the Cesarean you didn't do." OBs get sued a lot, and in many states, anyone who is actively involved in a childbirth can be sued until the baby turns 18. Part of the reason Midwives have such positive outcomes is that they only take low-risk patients.
Given the choice, I wouldn't opt for a home birth. It's a natural process that can go very wrong very quickly, and I'd like to be in a place that can deal with an emergency. My home is not that place. I've seen too much autoimmune disease to "trust the body's inherent wisdom."
I live in a very "crunchy" area, and in some circles a Cesarean birth is considered a failure. New moms have enough on their plates without being made to feel bad for not giving birth the "right" way. To each their own.
| | No. 38 |
Sep 07, 2009, 10:35 PM
Re: ACOG requests unsourced anecdotal home birth "data"
Not A Hat Person, I don't think there is anyone here that knocks your choice to birth in a hospital. What rankles me (and perhaps a few others here too) is that the ACOG is supposed to be practicing evidence-based medicine.
They are a medical association that for any other practice change would require peer-reviewed, well-conducted research to back up any claim. However, when it comes to homebirth - aka encroaching on what they perceive as 'their' territory - they are willing to lower their standards and ask for unsourced, unsubstantiated, what could be fabricated, stories to back up their claim that homebirth is unsafe.
Yes, midwives do have better outcomes because they only deliver low-risk women. But the fact is that the majority of women seen by OBs are also low-risk and do not need all the interventions OBs love to throw at them. I agree with you that because of the sue-happy society we live in, OBs probably do feel under pressure to intervene when they might not need to. I have just seen too many unnecessarily torn bottoms, sliced bellies, and yes, even dead babies that would have had different outcomes had women been allowed to labor as their bodies saw fit. And for the record, a good midwife will be able to handle a good number of unforeseen events at home - a baby that needs O2, a postpartum hemorrhage, a perineal repair - that kind of thing.
| | No. 39 |
Sep 08, 2009, 12:17 AM
Updated
Sep 08, 2009 at 12:23 AM by nizhoni
Re: ACOG requests unsourced anecdotal home birth "data"
It is fascinating that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) read and analyze the same medical studies, written and published in the same language, and reach conclusions about the safety of homebirth that are fully 180 degrees out from one another. It is, however, notable that there is a significant difference in the financial systems that contribute to the economics of maternity care here in the U.S. and Great Britain. The United States' long-standing debate about homebirth simply cannot be attributed to issues about safety because the safety of homebirth for low-risk women and their newborns has been established in the medical literature for decades. The conflict is about underlying issues of money, power, control, and societal values. Can anyone imagine the firestorm of controversy that would occur if any government ridiculously required all women to give birth at home?
Here is a link to the joint statement from RCOG and the Royal College of Midwives regarding homebirth: http://www.rcog.org.uk/womens-health...ce/home-births
Government policy as established in 2007 in England's Maternity Matters, and published by the Department of Health, states that "women should be offered the choice of planning birth at home, in a midwifery-led unit or a consultant-led unit."
Wales currently leads the British Isles in rates of planned homebirth. The Welsh Glan-y-Mor Community Midwifery Team in 2008 earned an award from Britain's Royal College of Midwives for achieving a community homebirth rate of 24%. The Welsh Assembly has set a goal for 10% of Welsh births to take place at home. http://www.nct.org.uk/press-office/p...eases/view/118
As far back as December 19, 1980, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study entitled "Home Delivery and Neonatal Mortality in North Carolina." This unique study compared data from three groups: planned home deliveries by "lay" midwives; planned homebirths without known screening and without a trained attendant; and unplanned, unattended homebirths from the same time period. The study found that "the patients attended by the midwives were more likely to be young, black, unmarried and less educated than the average woman who delivered in the state. Despite their high-risk demographic profile, these women had a relatively low-risk medical profile. None of their infants weighed 2,000 g or less and their neonatal mortality rate was one third that for all deliveries."
C. Arden Miller, M.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was a co-author of that study. In a 1981 written response to an article about the study's findings, he stated: "An appropriate interpretation of our study would be that childbearing among healthy, well cared for people is a happy and reasonably safe experience, but it is not free of risks. Some risks are associated with well planned home deliveries; different risks are associated with deliveries in hospitals. Women might best be well informed about both kinds of risks and be allowed to elect which kind they desire to assume."
No one could possibly say it better.
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