Homebirth Gone Awry

It is extreme cases like these that give home birth a bad name. I am all in favor of HB under the right circumstances and am a big fan of midwives, but this woman should not be allowed to practice...

And you can always find the right study to "prove" your biased opinion. Most studies show that homebirth is just as safe as hospital birth; then under the care of of train professional...

Look at this reply: MedFake: Hospital Birth Gone Awry: Is This Typical?

What is it going to take the faciliate a better collaborative relationship between MD and MW?

Consumer demand.

$$$$$

What will it take to increase consumer demand?

Education, patience, diligence, grace, kindness, forgiveness. All difficult and time consuming.

This is just so sad.

I, myself had a homebirth and while it was the most personal, intimate childbirth I have ever had (for the 1st of 4 children) I never elected to do it again. Luckily, there weren't any complications. It is just too easy for something to go terribly wrong in an instant. Sometimes there may only be seconds or minutes to save the baby. So, the time needed to get to the hospital could have been timed saved and a life/lives saved.

Not that all midwives aren't a capable and/or valueable asset to the medical community, but there are reasons doctors go to medical school for so long. Even a birthing center would be a better option for when situations such as this one go awry. Generally, a doctor will be available at a birthing center.

By the way, why on earth would a midwife (or anyone for that matter) allow a woman to keep laboring a week after her water broke? That is insane! I am not even in nursing school yet and I know that is extremely dangerous. Isn't it you must deliver 24 hours after your water breaks due to infection or meconium?

I agree that this midwife has given a bad name to midwives.

It will all be better as soon as midwives go away. Doctors have been working hard at it since the last century and with the increased publicity and safety studies (never mind this particular ANECDOTE), they have stepped it up a couple notches.

Unfortunately, women aren't being given safe, acceptable alternatives. If hospitals weren't such birth factories, "get 'em in, pit 'em up, strap a belt on 'em then stand in the hallway watching their activity on the monitor" that is no way to give birth- IMO- and a path I wasn't going to walk down for my birth experiences. I wasn't going there unless I had a true medical indication to do so, and being in labor doesn't count.

I fear that generations from now we will look back in this era and shake our heads, saying "How could we have been so arrogant and short sighted?"

Apgar,

It will all be better as soon as midwives go away.

Ha! It just makes me want to fight harder!

(and some days, move to some nice Scandinavian country where things are friendlier...)

I could write several stories called "Hospital Birth Gone Awry". I can if you want me to.

Evidence has proven over and over again that for the low risk patient a homebirth has equal mortality with REDUCED morbidity for mother and baby compared to hospital birth.

The United States stands alone in developed countries in supporting high-cost, high-technology maternity care for all women. The United States also ranks worse than most other countries in perinatal outcomes.

ACOG is a trade organization that protects the interests of its members. It is not an advocacy group for women, nor is it trying to improve health outcomes. If they were concerned with health putcomes they wouldn't advocate cesarean section for no medical indication- but when that is the subjectwomen suddenly deserve a choice (which conveniently involves MDs, makes their lives more convenient, and increases revenue).

Nothing against birth centers, but ACOG supports them as a political move. There is nothing about a birth center that is safer than giving birth at home, with the exception of possibly being closer to the hospital if a transport is needed (or of course someone's house could be closer to the hospital than the birth center). Midwives carry rescusitation equipment, blood volume expanders, etc. The physical presence of an MD changes nothing. In fact many MDs perform homebirths.

The key to homebirth safety is facilitating transfer. To the detriment of patients, people allow their personal beliefs to compromise the care women are given. Before my homebirth we had developed a plan of where to transfer in case of an emergency, printed the maps, and packed a bag complete with a copy of my medical records. Of note I would not have transfered to the hospital closest to my house, where I was an L & D RN, because they did not have 24 OB or anesthesia, all the women giving birth there who assumed they were safer than they were at home would actually have waited longer for emergency care than I would have with a homebirth transfer to a bigger hospital.

Doctors began trying to drive awar midwives at the beginning of the 1900's to get the money just like they are trying to do today. The difference is that homebirths and births attended by midwives have been on the rise for the past 30 years and continue.