Please don’t take what I am saying as me thinking one thing is “better” or “worse” than another. If in the next month we find our we have to be at the birthing center, we are totally ok with that. I do not think, and have never thought one is objectively better than the other. I am most concerned with my wife and baby’s health. We have been reading about the various primordial chemicals raging through a womans body at the time of birth, and are reading about other people’s experiences…I should have put your quoted text with more context.
[QUOTE=Dangerosa]
Statistically, that makes no sense at all. She can be the greatest midwife in the world, but things go wrong.
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Statistically, hospitals have exponentially higher c-section rates than most midwives. A doctor with 27 years experience, having delivered 1000’s of babies would make me feel just as safe as a midwife with the same experience. We happen to be going with the latter.
Our midwife has delivered breach, had placental abruption, massive bleeding, still-born babies, etc…we were told a story of an 11-lb baby who came out grey and not breathing…you know what the midwife did? The same thing they would have done in a hospital…resuscitate the child - and he was fine. Apparently when mom was laboring, the kids head stayed poking halfway out the birth canal for 4 hours he had to work, work work to get out and when we came out, he was not breathing because he was so tired..yet he was alive due to the oxygen being pumped into his body by the cord…that to me is the scariest story I have heard…and it too had a happy ending.
Hmm, for me this would translate as - if we have to transport we won’t know it until the last minute-
Having an ambulance on call is an excellent idea. Chances are that something will go wonky or surprise you, maybe not something dangerous but something will probably not go as planned. It may help a lot if you’re prepared for that something, so that you and your wife can ride it out and stay present. Whatever happens to your plan don’t lose sight of the larger experience. Enjoy it!
I guess for the only goal of delivery was healthy baby, healthy mom. Most hospital deliveries and, I guess (from what people who know better than I do say), home deliveries go just fine. But the question is where would I want to be if something catastrophic goes wrong.
The most relevant statistic I would look for is: What is the rate of injury/death to baby or mom in hospitals vs rate of injury/death of baby or mom at home. I don’t know the answer to that at all- but that’s the main stat I would concern myself with.
And just to add- this is the first many choices for safety and well being that you will make for your child- you just do ultimately what you think is best for your child.
My labor pains came and went. I was conscious during it. I didn’t have any problems demanding what I needed or asking questions. In fact, I was more pushy (ha!) than normal. Probably due to adrenaline.
I’m sorry, but this would all be a huge red flag to me that outcome isn’t as important as staying at home. All of this sounds to me like your midwife is not prepared to admit when they are in over their head and additional medical intervention is needed.
Like Dangerosa, I find this discomforting. Things go wrong. 7/1000 babies are stillborn: true, the vast majority are due to things that could not have been helped with any intervention, but they do happen. There is no way she’s been providing prenatal care and delivering babies for 27 years and never lost one, never seen everything go pear-shaped even if it was far beyond anyone’s control.
This is the attitude that bothers me in the anti-hospital crowd. Food and drink were (and to some degree still are) limited because doctors sincerely believe(d) it significantly increased the chance of serious complications if general anesthesia were suddenly called for. Just because it wasn’t for “the woman’s comfort” doesn’t mean it was part of a nefarious plot to make their own lives easier or to save the hospital money or to put women in their place.
Put it this way: as a parent, you will probably put a higher priority on your kid’s safety than on their comfort, right? I mean, you’ll care about their comfort, but you’d give up 10 units of comfort for 2 units of safety, and maybe they’d only give up 5 units of comfort for 2 units of safety. Neither the kid nor the parent would be “wrong” in their calculus, they’d just have different priorities.
The same is true with doctors and patients: because, frankly, the doctors aren’t the ones experiencing the discomfort, their willingness to give it up for increased safety may be skewed. And since laboring mothers are not (at least in this case), children, they should be the ones that decide how much comfort is worth vs. safety. The doctors’ job is to help them make a truly informed decision. I agree with you on that. But there’s no point in maligning the doctor’s reasons: they aren’t generally callous and greedy, they just prioritize safety over everything.
No, I wanted a drink of water when I was in active labor.
Why are you hassling me about this so much? Your labor experience was different from mine. Is that really so hard to understand? My sole point here is that you should make sure your hospital is on board with your wishes before you show up in active labor, which is something you seem to basically agree with, so I’m not sure why you’re going all Lt. Columbo on me about my ice chip story.
Do you know for sure that the stillbirths weren’t “catastrophic failures?” I certainly can’t think of a worse outcome. What caused the stillbirths? And are you sure that grey and not breathing baby was just tired? I don’t think babies get tired from having to work their way out, they are not the ones doing the work. Sounds to me like that baby was NOT getting enough oxygen through the cord at all, maybe something more along the lines of cord compression, which can happen when the pushing phase lasts a prolonged amount of time. Many of those babies cannot be resuscitated after they emerge, because they emerge dead. I would have a serious conversation with your midwife about how long she will allow a labor that’s not progressing to continue without transfer. The mere fact that she said that emergency transfers are almost never necessary is a huge, huge red flag to me.
Not one - and this person has a known track record with the state of Colorado as being one of the best midwives in the state. Have things gone wrong? Have things gone not as planned? Of course! But no, she has never lost a baby.
When I go down the laundry list of things that can go wrong, and think about what our midwife would do as opposed to a doc, I see very little that would MAKE me choose a hospital over home if given the choice. And yes, I am part of the home birth crowd, but am not a part of the anti-hospital crowd. Like I said, if we need to go we will.
“Stillborn” means a baby that has died in the uterus. If you are saying that your midwife has experienced stillborn babies, but has never lost a baby, then one of those things isn’t true. Or you are using a non-standard definition for “stillborn”.
If a baby is too big and takes longer than expected to turn when they come out [turning is a natural thing that happens in all births, baby’s “usually” come out with the back of their head on the sacrum - that is just nature - but when a baby is huge they actually get tired in those last few minutes of turning and can be “limp” upon arrival.
Yes, my red flag went us as well, and we happen to have a cousin who was 11.3 when he came out, his mom said he didn’t cry or vocalize for 48 hours because of how tired he was getting through the birth canal. Logically, it makes sense to me.
Right, “tired” due to lack of oxygen. Seriously, what could “tired” possibly mean in this context? Babies for real die because of this all the time, before they even emerge. Some have brain damage. This is much, much more serious than you are making it out to be, and if your midwife is this cavalier about it, I would find a new midwife. Or get a doctor.
Of course they should, and I am sure that if they had health insurance, many of them would be there. Who is going to pay the bill for a hospital birth? You can’t just say they should be in the hospital, when they have no insurance and no way to pay for it.
The mother and baby are covered by a state program and/or Medicaid
The mother shows up in labor, and delivers in the hospital. SFAIK, a hospital cannot turn away a mother in active labor. Then, the bills don’t get paid by anyone.
My thought is that maybe we shouldn’t encourage low income mothers to opt for home birth, as the complication rate is higher and may lead to worse outcomes.
Sorry - you just ended up there. I mean nothing personal.
It is just that, for me, the most frustrating thing about the home birth movement is that they target hospital staff and OBs. They use trumped up stories of Horror at the Hands of Modern Medicine, and it drives me nuts.
Most stories I hear about bad hospital staff basically come down to the fact the the mother/father refuses to stand up for themselves, and are completely intimidated by the hospital setting. That is what should be fought, not this idea that hospitals are evil, evil places.
It’s all involved in the targeting of medicine and science - like anti-vaxxers, herbal therapy and the like. Now, if someone wants to eat St. John’s Wort and chant at stones, that’s all well and good. But when that behavior starts to infect cancer treatment, high-risk birth and MMRs, it needs to stop.
You can see this from the OP - I’m am 100% certain he means well, and would do anything to protect the people he loves. But, first of all, he started off with a reference to “fear” of home birth, which implies a decision made not out of logic but emotions, and then moved through “primordial hormones” and fishy statistics on his midwife’s success rate.
I see using the Hospital of Horror as a tool to get people to agree to midwifery without using logical sense, which is manipulating good people who are in a stressful situation. These kinds of people may be the same kind of people who would not assert their rights in a hospital setting. I would be more comfortable with parents-to-be taking a class on what is allowable in a hospital setting, what you can protest, how to make decisions during times of great stress, etc., than research on primordial hormones and the Dangers of Not Bonding.
Yeah, I am not a Hospital of Horror person. One of the unfortunate things about the current climate of childbirth is that you tend to get assigned into camps: Either you are pro-homebirth, anti-vax, and hate hospitals, or you are super pro-hospital and will sign up for a unnecessary C-section because you are too posh to push.
I had two very good hospital experiences, and one less-good one. (Baby 1 was at one hospital; babies 2 and 3 were at a different one.) The first good one was because the hospital itself was just awesome. The second good one was because I learned from the bad one and went in prepared. All I am saying is, it pays to be prepared if you want to have a good experience, because there is a chance that once labor has started, you are no longer going to be a good advocate for yourself. I mean, maybe you won’t need to be, and maybe the hospital will be ace, which would be great. Just, be prepared.
As for the main topic, I personally am highly dubious that it is a good idea to allow labor to continue for four hours when you’re at the pushing stage and the baby is stuck half-in and half-out. I’m glad the baby survived but wonder if there were any lasting issues from this birthing trauma. Babies being born “tired”, particularly so tired they aren’t breathing, is not a normal part of childbirth.
Yes, MsWhatsit, I agree. I would say that in answer to the OP’s original question, the best way to get over the fear isn’t to pretend that childbirth isn’t risky or that it’s normal and fixable for babies to emerge floppy and not breathing. The best way to get over the fear is to understand the risks better than that, so that you know that your birth is being managed in an appropriate way, whether it be by a doctor or a midwife, in a hospital or another setting.
I totally agree with your second paragraph, that many home-birth advocates draw a line in the sand: it’s them vs. the hospital/medical staff. It sucks, too - both sides want the same thing (healthy mom, healthy baby). As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter how you get there as long as the result is the same.
With respect to the bad hospital staff, I think it varies hospital to hospital. I gave birth in a notorious baby factory. Had I done my homework, I would have known that. But we had trouble with the hospital staff because we asked questions and didn’t go with the flow. Of course, laboring for a day and a half and having eclampsia eventually put me in a bad institution to stand up for much of anything, but the second the staff heard that I wanted a natural birth, we were “those people.” I still remember us asking the nurse questions about the circumcision process, disagreeing with letting our baby have sugar water during the procedure and having her demand, “Oh, so you want your baby to cry? That’s nice.” Had I not had a migraine and been on magnesium sulfate to prevent me from seizing again, I probably would’ve strangled her. That particular nursing staff were the least sensitive I’ve ever encountered.
The second time, I used a different hospital and the staff were nothing short of awesome. Supportive, positive, encouraging - couldn’t have been better. Having an epidural helped me enjoy the birth much, much more, but they really made things much easier. Although I didn’t have complications this time, they told me when I walked in the door at midnight, “We want this to be a good experience for you. If there’s something you need, you have questions or want to know why we’re doing something, ask and we’ll tell you.”
I agree, and find it funny. I didn’t have a great hospital birth experience, but not because I was pushed for interventions - because the nurse decided interventions were not necessary, that I was probably not in labor (my water had broken and I’d passed the mucas plug - but since I was two weeks early and “first babies never arrive early” it was false labor :rolleyes:), and that if I was in labor, I didn’t require any medication for pain, despite having a “birth plan” that said “I’m fine with drugs” and me asking for them.
I was told to walk when I couldn’t stand from the pain, to take a bath when it caused anxiety, to sit in a rocking chair when it hurt like hell. I was most comfortable in the bed, on my back. When I asked for pain relief, I was told to “tough it out.”
All this with the front of my folder stamped “Strep B positive, Rh Neg, Anxiety and Depression, Toxemia” I could have been a higher risk pregnancy, but I wasn’t a good candidate for home birth.