I wasn’t being serious; it was a stupid question, so I gave it the answer it deserved. “Hay, dude, r there male midwives? But it has the word ‘wife’ in the name. R they called dudewives? Midhusband? lol”
Regardless of qualifications of various clinicians and OB-GYN specialists, I have asked the question (twice) in the other thread:
“Of what benefit for the baby does an at-home birth provide?”
And the only response I received was this:
This exchange was quoted in the OP and I’m still awaiting any factual answers to my question: What measurable, quantifiable benefit does the baby receive from a home-birth?
If I’m remembering my history lessons correctly, the move from home births to hospital births caused a brief spike in infant and mother mortalities for similar reasons - doctors would be dividing their time between a woman giving birth and the plague victim three rooms down.
Of course, that’s no reason not to have a hospital birth these days, unless you have an abysmal local hospital.
My wife was like your first example. The first was kind of a long labor (he’s still always late 
) , the second popped out within an hour of getting to the hospital, and the third had a maybe 3 hour labor-to-birth time. As I’ve said, I’m from a medical family and would’ve been more comfortable with a hospital birth, to tell you the truth, but every indication was that it would be OK to do it at home, we did our homework, had a backup plan, lived close to a hospital, etc. As long as it’s done with proper care, there’s nothing wrong with giving birth at home. But I won’t recommend it for everyone, still.
That’s the sort of comment that really isn’t fair to OBs.
Mine spent four hours during my birth in my room. He did not spend the entire labor with me - frankly no one did - the OB nurse was in and out of my room, my husband slept. I was to have my sister as a “non-professional doula” (she is an RN with a masters - but hers is in nursing administration, she doesn’t deliver babies unless the choice is her or the cab driver) but the baby came early and she was out of town.
Mine “catches” almost all ‘his’ babies - if you see him during your pregnancy, he is going to be the one in the delivery room - unless he is unavailable with another delivery or out of the office when you deliver (babies are hard to plan around).
I know that not all OBs work like that - frequently whomever is on call at the practice does all the deliveries at the hospital that day. But you can shop for an OB who doesn’t golf, who prefers non-medicated childbirth, who has a low c-section rate.
Well, there’s lay midwifery, which is generally illegal, and direct entry midwifery, which is an apprenticeship with academic requirements and legal in many states including mine. I’m considering being one.
ETA- midwife doesn’t mean “wife of mid”, it means “with woman”. That’s the “wife” part.
With a history of short labors getting shorter and uncomplicated deliveries - planning for home is better than Dad delivering by the side of the road.
Phlosphr frustrated the heck out of me in that thread. He cherry picked portions of quotes from peer reviewed studies, cited to propaganda-like, slanted articles, and seemed to take every story of at-home birth going well as some support that at-home birth is fine.
As a former med-mal defense attorney (thanks tort reform) I have seen some really horrific injuries to babies and some pretty horrific things happen to mothers in labor. The at-home birth is not terribly risky to a mother, but, as others said, having a NICU right there, having the ability to do a quick c-section if necessary due to fetal distress is important. Phlosphr said his house was 20 minutes from the hospital. That’s a long time to go if the baby is in distress. Further, that assumes that the midwife will pick up the distress quickly and not fiddle fart around trying to alleviate the distress to avoid intervention. When babies end up with cerebral palsy or a brachial plexus injury due to a misstep or two at the hospital–including waiting a tad too long to deliver if there is fetal distress, I don’t see why you would tempt fate and be at least 20 minutes from the hospital.
It sounds like that birthing center is nice, immediately adjacent to the hospital and a lovely alternative. Why not go with that? But, Phlospher is hell bent on an at-home birth so nothing said here will change that although I do recommend meeting a family who has gone through raising a child with a birth-related injury before making that final decision. It’s sad shit–I’ve balled my eyes out after depos with family members.
But, NAF1138’s story in that same thread scares the shit out of me and should scare the shit out of the rest of you. His wife took castor oil to make labor progress to avoid pitocin “at all costs.” Because, you know, castor oil is natural. She took two doses and labor progressed so rapidly that the main midwife wasn’t even there. The bag was black with meconium. The midwife couldn’t find a heartbeat for 4 minutes and didn’t realize the kid was breach. Mom had to go to the hospital and desperately try not to push for the 20 minute ambulance ride. But, THEY’D DO THE SAME THING AGAIN. WTF!
And, Phlsophr, his significant other and baby will all hopefully and likely be just fine. He’ll come back here crowing that everything was fine so we were all WRONG.
Be that as it man, the technical title for a RN/APN who has specialist training in childbirth/delivery specifically (as opposed to an obstetrics nurse, who is a pregnancy specialist) is currently “Certified Nurse-Midwife”.
If it helps, imagine it as the acronym and look for an RN/CNM
Did you see the asterisk?http://www.doula.com/becoming_a_midwife.shtml
Here’s the info regarding legality of a practicing direct-entry midwife on state by state basis.
Less likelihood of interventions, from c-section (some of the stats here are certainly influenced by patient selection - if you have a condition making c-section likely, you’re not going to be a candidate for home birth; but there’s also an observed effect of cascades of interventions and very hard time limits on events of labor leading to unexpected c-sections, which are more likely in a hospital setting) to being fed bottles of formula against the wishes of the parent to being placed in the nursery for “observation” (I’ve been in those nurseries - the healthy babies are not really observed in a meaningful sense; they lie in a crib while the nurses do paperwork) instead of rooming in immediately. Some people feel that bright lights and rough towels and quick cord cutting and removal of the infant from the mother for assessment are hard on the infant, as well.
I’m not saying it’s the worst thing ever, mind you. And you may indeed put very little importance on those benefits, or you may find a cooperative hospital staff willing to reduce or eliminate the loss of those benefits in a hospital setting. But not everyone does.
Tell me more about direct entry midwifery. I’m unfamiliar with it, and don’t know that we have it in Illinois.
Anybody else finding the term “direct entry” a little weird when it comes to childbirth?
True enough; that was gratuitous. However, depending on the shift change, etc. you might not get the attention you desire. I’m not arguing FOR home birth; just that it’s not an unreasonable or more dangerous choice given proper preparation.
Busy day, but I have some time to look up one thing for Rand Rover: Regarding the meta-study you linked to, seems many in the science field feel it is severely flawed. This articlealso mentioned the "The scientific debate about home birth has become extremely polarized and politicized, ".
Yeah, no shit.
p.s. our midwife is a certified nurse midwife…*and * apprenticed in an obstetrics department for the final year of her masters. Yes, some hospitals allow midwives, hereis something from Cedars-Sinai - that’s a pretty good hospital.
I am all for non-quantifiable, spiritual experience. I think there can be great value in it. However, I think the most important post in this thread is this:
. . . whenever I find myself getting down on modern medicine (which has a whole host of things wrong with it), it’s always good to remember things such as that.
This sounds like a bunch of contrived, mostly imaginary grievances, none of which are very important. Some are stupid (why would you want to remove the opyion to do a C-section, and who gives a shit if a baby gets fed a bottle? What kind of self important bullshit is that?). None of it sounds like a justification to risk the lives of the mother and baby by cutting them off from access to immediate, emergency medical care. The kind of people who think it’s better to risk killing the baby with a homebirth than for their precious angel to get fed an ounce of formula while it’s hungry and the mother is asleep -or heaven forfend - have its cord cut too quickly are too far up their own asses to be trying to parent children anyway. Bright lights, “rough towels.” Those are stupid concerns. Sorry.
Well, yeah…that was a concern, considering DC area traffic (the hospital near our house wasn’t the one our insurance paid for, so we would’ve had to drive a few miles out I-66 to Fair Oaks, or to the intersection of the beltway and Rt. 50 for Fairfax hospital, maybe 8 miles. Neither was a palatable choice, and again, we had a lot of factors going for us and didn’t make this choice in a vacuum, nor are we hippie weirdos or anything. YMMV and all.
Sorry to frustrate you, but in a thread 5 months ago, we were touring the birthing center, interviewing docs [there are 14 of them in our BC alone] and interviewing several midwives. It was an exhaustive process and we know where it ended.
Intervention definitely tends to escalate; that’s not contrived. The measures taken to intervene tend to interfere with the natural birth process, and often make further intervention necessary. It can be a slippery slope. Also, you need to chill. Men tend to have an attitude of “strap her down, yank it out” which is pretty counter to both the medical and emotional needs of the mother and baby. I know you’re more open-minded than that, and you might want to study up on it more before spouting off about it.
I respect that. But it doesn’t explain why the midwife you selected has given you the impression that it’s not scary as shit when a baby comes out not breathing, grey, floppy, and in need of resuscitation. Babies are not supposed to be born in that condition. Babies sometimes die despite attempts at resuscitation. Babies sometimes have severe birth injury due to lack of oxygen. It’s not acceptable for the birth process to be allowed to progress in a way that puts the child at that kind of risk. Maybe the midwife understands this…I sincerely hope she does. I hope you understand it, too
ETA: To me, that’s not a “see, things can be managed, it all turned out fine!” story, it’s a “OMG, that poor baby made it through by the skin of its fucking teeth, someone get on their knees and thank the Lord” story. And I feel pretty much the same way about NAF’s birth story as well.