We've Forgotten Just How Bad Hospital Birth Was

[tapati]

Ina May Gaskin on the beginning of the home birth movement and more.Whether you are for or against home births, there is no doubt that the competition of the home birth movement pushed hospitals to change many of their practices. Hospitals make lots of money on childbirth, money they lose in the ER. Losing those births really hurt them and forced

Comments

[litlebanana]

Usually I agree with you about most things, but I think you know my feelings about homebirth. The most recent CDC data shows that there is a 7 times higher risk of the baby dying from homebirth with a non-nurse midwife (like Gaskin) compared with comparable risk hospital birth, and that's just not something I can get behind. The only data study released from Gaskin's Farm showed that the mortality rates were similar to that in high risk obstetric births, which is a little scary.

I'm not sure if the homebirth movement in some way convinced hospitals to change their practices, considering it makes up such a very tiny percentage of all births. But if it did, it was at the expense of babies' lives. Not worth it for a nicer room.

Just from this year, these are some of the totally preventable and sad deaths from homebirth:

http://skepticalob.blogspot.com/2011/12/homebirth-2011-deaths.html

[tapati]

Nowadays women don't have to do home births to have the atmosphere and control that we advocated for, so it is a moot point. But each lost birth was costing them money and the movement was producing books like immaculate deception that put pressure on them.

It's about so much more than a nicer room. Would you have wanted a doc to use forceps on you before giving you a chance to push much? How about automatically cutting your perineum whether you needed it or not? Pushing you to c-section in situations that aren't warranted? Forcing you to stay in bed rather than move around? Treating you, basically, like a piece of meat? Yes it was that bad in the 60s and 70s. My mom was knocked out with gas as I was being delivered with forceps and I wasn't much over 6 lbs.

I'm not saying anything about preferences TODAY but back then, we were pushed to take control of our birthing experience by abuses in the hospitals.

[tapati]

and by doctor I mean male in most cases

[litlebanana]

I believe there are some practices that might have changed due to homebirth... like my hospital room had a tub in it. But practices such as use of forceps and episiotomy have changed due to scientific evidence that showed worse outcome with those practices. If research showed any of these things were safer, I would have been okay with them, but it's shown the opposite. Ditto with general anesthesia. And maybe it's helped that most ob/gyns are now female, but I'm not sure it has. (For the record, I was forced to stay in my bed during my birth, since I had an epidural.)

[tapati]

Yes it does. I'm somewhere in the middle (while still maintaining that ob/gyns of the past weren't so great). It's uncomfortable ground because I can see good things in both sides and bad things in both sides.

[pr1ss]

The c-section rate is now 40% in some hospitals. Plus, labor is routinely induced early in more and more cases. Doctors may have improved their bedside manner, but premature babies and mothers who have to recover from surgery aren't a good tradeoff.