ugh!!! Let's write this OB an letter....

[AustinMom]

http://www.obgmanagement.com/article_pages.asp?AID=6140

1) There are plenty other countries who have higher HB rates than US, oh, any by the way, they all have better neonatal and maternal outcomes....

2)There have been studies on larger scale

3)We don't paint a rosy picture, we video birth and show how birth with a normal view point is actually beautiful.

4)High risk moms belong in a hospital, I think most agree with this, usually these "high risk" mom are not truly high risk, or are forced to hb after crappy Ob after another

5)When birth moved to hospital, rates didn't get better. They got worse because OBs were handling more patients meaning more germs....yes they wash their hands today, but HELLO......MRSA!

6)With the initial senerio...."do you assume her care?" what kind of question is this? Your the ER Ob on call....of course you do. This is a woman who (now) needs help of a Dr. Are you questioning your qualifications? Oh yeah, it goes back to malpractice and $ I forgot.

7)Any OB in a group practice has a small chance of being at the birth of that particular mom, so when a mom goes to the hospital, she is cared for by the OB on call of that practice, that OB has no antepartum relationship either.

8), 9), 10) I could go on.....

[claddaghmom]

Write him a letter why? To educate him? Maybe instead you should get a domain w/ a misspelling of his site and put a rebuttal on it.

[AustinMom]

Good idea!

[TyrantOfTheWeek]

*head desk*

That guy is a

Maybe if c sections and other often unnecessary stuff weren't pushed in the first place....

Ugh, I really wish I hadn't read that complete ignorance this morning. I feel like my head is fixin' to explode now.

[MammaB21]

This guy sure is reaching.

Some stats he stated:

"Out of 1,913 women attempting vaginal birth after a cesarean delivery at a birth center, %0.4 ruptured there uterus, and %0.5 of the pregnancies resulted in fetal or neonatal death."
(This clearly makes HBAC high risk, in his opinion)

"Approximately %10 to %15 of planned homebirths transfer to the hospital."

"After successful homebirth about %1 of mothers are transferred because of hemorrhage, and about %1 of infants are transferred because of respiratory difficulty."

So, my question is, how is this supposed to convince anyone NOT to have a homebirth? %10 of women transfer? So that means that there is a %90 chance of NOT transferring and having a successful homebirth. That's pretty good odds, especially considering that the reason he sated for most transfers was failure to progress. That means that in some cases the transfer may not have been out of emergency, but simply exhaustion or fear. %1 of women transfer AFTER the birth for hemorrhage? So %99 of women in homebirth don't transfer for hemorrhage. Also pretty good odds, especially considering that hemorrhaging can just as easily happen in a hospital and he didn't bother to include those stats.

I don't have time to search right now, but I KNOW that stats for csections in the hospital are higher than these transfer rates. I'm sure it is also a higher % of infants being worked on for respiratory difficulties.

I hope that women reading this article will be able to see that he is actually not proving homebirth to be unsafe with these stats. This is simply his opinion. An opinion that he is trying to present as fact.

[scottishmommy]

My impression is that OBs who are placed in this unfortunate situation at first 1) wish that the mother had not chosen a home birth plan and 2) feel moral outrage and anger about the decision she made to place herself and her offspring at increased risk of injury and death.

hmmmm. Interesting how they would be morally outraged. My dad is a doctor and used to treat a lot of people with HIV/AIDS. I don't remember him being outraged at them for having unprotected sex, even though it clearly put them at risk. Of course homebirth doesn't even begin to compare because it's not actually dangerous. Maybe if physicians stopped birth rape, women wouldn't feel the need to stay home.

[AustinMom]

Originally Posted by scottishmommy

[I]Maybe if physicians stopped birth rape, women wouldn't feel the need to stay home.

OH MY GOD, you don't know how much I identify with this. This is one of the main reasons we are having a HB. With our last, we had to transfer from birthing center, and at the hospital, the nurse and the OB (as they BOTH had to check me) torn the insides of my vagina. My hips literally came off the table. Yeah, adding to that, I was sexually abused for a good portion of my childhood. When women say things like "I felt out of control, almost like I was being raped" It's SO true. Of course not every Dr. is this way, and not every mw is not this way. It was horrible.

[MiaMama]

When I read this article, it seemed he was saying that the biggest risk factor for "failed" homebirth was a prior surgical delivery with an OB.

To reduce the risk, moms can not homebirth, as he suggested, or, better yet, not see an OB for thier first pregnancies.

[Belle]

The thing that immediately raises my hackles reading this is that he calls a hb transfer a "failed homebirth". A transfer is not a failure.

I stopped reading after his "proof" that homebirth was dangerous were the Pang study and the study that observed giving birth in the Australian outback with no transfer hospital within reach.

[goinggreengirl]

I couldn't even finish reading that ridiculous post. I am SO glad I discovered homebirth before I got pregnant so I wouldn't make the mistake of having my first birth with an OB!