Wow.. If I ruled out midwives simply because they agreed to take on higher risked births outside of the hospital, I would have missed out on a wonderful midwife for my last birth, a midwife who was among the most experienced and skilled in my area! I have HUGE amounts of respect for her, and her skills. Sometimes its not about "recklessness" but simply a deep respect for a woman's wishes. She's taken on women who for religious reasons, will not accept hospital treatment, even in the most dire of emergencies. She has seen those emergencies.. and dealt with them (she's told me a couple specific stories) with healthy moms and babies. And those high risk moms, to whom hospitals are completely out of the question, are better off with a good midwife than UCing. So hell yeah, I'm sure as heck glad I had a "reckless" midwife, taking on those scary high risk births. It meant she had practice! So when MY baby had an unforeseen complication, (shoulder dystocia) she was on it, and he was unharmed. I might think those women who would rather bleed to death than go to the hospital and have a life saving transfusion are crazy, but its their decision to make, and I respect that. I should clarify that there is a big difference in agreeing to attend a higher risk birth with a mother who has had full informed consent and understands the risks she's taking, and having risks come up in what was previously a normal birth and ignoring signs of emergency, delaying transferring or calling 911 until its too late.. THAT is a whole different kind of "risk taking" and I want to make absolutely clear that I am not lumping the two together.Â
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I cannot speculate if the op's midwife was negligent, because we DON'T know the story. This could be anything from a completely mismanaged birth to one that went perfectly, with excellent heart tones up until the baby came out unexpectedly compromised, 911 called right away, and unsuccessful resuscitation. I'd withhold judgement until I heard the story.Â
