Safety compared to no-intervention hospital birth - Page 2

[Thmom]

Originally Posted by pamamidwife

you're forgetting the fragile piece of a woman's physiological state during birth. the delicate hormonal balance that occurs and the intervention that is just merely walking out of her front door in labor. being in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people wanting to do very intimate things to you under an element of fear (both by the providers and the woman) all creates a disturbance to the hormonal and physiological aspect of birth.

It's not always about having the water broken, etc. It's mostly about the delicate normalcy of birth. Sadly, that sometimes doesn't even happen at home.

My thoughts exactely! the first intervention is Mom gettting in the car, then Mom has to answer very personal questions about her sexual and health history to a perfect stranger etc... it completely disrupts the birth process. http://www.birthpsychology.com/messages/intro.html
Sadly this can happen at home too, depending on your midwife.. but I think it's less likely because it is *your* home and you can more easily screen midwives to be sure you are getting one that will do things the way you want them done. You have no control of the nurse and frequently the doctor you get in a hospital enviroment.

also hospital born disease is the 4th leading cause of death in this country
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Health/st...1213789&page=1

[Mommy_Pooh]

I would tend to agree that there's no such thing as "intervention free" in a hospital.


I consider my hospital births pretty darned AP friendly, relatively speaking. There was no nursery, rooming in was standard, you were expected to bf, and baby never left my side for our entire stay w/out me even having to request it. Nurses didn't even blink an eye when I coslept with Ben (in fact, one commented on how sweet she always though mom sleeping with newborn was).

OTOH, my births were filled w/ interventions. Epidural, episiotomy, IV's, AROM, etc. I didn't protest at the time , I'm a terrible people pleaser. Anyways, they did ask me before doing most of these things, so I think I could have avoided them if I fought for it. However, there's some other interventions I doubt I would have been able to avoid - like the external fetal monitoring, or having to labor lying flat on my back. Esp the fetal monitoring, since they won't even admit you w/out doing a test strip first! The other thing you really can't avoid would be those annoying cervical checks everybody including the janitor seems to want to do.


Other things you can't avoid - the "mandatory" testing of the newborn, for PKU, hearing, and so forth. Luckily in Ont they don't do Vit K or HepB shots, or eye goop but they still do the PKU tests. UGH, it freaked me out when Ben was brought back all covered in blood, and bruises all over his poor little hands and feet!! :
IME, low intervention is possible. NO intervention? Absolutely not.

[norasmom]

I had a beautiful intervention free hospital birth & am eagerly anticipating a homebirth with my second.

Eventhough no one did anything I didn't want in the hospital I still spent some time tied to a fetal monitor & had lots of anxiety leading upto the birth about having to fight to make my wishes known & respected.

Why should you, I, or any other expectant mom have to fight for what we know is right for ourselves and our children. That anxiety alone is reason enough to me to choose homebirth.

I know we all want to convince people we have studied up & are not making irresponsible choices but as has been said many times in this thread, it is your choice and there is no need to defend it!

[ktmama]

For me there are two primary issues in choosing homebirth.

1. My ability to be completely relaxed and comfortable with my care provider and not on ALERT that someone might try to do something or offer something or forget something, etc...

2. That my child be treated with respect and handled gently after the birth. From the videos of hospital births that I've seen and the friends and family that I've talked to, hospital personnel are really rough with newborns and are often very disrespectul of them as human, vulnerable creatures that are new to the planet.

My .02