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<div>Originally Posted by <strong>Munchkimo</strong> <a href="/community/forum/post/7908232"><img alt="View Post" class="inlineimg" src="/community/img/forum/go_quote.gif" style="border:0px solid;"></a></div>
<div style="font-style:italic;">But the help available to me in the hospital would be more competent should an SD occur.</div>
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If you have a competent midwife (or are able to maintain your head, and preferably have a helper, with a UC), this is not true. What do you think OBs can do that midwives can't when it comes to shoulder dystocia? The only things that would be available at a hospital that aren't at home are surgery (cesarean section, which is useless in a shoulder dystocia anyway) and drugs (which don't help with a true mechanically stuck baby). I would say midwives are BETTER able to deal with shoulder dystocia, not only because it is much less likely to happen at home, with a hands-off birth, and physiologically appropriate positioning, but because midwives have more "tricks" up their sleeves to deal with it - position changes (Gaskin's maneuver), etc. And as someone else pointed out, midwives do generally carry oxygen for after, and a midwife is MUCH less likely to take the baby away from its mother, with whom the baby needs to be after birth, much <i>more</i> so if there were difficulties or traumas with the birth. (Being on the mother helps babies pink up faster, stay warmer, breathe sooner and better, etc.)