Aaargh. A preggo friend of mine, Sami, (alright, she's friends with one of my friends; we're still kind of acquaintances at this point) came to our playgroup today. My friend Sue was hosting playgroup this week, and she invited this woman Jill over because she has a 2 year old child.
My friend Sami was talking about how she's now in her 7th. month and is really struggling, because she really, really wants a homebirth but, because she's 40, everyone's trying to scare her out of it. She's torn between a CPM, CNM in a birth center, and a hospital medwife.
This woman Jill starts going on a tangent about how "I don't mean to scare you, and of course I'm biased because I've been a L&D nurse for ten years, but I really, really recommend that you birth in the hospital. The things I see that go wrong every day in our unit would just make your skin crawl..." and starts going on and on about how many women or their babies would have, without a doubt, died if they were at home, how her son would have died if he would have been homebirthed, and on and on and on!
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I mean, good god, do I, as a homebirth advocate, go up to all the women I know planning to birth in a hospital and tell them all of the horror stories about hospital births I've seen and heard? Of course not! I was so totally disgusted, I jumped in with all the facts and research and flat out told her that it was the hospital that caused most of the complications in the first place. She kept saying, "I've been working there for over ten years, and I've got to disagree..."
Finally I went outside with the kids - calmly and respectfully - and I sat outside for A HALF HOUR listening to this woman going on and on and on about how great hospital births are, how dangerous and irresponsible homebirths are... and on and on and on! I was literally gritting my teeth the entire time.
All the research in the world does not matter to these people! It is so incredibly disturbing to me that a woman would do this to another woman - a PREGNANT one, at that! So now Sami's so unnerved she's leaning toward the hospital again. I just had to rant at a place that I knew would understand. It was just unbelievable.
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My friend Sami was talking about how she's now in her 7th. month and is really struggling, because she really, really wants a homebirth but, because she's 40, everyone's trying to scare her out of it. She's torn between a CPM, CNM in a birth center, and a hospital medwife.
This woman Jill starts going on a tangent about how "I don't mean to scare you, and of course I'm biased because I've been a L&D nurse for ten years, but I really, really recommend that you birth in the hospital. The things I see that go wrong every day in our unit would just make your skin crawl..." and starts going on and on about how many women or their babies would have, without a doubt, died if they were at home, how her son would have died if he would have been homebirthed, and on and on and on!
I mean, good god, do I, as a homebirth advocate, go up to all the women I know planning to birth in a hospital and tell them all of the horror stories about hospital births I've seen and heard? Of course not! I was so totally disgusted, I jumped in with all the facts and research and flat out told her that it was the hospital that caused most of the complications in the first place. She kept saying, "I've been working there for over ten years, and I've got to disagree..."
Finally I went outside with the kids - calmly and respectfully - and I sat outside for A HALF HOUR listening to this woman going on and on and on about how great hospital births are, how dangerous and irresponsible homebirths are... and on and on and on! I was literally gritting my teeth the entire time.
All the research in the world does not matter to these people! It is so incredibly disturbing to me that a woman would do this to another woman - a PREGNANT one, at that! So now Sami's so unnerved she's leaning toward the hospital again. I just had to rant at a place that I knew would understand. It was just unbelievable.
