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WOW! I really appreciate all of the thoughtful responses to my request that you prove that hospital birth is safer than Freebirth.
Now, just to clariy, I was asking that you use the current birthing statistics, from say 2002 on, to prove that Hospital birth is better for the mother and the child than freebirth. I'm well aware of the worlds infant mortality rates, but they don't have a whole heck of a lot to do with birth.
Prove to me with links, quotes, studies, etc etc...that medical birth is SAFER FOR BOTH THE MOTHER AND THE BABY.
Please share scientific evidence that PROVES families are better served economically, socially, spiritually, physically, emotionally, and hormonally by Hospital Birth.
Infant mortality is just one very small portion of the birth scene. And because most babies die long after the birth is over (if I remember right it is up to a year after birth) many, many factors can contribute to a countrys infant mortality above and beyond birth practices - the most important being proper nutrition.
Current Maternal mortality statistics in America are also a bogus argument because only mothers who die on the table during an actual birth are included in those stats. The moms who died from childbirth complications the next day, week, month are not included in the maternal rates.
When was the last time you heard or read about an accidental freebirth? You know, those babes born in the taxi or at home but with an unplanned situation. The media response to those births is almost consistenly the same...."mother and baby are doing fine" Anyone here recently hear a story of an unplanned out of hospital birth where the reporter breathlessly exclaimed, The baby died from the cord being around its neck and the mother bled out her blood volumne all over the taxi and both are stone cold DEAD!
I know it is difficult to accept my premise that too much medicine and surgery is murdering and maiming more women and children than it is helping. And that many of those babes who were born in hospital and died from too many drugs or whatever, would have done just fine at home.
I am asking for evidence, scientific if possible, that hospital birth is safer for mother and baby than Freebirth. The only person who even attempted was sticky who shared some of the results from the Mehl homebirth study.
Let's assume that Judy Ralls statistics are somewhat indicative of what is happening on the freebirth scene.
One C-section out of a hundred. No maternal deaths. No infant deaths.
And just for giggles we will double that c-section rate, Two out of a hundred. A 2 % chance of having a section sounds pretty good to me. Actually doctors like Robert Bradley who actively taught couples how to give birth without drugs had a section rate of 3%. His drugged birth rate was 10% and after 17,000 births he never lost a mother. And he claimed that these amazing stats were because of his natural childbirth method, which was defined by NO INDUCTIONS and NO EPIDURALS.
If I as a birthing woman in labor walk into an American hospital my chance of having a section is one in three. Twenty Nine women out of a hundred in America give birth using major surgery.
2 out of a hundred? Or 29 out of a hundred? Hmmmmm I really have to think about that one.
Now, if you accept the fact that surgical delivery carries a much higher risk of death for mother and baby. And many compelling studies indeed make that case, Why would any sane woman walk into a hospital to give birth knowing that the odds, just the simple odds, were so stacked against her? Sounds a little like russian roulette.
Again, I know what the infant mortality rates around the world are. But please, using the hospitals own numbers, make the case for WHY I should go into the hospital to give birth. I would really like to know.
And, for the record, I am not anti-medicine. We have taken our children to the hospital for a variety of issues, mostly tied to sports injuries, and have gratefully used the services of these professionals for help with different things.
I choose to believe that birth is not a medical disaster waiting to happen. And that choice is based on much much more than just my spiritual beliefs or emotion.
I have intensively studied birth for 19 years.
Oh and for the geneologists out there, as I said, I believe modernity (Living in large, filthy cities and being on the move) are some of the main reasons babies and mothers have died during births. As I said, go back two hundred years, and just look at your own family. My great, great grandmother in Michigan gave birth to fourteen children in her farmhouse.
When professionals started interfering in birth with ethers and forceps (yes while still birthing at home in America), mommas were at higher risk for birth complications, one because they were not awake, and two because any intervention with a surgical instrument at a home birth increases the risk of bleeding out.
Please someone convince me, beyond all the hype and knee jerk emotional reacting that has gone on here, WHY I should give birth to my child in an american hospital in 2007.
And no, stats about women and children dying in the third world or at the height of the industrial revolution are not going to convince me. I need to know why, right now today, I should put myself and my child at risk for potential death and almost certain drugging and maiming during birth in a US Hospital.
Jenny Hatch
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