![\"Having](\"http:\/\/www.jennifermargulis.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/beautiful-baby-looking-at-the-camera.png\")
\nToday we’re talking about planned home birth and why there’s no place like home, which is often the best, safest, and most ecstatic place to have a baby. But first I have to admit my biases. Like every other person on the planet I have many. Here are some of mine:<\/p>\n
1) I think having a baby is an amazing, miraculous, wonderful feat that the female human body has evolved to be able to perform.<\/p>\n
2) I believe that every woman should birth where she feels most comfortable.<\/p>\n
3) I know that birth can be exciting, empowering, fun, and even\u2014sometimes\u2014funny.<\/p>\n
4) I know that things don’t always go the way we want them to.<\/p>\n
5) I feel grateful that we have the option of modern medicine when we need to use it.<\/p>\n
6) I know many women have strong feelings of disappointment around the way their baby was born. Those women often want to blame someone for what went wrong.<\/p>\n
I know this because I am one of those women.\u00a0I still feel upset about the way my first child came into the world.\u00a0The obstetrician who told me I was “being selfish” and “making people wait” because I wanted a natural childbirth and did not want Pitocin does not remember me.<\/p>\n
I am one of hundreds, maybe thousands, of women who he has berated and shamed during childbirth.\u00a0But I will never forget him.<\/p>\n
I will never forget how he ignored me when I told him I was ready to push, failed to come into the room as my baby was being born, rushed in angrily and pushed the nurse aside, told her she was “making [him] look bad.” How the labor and delivery nurse scoffed at me while I was in pain, told me I wasn’t dilated at all “not even a dimple!” after roughly shoving her fingers up my vaginal when I had been through more than 15 hours of hard labor with contractions coming every two minutes apart, and forbade food<\/a> even though I was shaky with low blood sugar and pleaded with her for something to eat.<\/p>\n I will never forget that the hospital “lost” the placenta even after we told them repeatedly, orally and in writing, that we wanted to bring it home to bury in our garden. How the nurses refused to shut off the epidural medicine<\/a> although I begged them to do so. The feeling of numbness in my leg for weeks after my daughter’s birth. I’ll never forget the hospital slapping me with a bill that was the equivalent of more than half a year of my graduate stipend that had an additional charge for each intervention that I’d not wanted.<\/p>\n Or how my healthy perfect baby who needed nothing but her mother was taken out of my arms<\/a> by nurses who insisted she go to the nursery when all I wanted to do was hold and cuddle and love her.<\/p>\n Then my insurance company denied the claim. They called my pregnancy a “pre-existing condition,” even though I had proof of being insured by them for over four years.<\/p>\n I no longer blame the people at Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s true that they treated me with so little respect and so little kindness at one of the most vulnerable moments of my life. But I don’t think it’s their fault anymore.<\/p>\n Actually, I feel sorry for them.<\/p>\n I feel sorry that they are living their lives with so little kindness. They are spending their time hurting women and perpetuating suffering in the world.<\/p>\n But I do blame the American hospital system<\/a> and our medical professionals in general who believe that bullying, lying, and berating women<\/a>, which they do, every day, every hour, is somehow acceptable.<\/p>\n I didn’t always feel this way. For months after my baby was born I was relieved we had had her in the hospital.<\/p>\n I would have died,<\/em> I told myself, or she would have died, if we had not had a hospital birth.<\/em><\/p>\n Those doctors saved my life, <\/em>I thought.<\/p>\n The problem had not been with them<\/em>.<\/p>\n The problem had been with me.<\/p>\n Of course.<\/p>\n My body was broken. It\u2014 I\u2014couldn’t have a baby without their help. Without their Pitocin. Without their fetal monitors and medical supplies.<\/p>\n It wasn’t until months after my baby was born that I realized the hospital had not saved me. Actually, being in the hospital had hindered my birth. Took me months after my baby was born, too, to realize that I had no one to blame but myself. I’d not educated myself to have an empowered, gentle, fun childbirth. My biggest mistakes was reading mainstream books and watching mainstream TV shows<\/a>.<\/p>\n I had believed that planned home birth\u2014and all birth\u2014was dangerous, that women were weak, that my life was at stake if I didn’t follow our culture’s rules and have my baby in the hospital.<\/p>\n Instead of seeking out experienced moms who had positive, exciting, gentle births, I’d allowed conventional health care practitioners and our culture’s fallacies to dupe me.<\/p>\n I made that mistake once.\u00a0But I never made it again.<\/p>\n My husband and I have four healthy, smart, energetic, exasperating children. We had our firstborn in the hospital. But our next three were born in our home.<\/p>\n If you follow the endless internet debates about home birth you probably read some of the news stories that said that having a home birth is like driving in a car without a seatbelt<\/a>. The pundits spreading those myths have their own biases.<\/p>\n I find it ironic that mainstream medical professionals would spend so much time critiquing and vilifying home birth when the VAST MAJORITY OF BIRTHS IN AMERICA HAPPEN IN AMERICAN HOSPITALS <\/strong>and when AMERICA HAS AMONG THE HIGHEST MATERNAL MORTALITY RATES OF ANY COUNTRY IN THE INDUSTRIALIZED WORLD.<\/strong><\/p>\n Every pundit, every doctor, every researcher should be desperately trying to improve that\u2014to find out why our hospital system is so dangerous<\/a>, why our outcomes are so poor, and how to improve them.<\/strong><\/p>\n Something else to consider: much of what you read about planned home birth on the internet is simply untrue or irrationally exaggerated or so skewed as to lose much of its truth.<\/p>\n I’m a skilled grant writer. I successfully raised 9.2 million dollars for a major research university to fund underrepresented minorities to study graduate-level science.<\/p>\n I’ve also raised thousands of dollars for a non-profit non-government organization to fund a child survival campaign, provide warm clothing for women participating in an off-season garden project, and build a handicapped artisan workshop in Niger, West Africa.<\/p>\n I can tell you because I’ve seen it happen in real time that it’s very easy to massage the numbers\u2014for or against what you believe to be true.<\/p>\n That is why you should not take my word, or anyone else’s, for anything.<\/p>\n You should read the studies yourself,<\/strong> even if you’re not a scientist. Analyze them thoughtfully,<\/strong> look at the way the experiments were implemented, pay attention to the numbers, the inevitable confirmation biases, the design flaws \u2026 and then draw your own conclusions.<\/strong><\/p>\n What will you uncover when you start doing research on childbirth best practices<\/a> (which is something I’ve been investigating and writing about for over ten years)?<\/p>\n That midwife-assisted planned home birth and planned hospital birth lead to many fewer complications and is often, if not always, safer than planned doctor-assisted hospital birth.<\/p>\n That, as Alice Dreger, a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, puts it, the most scientific birth is the least technological<\/a>.<\/p>\n That continuous electronic fetal monitoring during labor is not beneficial for fetal outcomes but has been shown to lead to unnecessary C-sections<\/a>.<\/p>\n That women do better with continuous labor support. (News flash ladies: that doctor you’ve spent at least six months developing a relationship with has no intention<\/strong> of being with you during your labor. She will come in when the birth is imminent. The rest of the time you will be on your own with labor nurses you’ve never met before and will never see again checking on you periodically. You might end up with angels. Or you might end up with angry<\/a> overworked overtired labor nurses like the one I had. I still remember her name: Ebony. She never bothered to learn mine.)<\/p>\n Planned\u00a0home birth is a safe option for most moms and their babies.<\/strong> We know this from over half a dozen studies of home birth in other countries. And now we have a large longitudinal study showing that home birth is also a safe option for American women.<\/p>\n Since I suggested you do your own reading, I’m including the study’s entire press release, published in\u00a0Journal of Midwifery & Women\u2019s Health<\/em>, here:<\/p>\n In the largest ever examination of planned home births in the United States, a study released today found that, among low-risk women, planned home births result in low rates of birth interventions without an increase in adverse outcomes for mothers and newborns.<\/p>\n The study\u2014which looked at nearly 17,000 women and their newborns\u2014found that for planned home births with a midwife in attendance:<\/p>\n PO Box 373 Montvale, NJ 07645<\/p>\n info@mana.org www.mana.org<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThese rates of intervention are significantly lower than those seen in U.S. hospitals, without a simultaneous increase in adverse outcomes,\u201d said Dr. Melissa Cheyney, PhD, CPM, LDM, Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology at Oregon State University, and lead author on the study. \u201cDirect comparisons cannot be made between home and hospital birth samples because of differences in risk level, but nonetheless these data are compelling. It should be possible to achieve lower c-section rates in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n The planned home study was released today in the Journal of Midwifery & Women\u2019s Health (JMWH) and was conducted by researchers at Oregon State University, Bastyr University, the University of California-Davis, and the University of British Columbia.<\/p>\n \u201cThis research tells us that, for low-risk women, a planned home birth with a midwife in the U.S. can be a safe option,\u201d said Cheyney. \u201cData from other countries have shown that planned home birth with a skilled midwife is safe for low-risk women. But there are enough differences between the U.S. and other high-resource nations that this question needed to be re-examined with a U.S. sample. Findings from our study, including low rates of interventions and low rates of death or injury, are comparable to findings reported in other large observational home birth studies from Europe and Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n The risk of death to the baby during labor, in the first week of life, or the first 28 days of life, was very low in this study. However, this risk was even lower when women with certain health issues or who were carrying babies that are considered to be in higher-risk categories were excluded from the analysis; for low-risk mothers, the risk of death to the baby was about 1.6 per thousand.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen parents are making a decision with their providers about place of birth, it is critical that they have access to the best possible evidence,\u201d said Cheyney. \u201cHome birth may not be the best choice for every pregnant woman, and risk factors must be weighed. However, our study suggests that for a healthy woman with a single, head- down, full-term baby, planned home birth with a midwife can be a safe option.\u201d<\/p>\n This study is based on a voluntary dataset collected by the Midwives Alliance of North America. A separate article, also released in the JMWH today, provides evidence of data validity. The MANAstats registry contains high-quality data. This data uses the gold standard\u2014the medical record\u2014instead of birth certificate data, which research shows is unreliable for studying intended place of birth and newborn outcomes.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal was to design a dataset that could help to reliably inform health care providers<\/a>, policy makers, and families about the outcomes of midwifery care in all birth settings, and the characteristics of normal physiologic birth,\u201d said Geradine Simkins, CNM, MSN, Executive Director, Midwives Alliance of North America.<\/p>\n \u201cPlanned home births are only a small percentage of all births in the U.S., but the numbers are growing each year. Given these data, we hope providers in all settings can learn from what\u2019s working well at planned home births.\u201d<\/p>\n Both articles will be available for free online for all of 2014. Go to www.jmwh.org, Find Articles, and then click on Early View. The articles will be live sometime today – watch mana.org for updates.<\/p>\n Copyright issues forbid me from publishing the entire study itself. But here’s a screen shot of the first page:<\/p>\n There will be backlash about this planned home birth information.\u00a0From birth haters. And women haters.<\/p>\n From people\u2014both women and men (but, sadly, mostly women)\u2014who don’t want you to have the right to choose where you have your baby. These are folks who gnash their teeth at every positive piece of evidence that reinforces the idea that birth is a natural, beautiful, wondrous process.<\/p>\n Read what they have to say too.\u00a0Some of their arguments may be valid.\u00a0Bringing another human being into the world via a planned home birth or a planned hospital birth involves risk.<\/p>\n There are incompetent or inexperienced practitioners in the planned home birth midwifery community. And there are incompetent and inexperienced doctors and nurses in the hospitals.<\/p>\n Sometimes these practitioners’ faulty judgment puts women at unnecessary risk. The fact that home birth midwifery is illegal in some states and that American doctors often antagonize and feel competitive with midwives<\/a> makes birth less safe for everyone.<\/p>\n But notice how the planned home birth haters launch ad hominem<\/em> attacks. They try to discredit researchers, organizations, journalists, and birth supporters by dismissing them. Instead of making rational arguments, they want to kill the messengers<\/a>, falsely claiming that the messengers are biased.<\/p>\n The personal attacks and rude language are childish and unfortunate. But one part of the haters’ premise is right: Those who advocate for a better safer birth environment for all women in America are biased.<\/p>\n Read everything you can.\u00a0Talk to everyone you can.\u00a0And then decide for yourself.<\/p>\n Published: January 30, 2014 Related articles:<\/strong> Today we’re talking about planned home birth and why there’s no place like home, which is often the best, safest, and most ecstatic place to have a baby. But first I have to admit my biases. Like every other person on the planet I have many. Here are some of mine: 1) I think having […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[626,5268,8162],"tags":[602,509,227,230,9529],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Obstetrics](\"http:\/\/www.jennifermargulis.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-Shot-2014-01-29-at-10.36.54-PM.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nTaking responsibility for a bad birth<\/strong><\/h3>\n
For a long time I drank the Kool-Aid<\/h3>\n
Hindered by hospital doctors and nurses, not helped<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"profit](\"http:\/\/www.jennifermargulis.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/profit-based-care.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThree babies born at home<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Birth matters<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Planned home birth: the most scientific birth is the least technological<\/strong><\/h3>\n
![\"Evidence](\"http:\/\/www.jennifermargulis.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Evidence-based-birth.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\nPress Release: Largest Ever U.S. Study On Planned Home Birth Finds Low Rate of Interventions, No Increased Risk for Mother and Baby<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n\n
\nBetter outcomes for mamas and babies<\/strong><\/h3>\n
A safe option<\/strong><\/h3>\n
High-quality data<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nConsider both sides<\/strong><\/h3>\n
We’re biased in favor of mothers and babies. In favor of healthy birth.\u00a0And in favor of happy moms.<\/h3>\n
\nUpdated: January 20, 2024<\/p>\n
\n45 Reasons Not to Have a Planned Home Birth<\/a>
\nA Doctor’s Thoughts on Planned Home Birth<\/a>
\nHow do you Know You’re Pregnant?<\/a>
\nHave Your Baby in the Bathtub<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"