Home Births. They honestly make me mad.

The title says it all. I think allowing anyone to have a home birth these days is an utterly ridiculous concept. Midwife assisted or not, to me, it's simply too risky.

Okay, okay - I know I've already pissed off many people. But it's my opinion. If you are one of the people who got pissed off, think of it this way - you think it's ridiculous so many women have hospital births, right? Well, I feel the exact same way, we're just opposite. One of those "I'll have my opinion, you have yours."

But this is my space to rant and rave if I want to, so I'm going to throw down my opinion.

I understand there is way too much medical intervention with births now. Most women just have too much interference, c-sections, etc. But ... it's their choice. They could have gone to a birthing center and requested a natural birth with the assistance of positioning, water, walking, whatever. Just because it's a hospital doesn't mean you will be strapped down to a board to allow the medical staff do whatever they want to you.

I also understand how a home birth can be the most personal experience ever. You are totally in charge. You can birth your own child into a bathtub. You can play music and light candles and bring your baby into the world however you want to. I definitely see the magic in this situation. And it's something you really just can't get at most hospitals. I get this. I do.

What I do not get is why anyone would put their child are risk. For the purpose of this post, I did a bit of research and looked into some professional medical studies. These are random stats I pulled from medical sources, so I am not saying these are the be-all-end-all statistics. But for sake of what I'm talking about, it's good enough.

Note: I was very careful to not use any statistics from "pro home birth" or "anti home birth" groups, because their data is skewed. For instance - one pro home birth group mentioned more babies died during birth by a physician than a midwife. But what's not taken into account is high risk babies are usually not delivered by midwives, and have been referred to a physician from the beginning. Midwives tend to deliver mostly healthy, low risk pregnancies, so this is always something to think about when looking at pro-anything sites and statistics.

~ Women who gave birth at home had fewer procedures, inductions, epidurals, drugs, episiotomies and c-sections than the women in hospitals. (um, "duh"?)
~ There are 40% more complications for unassisted births.
~ .025% of babies die during (or immediately after) birth at hospitals.
~ .125% of babies die during (or immediate after) home births.

Did you catch the last 2 statistics? FIVE times more babies die from childbirth at home than in the hospital. In googling, I was appalled how many babies died from drowning at home water births. There were pages and pages of results. Then there were the cord issues and baby getting stuck in birth canal and breech babies dying during delivery. These are all normal risks any woman takes when giving birth, but the bottom line is - it is usually caught faster. And if something has to be done, like an immediate c-section where you have only 2 minutes to get the baby out alive, being ~in~ a hospital is going to give you that chance of getting your baby out alive.

I understand the risk of fetal demise during birth is low. With numbers like .025% and .125%, the chances you'll have a live baby are 99.975% and 99.875% respectively. Personally, I just couldn't chance it.

How could I live with myself if my baby died from a result of wanting a home birth? In one of the
results I read from my google search on home birth references, I read that in choosing home birth, one of the prerequisites is having a partnership strong enough to be able to live through fetal demise without blame in the process or one another. Wow. But it makes sense. If your baby dies at the hospital, you are probably going to be full of blame at the hospital and/or staff. But if your baby dies from a home birth, you are not going to have anyone to blame but one another, so this particular home birth group discusses this before hand. Quite smart actually.

I do feel compassion for the women who want to have their own birthing experience. I do get how so much is taken away from the experience when at a hospital. Even if you have a strict birthing plan, docs and nurses do tend to push for all kinds of medical things. The only way you can ensure you will be listened to 100% is to have a birth away from these people, which then you are risking your baby's life. Ugh. I guess I would just try to go to a birthing center where the rooms try to give you the feel of home. No medical type beds. No medical equipment. It tries to imitate what your own home would feel like, allowing you to bring in anything necessary. The problem is these types of centers are not available everywhere.

For those choosing a home birth despite the risks, I say good luck. 99.875% of you will have a newborn in your arms after having the perfect birth experience, which is the experience ~you~ got to choose. I just wish .125% of you won't have to fall into the other side of the statistics. The unfortunate truth is there will be a group who will end up empty handed. 1% of all births in the US are home births. With about 4,000,000 births every year, home births account for 40,000 births. 50 of these babies will die. If these 40,000 babies were born in a hospital, 10 babies would have died. 40 mothers would have been able to bring their babies home instead of making funeral arrangements.

What I am about to say doesn't really fit into my post here, since I'm focusing on a the risk of fetal demise instead of delving into all the reasons why a mother would want to have a home birth. But when I discussed this topic on the "pregnancy after infertility" website yesterday, this 'argument' was brought up. When speaking of unassisted childbirth, "women have been giving birth without a hospital since the beginning of time" has been used as a reason. True. But did you know the infant mortality rate in 1800 was 50%? And the maternal death rate was 1%? In 1900, the infant mortality rate was down to 30% and the maternal mortality rate was .9%. Today, the risk of dying at birth is .025% for the 99% of hospital births and .125% for home births. And the maternal death rate is .0011%. Why do you think this is? Because we continue to do the things we did at the beginning of time? Or maybe it's because of medical advances. Hrm, I just don't know what answer is the right one.