reputable homebirth info/stats needed

On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 10:24:58 +1100, Daye wrote:


Sure, I paid for it with my taxes, but I really believe
that Australia's is a MUCH, MUCH better system.

We also tend to pay far less for it. For example, in the UK the
average c-section delivery costs the NHS about £2500 (US$4000),
including ante- and post-natal care. I've heard figures several times
that quoted for US deliveries alone.

Megan
--
Seoras David Montgomery, 7th May 2003, 17 hours. http://seoras.farr-montgomery.com
EDD 11th March 2005 (another boy!)

In ,
Mum of Two wrote:

*Sorry to reply to my own post, but I can't believe I forgot to add amnio &
*CVS, which it seems are way over-used in the US and killed my friend's
*daughter (amnio). Amnio is available here when you are over 35 or there is a
*strong indication there could be something wrong with your baby, but there
*certainly isn't the pressure to have it and I could count on half a hand the
*number of women I've heard of who've had it.

Pressure to have it? Well, I'm 34 and have not been pressured to have it.
Or do you mean you think women over 35 are pressured to have it? That
would surprise me. My doc has repeatedly made comments to the effect that
"if you were over 35 of course we'd offer an amniocentesis..." (this in
the context of my having raised the subject of prenatal testing options)
but that's just it - would OFFER, not would URGE or SUGGEST or whatever.
OFFER does not sound like pressuring to me. but who knows.

--
Hillary Israeli, VMD
Lafayette Hill/PA/USA/Earth
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is
too dark to read." --Groucho Marx

In ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

*Hillary Israeli wrote:
*
* In ,
* Unadulterated Me wrote:
*
* *Your the one living in the country that still has routine circ,
* *
* *
* * Umm....
* * and...? Because many parents make a choice you obviously disagree
* * with....? what's your point?
* *
* *My point is it's an outdated routine practice. If informed parents in
*
* My definition of "routine practice" is one that is done unless or until
* someone specifically issues an order against it.
*
* I don't think that's the typical definition of "routine"
*when it comes to medical procedures. "Routine" in that context
*usually means "done under normal circumstances" or "done without
*medical cause." For instance, a routine mid-trimester ultrasound
*is one that's done for just because it's about 20 weeks rather
*than one that's done because there's a medical indication.

Well, exactly, that's the same thing. They do it at 20 weeks unless
someone says "no, I don't want you to do it," and prevents it from being
done. It's routine. That's exactly what I meant.

h.

--
Hillary Israeli, VMD
Lafayette Hill/PA/USA/Earth
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is
too dark to read." --Groucho Marx

Uh, if homebirth rates are allowed to exclude high risk situations (which
would make homebirth seem quite safe), is it fair to compare them with ALL
hospital births, which by their nature would include most high-risk
pregnancies?

I would think that the best statistic would be low-risk pregnancies/births
at home vs low risk pregnancies/ births in a birthing center vs low risk
pregnancies/births in a hospital.

The second best probably would be what was done in the ACOG study-look at
ALL births within a time frame, sort by where they happened, and not sort
for low risk/high risk-but this isn't going to give really indicative
results to a low-risk mother.

Hillary Israeli wrote:

In ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

*Hillary Israeli wrote:
*
* In ,
* Unadulterated Me wrote:
*
* *Your the one living in the country that still has routine circ,
* *
* *
* * Umm....
* * and...? Because many parents make a choice you obviously disagree
* * with....? what's your point?
* *
* *My point is it's an outdated routine practice. If informed parents in
*
* My definition of "routine practice" is one that is done unless or until
* someone specifically issues an order against it.
*
* I don't think that's the typical definition of "routine"
*when it comes to medical procedures. "Routine" in that context
*usually means "done under normal circumstances" or "done without
*medical cause." For instance, a routine mid-trimester ultrasound
*is one that's done for just because it's about 20 weeks rather
*than one that's done because there's a medical indication.

Well, exactly, that's the same thing. They do it at 20 weeks unless
someone says "no, I don't want you to do it," and prevents it from being
done. It's routine. That's exactly what I meant.

Hmmm...I guess because you were arguing that circ. isn't
routine by your definition, I wasn't making that connection. In
much of the country the default assumption is that the baby will
be circ'ed unless you say no. Obviously, with informed consent
laws you generally have to sign for it, but the people I know
IRL have been handed those papers in the stack of routine paperwork
and the whole thing has been dealt with as a matter of routine.
In other words, if you just signed off on what they routinely handed
you, your baby boy would be circ'ed. To me, that's routine circ.
because it's the default practice, even though legally you have
to sign off on it (just as you have to agree to a routine u/s).
Sorry if I'm misinterpreting you.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Hillary Israeli wrote:

Pressure to have it? Well, I'm 34 and have not been pressured to have it.
Or do you mean you think women over 35 are pressured to have it? That
would surprise me. My doc has repeatedly made comments to the effect that
"if you were over 35 of course we'd offer an amniocentesis..." (this in
the context of my having raised the subject of prenatal testing options)
but that's just it - would OFFER, not would URGE or SUGGEST or whatever.
OFFER does not sound like pressuring to me. but who knows.

Obviously, we're in different states, so perhaps the issue
is geographical, but *many* women IRL over 35 have said things to
me either indicating that their doctors *strongly* recommended
amnio for them, that their doctors attempted to persuade them
to do it after their first refusal, or that they were surprised
to learn that they could have refused.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Donna Metler wrote:

Uh, if homebirth rates are allowed to exclude high risk situations (which
would make homebirth seem quite safe), is it fair to compare them with ALL
hospital births, which by their nature would include most high-risk
pregnancies?

I don't think that's what she was advocating. She was
saying that any study comparing homebirth vs. hospital birth
from 34 weeks' gestation on is a deeply flawed study because
no reputable homebirth care provider would plan to attend a
34 week birth. That's an automatic transfer to a hospital birth
with any reputable caregiver I've ever seen. The *existence*
of any 34-37 week births categorized as planned homebirths
indicates that the study is not properly allocating it's
subjects to the correct groups.

I would think that the best statistic would be low-risk pregnancies/births
at home vs low risk pregnancies/ births in a birthing center vs low risk
pregnancies/births in a hospital.

Absolutely, and that's what respectable studies do (and
there are several of them out there). This study didn't do that.

The second best probably would be what was done in the ACOG study-look at
ALL births within a time frame, sort by where they happened, and not sort
for low risk/high risk-but this isn't going to give really indicative
results to a low-risk mother.

The flaws run far more deeply than that. This
approach really isn't adequate for this sort of study.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Hmmm...I guess because you were arguing that circ. isn't
routine by your definition, I wasn't making that connection. In
much of the country the default assumption is that the baby will
be circ'ed unless you say no. Obviously, with informed consent
laws you generally have to sign for it, but the people I know
IRL have been handed those papers in the stack of routine paperwork
and the whole thing has been dealt with as a matter of routine.
In other words, if you just signed off on what they routinely handed
you, your baby boy would be circ'ed. To me, that's routine circ.
because it's the default practice, even though legally you have
to sign off on it (just as you have to agree to a routine u/s).
Sorry if I'm misinterpreting you.

Best wishes,
Ericka

I dont know how they do it at other hospitals since I have only had one boy
but we got a packet of routine paper work and then the nurse came by later
and asked about Circ. and then depending on the answer gave you a consent
form.

Tori

--
Bonnie 3/20/02
Xavier 10/27/04

"Donna Metler" wrote in message .. .
"Sue" wrote in message
...
Just like you believe what your media tell you about the situation in
the middle east or what's happening in the rest of the world? I hardly
think someone from the US should be throwing stones about biased one
sided opinions formed from the media.

I never said that I believed everything I read or saw. Quite contrary. I
take everything with a grain of salt and always have. You know absolutely
nothing about what I believe.

Actually, I believe almost NOTHING coming over the US media on the middle
east-and I would say that a good % of the population is similarly minded. We
know it's biased.

By the same token, people *everywhere* in the world would be advised
to realize that their media is likely to be biased. It's just that
media elsewhere has *different* biases than media in the US. You
really have to look at media from multiple sources to arrive at
something that approaches a true picture of reality (and even then, it
will only *approach* reality, not match it with 100% accuracy).
--
Be well, Barbara

(Cathy Weeks) wrote in message . com...
Unadulterated Me wrote in message ...

*snorts her soda and tries not to laugh*
FREE? You think it's free??

Oh calm down before you blow a vein, you know what I meant, it's free as
in the consumer does not pay for her maternity care, the government
does. It's funded by our taxes, along with other general health care,
education, roads and other things.

Look, I agree with most of your points about the problems we have over
here, but to claim that it's free is just plain silly. You DO pay for
it with higher taxes. Healthcare is expensive. The difference is
HOW/WHEN you pay for it, not IF.

But health care is plainly *more* expensive and, in some ways, less
efficient when it is left to the free market. Part of the reason
health care costs in the US have skyrocketed is that the
capitalist/free market model doesn't really work very well for health
care. Why doesn't it? Because in a capitalist model, the provider of
good/services makes money by selling those goods or services to as
many people as many times as possible at as high a price as the market
will bear. In addition, if the market price of a particular good is
too low to make it very profitable but is likely to be purchased by
many people, then the producer benefits by making *less* of it than
the actual demand, thus causing the price to rise. (Witness the flu
vaccine debacle this year. Even if half the US supply hadn't been
contaminated and unfit for sale, there probably would have been more
demand for those vaccines than supply.)

The free-market model for healthcare delivery deserves to die a quick
and painful death. It doesn't work.

There are problems either way... Here's it's more expensive
out-of-pocket, but it's much easier to get what you want (though not
in childbirth - we ARE backward).

But part of the reason healthcare is exorbitantly expensive in the US
is that people often get what they want even when they don't NEED it.
People are getting lots of procedures, tests, and medications that
they don't actually NEED because they WANT them. That's not good
medicine, IMO, although it may very well be good *business*.

Another thing that people are often not aware of is the degree to
which the coverage provided by their health care plan determines which
treatment options their physicians offer them. A friend of mine
recently told us a rather chilling story about his father's bout with
thyroid cancer. Basically, his doctor wanted to put the father on a
drug that the family researched and discovered had a number of
drawbacks that another drug didn't have. They asked the doctor why
their father couldn't have the other drug instead and why the doctor
didn't even mention it. Doctor explained that the other drug was not
covered by their father's insurance. Family said, "We'll pay
out-of-pocket, then, to get him the better treatment." They were
concerned about the cost, but it turned out that a month's supply was
a mere $30! Yet the doctor held back information about this possible
drug solely because it wasn't covered under the patient's insurance.
Had the family not been willing/able to do their own research, they
might well have thought the other, worse drug was the only option.

There it's less out of pocket, but
access is harder in some ways.

My suspicion is that the reduced or difficult access card is played by
the current beneficiaries of the free market medical system in the US
because they know it scares Americans. In point of fact, I have met
relatively few people from countries with single-payer systems who
were particularly dissatisfied with "access" per se, though they
sometimes had to wait a long time to see specialists. (Given that I've
found the wait to see pediatric neurologists to be 3-4 months in my
city, I don't see how a single-payer system could make it any worse,
frankly.)
--
Be well, Barbara