home birth

Cathy Weeks wrote:
Ok... you did mention your status as a primary infertile, which made it
SOUND like you were whining.

Oh, p-****ing-lease. It's like comparing someone who is blind to
someone who can't decide what lens frames to buy. Get it? There is no
comparison. Excuse me if I have no sympathy for you. I'm not whining
- I have *no* desire to have pregnancy or birth at all - that desire
left me shortly after we brought DS home. My point WAS that this
argument falls on many deaf ears - it's simply NOT an important issue
in the grand scheme of reproduction. If all you have to worry about is
whether or not you can birth your child at home, then your life is
pretty damn sweet.


But either way - accept for a moment that not everyone agrees with you
about the "safety" of all hospital births.

Stop putting words in my mouth. No where did I say all hospital births
are, by default, safe.

Stop thinking of us as
nutcakes, and just accept it for a moment. I don't like hospitals. I
don't like how they smell, and I don't like having the janitor outside
my room while I'm stalking around naked. And I don't like having nurse
after nurse whom I don't know, come in and stick her fingers in my
vagina every hour (another practice that has been shown to increase the
chances of infection). And then, when my legs are spreadeagled, I'm in
pain, and in THE MOST vulnerable situation in my life, and some doctor,
whom I've never met comes in and catches my baby for me, and before
that decides to cut my vagina (episiotomies are considered the most
common unnecessary surgery in america, and the ACOG now recommends
against their routine use, not that the OBs actually go by their
recommendations) whether *I* like it or not (that happened to my
stepson's mom, and my husband had nightmares about that for years).

eyeball roll It sounds like to me that you have never had a major
medical problem, nor a major medical procedure. I had my ass up in
those stirrups at least twice a month, every month for two and a half
years - with a metal speculum and a god damn huge dick-shaped
ultrasound probe shove up my butterfly, not to mention every other
invasive procedure I went through at the time. One day of exposure and
embarassment sounds trivial to me, when the reward is a baby to take
home.


So your "little sympathy" seems incredibly... well wierd. It's like
saying that I shouldn't have the choice of what doctor to go to, what
dentist, what school my child attends. Where to give birth is similar.

Where did I ever say you shouldn't have the choice? AlI have ever said
is that you are ****ing nuts and that I don't want to fund them - via
insurance or medicaid.

-L.

-L. wrote:
[snip]
nope. Hospitals have a ton of trained specialists to call upon should
a problem arrive. You have yourself, your kiddie pool, a
granola-crunching midwife who fancies herself a doctor and your husband
who probably couldn't find the clitoris without a map.

[snip]

That goes back to Chookie's point about different countries varying
in the way homebirths take place.

In my country, the difference between a planned homebirth and a planned
hospital birth is ...well, a planned homebirth starts with the
medically trained midwife coming to your house when you are in labour,
and with a planned hospital birth, you go to the medically trained
midwives in hospital when you are in labour. The pre-labour
monitoring etc are the same.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

In article .com, -L. says...


Cathy Weeks wrote:
Ok... you did mention your status as a primary infertile, which made it
SOUND like you were whining.

Oh, p-****ing-lease. It's like comparing someone who is blind to
someone who can't decide what lens frames to buy. Get it? There is no
comparison. Excuse me if I have no sympathy for you. I'm not whining
- I have *no* desire to have pregnancy or birth at all - that desire
left me shortly after we brought DS home. My point WAS that this
argument falls on many deaf ears - it's simply NOT an important issue
in the grand scheme of reproduction. If all you have to worry about is
whether or not you can birth your child at home, then your life is
pretty damn sweet.


But either way - accept for a moment that not everyone agrees with you
about the "safety" of all hospital births.

Stop putting words in my mouth. No where did I say all hospital births
are, by default, safe.

Stop thinking of us as
nutcakes, and just accept it for a moment. I don't like hospitals. I
don't like how they smell, and I don't like having the janitor outside
my room while I'm stalking around naked. And I don't like having nurse
after nurse whom I don't know, come in and stick her fingers in my
vagina every hour (another practice that has been shown to increase the
chances of infection). And then, when my legs are spreadeagled, I'm in
pain, and in THE MOST vulnerable situation in my life, and some doctor,
whom I've never met comes in and catches my baby for me, and before
that decides to cut my vagina (episiotomies are considered the most
common unnecessary surgery in america, and the ACOG now recommends
against their routine use, not that the OBs actually go by their
recommendations) whether *I* like it or not (that happened to my
stepson's mom, and my husband had nightmares about that for years).

eyeball roll It sounds like to me that you have never had a major
medical problem, nor a major medical procedure. I had my ass up in
those stirrups at least twice a month, every month for two and a half
years - with a metal speculum and a god damn huge dick-shaped
ultrasound probe shove up my butterfly, not to mention every other
invasive procedure I went through at the time. One day of exposure and
embarassment sounds trivial to me, when the reward is a baby to take
home.


So your "little sympathy" seems incredibly... well wierd. It's like
saying that I shouldn't have the choice of what doctor to go to, what
dentist, what school my child attends. Where to give birth is similar.

Where did I ever say you shouldn't have the choice? AlI have ever said
is that you are ****ing nuts and that I don't want to fund them - via
insurance or medicaid.

-L.


Yep, Cathy, it's a whine. A big melodramatic whine.

Banty

-L. wrote:
Cathy Weeks wrote:

Well, no he's not. But does my husband carry germs that are likely to
give my baby an illness the way a doctor would? Nope. Iatrogenic
infections ARE a real risk in the hospital and are not at home.

Oh, please! Doctors scrub *way* better than any midwife or layman
could. An acquired infection is most likely acquired through the air -
not from a doctor's hands.

Oh how wrong you are! This is the bane of hospital infection control
staff everywhe getting doctors to *wash* their hands!!!

I can't find it at the moment, but in the spring there was a great
research article in which doctors were asked to put their hands on a
culture plate. And then see what grew. You'd be *shocked*.

The hospital ICs have been asking us for recommendations on how to
*force* doctors to wash their hands for the sake of infection control,
but it's hard to force anyone to do anything.

Don't believe what you see on TV. I'm sure surgeons scrub more when
they're going into surgery, but docs going into rooms? Nope.

On 20 Dec 2006 06:40:45 -0800, "cjra" wrote:


Oh how wrong you are! This is the bane of hospital infection control
staff everywhe getting doctors to *wash* their hands!!!

I can't find it at the moment, but in the spring there was a great
research article in which doctors were asked to put their hands on a
culture plate. And then see what grew. You'd be *shocked*.

The hospital ICs have been asking us for recommendations on how to
*force* doctors to wash their hands for the sake of infection control,
but it's hard to force anyone to do anything.

Don't believe what you see on TV. I'm sure surgeons scrub more when
they're going into surgery, but docs going into rooms? Nope.

Hah, I have to agree 100%. In the 4 times I was hospitalized in the
last 2 years I never saw a Dr. wash his/her hands when coming to my
room. I know there was not a sink for them to use outside my room,
and I know they did not wash their hands upon leaving my room before
going to the next patient.

And there was a container of hand gel right near the door for their
use. Now the nurses used it each and every time they came in.

Nan

Penny Gaines wrote:
-L. wrote:
[snip]
nope. Hospitals have a ton of trained specialists to call upon should
a problem arrive. You have yourself, your kiddie pool, a
granola-crunching midwife who fancies herself a doctor and your husband
who probably couldn't find the clitoris without a map.

[snip]

That goes back to Chookie's point about different countries varying
in the way homebirths take place.

In my country, the difference between a planned homebirth and a planned
hospital birth is ...well, a planned homebirth starts with the
medically trained midwife coming to your house when you are in labour,
and with a planned hospital birth, you go to the medically trained
midwives in hospital when you are in labour. The pre-labour
monitoring etc are the same.


In the Netherlands, the figures I've seen have been more than 50% of
births are at home, and approx. 90% of births are midwife attended. Yet
their infant mortality rate is much lower than in the US. (I don't have
the articles handy, perhaps someone else does, to give the references,
but infant mortality is easy to look up)

Clearly, the 'quacks' who homebirth are doing something right.

-L. wrote:
But either way - accept for a moment that not everyone agrees with you
about the "safety" of all hospital births.

Stop putting words in my mouth. No where did I say all hospital births
are, by default, safe.

Stop thinking of us as
nutcakes, and just accept it for a moment. I don't like hospitals. I
don't like how they smell, and I don't like having the janitor outside
my room while I'm stalking around naked. And I don't like having nurse
after nurse whom I don't know, come in and stick her fingers in my
vagina every hour (another practice that has been shown to increase the
chances of infection). And then, when my legs are spreadeagled, I'm in
pain, and in THE MOST vulnerable situation in my life, and some doctor,
whom I've never met comes in and catches my baby for me, and before
that decides to cut my vagina (episiotomies are considered the most
common unnecessary surgery in america, and the ACOG now recommends
against their routine use, not that the OBs actually go by their
recommendations) whether *I* like it or not (that happened to my
stepson's mom, and my husband had nightmares about that for years).

eyeball roll It sounds like to me that you have never had a major
medical problem, nor a major medical procedure. I had my ass up in
those stirrups at least twice a month, every month for two and a half
years - with a metal speculum and a god damn huge dick-shaped
ultrasound probe shove up my butterfly, not to mention every other
invasive procedure I went through at the time. One day of exposure and
embarassment sounds trivial to me, when the reward is a baby to take
home.

So, let me get this straight.

1. You don't think hospitals are by default safe.
2. But home births are by nature SO unsafe, that you have to be ****ing
nuts to do it.
3. But taking ANY chance that your baby might die is unacceptable,
depsite the fact that hospitals have their own set of risks where your
baby might die, simply BECAUSE you are in the hospital.
4. You've come to these decisions without doing one shred of research,
nor will you consider ANY research that shows that for low-risk
pregnancies, home birth is as safe as the hospital.
5. You don't want to give birth and prefer to adopt.
6. You tried to get pregnant for years, and suffered many indignities
in the process, despite preferring not to have to squeeze him out.
7. You think that women who do not wish to go through said indiginties
are whiners because they'd rather NOT have strangers shove speculums,
fingers, etc into their vaginas.
8. You assume that midwives are untrained quacks, despite the fact that
the average midwive has had 6 years of medical training, and more than
2 years more OB training than family practice physicians. Certifiied
Nurse Midwives have 4 years of college, and usually 2-4 more years of
specialty OB training. They are trusted by the medical and
pharmaceutical boards to write prescriptions that are honored at any
pharmacy, yet you boil them down to quackery.
9. You don't think taxes or insurance dollars should pay for midwifery
care, despite their having A) lower rates of C-sections, B) lower rates
of maternal mortality, C) similar rates of infant mortality, and being
cheaper to the taxpayers and insurance companies
9. But you don't believe the above statement, despite having done no
research one way or the other to see if it's true.

I see.

I might also add, that if you DID find research that proves your side
of things, I WOULD change my mind. But you also have to find the
studies that are well constructed and without serious methodological
flaws (you do know how to spot those, right?)

But, I doubt you are up to such research, because you aren't interested
in anything that doesn't suit your pre-conceived notions.

Cathy Weeks

-L. wrote:

You don't care any more than I don't care about what you believe.
"Data" is only as reliable as the people who fund it and publish it.

Interesting. What else is there for us to make decisions about the
relatively safety of anything?

How can anyone reasonably make ANY informed choice about anything at
all?

And when a doctor hands you a form that says you have a 1-in-X chance
of having this complication, why would you believe it, given what you
believe about data?

Cathy Weeks

Ericka Kammerer wrote:
wrote:

I don't think care necessarily needs to be transfered, but I think the
MFM should be called in for oversight according to the NIH Working
Group guidelines and that testing should follow those recommendations.

Hmmm...I agree that the testing should be done.
I don't know that I think MFM oversight should be required
in all such situations (depending on what you mean by
"oversight"). I'm not sure what oversight would be
required. If guidelines are clear on the indications
for testing, and the tests are done, I wouldn't think
it would be necessary to bring in a specialist until
and unless the test results move into the realm where
they're at least suggestive of a problem that would
benefit from a specialist considering the results.
Otherwise, you've all of a sudden got a whole lot of
unnecessary demand for specialists. As long as the
test results and monitoring suggest that there is no
pre-eclampsia, a midwife should be capable of continuing
to order appropriate tests and performing appropriate
monitoring. As soon as test results support a diagnosis
of pre-eclampsia (or if the results are in a gray area),
I would agree with oversight. I just don't see why
oversight would be beneficial (especially given the
cost) prior to that point.

Ah, that's probably because you're thinking I'm worried about "a touch
of high bp". :-) I'm worried about women who hit two readings of
140/90 plus a dipstick of +1 not being sent for a 24-hour because their
bloodwork came back good -- when bloodwork is only diagnostic in severe
PE, and mild is dxed with a 24-hour of 300 mg/dL. I'm also worried
about women who aren't followed up on assiduously when they show a rise
of 30/15 or a trace dipstick. Women who call in worried about their bp
and are told that they're probably anxious and they shouldn't take
their bp so often (raises hand.)

Now, one might argue that there's a problem
if some caregivers don't respond well enough to
early indicators, but when that's the case, there's
a bigger problem. *Someone* has to notice indicators
and run tests before the appropriate care can happen.
That can only be dealt with via education, regardless
of the type of caregiver or the setting, unless we're
going to send everyone to a specialist. Still, as you
point out elsewhere, we should soon have a good
screening test that will allow us to send virtually
all of the at-risk women to a specialist plenty early
for appropriate oversight.

Exactly. I think we will still need good education for the rare cases
-- what about a woman with a clean test at 20 weeks, and 4 previous
spontaneous vaginal deliveries with no change in her bp, whose
umbillical artery clots off at 34 weeks and infarcts three quarters of
the placenta, for example -- but we should be able shortly to eliminate
this whole problem. I am inclined to think it might eliminate the need
for OBs, actually -- we'd need midwives, and MFMs, and why would we
need OBs?

--
C

Of course she does - she isn't going to blame herself. The website is
in poor taste - dead baby photos are disgusting. That aside, there is
nothing on that website that discusses his condition other than the
fact that she had a long labor, had trouble "getting pushing", etc -
sounds like a classic case of ****ty birth to me. The kid essentially
went without oxygen so long that by the time they got him to breathe,
it was too late.

his cord was attached and pulsing and oxygen was given as soon as they were
aware their was a problem, which was just as soon at home as it would have
been at hospital, where it's entirely possible the cord would have been cut
and brain damage occured sooner. The only difference would be that once
resus started in the home/ambulance situation there would have been longer
bagging before intubation and venilation, but either way the damage had
already been done and would have been done in hospital.

I think you overestimate the politeness of doctors in keeping their mouths
shut when they thing something is someones fault, many women who have
transferred from homebirths have suffered bullying from doctors, when there
has been absolutely no justification for it.

Megan is an educated and intelligent women, whatever doctors said to her,
she will have worked past that to get the truth, had she gone on to have a
hospital birth, or even an elective c-section, no one would have judged her,
but they could have happily brushed aside her thoughts about the previous
birth, but the fact she went the same route again, I think with the same
midwife, confirms everything she said about making the right decision, would
she really have birthed at home again if she had even the slightest belief
that that choice first time round killed her baby. Homebirth does, rarely,
cause babies to die, but you're using a bad example here.

Anne