Homebirths on the rise, and not a mention of fundies

[dcmhejbl62]

http://news.yahoo.com/home-birth-rise-d ... 57307.html

"The study, considered one of the largest for home births, showed 88 percent had positive outcomes, while 12 percent of the women were transferred to hospitals, including 9 percent for preventive reasons and 3 percent for emergencies."

That's more like 97% positive outcome to me. And the 3% emergencies was reassuring also; seems low compared to hospital births (where the high-risk pregnancies would skew the statistics somewhat) and it sounds like moms got appropriate emergency care when necessary.

Interesting that the women in the article were so vastly different from the ones we discuss here.

[maybeizfundie]

I've been part of a "natural" mother's board for years, and homebirth is the norm there. Fundamentalism is not.

I think hb is more often a natural follow-up of families looking to live a more earth-based life, not a function of being fundie. Some fundies do get into fits of natural-ness as part of being "godly" and hb follows that. But other people just prefer it.

I probably won't have a hb unless it's accidental (which is possible, as fast as my labors go). But the thought of it doesn't freak me out. And that has nothing to do with my faith, but everything to do with my experiences with birth and what I want in terms of health and interferance during a normal, non-emergent birth.

[Guest Anonymous]

Homebirth can be a viable option, but I feel the candidates need to be carefully screened and have a certified nurse midwife present (unless things go so quickly she/he can't get there). I always wonder what the role and lack of health coverage plays in these decisions. Someone very dear to me had a homebirth at the age of 44 with a Christian nurse midwife present - I felt like at that age she should at least be at a birthing center (and her previous midwife attended hospital labor lasted 3 days). But she didn't have maternity coverage, had prayed about her decision (I was hoping someone would hand her husband a sack of money and that she would go to a birthing center) and said she felt led to give birth at home. Luckily, all was well and her husband felt led to have a vasectomy soon after.

[apple1]

Homebirth can be a viable option, but I feel the candidates need to be carefully screened and have a certified nurse midwife present (unless things go so quickly she/he can't get there). I always wonder what the role and lack of health coverage plays in these decisions. Someone very dear to me had a homebirth at the age of 44 with a Christian nurse midwife present - I felt like at that age she should at least be at a birthing center (and her previous midwife attended hospital labor lasted 3 days). But she didn't have maternity coverage, had prayed about her decision (I was hoping someone would hand her husband a sack of money and that she would go to a birthing center) and said she felt led to give birth at home. Luckily, all was well and her husband felt led to have a vasectomy soon after.

Now that (bold) I can believe. Felt led = use the brain the good Lord gave you. Seriously.

[Juliakitty]

I always wonder what the role and lack of health coverage plays in these decisions.

That is why I had my homebirth. No maternity coverage and I didn't have $10,000 to pull out of my @*# to pay for a surprise pregnancy/birth. And the midwives who were there weren't CNMs either, but they knew what they were doing, so I felt safe with them. It just hurt like *@#$ and both my husband and I ended up getting fixed afterward. I don't really recommend homebirth, but I'm not opposed to it either as long as the attendants are qualified and there is backup emergency hospital care available at a moment's notice.

[lilwriter85]

Homebirth can be a viable option, but I feel the candidates need to be carefully screened and have a certified nurse midwife present (unless things go so quickly she/he can't get there). I always wonder what the role and lack of health coverage plays in these decisions. Someone very dear to me had a homebirth at the age of 44 with a Christian nurse midwife present - I felt like at that age she should at least be at a birthing center (and her previous midwife attended hospital labor lasted 3 days). But she didn't have maternity coverage, had prayed about her decision (I was hoping someone would hand her husband a sack of money and that she would go to a birthing center) and said she felt led to give birth at home. Luckily, all was well and her husband felt led to have a vasectomy soon after.

I agree candidates should be carefully screened.

[silverspoons]

15 years ago I only knew one person who had a homebirth and her mom and aunt were midwives so my friend saw it as the norm(though she did always say people like myself with health issues should be in a hospital setting). I think I knew so few people because the co-pay at my work for pregnancy was $100. $100 for the whole pregnancy even if you had complications. Now the deductible is 9k + 20% and now I know at least a dozen women who have done homebirths and most of the reason was the cost. I know the talk seems to center around for 9k+ you could take off extra time 3 or more months off from work, or re-do your kitchen or start a college fund or some just can't afford the cost and the one HMO that dominates 95% of the hospitals in our state has no problem suing you for what you owe, usually exactly 365 days after the birth(seen a few people lose thier homes).

One of the homebirths had complications but it was her not the baby so most people were not that scared off by it.

For my own health reason I would always choose to go to a hospital but I think everyone should be able to choose what is comfortable for them without worrying about cost. Hospital births cost inflation is so out of control. My neighbor showed me she paid $171 in 1974, and $380 in 1980 for the total birth, her husband made about $6k in 1974 and 20k in 1980. Today the same birth would cost min 9k and the average wage in our area is 40k.

[Guest Anonymous]

Ironically enough, if I were to get pregnant (not likely given my age), it would be better for my health and our finances to divorce my husband, quit any gainful employment and file for medicaid. That way at least I would have coverage for the birth and the baby would have some healthcare while still an infant. I learned a few home truths regarding access to health care last fall when I broke my finger and needed surgery - the surgeon who got 4 carpal tunnel surgeries off of me and mine would not even return an e-mail. Hindsight being 20/20, I would have gone to the ER and then sorted out the bills. Now I'm left with a permanent (though minor) deformity and the promise of some real fun with arthritis in the future.

[Brainsample]

These are all societal trends, and it is pathetic that a bunch of wackos are claiming to be the cause of all that.

Martha Stewart became popular and women started staying at home because we'd finally recovered from the tight money of the late 70s and the early 80s. There was more money for everyone, so fewer people had to work to survive. More of those ebul heathens were deciding to keep their non-elect babies rather than abort them. Pregnancy rates started to drop and births started to rise.

It had more to do with the zeitgeist of the generation and their response and reaction to the stuff that their parents did that they didn't like (or what their parents wished they didn't have to do because those were the only options available to them). And no one liked thinking about the average family having 2.1 children or whatever that statistic was, wondering if perhaps they were the 0.1 kid. So when it was their turn to do what they wanted, they decided to make sure that none of their kid would have to worry about being a partial percentile kid.

[emmiedahl]

I was really hoping that healthcare reform would include an expansion of Medicaid to cover a lot more people. I think pregnant women should be offered Medicaid in all circumstances because a negative outcome will be so expensive for the state in the long run. It will save money. People should not go cheap on prenatal care.

Instead, we get a mandate to buy coverage and I still can't afford it.

[Katiebug]

I admit, homebirth made me nervous and I knew it wasn't for me. I would rather risk unnecessary intervention and be in a place where they can do a crash C-section in the (admittedly unlikely) event the stuff hits the proverbial fan. A lot of the recent uptick in homebirths probably comes from the more crunchy/natural living folks versus fundies. The hospital-based maternity healthcare experience can either be really good or really bad, depending on your socioeconomic/insurance status and the quality and attitude of the OBGYNs and/or CNMs caring for you.

I have a strong family history of pre-eclampsia and while I had a healthy, normal pregnancy I developed fairly bad pre-eclampsia at 38+ weeks, was put on bedrest over a weekend, and was induced at 39 weeks. I'm young and healthy and I still had complications. I was afraid of the "cascade of interventions" and I had to have an IV, Cervidil, Pitocin, magnesium sulfate, and be on continuous external monitors. Heck, I had to be bedridden on mag sulfate for almost 24 hours postpartum, with vitals hourly and blood draws every 4 hours to make sure it wasn't poisoning me. About all I could do was lay there feeling groggy and nurse the baby. Despite all of that, my OB and the nurses made it a special and happy experience.

If I'd tried a homebirth with lay midwives the baby and/or I might have died. Any competent homebirth CNM would have risked me out as soon as my BP hit the roof and I would have had a hospital birth anyways. The way it shook out, I had my OB who had done all of my prenatal care with us for the diagnosis, the induction, and the delivery. In the end he was the one who caught our daughter and I was very happy to have had that continuity of care. If I'd gone for a homebirth and risked out, I'd have been meeting the doctor for the first or second time when I went in to be induced and that level of mutual understanding and trust would not have been there.

The bills for my fairly routine induction and delivery were insane. I saved them all and totaled them up, and between me and the baby it was well over $10K, and my prenatal care had been $4K before that! Thank heavens for insurance. I can understand why people with lousy or no insurance might go for a homebirth for financial reasons.

[Shoobydoo]

I agree candidates should be carefully screened.

I left several comments amounting to that. A lot of commenters seemed to go "DURR HURRR IF OUR ANCESTORS DID IT THEN IS MUST BE GOOD FOR US WHAT ARE INFANT MORTALITY RATES" :evil: I would never, ever have a home birth myself, but in some cases it is a perfectly viable option. What a lot of people don't understand is that women are healthy enough to give birth so successfully because of modern health and prenatal care. The average mother-to-be today is a LOT healthier than the average mom 150 years ago. I even looked up some stats about it, but posting anything intelligent on yahoo is like throwing cake into a sewer.

Sorry for the rant, but sweeping dismissal of the benefits of modern healthcare as "unnecessary" really gets my goat. I probably would have died as a toddler if it weren't for antibiotics, and those same types of inventions have saved millions and will go on to save millions worldwide. It takes a special kind of privilege to get to the point where you can discount something so basic and vital as competent healthcare and disease prevention as unnecessary drivel.

ETA: Because it's not really clear, I'm complaining about the numbnuts who comprise most of Yahoo's commenter base, not the article itself.