There’s No Place Like Home … To Give Birth

A great article by Emily Willingham over on Slate.com After a traumatic hospital experience with the birth of her first child, she chose to birth at home the next time. Professionally she is a developmental biologist and is not one "given to unscientific leaps or to detours away from evidence-based medicine."

Some talking points:

- The CDC (Center for Disease Control) has identified a 29 percent increase in home-birth rates from 2004 to 2009 in the United States

- A large study she sites found that births among first-time mothers were as safe in a midwifery unit as in an obstetric unit

- The same studied said that home births or births in a midwifery unit (the U.K. equivalent of a birthing center) were just as safe as a hospital delivery for women who’d already had a child

- 2010 analysis of 12 studies from six industrialized countries found that planned homebirths with healthy and low-risk mothers carried a 0.2 percent risk of newborn death versus a 0.09 percent risk for in-hospital births, a greater than two-fold increase

- Advocates for gentle births such as Harriet Hall, an OB, call for integrating a “kinder, gentler, less-interventionist midwife approach into a home-like hospital birthing facility” would increase patient satisfaction without sacrificing safety.

- Bottom line "The obvious solution to the controversy is to offer choices that reduce perinatal stress, minimize interventions, and personalize birth—the great appeal of home birth and midwives—while ensuring a safe outcome with well-trained attendants and access to emergency facilities. The absence of options in the United States leaves this solution elusive, especially where hospitals lack a homey, low-stress environment and local midwifery care fails to meet the gold standard. Strange, isn’t it, that our nation, in the 21st century, can’t offer more uniformly safe choices for a low-risk pregnant woman seeking a healthy, low-stress birth for her child … and herself?"


Read the whole article here -
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From C-Section to Home Birth, and becoming a Midwife Inbetween!

This is powerful video details Lindsey's journey from the traumatic cesarean birth of first child, daughter Dylyn, to becoming a Doula, Childbirth Educator & Midwife in it's aftermath. It ends with the Home Water Birth of her son River.

http://vimeo.com/6885221

Lindsey Meehleis-Matthews is a Certified Doula (DONA), Certified Childbirth Educator, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, Prenatal Yoga Teacher, & Midwife in Orange County, CA.


Here's Lindsey's birth philosophy: I believe that birth is a profound rite of passage that every woman should be able to experience with being surrounded by options, love, and support. But all and all, I think Gerri Ryan states this best, "Deep within every woman is the ability to birth. When she has confidence in her own abilities, the encouragement and freedom to tap into her innate wisdom, and has the loving support of family, friends and professionals who believe this too, she will truly have a satisfying birth experience."

Here's a link to her doula info: http://www.ocdoulas.com/lindsey_meehleis.htm

image from: http://www.ocdoulas.com/Assets/courtney_portrait.jpg

Canadian Home Birth Study Finds Home Birth As Safe or Safer Than Hospital Birth

by Jennifer Margulis, Mothering Magazine's website (emphasis theirs)

A study by Canadian researchers published in the September 2009 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) concludes that planned home births with a midwife in attendance have comparable or better outcomes than hospital births in British Columbia, a province of Canada with some 4.4 million inhabitants.

The researchers studied over 2,800 planned home births attended by the same group of registered midwives over a 4-year period.

They found that women who planned home births had lower rates of invasive and negative interventions than women who had planned hospital births, whether the hospital births were attended by a midwife or a doctor.

Women birthing at home were less likely to experience:

• Electronic fetal monitoring
• C-sections
• Episiotomies
• Augmentation of labor with oxytocin or amniotomy (artificial rupture of the fetal membranes)
• And the use of drugs during labor, among other interventions 


While there were at least six infant deaths in the hospital births, there were no infant deaths among the women who gave birth at home.

Mothers who had a planned home birth had far fewer severe tears or postpartum hemorrhage, and health problems for the mother was much lower among women who had home births. Home birth proved safer in almost every category measured.

Newborns born at home had fewer incidents of:

• Birth trauma
• Meconium aspiration
• Need for resuscitation at birth
• Need for oxygen therapy beyond 24 hours. 


However, they were at a slightly higher risk to be admitted to the hospital after birth. The researchers hypothesize this was for jaundice treatment, for which the newborns born in the hospital would simply stay longer.

This was a highly controlled study of all comparable births attended by the same group of midwives and comparable physician-attended hospital births.

Despite this study and dozens of other large studies showing home birth is safe, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) cites safety reasons for its continued opposition of home birth.

This Canadian study adds to the growing evidence that the widespread American bias against delivering babies at home is not guided by science but by politics, business interests, and misinformation.

http://mothering.com/canadian-homebirth-study

photo: http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:gD87BJ1d6eHOhM:http://www.attachmentscatalog.com/images/born_at_home_lavender.jpg