(Home)Birthing in Baltimore, Baby

This is a great article on homebirth in Baltimore. It presents an interesting variety of statements representing numerous angles in the birth debates. But the quote from the article that stuck out most strongly for me was that of anti-homebirth obstetrician who said, in response to the charge that hospitals will unfailingly intervene unnecessarily in an otherwise normal birth:"If you are here long enough, we are going to do something to you. It's a matter of time. I will be the first one to admit that," he says. "The trade-off is that I am going to make sure that nothing happens to you or to the baby."

I'm going to completely stay away from the first part of his statement, which speaks for himself. and unfortunately influences 90% of how I spend my time at work. I'll leave that aside for now. No, the part that I find really chilling is the statement "I am going to make sure that nothing happens to you or the baby."

Really?

Especially from a person who believes that birth is inherently dangerous to mother and baby, how can he make a promise like that? That NOTHING will happen to mother and baby? Who placed life and death and health all within his omnipotent control?

Even--maybe especially?--midwives and doulas and granola nurses, who believe that birth is a normal and natural and beautiful process, know that life itself is inherently unpredictable, and that tragic things happen. And they do, to people crossing the street or mowing the lawn and also to midwives and their clients. But you know what? Midwives are sued much less often than physicians, perhaps because they don't tend to make ridiculous promises like that in the first place. (One of the first things I learned as a nurse was to NEVER, under any circumstances, tell a patient that they or everything "will be okay." Because you just don't know that. Instead, I'll tell people that they're in good hands, or that we'll take good care of them. Because I have never had a patient, geriatric or obstetric tell me, "I'm afraid I'm going to die," who hasn't up and done just that. Often unpredictably. And I'm not going to be the ass who told them to stop being silly because NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO THEM.) In general, they empower them with factual information and then they trust them to make their own decisions. They don't try to bamboozle them with scare tactics.

Because babies and mothers have occasionally died in childbirth for centuries, and it's always been terribly sad, but it's only since birth moved into the hospitals, at the doctors' behest that they were unquestionably safe there--that nothing would happen to them or their baby--that it's become a total shock, one that leaves families looking around for someone to blame--and sue.

One of the midwives in the story comments on the fact that she cares for "a lot of religious ladies because they don't deify doctors as much as the rest of us might--they feel like they can trust a different kind of power to see that their birth goes well."

Amen to that.