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Can you please have a little bit more respect, take note of words like personal opinion a little more?
But the simple fact is that a hospital birth is an option and should not be presented as the standard in birth. Hospital birth increases the chances of: tearing into the anal muscles, haemorrhage, induction (which causes longer and more painful contractions and second stage of labour), infection, etc. A newborn died of MRSA recently, and you're still talking about hospital giving you more options?
I don't understand why you're jumping on me but okay, you generally have to be in hospital in order to have assisted delivery or induction of labour for a variety of reasons, thus being in hospital doesn't increase your risk, having complications before or during childbirth do.
But the system in the UK encourages intervention in birth (although the USA is worse for this) which means that you are more likely to have an unnecessary intervention, and therefore a higher chance of negative knock-on effects like those listed above.
Induction, again, is often preformed unnecessarily. Just because the baby isn't ready to come yet does not mean something is wrong. The hospital can test for fetal distress, but even if the baby is fine, will try to force an induction on some women just because it is past their due date. Induction is painful, invasive, and causes labour to also take longer and be more painful.
I'm "jumping on you" because your response is indicative of the kind of mentality that is fucking boiling my blood right now. My partner is pregnant with our first child, we've both reviewed the information and have chosen to have a home birth. Despite research which is controlled for pre-existing complications and time of travel to the hospital in case of complications, doctors and midwives are hell-bent on trying to convince us to go into hospital. Special appointments have been made so that obstetricians can try to convince us that a hospital birth is required. And, regardless of their paranoia, we've had a marvellously normal pregnancy with a gloriously active baby. Yet conversations still focus on the medical professionals trying to scare us into following procedure, like when we said "But nothing's gone wrong with our birth" and the midwives responding "Nothing's gone wrong yet." That's why I'm so pissed off that statistics, individual and midwife accounts, and scientific evidence don't seem to make a dent in the fear of birth that the medical establishment seems to have instilled in women, yourself included. It makes me sad, and it makes me angry, and it seems so counter-intuitive. Women have been giving birth for quite some time, it's evolutionarily designed to be safe, and yet most women are prepared to hand over all responsibility and allow themselves to be cut open, episiotomied, and forceps delivered without thinking about it, just because doctors say it's okay. Fuck that. The fact that we still do forceps and ventouse extraction of the foetus when it has a 1 in 5 chance of permanent urinary incontinence for the mother, and a high likelihood of head trauma and shoulder dystocia to the baby being delivered is appaling.
It's this attitude that tries it scare, intimidate, and goad women into going against their own wishes. I don't think you're trying to do that here, rather that you have been frightened into accepting the superiority of medical professionals over your own feelings about birth, as so many women have. Your insistence that hospital births present numerous other options? The only options presented are forceps or ventouse (dangerous and less safe than a c-section, as mentioned above) epidural, and caesarian. However, as a c-section takes so much preparation and waiting, being transferred to hospital from home birth does not radically impact the speed with which a c-section can be preformed.
Also, there is the absolutely insane fact that doctors and midwives in hospital are more likely to encourage a woman to give birth lying on her back, which is just fucking stupid. Makes the birth longer, more painful, and, once again, increases the chance of medical intervention.
what if it happened to you?
As for your statement about being transferred to hospital, for some people it may be the case. However my partner and I understand that there are situations in which we may have to transfer to hospital, but as we both dislike hospitals, we'd prefer to have the baby at home. You might find your home stressful, but we find it less stressful than a place where people die regularly, and a place where doctors are more likely to try and pressure us into induction or forceps delivery just because we aren't conforming to a schedule. We accept the possibility of transfer, and would be disappointed if it were the case, but would find having the birth in the hospital from the beginning an even more stressful situation.
I want that last choice, I want the operating table readily available to me.
Like I said above, it is an option if necessary. But if you have a home birth, it's less likely to be necessary, and has a negligible impact upon you in the unfortunate event of complications. |
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