For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for January 06, 2020

Leave it to a medical professional (who only operates in the mouth) to give interesting advice.

I’m Swedish, and lemme tell you, we do NOT give birth at home. We go to the darn hospital.

IT TAKES A MIDWIFE.

Women have been having babies at home for hundreds and hundreds of years. This not really a very good argument. My source:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm

At the beginning of the 20th century, for every 1000 live births, six to nine women in the United States died of pregnancy-related complications, and approximately 100 infants died before age 1 year. From 1915 through 1997, the infant mortality rate declined greater than 90% to 7.2 per 1000 live births, and from 1900 through 1997, the maternal mortality rate declined almost 99% to less than 0.1 reported death per 1000 live births (7.7 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1997).

Lynn Johnston is misinformed. Most European women go to hospitals for births too. Like here, they do have the option for the home birth or midwifery centers like we do here. Heck, the ROYALS go to the hospital for their births. They can afford to hire a midwife to tend to the births as well as private practitioners to supervise. But no, they go to the Ling Wing for royal births. Except Archie who was born in a Sussex hospital.

It is foolish to have a baby at home. You never know what emergency may come up. Not worth the risk.

It’s a choice that belongs to the parents. If previous pregnancies have been uneventful and the mother is in good health then there is no reason why they should not opt for a home birth. Provided, of course, that all the scans are normal. My stepson’s wife had two difficult confinements in a hospital. She chose to have a home birth for her third baby and says it was the best she had had. She had a birthing pool and she was much less tense. The older children also felt much more involved and the whole family was happier.

If you can do it at home, do it.

In Europe, women go to hospitals to give birth. At home is very rare

I understand his reluctance. When the stakes are high like they are now you want to go with what you know works.

Before they learned about bacteria, high infant mortality made the hospital the worst place to go to give birth. Semmelweis tried to warn the hospitals but they didn’t listen.

My mother had me and my 5 older siblings the “go to the hospital and get knocked out” way. When, at 40, my mother was expecting my younger brother, she decided to try the NEW way of having babies…called “Natural Childbirth”. LOL

(Side note: When my brother’s wife had their first, my brother was asked if he was in the deliver room. He said, “I was where any good father would be…pacing in the waiting room!” Yeah, my family’s weird.)

NO WE DON’T! I wouldn’t have dreamt of having my children at home. Just as well too since (after a perfectly normal pregnancy and a quick and easy birth) my eldest was born in green water and had to be whisked onto the revival table and then be in oxygen for over an hour. No way that I’d risk a home birth after that. And would you really want all the blood and fecal matter in your own bedroom! Why?

Women gave birth at home a hundred years ago and many died in childbirth, go to the hospital.

Play it safe, girl. Especially at your age.

Lynn’s Comments:

At the time I was formulating this story, there was some debate regarding midwifery and the decision to have your baby at home. My own obstetrician, Dr. Murray Enkin, advocated for home birth and I wanted to champion his ideals.

Find a birthing center (near medical help) with a midwife.

Elly’s right. Hospitals are dangerous. If you’re not sick, why take the chance? Go to a birthing center and have a midwife. Doctors are trained to “save” people. Childbirth is not something women have to be “saved” from, and their interventions often do more harm than good. Of course, in the unlikely event that a healthy woman with no risk factors, has complications that threaten her or the baby’s life or health, then, of course, get a doctor.

I guess having a birth in the barn is out of style.

How about for tens of thousands of years. Not so “new” then, eh?…

I WAS BORN AT HOME 1934 WITH A MIDWIFE AND AUNT IN ATTENDENCE, AS I LEARNED LATER IN LIFE. EAGLE STREET, NEW ORLEANS.

My twin sisters were born in 1927 at home. Weighed in apx 3 lbs each and not expected to live till morning. (One died in 2016, other in 2019) Always joked about having been delivered by a vet! (1920s, Western Illinois, whether the mare was having a colt, or wife having a baby, you called for the same man!) I came along 11 years later.

Well, hospitals as they now are weren’t around hundreds of years ago so that’s a silly argument.

The reason why women in Europe are having their babies at home is they were still awaiting clearance for a hospital bed.

Don’t worry John. It’ll work itself out!

And how many died in childbirth at home? There’s so much that can go wrong and you’re no spring chicken!

John – you don’t have a say here as you are not the one to give birth. On the otherhand, you might compare childbirth to a major dental operation (wisdom teeth extraction) and maybe that would change her mind.

Women may have been birthing at home for thousands of years, but there was a high infant and maternal death rate that went along with it, too. It irritates me when people use that sort of reasoning, because they’re looking through decidedly rosy glasses.

All I know is that if I hadn’t been in a hospital with an experienced OB for my last baby, I probably would have lost him.