About Natural Childbirth

Confidence In Natural Childbirth

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Millions of women will take the recommendations regarding homebirth from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists despite the blatant and inherent conflict of interest. It is absurd to take a recommendation from any group that will lose money if you don’t take their recommendation. Here are some other implied recommendations that you wont see in print:

• Used car salesmen recommend against the use of bicycles
• Airlines recommend against automobiles
• Restaurants advise against homecooked meals
• Kmart advises shoppers to avoid Walmart

It might even be OK if they had any scientific data to prove that homebirth was unsafe in any way. But they don’t. In fact, many studies have been conducted showing that a midwife assisted planned homebirth is as safe or safer than hospital births. What really irks me about these findings is that they don’t even take into account the interventions which are unsafe in their own right. Someone slicing your pregnant abdomen with a scalpel is a problem! How about taking a giant scissors to your vagina? Sounds like something went wrong. What about clamping the umbilical cord immediately and potentially causing permanent brain damage to your child from oxygen deprivation?

If all interventions were calculated into the homebirth studies, then hospital births would be considered exceptionally dangerous to both mothers and their helpless babies.

The Lamaze Institute of Normal Birth recently posted a call to hospitals and obstetricians to “promote, protect and support normal birth.” In fact, the hospitals and birthing centers that will come out ahead in the next few decades, will be the ones who embrace normal birth and stop blasting, dragging and filleting babies out of women and let the babies come out on their own terms with the hospital support as a backup.

“Women who choose to give birth at home are making their decisions based on best evidence. If you need to be convinced visit the Cochrane Library, or read A Guide to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth, or read our book. The Childbirth Connection response to the 2006 ACOG policy statement on home birth is also important reading.” -Birthwithconfidence.blogs.lamaze.org
This is why women in the know, educated women, are choosing homebirth. It IS safer. It is also the only way you can do your best to guarantee that these terrible things will not happen to you and your baby.

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