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It never ceases to amaze me that pregnant women in the United States continue to believe that they have access to the “best birthing and obstetric care in the world”. What rubbish! The amazing part is not that people have been brainwashed since birth to believe that practitioners in the US Healthcare system are nothing short of gods, but that they do not even consider their belief system when the health and safety of their baby is at stake.
The United States does the most “things” to pregnant and birthing women, so if the medical model has any validity, our maternal and infant maternal mortality rate should be the lowest in the world, correct? But it isn’t. It is woefully far down the list. How far down are we? According to a great article on maternal mortality at Woman to Woman Childbirth Education:
“The U.S. has the highest rate of obstetrician-attended birth in the world, and among the highest rates of hospital birth and C-section (if not the highest). We are the richest country in the world by just about anyone’s estimation, yet our maternal mortality rate is worse than Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. We are tied with Bulgaria, Lithuania and Portugal, and just barely edge out Luxembourg and Qatar.” Womantowomancbe
“After the birth (regardless of whether you have a home birth or not), a ‘kraamverzorgster’ –a professional maternity nurse– will come to your house for 8 days, up to 8 hours a day, to look after mummy and baby.”The Dutch way: homebirth and at-home maternity care!
Needless to say, women in record numbers are choosing to think for themselves because they looked at the numbers, looked at how birthing women are treated in hospitals, looked at the risks of interventions to both themselves and their innocent babies and even looked at the birthing model of countries with much better mortality rates and they have chosen unassisted homebirth or midwife assisted homebirth as the safest and most logical birthing solution.
The US could most likely improve their maternal and infant mortality rates by adopting the Dutch system where 1/3 of babies are born at home (vs. 1/3 of US babies that are filleted from their mothers), interventions are minimal, babies are birthed in an upright position and you automatically receive a postnatal in-home nurse to help out, make sure you know what you are doing and to check that everything is OK. The postpartum nurse is a great perk according to Babyccino
I have seen Dutch birthing videos in the past and I swear that if I ever give birth again and I cannot have a UC or lay midwife homebirth then I will cross oceans to have a Dutch birth.
Image Source: Wikipedia.com
Tags: home birth, Homebirth & Waterbirth, maternal mortality, medical model childbirth, Natural Childbirth
I am from Romania and in my country there are a lot of mothers that can’t afford to go to the hospital in order to give birth to their babies. In my opinion this is quite a wrong thing since you will only get professional care if you go to a hospital.
@Tudor@hotel en belgique:
There is a very big difference between well educated, low risk women giving birth in a sanitary home setting and a country where all women, including high risk and unhealthy women have to wing it because they do not have access to modern obstetrical care.
Birth is the starting point of your life and death is the destination. We can do all our activities with in both the boundaries.