Not one, but two maternal deaths at homebirth have occurred in the past several months.
Yesterday, Mother’s Day, from Baby Center:
My husbands cousin passed away today while giving birth. She was 24, beautiful, had just graduated with her masters in engineering, and was getting married. She was due may 15th. She went into labor today. She had a home birth and midwife. She bled to death on the way to the hospital that was 8 minutes away. Her daughter is alive…
But wait! That’s not all.
A St. Louis area doula reports on the death last fall of both mother AND baby. The piece originally appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of the Missouri Friends of Midwives newsletter. Although the doula does not specifically mention that this was a homebirth transfer, she does say that it caused her to question her own decision to have a homebirth (which, having learned nothing, she ultimately did anyway).
Addendum 5-16-13: The doula added the following to her post, “this was a PLANNED HOSPITAL BIRTH. It was not a homebirth or a homebirth transfer. This mother was attended by an obstetrician, not a midwife. This update isn’t meant to invite further dialogue …” Surprising, considering that the doula is an aspiring homebirth midwife, treasurer of her local chapter of Missouri Friends of Midwives, and wrote about it in the Missouri Friends of Midwives. I apologize for the error.
Why do mothers die at homebirth? Because homebirth midwives and doulas replace knowledge of childbirth with “faith” in birth:
… I have been “brought up” in the midwifery and homebirth community. As a result, my heart and mind have been continually washed with faith in the birthing woman’s abilities and the newborn babe’s resilience. Trust birth. Birth works. I’ve heard it all many times over. I believed it like a religion…
Why do mothers die at homebirth? Because homebirth midwives don’t understand that low risk does not mean no risk.
I recently attended a birth as a doula in which the mother died. And making things even more horrific, the baby died as well. They had both been perfectly healthy the entire pregnancy and labor…until they weren’t…
Why do mothers die at homebirth? Because the hospital is never “close enough.”
… When my client and her baby died, I was in the room. I was tapping her arm and feeling for her pulse and calling out her name…and then I looked in her eyes and knew she was no longer inside looking back at me. I was a foot away when the doctor caught her baby girl, as purple as an eggplant in the face and white everywhere else. I was clutching the father’s arm when he was told the impossible news some 45 minutes later that neither mother nor baby could be saved.
Why do mothers die at homebirth? Because homebirth midwives obsesses about the process and take the outcome for granted:
I have not been able to talk to this beautiful mother – who I came to care about deeply –about the amazing job she did in labor and birth, and I will never be able to have that conversation with her…
Did the doula learned anything from this hideous tragedy? Of course not.
… Got mad at God. Felt helpless. Questioned whether or not I still wanted to have a homebirth. Wondered about everything over and over again – if my client had been sufficiently informed of the risks vs. benefits of various interventions, if the presumed cause of death was accurate, if I was a horrible doula/if I would be a horrible midwife, if I could regain trust in my baby and my body, and if that would be enough …
What is the matter with homebirth midwives are homebirth advocates. A mother and baby are dead. They are DEAD!! You can’t get a better, more brutal confirmation of the fact that trusting birth is NEVER enough, yet these fools prattle on about regaining her trust in a process that has just been shown to be entirely untrustworthy.
The doula titled the post, When Birth and Death Meet. A more appropriate titled might be When Ignorant Homebirth Midwives Meet Birth, Mothers and Babies Die. Trust that, not birth.
