Thank you to the folks at ACOG for inviting me to address the district meeting in Maui.
It was a privilege and a pleasure to speak to nearly 300 obstetricians, medical students and CNMs, all of whom were eager to learn what they could do to prevent homebirth tragedies. As I told the group, I wish I could have taken a picture from the podium. I think many homebirth advocates would be surprised. They’d be surprised that the group was 50% women; they’d be surprised that the group was anxious to learn all they could; and they’d especially be surprised that the question I heard repeatedly, both during my talk and afterward was: “How can we convince homebirth midwives to transfer a higher proportion of their patients, earlier in labor, before it is too late to save the baby?”
Homebirth advocates also would have been surprised by the straightforward nature of my talk. All I did was tell the truth: the truth is ugly enough, and there was hardly a soul in the room who was not aware that homebirth leads to preventable deaths, because they had seen if for themselves.
The talk was not recorded, but I have posted my Powerpoint slides:
[gview file=”http://www.skepticalob.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/The-Homebirth-Midwife-said-What.pptx”]
You can read my notes for the talk (complete with typos) here:
The talk took over an hour plus time for questions from the audience.
My questions to the audience were these:
How many babies have to die preventable deaths before we address the misinformation spread homebirth advocates and homebirth midwives? How many babies have to die before we abolish the pathetically inadequate CPM credential?
I don’t know, but every death is a tragedy too many.
