Mommyish just posted a piece entitled 10 Terrible Reasons To Have A Home Birth by Bethany Ramos. It’s partly serious and partly tongue in cheek, and accompanied by lots of animated GIFs.
Ramos’ reasons include:
You hate you doctor
You don’t trust modern medicine
You want a memorable birth “experience”
You don’t want to have a C-section
They used to do it in the 1800’s!
It seems not to have occurred to Ramos that these are actually among the top reasons that women choose homebirth.
But there are even worse reasons to have a homebirth, and they include the following:
1. You think it’s safe.
It isn’t. Homebirth kills babies who didn’t have to die. Indeed ALL the existing research on American homebirth, as well as state and national statistics, show that homebirth with a nurse midwife doubles the risk of neonatal death, and homebirth with a non-nurse midwife has a death rate 3-9X higher than comparable risk hospital birth
2. You think homebirth midwives are real midwives
Most homebirth advocates have no clue that CPMs (certified professional midwife) are actually laypeople who carry a certification made up and awarded to themselves. They are a second, inferior class of “midwife” ineligible to practice in any other first world country because they lack the education and training of real midwives.
3. You trust birth
Homebirth advocates appear to be unaware that childbirth is inherently dangerous. It is, and has always been, in every time place and culture, a leading cause of death of young women and THE leading cause of death of children. There’s nothing trustworthy about birth and only a fool would trust it.
4. You actually think that because homebirth midwives carry resuscitation equipment they know how to use it
Hospital personnel train incessantly on how to manage emergency situations. They’ve performed hundreds or even thousands of resuscitations and probably did one within the past week. Most homebirth midwives have never performed a successful resuscitation.
5. You live only 10 minutes from the hospital
Can you hold your breath for 10 minutes? Neither can your baby if he or she is in distress.
6. You are afraid of hospital acquired infections
The major infectious threats to babies (and mothers) live within the mother’s vagina. These include group B strep and herpes.
7. You think waterbirth is “natural” even though primates don’t give birth in water
Yup, all indigenous peoples give birth in plastic kiddie pools in their living rooms.
8. You actually believed the nonsense and propaganda in The Business of Being Born
BOBB is a one sided, inaccurate piece of propaganda produced by a woman who has no training in midwifery, obstetrics or science. Most of the people presented as “experts” in the film are experts only in their own minds. No one with actual training in science or obstetrics pays any attention to them (if, indeed, they are even aware these “experts” exist).
9. You think that breech, twins, VBAC, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia and group B strep colonization are “variations of normal”
Apparently it has not yet occurred to you that homebirth midwives reclassify all high risk situations as “variations” of normal in order to retain control over high risk women and profit from them.
10. You had no idea that Ina May Gaskin is a layperson who lives in a cult and has no training in midwifery; that Henci Goer is a layperson with no training in science, medicine or midwifery; and that Ricki Lake is the Jenny McCarthy of birth
You probably also think that reading books, blogs and websites written by laypeople for other lay people constitutes “research.” It doesn’t. Only reading and analyzing the full breadth of the scientific literature on homebirth and obstetrics is actual research. Anything else is only kidding yourself.
The bottom line is that most women who choose homebirth do so for reasons that range from terrible to even worse. That’s because they have no idea of the risks of childbirth, no idea of that homebirth “midwives” are just lay people, no idea that watching a documentary is not “research.” and no idea that homebirth kills babies who didn’t have to die.
