Jill

Mom was up this weekend and her Sunday ritual is to get the Sunday paper. We usually don't get the paper as we are all over the place every weekend. But this particular opinion article rankled me: Jennifer Block: A turf war over the maternity market - Doctors are up in arms over a documentary film that they see as promoting an unsafe alternative: home childbirth.

( Full article under here )

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Parts to take note of:

"...hospital maternity care in the United States is typically not supportive of this process. More than half of women are induced into labor, or it is sped up with artificial hormones; the vast majority of women labor and push in the desultory flat-on-the-back or leaning-back position; and (perhaps not surprisingly) nearly one-third of women end up giving birth through major surgery, the caesarean section.

This has led to an epidemic of pre-term births in the United States. A 2006 survey showed that the majority of babies are now born before the spontaneous onset of labor, which leaves them more prone to breathing and feeding difficulties. Caesareans are also contributing to a rising maternal death rate...

...Studies of "low-risk" women in North America planning out-of-hospital births with midwives have found that 95 percent give birth vaginally with hardly any medical intervention. The largest and most rigorous study to date published in the British Medical Journal found that in North America, babies were born at home just as safely as in the hospital."

And finally:

"The AMA's statement calls for legislation that could be used against women who choose home birth, possibly resulting in child-abuse or neglect charges."

WTF. I think I'll have to find myself a midwife, thankyouverymuch.