Today the average woman goes through a lot of decision making when it comes to making clear decisions on planning their own births. The biggest percentage of women in America take the most socially accepted root and just have their births experiences in regular hospitals. But there is methods of birthing that a wide majority of women also take part it called home birthing. Although there has been criticize in pitting the hospital birth and the home birth together they both have their downfall's and their own benefits.
If you look at your typical hospital scene today you see hundreds of women giving birth at all hours of the day every day. You don't see every day is the but a specific news station in Bakersfield took some polls and tallied them up and had this to say: " Though it doesn't appeal to all moms, some women prefer to deliver their babies in the peace and comfort of their own home. About one in 200 women in the United States gives birth at home, and about 75 percent of those delivers are low-risk single births that are planned in advance."(Parks) This piece of information just shows that there really is a good amount of women that actually take part in using their natural home birthing method and not everyone is taking the typical path of a hospital birth.
The whole aspect of having your birthing experience within a normal hospital I feel has been misinterpreted by most women of the United States for years. I mean look at your sisters mothers and grand mothers most likely they had their birthing experiences within regular hospitals and most likely they had a few bad experiences. For example my own family's women have all had hospital births and have had some terrible experiences with the doctors risky procedures and juiced up medicine. Here some information your average OBGYN doesn't want you to know:"The medical evidence about VBAC is actually clearer than some recent medical and media interpretations of it would suggest. Cesarean surgery is just as risky as any other major abdominal surgery for the mother-a considerably higher risk for her than vaginal birth. With repeat cesarean she has three times the chance of dying and roughly five times to ten times the risk of suffering complications from anesthesia; injuries to the bladder, intestines, or urethra; and future bowel obstructions, hysterectomy, ectopic pregnancies, infertility, and dangerous placental complications. The more cesareans a woman has, the more the risks to her increase."(Mays 294-295) VBAC is an acronym for vaginal birth after cesarean. This information here is saying that even having a natural vaginal birth is absolutely a much safer solution to having multiple cesarean back to back to give birth to their children. As well:" For over a generation, more than one fifth of U.S. women have had their babies by cesarean surgery."(Mays 294) With numbers like that, considering the amount of women that are actually getting cesarean surgery's there are going to be many women that are at the risk of falling ill or even losing their own life all for this risky method of birthing surgery. Overall what I'm trying to get across here is that hospitals aren't the only choice of a place for having your baby. Think about centuries ago when we didn't even have the technology we had today, a woman's only method of birthing was to give birth in their own homes and look where the human race is today, it's stronger then ever.
All that I'm really trying to get across here is that hospitals aren't your only choice of places of birthing and as well they aren't always the safest. Having your birthing experience at home the natural way is the way our race has been doing for thousands of years. Although both of these methods have their downfalls in some aspects I feel that having a home birth is significantly safer then having your birth in a regular hospital. As well even if you tweak the home birthing method a little bit by having doctors there or having a hospital near your home incase of emergencies couldn't hurt if you wanted to be on the safe side of things.
MLA Citations:
-Mays, Ina. Ina Mays Guide To Childbirth. 1st edition. New York City,NY: Bantam Dell A Division of Random House, Inc, 2003. 294-95. Print.
-Parks, Jackie. "Staying Healthy." Study Evaluates Home Birth Statics 07 July 2010: 1-1. Web. 14 Apr 2011. <http://www.turnto23.com/health/24174998/detail.html>.
It is very interesting to hear about the birthing process from a male point of view. I was surprised to hear that you were in favor of home birthing, but I was not as surprised once I realized how educated you were on the subject. I think it is true that women do have many decisions to make when planning the birth of their children, but rather than become educated on the multitude of options they have, including home and natural childbirth, most women tend to "follow the crowd" to the hospital.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that hospital births, including cesarean sections, can be dangerous. We have two women close to us who were other wise healthy and young that have almost died due to complications from cesarean sections. On the other hand, I personally would have been a perfect candidate for a home birth, but in the final few hours of labor there were complications that would have made a home birth dangerous. However, no one knows if these complications were a result of other interventions performed at the hospital, such as the epidural and the delivery of pitocin which interfered with the natural birthing process.
At the beginning of the third paragraph, where you stated that the hospital birthing process has been "misinterpreted" I would have to disagree. I think that the low number of home births is more a result of lack of education and fear of the unknown. People tend to place a lot of trust in doctors and Western medicine, and sometimes blindly follow that trust rather than questioning and educating themselves to other options. I hope that you bring some of this insight to not only your own family, but also friends and strangers when this conversation is discussed. I am very impressed with your open-minded views regarding this topic.
Brendan,
ReplyDeleteI think that you addressed an important point here. By looking at the comparisons between home birth and hospital birth i think you were really able to show some clear comparisons and contradictions between the two. You showed how dangerous hospital birth can be with your numbers and statistics comparing it to home birth. I really appreciated how you took the time to compare the two and show how people aren't aware of the dangers of hospital birth. This project really mattered to me because it is something that is very important considering i am going to have children one day so it is important to see the other side of the story. Good post, keep it up.
Sam