Having had two c-sections, though I know the vbac risks are minimal and acog even recently recommended vba2c for the first time in years, my doctor doesn’t foresee liability restrictions lifted for some time still, so home birth or moving out of state to deliver are my only options outside of being hamstrung into surgery again.

Home births are great but you need to realize you are taking on additional risks.

If major bleeding occurs, you still must be transported to hospital which may not be straightforward (weather, vehicle problems, traffic etc etc). Then doctors and nurses would need to be freed up to look after you, what if they are busy looking after someone else (if only they knew that you may have a problem they might have put off the other patient if possible). It will also take time to test you for a blood transfusion and they may not be able to start an intravenous if your veins have shrunk from all the bleeding.

If the baby is strangulated by a loop of cord that was not anticipated, it will seem like a long time before a doctor can be found to help out.

I like riding my bicycle without a helmet. It is more natural, but I also know that I am taking an additional risk.

Giving birth at home sounds wonderful. It has been done for centuries. Unfortunately mothers and babies have also died as a result. A quick study of history not that long ago will show how common child deaths were.

Thank God we can go to hospitals to minimize those risks.

It is more than obvious from your comment that you do not know much about homebirth. Put simply, we have all the same drugs that the hospital does, we are trained as frequently as EMTs on IV set up and Neonatal and Adult/Infant/Child CPR (as in certified professionally every 2 years) and cord around the neck is much more common than people think and we are trained to deal with that too. I am thankful we have hospitals as well, but statistically only 15% of women need to have medicalized birth…after all it is a body function…at the moment homebirth is under 5% of women in the US…I recommend that you look into the history of childbirth. Women did not die because of no hospitals, and if you look at those statistics there has not been an improvement in maternal or fetal mortality since hospitals…although there was a bit of an increase from antibiotics because the women were dying of infection in the hospitals. I would also recommend you look into the fact that the USA is #36 for Neonatal mortality rates in the world…which means there are 35 countries ahead of us…and guess what, the countries that are ahead of us have midwives guiding normal birth. Most of what people think they know in this country is what they have been brainwashed into thinking.

I agree with Rennata. I am pretty sure by “hospitals” she means modern medicine. Today’s hospitals are quite different from a hospital in 1860. You cannot correlate death rate to number of hospitals because it ignores the changes in medicine. There has been a tremendous decrease in the infant mortality rate even since 1960 (down from 25/1000 to 6.7/1000). I am pretty sure that modern hospitals have a thing or two to do with that. It is simply not reasonable to suggest that home birth doesn’t carry more risk. If 15% of women need medicalized birth, that is very significant. While home birth may be a wonderful option for some people, they need to be fully aware of the risks they are taking. I am sure that home birth studies show lower rates of c sections, episiotomies, etc. because most women at higher risk for these things don’t have home births. I just think that people need to look at this objectively instead of turning it into an emotional, nearly political, topic.

Renatta professed the typical brainwashed response that American women have been fed since the male dominated medical field sought to blackball midwives & move ALL women into hospitals for total control over the BUSINESS of Birthing. They took a perfectly natural human event & turned it into a medical procedure. They kicked the entire family out of the process as well. Male doctors were GODS, not to be questioned, not to ever be contradicted. Women were reduced to nothing more than a money making machine for them & the budding business of hospital & maternity wards & nurseries. At the time-you had to pay to GO to the hospital, it was a privilege that if you had the money or BlueCross you were allowed to buy the honored spot there. If not, you stayed home. That’s when doctors began pushing midwives out of attending home births as well, when they did housecalls. Medical nursing & prep books from that era showed in great detail what the home birth arena setup was to be for the arrival of the esteemed doctor, as well as the hospital setup. Point being, this was the transition period of the total takeover of the birth business. Eventually nearly ALL birth in the U.S. was conducted in hospitals & home birth began to be regarded as an accidental event & an emergency. Regardless, highly skilled midwives were blackballed, & nurses who previously attended home births prior to the doctors arrival that had been perfectly capable of helping deliver a baby were relegated to a lowly assistant & not allowed under any circumstances to assist in an actual birth & many women & infants suffered injuries such as maternal bleeding/death, infant suffocation/blue baby/mental retardation as a result of women directed by the waiting nurses in hospital OR home to “Keep your legs together, the doctor isn’t here yet!”, babies were actually pushed back or held IN.{THIS STILL HAPPENS-SAW IT ON “A BIRTH STORY” TLC a week ago!”
Any power a woman had over her own birth was taken away if you consented to a doctors care, period. How many of your own mothers, if you are MY age-mid 50′s, actually remember having any of their babies?? A scant few, I am sure, because women were put on heavy sedatives, scopalimine, barbituates or just given enough inhaled gas to knock them out. HOURS later in recovery, if you were at all able to, you may be brought your baby from the nursery, at the nurses discretion, of course. Forceps, large episiotomies, shaved, enemas, IV’s, & a 2 week stay were the norm. Sugar water was given to the baby because a drugged mother can’t nurse for a week or so.
Much of this is STILL routine procedure, although things have evolved, some for the better, and some not.
What the tragedy of this is, is that for the last 50 years or so, women have been handing over all choices to the “pro’s” & they have lost any knowledge or confidence in themselves. They are basically uneducated about any other kind of birth than a hospital birth. Home birth is FOREIGN to most American women. This is why there is all this back & forth debate going on.
Having had a HORRIBLE hospital vaginal “delivery” with forceps, episiotomy & the “husbands stitch” after 3 days on an epidural, a jaundiced 7lb 3oz baby boy was dragged out of me. He was bruised, I was bruised. I had followed the doctors orders & had all the awful symptoms of pregnancy that they call “NORMAL” which are NOT-& the doctor told me I couldn’t deliver naturally again a baby over 7lbs. This was in 1973.
In 1978 I had a 10lb 5&1/2 oz baby girl at HOME with a wonderful midwife & her assistant. In 1984 I had an 8lb 1oz baby boy at HOME, & he was a footling breech. My midwife saved his life. {This was illegal, BTW,but my son didn’t know this}
Doctors over these last few decades have LOST vital skills & abilities & have resorted to drastic measures & interventions that are not needed in a lot of cases, but in the business of birthing-they HAVE to protect themselves from lawsuits/liability, so they do less & less actual natural deliveries. They stand around chomping at the bit while waiting out a labour-hence, inducements, & C-sections abound. Breech births are pretty much banned. Since no one will attempt them anymore-they do not have the skills anymore.
I could go on for ages on this subject, but I’ll just tell women who are confused this: Regardless of WHERE you chose to birth, when pregnant or before-read everything you can on alternative birth options. Anything that goes against the “norm” & the pamphlets doctors hand out. Read about emergency births as described by EMT’s, midwives AND OB’s. This is how you will find out what really happens in a natural delivery, in all it’s various modes.
And this too: There are many unskilled midwives out there who I swear, are doing it for the “cool” factor & are JUST as clueless as a C-section crazy OB. Pick a midwife who is referred by someone who was happy.
Don’t be used & abused by anyone in the birthing business, prevent it by being educated!! It makes a world of difference in your pregnancy, the baby’s health & the birth. Take the fear factor away & believe in yourself. We ARE WOMEN.

The medical industry’s efforts to retain control over women’s bodies, women’s autonomy and homebirth are only growing stronger as more and more women are gaining an understanding and appreciation behind the “busines” of maternity care.

I have also written about the Lancet’s attack on women’s rights here: http://erinmidwife.com/2010/08/19/is-politically-invented-risk-in-birth-defining-the-rights-of-childbearing-women-part-1/

I know people love to do the polarizing, black-and-white thing, but c’mon! Stop acting like hospital births don’t carry any risk! Truth: there’s risk inherent in ANY choice we make when we choose to have a baby — risks for giving birth in hospital, risks for giving birth at home.

What is so very, very preposterous is suggesting that only homebirth has risks — if this is your stance, you’re either blissfully ignorant or you have chosen *not* to do all of your homework/hide your head in the sand because hospital births have their own long list of serious risks. NEWSFLASH: choosing to give birth in a hospital opens you up to a smorgasbord of risks, not just obstetric risks, either!!! I’m not going to go into a long, detailed list here since it’s been done so well already in so many other places on the web – here’s just one: http://www.mamaeve.com/index.php/natural-childbirth/251-home-birth-vs-hospital-birth-isnt-about-location/

Bottom line: take into account ALL of the real risks at hospital, at home, and compare them to your own, individual needs (medical, psychological, financial), and make the decision that is *safest* for you. For some mamas, that’ll be at home, and for other mamas, that’ll be at the hospital. But can we finally just all be adult enough to admit that there’s no single one safest, risk-free place to give birth?