Famous OB Sends Dads Out of Delivery Room

One of the world’s best-known experts on obstetrics has announced he thinks Dads need to get out of the delivery room and leave the women to it.

Dr. Michel Odent is a French obstetrician who’s heavily involved in the orgasmic birth and home-birthing movements. Last year, he wrote a piece in the Daily Mail espousing his theories about why dad needs to stay “nearby” for the birth, but stay out of the delivery room.

Now he’s back, with plans to address the Royal College of Midwives in England next month, and he’ll be sharing the same story that got modern women riled last year: bid Daddy goodbye. Continue reading »

Dolphin Water Birth Video

OK. So I’m all for letting people have their babies how they want to.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion about it. Continue reading »

The Perils of (Bad Reporting on) Home Birth

Just when you think we’ve gone beyond safety issues with regard to homebirth — what with the findings in this study and, more recently, this one, among others — the Today show goes and airs “The Perils of Home Birth,” a seven-minute segment so poorly reported, so one-sided and salacious, that instead of feeling defensive and outraged — I laughed. Out loud. Alone!

Here’s what I learned: women choose home birth because it’s “hedonistic,” and the equivalent of a spa treatment. Furthermore, reporter Peter Alexander suggests that women choose home birth because famous people like Meryl Streep and Demi Moore had some babies at home. Home birth, Alexander says, is “fashionable, trendy and the latest cause celebre.”

Spa treatments? Cause celebre? (Demi Moore?!) Continue reading »

Woman Sent Away From Hospital Forced To Give Birth At Home

Natasha Ramirez of Sydney Australia says that she was turned away from a hospital because they didn’t have “enough room.” And besides, the nurse told her, you won’t be in labor “for another 24 to 48 hours.” So she went home. “Five hours later baby Anjelita was born” on her bedroom floor, according to Australia’s Daliy Telegraph.

The 27-year-old new mom claims that she was bleeding and “in labour” (they spell things funny in Australia) when she arrived at Liverpool Hospital. Apparently Ramirez was 4 days past her due date, “needed anti-D injections because of her O-negative blood type” and due to complications with a previous birth, and oh yeah — she was having contractions. But a nurse “assessed” her and told Ramirez to go home. She says that she was not seen by a doctor. Continue reading »

Woodstock Baby, are You Out There?

You know I love a nice, juicy, out-of-hospital birth. But I’m not sure where I stand on live, in-concert labor and deliveries. Not that giving birth among a half a million people at a large, outdoor, three-day-long hippie concert is all that common.

In fact, births at Woodstock — long one of the many free-love stories told of the event — may never have happened.

The supposed Woodstock baby (or babies — estimates range from zero to four births at the famed 1969 concert on a farm in Sullivan County, New York) turns 40 in August and people are starting to ask again. No one has ever credibly stepped forward and said, “I’m a Woodstock Baby.”

But there is some evidence there were births. From the AP: Continue reading »

Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Other Celebrities’ Birth Stories

One thing that had been sorely missing from homebirth advocacy was a celebrity spokesperson. Then Ricki Lake and her documentary, the Business of Being Born came along. Suddenly, it seemed, home birth was taken out of the patchouli saturated communal tent and brought into mainstream Americans’ living rooms, where they were sitting in blow-up kiddie pools having babies.

The media started talking about home birth as a reasonable and safe birthing option for many, many women — not just crazy cult Christians and yoga instructors. Continue reading »