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New York City has only 13 home birth midwives, and 7 of them are in danger of losing their licenses.
State law requires all home birth midwives to have agreements with obstetricians at nearby hospitals who will back them up and handle medical emergencies with their patients. St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan was the official back-up hospital for more than half of New York City’s midwives until it closed this week.
Now the midwives are having trouble finding a new hospital that will take them in. Obstetricians, it seems, are not eager to sign on for back-up duty.
A California hospital has decided it’s not safe enough for midwives – so they’ve kicked the healthcare practitioners out the door, and their patients along with them.
St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital told certified nurse midwives they’ll have to see their patients at a sister facility eleven miles away from now on. According to the Ventura County Star, that sister facility has a NICU, which hospital adminstrators say the midwives need as “back up.” Continue reading »
Here’s a Baby New Year story with a twist — in Port Angeles, Washington, the first baby of the year was born at home.
I’ve done my share of “first baby of the year” stories, and this is the first one I have ever seen where the baby came at home (on purpose, anyway). Raechel Allen gave birth to her second daughter, Miya Isabella, in a birthing tub in what was described as a wonderful home water birth. Continue reading »
That’s what an economist for the Big Push for Midwives has calculated (pdf file) the country could save in healthcare expenditures if we increased the number of midwife-attended out-of-hospital births from 1 percent to 10 percent.
As Jennifer Block points out on RH Reality Check, hopsital maternity care accounts for the largest chunk of hospital expenses—a whole lot of which is paid for by the taxpayers. And where else are you going to get that kind of cost savings and improved results—fewer preterm births, fewer unnecessary interventions, etc.? Continue reading »
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