Facebook, why do I look at you?
leighzlou
member
A friend of mine just found out she is pregnant and wants to use a birth center and have a natural birth. I'm obviously super supportive and excited for her, but it appears I'm the only one.
She made a comment on fb that opened up the debate about hospital and doctors vs. midwife and birth center. Everyone was telling her how the hospital saved their baby and doctors are the reason that birth is safer now than it was 100 years ago. It just pisses me off that people have such a knee jerk reaction towards out of hospital births based on no actual research. Birth is not magically safer and better in a hospital for a healthy woman with a normal pregnancy. Ugh!
Luckily, my friend is very stubborn and has done plenty of research on both sides of the issue and is confident in her choice. It just sucks when people spew out crap when they don't know what they are talking about.
Re: Facebook, why do I look at you?
This drives me nuts too! It's crazy that people research which phone to buy more than they research birth options. When I get the "hospitals are safer" argument, I usually bring up the 32% C-section rate and increased rates of maternal and infant death in the U.S. (hospital-oriented) as compared to European countries, which are more homebirth oriented. It doesn't seem reasonable that the U.S. just magically has more pregnancies with complications than any other country, so the difference must lie in how we treat pregnancy.
That said, I have no problem if someone researches all of their options and still opts for a hospital birth with interventions - it's each person's choice. Like you said, the knee-jerk reaction is what bothers me.
I love this argument. The reality is that if they hadn't been in the hospital in the first place their baby wouldn't have needed to be saved. I would be willing to bet that 99% of those comments came from people who were induced. The baby probably didn't tollerate the induction, and they ended up with a c-section. If they'd just waited past 40 weeks, the baby would have come on its own and no "saving" would have been necessary.
Ignorance kills me.
This is what I was thinking. Whenever someone would tell me why the hospitals were better and a baby was saved I always asked, did they have interventions. Most of the time they did.
I had one friend who had a baby who almost died that was a legitimate almost death that had nothing to do with how he was born (heart condition). That birth was the only one that had me nervous about home birth.
Pregnancy # 6
4 missed chances
2 loving children
1 on the way
Yeah I find people always view out of hospital birth as crazy, but often they can be turned around with just a little more information. Heck, I was one of those people. So was MH. And, I'm even managing to get my sister on board. So maybe these facebook freak outers are just on their way to a better understanding. (I think I'm just being super positive because I ate a delicious burrito for lunch and it brightened my mood.)
Missed m/c found @ 10 weeks - May 2010
Missed m/c found @ 10.5 weeks - August 2012