Response to Homebirth Petition

I like to share comments on older posts that won't show up here on the homepage. Today I received one commenting on a petition I posted in June of 2008.

Mommato6 has left a new comment on your post "Keep Home Birth Legal Petition":

To sign that would be utterly stupid! Babies do die in Homebirth and it is most of the time, preventable.

Thanks for sharing your opinion. It is, however, not substantiated by statistics.

Of course you've heard that the US has the worst infant (and maternal) mortality rates in the industrialized world. Who hasn't? It's even in the mainstream news and concern. The US has the greatest access to technology and medical care, but the worst rates of mortality. Why isn't the US medical establishment itself looking into why this is? Instead, ACOG comes out with stopping midwifery as one of it's two prime efforts this year. Is ACOG and the medical establishement invested in doing what is necessary to create the best outcomes? It does not appear so. Is their agenda about what is truly about women's bodies and souls? Or babies bodies and souls? It does not appear so.

THE POINT of this blog is to point out that NEITHER homebirth nor hospital birth are safeEST until they WORK TOGETHER to provide the best care possible for women and babies, FOR THE BABY in particular!!

In countries where midwifery and homebirth is PART OF THE MATERNAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM, and not controlled by obstetricians and drug companies, MORE BABIES LIVE. This is because the legal and public will is that women have availablity of homebirth WITH ALL the access to medical care IF NEEDED.

The blocking and controllng of midwifery by the medical establishment in the US is taking it's toll on women and babies. UNNECESSARILY, and it is criminal what they are getting by with. Women are seeking to have a safer birth outside of the hospital and going to extreme lengths to do so. THE PROBLEM is that most of society is not looking at the MISUSE of medical technology and drug use in birth (and all specialites). The root of the problem is that this society (the leader of the world) has little regard for the sacredness of birth. Society had little regard that this is a SOUL, a being, being born, and she or he will be impacted for his or her entire life by his or her experience of birth. I'd even go so far as to wonder if medical birth is not Biblically supported.

Originally, the use of drugs at birth were condemned and part of the women's movement was to get the right to use drugs during labor. The Pope had to say it was ok. The leader of the women's movement died during birth using Twilight Sleep.

We today are living the legacy of decisions such as this. The experiment could have gone quite differently had women/midwives not been hung and burned for their spiritual and midwifery gifts in order for male dominated medicine to take over ... if women had not had to rise up in this country and fight like men to just to get their God-given right to liberty and freedom and prosperity ... if we were not controlled by religious men and dogma ... if birth and motherhood were honored as the core, roots of harmony and family. Our world would be different today.

But finally, today, again because of very strong and brave and outspoken women in America, a woman can go within and claim her femininity and all that it means ... she can claim her body as her own, and she can claim her motherhood as her own. She can claim motherhood as a worthy path. It is between her and that soul, coming into her body, and the father how they choose to bring forth that life ... on their terms, in their home, or in a drugged stupor, overexposed, managed on someone else's time table, protecting some doctor or nurse or hospital's assETS or protecting her baby's soul and brain from unnecessary stress, trauma, noise, agendas, germs, time tables, sacrificing her baby's cord blood for someone's agenda and schedule.

Hospital birth doesn't have to be so violent!! The gifts of medical care givers can be used to support a different kind of birth. They can learn from the midwifery model of care, just as the midwives, historically, have benefited from the medical knowledge, and antibiotics. A baby has a right, A RIGHT, to come into this world from the spiritual world, in a loving, safe, nurturing, aware way and to be treated like a human being. It's more likely to happen in a homebirth and very unlikely to happen at the hospital. Perhaps, there are moments in the hospital. At the homebirth the baby is more likely to be regarded as a fully sentient human. THIS is the what makes birth safe FOR THE BABY. The blatant disregard of the baby by the majority of medical staff that allows for horrific treatment of the baby, which DOES NOT HAVE TO BE!, is what makes birth UNSAFE.

A skilled practitioner who has regard for the sanctity of birth and this baby, a soul, and who has supportive medical backup makes homebirth the safest place to birth on the planet. I am in association with a birth center in MO where a Family Practice doctor backs the midwives in the practice. Prior to the legalization of midwifery this year, she attended every birth with the midwife. I don't know if that continues to be the practice since it no longer legally required, but I know her well and I know if a woman wants her there, she would be. And, she doesn't pop in just in time to catch the baby and collect her payment. She is there from the moment the mother and father want her there and until mother and baby are established. Two hours or two days, the doctor and the midwife are there. They are not caring for others or running back and forth between office and hospital, or home and hospital, or church and hospital, or football game and hospital, or child's Christmas pageant and hospital. (MY ex is an OB). The midwife is there, nurturing and observing. Surprise events are rare ... it is the homebirth doctor and midwife who has been monitoring and observing, not a nurse or someone across town. Nurses monitor a woman and relay the info to the doctor who shows up when birth is imminent.

That is utterly stupid.