Traditional Birth vs. Hospital Birth?

[QUOTE=Michael W. Smith;6429592
I know even in a hospital setting, things can go terribly wrong. But I have to wonder - if you chose a home-birth and something went wrong where you lost the baby - could you live with yourself for choosing a home-birth when if you had done a hospital birth, things could have turned out completely different?[/QUOTE]

If you chose a hospital birth and "something " went wrong where you lost the baby - could you live with yourself for choosing a hospital birth full of staph, influenza etc, when if you had done a home birth, things could have turned out completely different?

See how that works?

I worked as a L&D nurse for a long time. While the thought of a home birth sounds nice, when things do go wrong it usually happens very quickly. Having the equipment to monitor mother and baby, to do an emergency c-section, to necessitate baby is important IMO. It can make a real difference, especially for baby.

You are going to see statistics that show there are more complications in hospital births-high risk pregnancies are not delivered at home or in birthing centers unless it is an accident.

IF you are going to have a home delivery, be very careful in choosing a mid-wife. I have heard of more really bad decisions made by midwifes recently. I don't know if it is poor training, overconfidence, or people delivering babies that shouldn't but be sure the midwife has more than a good bedside manner and is cheap, if that is what you decide.

Well, more women in the USA give birth in hospitals than do at home, so I guess by the numbers more deaths would occur in hospitals then. Does this also account for women who start off attempting a homebirth, then are transported to a hospital for complications and die at the hospital?

Again, if you want to give birth at home that's your right. But again, I also honestly believe that women who advocate for themselves and what they want in a hospital setting can have a good experience there.

The key IME is to discuss your birth plan up front with your OB and make sure they're on board. If you want to be up and walking instead of flat on your back, at least from my 2 hospital birth experiences, the OB's are fine with it -- IF you ask.

If you want to refuse an induction, refuse it . If you don't want pain meds/an epidural/etc, refuse them . If when you get there you don't like something they want to do, refuse it and ask to speak to a patient advocate if they give you any grief. Better yet, bring a Doula to the hospital with you, or another relative who can advocate on your behalf.

A lot of the issues people have with doctors and hospitals come because they don't question what the doctors tell them and they don't REFUSE things they're uncertain about. To me, THAT is the issue - not giving birth in a hospital. But that's just my $0.02cents, YMMV

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Just a thought...I decided to be medicated to the hilt, epidural. I wouldn't have surgery without pain meds. Yes, women have been doing it for centuries, but they used to cut off limbs without pain meds, too! I would prefer to be medicated until she turns 18, but they frown on that. My neighbor, on the other hand, went natural, whirl pool, that kind of thing and looked down her nose at me for meds. Hey, I'm allergic to pain . I smiled sweetly at her at some point and told her that when the child was a year old and all the way for the rest of her life, it wouldn't matter if she got the pain meds at the time of her birth or not...and there was no medal for it, that I am aware of. OTOH, for a woman who wants to experience the miracle of birth naturally, more power to her. There is no real right or wrong here, I don't think. Common sense will prevail...if something happens, how soon before you can have that baby to a qualified ER? If less than 10 minutes, good to go. If more than that...I am a bit cynical because of my work; I have seen too many unfortunate things to be at ease having a home birth as far from the hospital as I live.

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How many babies each year are lost to hospital acquired staph or influenza? Not a whole lot.
How many babies are saved each year due to being delivered in a hospital instead of at home? I'm betting quite a few, there are many stories in this thread alone.

An asteroid could fall on your bedroom while giving birth at home too, or the hospital could collapse while giving birth in the hospital. There has to be some common sense here.

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You have entirely missed my point.

The "dead baby " card is one not to be played lightly but when people's choices differ, it is tossed around with ease. Not cool.

The ideal birth in my mind is the kind where you have a live healthy baby, born to parents with sense enough to take care of it.

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This is often a testy issue here but I'll give my two cents anyway. Women have had unassisted births for millennia. Women have been dying from childbirth for millennia. Childbirth was a leading cause of death in young women, especially healthy young women. It wasn't all that unusual for a man to have several wives because the man had been widowed when his wife died during childbirth. From about 1850 to about 1900 around 40 to 70 out of every 1,000 women died from childbirth in England. The Four Horsemen of Death were puerperal pyrexia (a horrible, horrible way to die that's very uncommon nowadays in industrialized countries), hemorrhage, convulsions (caused by toxemia), and illegal abortion.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/

Quote:

Originally Posted by jen74145 If you chose a hospital birth and "something " went wrong where you lost the baby - could you live with yourself for choosing a hospital birth full of staph, influenza etc, when if you had done a home birth, things could have turned out completely different? See how that works?

Jen, the likelihood of having a problem caused by having a baby in the hospital is far less than the risk than one takes when having a child without access to lifesaving technology. I don't believe that anybody is saying that giving birth eliminates all birth accidents. I am saying that it reduces those accidents. Jen, my first baby would have been dead had he been born at home. I'm not "playing" the dead baby card lightly. It is real and was my experience. We would both be dead if not for a hospital birth.

Only you can make the decision that's best for your family. I would suggest that you not look at online home birth sites. They have the agenda of getting many, if not most, women to deliver at home.

I am the mother of two. Had I been born twenty-five to fifty years earlier none of us would have survived. I have twin aunts who would have died had they not been born in a hospital. I have an aunt who died because she was born at home.

Birth accidents happen. You cannot fix all of them, hospital or not, but you do have a better chance of saving your child when doctors and nurses are in attendance. For me, at least, that's what is important. I understand that the birth experience is really important for many but I'd rather have a so-so birth day than to risk losing my child or risk a birth injury. I realize that risk isn't nearly as high as it used to be. I think I read somewhere that the average response time to a 911 call is something like 23 minutes. Seconds can count when a child is being born.

What was best for my family may or may not be what's best for your family. Only you and your husband can make that decision.

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I believe that the choice is entirely up to you. There are several things to consider. Midwife,how far to hospital in case of complications, tub birth, bed birth,there is a lot to think about. My Amish neighbors have home births I had mine in hospital. There is no right or wrong it s more of what you are comfortable with.

All 3 of my children were delivered in the hospital, which is a good thing considering they were all C-sections...had I tried to deliver my first at home, we may have lost him.
I loved my doctors and this last time (4 months ago) I delivered at the new hospital and it was amazing! Private room and very quiet even though there were over 30 women in rooms who had just delivered. The food was great and everyone was so happy and helpful. It was wonderful!

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My wife had our first two in the hospital and we will be having our third (now expecting) at home. IMO, one isn't necessarily better than the other. But one or the other might suit you better. Just research it as much as you can.

For our first, my wife was 10 days overdue and was scheduled to be induced. The morning of our induction date she started labor and we went in. After monitoring her dilation a little while they started the pitocin. My wife vows she will never do pitocin again and I don't think they do enough to tell you that it amplifies contractions, and likewise, pain. After several hours she was dilating, but not a lot. The contractions were pretty bad so we asked about an epidural, but they suggested we try stadol first. My wife hated that because it made her feel drunk and really didn't "take the edge off" like they said it would. Eventually we got the epidural. She could still feel everything but it was lessened enough that should could rest a little. During that time there was talk of c-section because there were some signs of distress so they backed off on the pitocin (seems to me that indicates that the pitocin induced contractions were causing the distress). When the distress signs went away they started the pitocin again and after several more hours of horrible contractions she was dilated to 5. Now, after dilating to 5, she dilated the rest of the way within 30 minutes. They had her start pushing. After an hour of no progress my wife suggested that the baby might be posterior. A few more pushes later the doctor finally checked and was able to turn him. As soon as he was turned my wife immediately felt the difference and a few pushes more she pushed him out. Neither the doctors, nurses, or our birthing class teachers told my wife to stop pushing after the head so they could ease the shoulders out, so my wife tore from that. And the doctor did not do a good job stitching her up also. Our son came out beautiful and healthy but our hospital experience was not fun. Hard to say, but I believe if they had let things progress she would have dilated in time (and with less pain) and done just fine.

For our second we switched hospitals. Had a much better experience but still some issues that we didn't like. After a day of contractions at home getting regular and then irregular, they were finally regular and strong enough to go in. We got admitted and, expecting hours and hours like our first, got an epidural. Not even an hour after the epidural they checked and my wife was dilated to 5. At this point we told the nurses that last time, it took forever getting to 5 but once she was there she went fast. They didn't quite believe us but within 20 minutes she was at 10. They kept leaving the room like it was still going to take a long time. But she felt the urge to push right away and seven minutes of pushing later our son was born. Our nurses and doctor were very nice. But we still had this sense that they were not listening to my wife about how she felt.

So this time we'll try a home birth with a midwife. We're hoping that our home will provide a more comfortable setting and more options for pushing and that a midwife will provide more supportive, less intrusive care and listen to my wife more. We're going with a midwife that actually delivered some of my wife's siblings and she still remembers her family and all of their names.

Personally, the more I read and experienced about hospital birthing, the less I liked the idea. Hospitals and doctors are in the business of quickly and efficiently treating things. But birth is such a broad and differing thing. No two are alike. You can't really schedule them without surgery (if they induce and things don't progress they will do a c-section). For hospitals and doctors with extremely busy schedules a natural birth is a logistical nightmare. The easy thing for a hospital to do is to make it less natural and easier to schedule. But we don't want that, so for us I think a home birth will be best this time.

Kinda drifting here, but why are most (not all) of the pro homebirth in this thread fairly open to whatever the mother wants and most (not all) of the pro hospital birth saying that all should be hospital or all will die? Every single thing you do every single day carries the risk of death.

Why the view that if someone homebirths and the kid dies then the mom is responsible but if she goes to a hospital and the kid dies then it's ok? Serious question.

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Huh... my impression of the replies in this thread is the exact opposite of yours . I'm reading it as those who are saying "it's your choice, but...." are the ones who are more pro-hospital and the ones who are pro-home birth are saying "you'd be stupid to have your baby in a hospital;, homebirths are the only way to go."

Perspective is an interesting thing......

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Study from the UK that concluded that homebirth is safe for healthy women. I guess they did the study because homebirth in the UK is more popular there than in any other industrialized nation.
http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7400?tab=full

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Not to be political, but I don't trust studies saying "no hospital care is needed!" that are paid for by countries that have National Health Care... it's in their best interests to keep people OUT of hospitals, because of the expense. It's kind of like when the Cattlemen's Association publishes studies saying that beef is healthy and won't raise your cholesterol....may be true, may be junk, but because of the source I'm leery of believing the "results".

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Both my children were born in hospitals 17 and 15 years ago- The first was 10 days late and I went into labor before I was induced. I was put into bed very quickly, hooked up to monitors, given an epidural and ended up with 3 hours of pushing because son was "sunny side up". I tore badly enough that things were never right down there again....nerve damage. I spent the next 3 weeks in tears due to pain from both nursing and the episitomy and tears with no real support.
2 years later I was NOT going to go thru that again - so I stayed at home until my water broke. I had my daughter in 20 minutes with no pain management and only got into the bed when I felt the need to push - I healed physically very quickly. Unfortunately, at that time I was undiagnosed bipolar and the hospital staff didn't recognize that I had gone manic....7 weeks later the bottom fell out and I spent 2 years trying to find a med combination that worked on all my symptoms.
I was warned to NOT have any more......I so wish now that I had ignored the doctor and gone ahead and had more. I would have been able to plan ahead of time for the after affects and had medication lined up but hindsight never gets you anywhere. I am blessed with 2 incredible kids who are becoming wonderful adults - at least I was able to be a mom!
I would still choose a hospital birth if I ever had more but be aggressive in what YOU want to be happening ie if you want to walk - DO IT - don't let them stick you in that bed on your back as soon as you come thru the door!

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I'm not saying it's got all the answers, even some of the responses to the article questioned some stuff in there, but no matter how you look at it the UK has been doing the most at home and midwife births than anywhere else... if there were high rate of problems it would have come out by now also seeing as Oxford university womens health dept. was involved I am not so sure numbers or outcome could have been influenced.. but who knows.

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Hospital. No question.

[insert story about almost losing youngest son]
He would be dead now had he gone through the birth canal... nothing a midwife could have done would have detected anything wrong.

I think the majority of the populationin the UK lives in or near towns or cities. My impression is that the majority of the folks on this forum live in the country or very small towns. I think one very important thing to. Consider is how long will it take me to get to the hospital if I have a home birth. Not only how long is the drive but how long will it take for help to get to me to transport me as well. Unless you are very close to the hospital I would reconsider home birth .

I find it interesting that the home birth people talk about the mothers feelings and her control, the others are talking about the safest situation for the baby.

Most hospital OB depts or birthing centers run on the fact that you can not schedule labor. Intervention is done for the safety of the baby or the mom, not the staff. Those of you that have first hand experience that leads you to feel otherwise either misunderstood something or were at a sub standard hospital.

I would choose a birthcenter if i could. I had my son with a CNM in a hospital becasue that is all my insurance would cover. I rufused everything they wanted I ate I didn't have an IV and no meds I was in the location only becasue that is what the insurance covered. I was not close to a hospital so a homebirth would have been bad if I needed help.
If we can have another child our insurance only coverd OB's at the hospital so that is the only option we will ahve but I can still refuse all hospital type treatments