Isn't the rate of complications higher at home than in a hospital? Statistics is your friend here. Not sure I would want my wife to experience pre-hospital rates of complications.
Maybe tough to study tho, as I'm sure women who have had smoother pregnancies (or a good first like your wife) are the ones more likely to home birth.
We've decided that it will be safer and more comfortable for us to do it at home with professional help. Thankfully the public hospital here had a home birthing unit, which was only started about 3 years ago.
Look at common complications, like postpartum hemmorrhage (usually > 500 ml blood loss). "estimated 76.7m delivery hospitalizations, 2.3 million (3.0%) were complicated by postpartum hemorrhage. From 2000 to 2019, the rate of postpartum hemorrhage increased from 2.7% to 4.3% ... proportion of deliveries to individuals with at least one postpartum hemorrhage risk factor increased from 18.6% to 26.9% ."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36701615/
Bottom line with a home birth, everyones training is around when things go smooth. Medical center is where people have thousands of hours of training on how to save your life.
There's no relationship between those two things. The "do you feel safe at home" questions are required by law; I get them whenever I visit a hospital, including when I go by myself with a question about toenail fungus.
Hopefully you live close enough to a hospital. Pregnancy complications can happen suddenly and require immediate medical assistance.
science isnt a religion, you cant deny it or follow it, there is a rigorous process and sometimes the results are wrong, misleading, or lead to the wrong decisions.
Do not pretend there's an absolute in science, especially medicine, where one can say "this is the only good way" and know it to be true.
You seem to be denying the scientifically proven facts that science gets things wrong... constantly... to the detriments of people suffering the catastrophic effects of those errors.
The milk transfusions were shitty solution for lack of blood during a cholera epidemic, but the articles claims are false "In the late 19th century, milk was believed to be the perfect substitute for blood"
Soothing syrup did it's job (pain), we now shy from it because of perception of risks, but no one's ever run clinical trials on small amounts of alcohol + opioids on childrens gums showing any adverse outcomes.
Chloroform is an effective treatment for asthma, and the best we had before the discovery of beta-2 receptor agonists. See this paper for details on the physiology in mice.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5702405/
Cocaine (stimulant) is also likely a somewhat effective treatment for allergies. Take a look at this clinical trial which showed antihistamine + ritalin being a more effective treatment.
https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(04)00017-X/ful...
Malaria for treatment of syphilis also makes sense, it was incurable at the time, and the other options were mercury based, ineffective and had horrific side effects. Malaria was better than mercury.
Tobacco enemas can be thought of as a large nicotine delivery mechanism. Newspaper clip says it's helpful with meningitis, inflammation of the brain, nicotine is a vasoconstrictor, crosses the blood brain barrier. Maybe it did something, who knows.
However, the cases that I do know of are the food pyramid recommending the vast majority of your caloric intake to be processed carbohydrates, lobotomy as a treatment for mental illness, and the case of David Reimer, who was raised as a girl following a botched circumsicion. Then there's thing like the missaligned incentives between sales reps and doctors leading to hundreds of thousands becoming addicted to OxyContin.
We act as though doctors and scientists are above some standard, and some even believe they follow a falsifiability principle, but there are cases - childbirth being one of them - where a common sense approach that tells you not to follow recommendations might actually be the right thing. It's a fine line, but we should have open conversations about the fallibility of science. Often, and in the comment that I was responding to, the implication is: science says it so it is correct. That's simply not the case.
Please take a look at the CDC data over the last century. In 1915 infant mortality was _10_ percent. Maternal mortality was around 0.8% in 1900.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm
Are you seriously claiming that these things dropping an order of magnitude has anything to do with common sense, or not listening to doctors?
https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-op...
If you’re on an OB floor, ICU, PACU, or dedicated unit, you’d better know why she’s there and they are doing those blood draws as you’re putting mom at risk for a variety of problems.
If all is well, she’s going home in a day or two, and being an obstructionist is just delaying that process and an actual good nights sleep.
After a C-section once my wife were back in our postpartum room, no one seemed concerned at all with her sleep. Every 15-20 minutes there was another visitor. At this point she had been awake more than a day, had a few hours of extreme exertion before a pivot to surgery, and was full of pain killing narcotics.
She could barely stay awake.
I ended up being her sleep guardian. Every time I heard the sliding door to our room crack open I was on my feet to turn people away.
In retrospect it was good exercise in being assertive with authority figures in service of others. I think I’ll be doing plenty of that as a father.
That number includes both hospital and home births.
However studies have found home births with certified professional midwives in the US to have very low rates of maternal and infant mortality, comparable to hospital births for low-risk women.
As far as high US mortality rate, I wonder if this is more of a reflection of general poor health issues from terrible dietary choices rather than the birth process itself.
Does this factor in that high-risk births might be more likely had in the hospital?
How does that compare to 1920, or even 1820 when home births were the norm?
I find it incredibly creepy since it sort of treats science as a religion, and usually people who say it seem to know basically nothing about actual science.
If I think back before about 10 years ago I don’t think I had ever heard it before. In the past, non-technically minded people didn’t really cite “science” as a concrete reason to do anything, and the people who did generally at least kind of knew what they were talking about.
Reactionary people weaponized vaccines with Gardasil - good Christian boys and girls are chaste until marriage, so vaccination is unnecessary. Sinners get gods punishment.
Crazy left-wing people cling to the autism rumors about vaccination.
All of this is magnified by politics and propaganda. Certain religious sects punch above their weight because of political factors - you can usually correlate this with measles outbreaks. Foreign influence operations encourage and stoke this stuff to encourage general unrest as well.
This has been a thing for a while:
For example, drekipus provides no data, no data and no specifications about their claims, and even if their experience was true, it is 1 datapoint. Contrast that with the conclusions someone who has a systems level view of outcomes from numerous births.
Go ahead and contradict the norms, but provide supporting reasoning and evidence. Note that even the medical “establishment” constantly updates their guidelines as new information is evaluated.
Now, people who live in a modern society actively pursue ignorance as they perceive it to be some sort of virtue. Many people want to aspire to home water birth, exclusively breastfeed and only used organic cotton diapers, because…
Others seek cures from goop.com or gurus of various stripes because it makes them feel empowered. Look at Steve Jobs - a fricking billionaire with access to anything possible, who delayed meaningful treatment to chug papaya juice or whatever for his cancer.
It dogmatic thinking just as wrong as the doctor who pushes for a c-section so he doesn’t get called on Christmas morning or miss his football game.
Empowerment and ego can often fool us. And marketers have monetized or.
What's wrong with doing this before the baby is ready for solid food (around 4 months IIRC)?
> only used organic cotton diapers
What's wrong with using those types of diapers if they're better for the environment compared to a standard disposable diaper?
It's one thing if you've studied a given field, are aware of the limitations in current research, and have a well-informed opinion. It's something completely different if you don't seem to understand the blood is transmitted through the UC and the concern around it being wrapped around the neck has nothing to do with the respiratory system, or that asking if a pregnant patient is safe at home is completely routine and happens in 100% of cases.
This effects blood flow no? This happened to our first born and his heartrate began to drop by half and we began to prepare for an emergency c-section.
Might be worth reviewing the ACOG's recommendations on post-term deliveries https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-op...
I'm saying that you need to tell that to the doctors, who raised all manner of forcible induction on the mother at N+1 days.
Why is a week within margin, but the day after due date isn't?
You say "the baby will come out when they're ready", but what would you reply to "what if the baby wants to come out stillborn?"
When do you want forcible induction to be advised by the clinician? 39 weeks + 2-3 days for you to feel comfortable about the decision? Maybe a week if you're seeing a psychologist or like astrology?
It is a problem because if you run out of the pre determined terminus based on erroneous scans you will get c-section because protocol.
Of course this is a personal anecdote and may not apply to your country.
Forceps are generally reserved for emergencies, and could save your baby's life.
Birth goes ok, 90%+ of the time. I don't think it's right saying doctor and nurses are overreacting, their job and where they make a difference is in the 10%. And there's no knowing where you'll fall until after.
Gets one project off the ground by "following their gut", and it wasn't a disaster, concludes this is the way to go.
> Doctors and nurses make a big deal about things like "the cord is wrapped around the neck" when the baby isn't even using its throat to breathe yet. It still has the cord for everything they need.
This is just wildly ignorant, they're concerned about occlusion of bloodflow through the cord and/or the carotid artery.
> The morphology scans can't seem to decide if we're at 18 weeks or 19 weeks. Due dates my ass.
What are you upset about? The error margin being well within the stated limitations in current research?
I think it's stupid to disregard a doctor's advice, but as someone without a medical degree you really have no good way of knowing whether you're getting the healthcare version of "use version control" or "I just used Svelte for 5 minutes and it's the best thing ever!!!!!!!". You just have to roll with it like you'd roll with a shit dev over someone who's never written a line of code in their life.
As example of your ignorance is your lecture about the dangers of an umbilical cord wrapped around the neck. That is, in fact, very common and it is incredibly rare for it to lead to complications. https://unmhealth.org/stories/2022/12/nuchal-cord-managing-d...
Which leads to your willful ignorance of the fact that the guy was exposed to a lot of research about problems in medicalized interventions. "This guy"'s critical experience was almost certainly running across that research. And not on his personal anecdote. I've seen enough of that research myself to know that the interventions that he's questioning really aren't equivalent to any of the software best practices in your straw man comparison.
As for an example of your being an asshole, take your question about what he's upset about with due dates. You are right that it is a medical fact that the date chosen is imprecise. He knew that as well. But you are wrong to have not noticed his story about having his wife be asked about abuse because she wasn't getting induced 2 days after her due date. That behavior on the part of the doctor is an excellent reason to get unhappy.
Now why do doctors behave that way? According to research I saw close to 20 years ago, because they really want to control when the baby comes. It is more convenient for them to have a baby come during the work week rather than interrupting their Sunday golf game, and so they pressure mothers to make that happen. They do this both by recommending medically unnecessary Caesarians, and by inducing when there is no medical need.
Which is an example of the arrogance of the medical industry that illustrates why people get upset about this.
The link that I provided explains the characteristics of the umbilical cord that have been evolved to minimize the probability of problems. It really isn't a problem. Even in childbirths where people don't worry about the umbilical cord.
This shouldn't come as a surprise. Evolution has selected for safe natural childbirth. Unfortunately in homo sapiens there is a conflict between our recent evolutionary pressure for large heads, the needs of walking, and for safety during childbirth. And so childbirth is much more dangerous for us than for other mammals.
Modern humans also have the problem of mothers in poor health. Reasons vary from drug use, to age, to sedentary lifestyles. Of these, drug use is the most dangerous. Despite most mothers not using drugs, drug use is a factor in something like half of childbirth deaths.
Then there is the list of usual complications. Breech birth, infection, blood type incompatibility, diabetes, heart attack and so on. It is a long list. It interacts with the previous lists - for example breech birth is made more dangerous because of our large heads. Complications from knotting of the umbilical cord is very far down the list of things that go wrong.
Pretty much the question I was asking.
While I don't appreciate OPs mockery around CI/CD, what they said about the unbilical cord was accurate. I don't see where the supposed lecture on dangers you mentioned came from.
The post that started this thread was mocking doctors without a proper understanding of the mechanics involved. But sure, it must be a valid criticism by someone who has done their own research.
Not something I've looked into before and I've learned that it seems like it is rare for it to cause issues.
Personally I'd still want a professional on hand to be on the lookout, your posted article links to research where 0.6% of births had the cord wrapped around 3 times and that was correlated with infant death. That's something I would think is of concern even if not of very high chance.
> This is just wildly ignorant, they're concerned about occlusion of bloodflow through the cord and/or the carotid artery.
And no, this is not an accurate lecture. Most of the time that particular lecture is delivered by doctors who actually know it is not an issue, but want to scare patients into being in hospital for other reasons.
As for the post that started this thread, I have a context that you don't. I recognized the circle of ideas that would have been in that natural childbirth class. And so had context for where they would come from.
OP was then corrected as to the mechanics of the situation.
Yes, it might be relatively rare for the complications to occur.
Yes it is your choice if you have issues with medical care and choose to stay away.
None of this changes the reality that OP was talking nonsense and your response is pure speculation and anecdote.
At that point every professional in the room is thinking "How do we get this guy the fuck out of here".
What are you even arguing about nuchal cords? They're common and we should ignore them? Who cares that the "complications" are fetal death?
You read some papers 20 years ago? Care to share any of them?
How confident are you about your hand waving claims around sunday golf games? Have you bothered to review the clinical literature around hour of birth and outcomes? Have you considered it may be related to the hospital being better staffed & rested during the day vs at night?
Oh, yes, I most certainly would. This is a great example of the tools being there for the convenience of the practitioner, not for your convenience or comfort (I'm sure the reader can draw parallels to child birth on their own).
When you, the mechanic, put the wheels back on you will use a torque wrench and torque the nuts to the proper values. Just I like I used to do 30 years ago when I was a mechanic. Because no one should find out at the side of the road that the air gun torques those puppies to 146ft/lbs, and you're not getting them off with that weenie little wrench that came with the car.
This is yet another case where staff is optimizing short-term efficiency by burning long-term trust in healthcare system of entire generations.
>they're concerned about occlusion of bloodflow through the cord and/or the carotid artery.
Yep. Our #5's cord was looped 3 times. He was born with no vitals but staff was able to resuscitate him. He was effectively dead for the intervening time.
Most of the hysteria is because they get a lot of women who show at at 42 weeks, no prenatal care, gestational diabetes and no support system. Even worse, if mom is hooked to opioids, and that baby costs $2m to deliver.
America in this area is basically the privileged who get world class care and the proles who get whatever.
Guy who has delivered zero babies telling the team who has delivered many babies what to do.
>Doctors and nurses make a big deal about things like "the cord is wrapped around the neck"
Lol.