Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Jul
24
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“If You Have A Home Birth, You Will Probably Hemorrhage And Die.”
“If you have a home birth, you will probably hemorrhage and DIE.” -OB to mother during a prenatal, stated in front of the other children.
There are 27 comments to this post.
That’s even better than pitting the spouse against the mother! Say that in front of her kids and she’ll never hear the end of it from them. Way to go jacka**, you scared KIDS and used them to try to bully mom into doing it your way.
Hope you had your homebirth and that another doctor convinced your kiddos that it would be alright.
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Charity had this to say,
Jul 24, 2010 @ 6:32 am (Quote)
OMG I can’t believe he was so crass to say that in front of her other children! “Yes kids, mommy’s going to die if she tries to have this baby at home, so you’d better make sure you cry a lot so she comes in to see me for a bunch of unnecessary interventions. You’ll thank me later!” *palm to forehead*
My kids weren’t the least bit scared to watch me have a homebirth. My son was asking me all kinds of questions and my daughter was dancing to the music I had playing. I really enjoyed making it a family thing and that doctor probably ruined that experience for her by scaring her kids. What an idiot!
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Cmat Reply:
July 24th, 2010 at 7:01 am (Quote)
Probably made your experience so much more relaxing and less painful!
I just remember that once I relaxed, there was so little pain, then all the interventions started and then I couldn’t relax. Once I couldn’t relax the pain really started.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
July 24th, 2010 at 11:55 am (Quote)
My “doula” at my last birth was my two and a half year old daughter Liesl (Sophie slept through the whole thing; either that, or she hid in her room with a pillow over her head, which I think is more likely, because I screamed like a banshee).
She whimpered a little when I got loud, but she didn’t seem distressed. And the first thing I heard when Kassandra rocketed out of me into my husband’s hands was the delighted, amazed exclamation, “BABY!…”
Something tells me she would have been a lot more scared if I’d been hauled off to the hospital. In our house, hospitals are places people go when they’re very, very sick or very badly injured.
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Charity Reply:
July 24th, 2010 at 3:45 pm (Quote)
Cmat: It was a great experience! Very little pain and it went so much faster at home. 2 hours from first contraction to holding my baby in my arms. We had planned a trip to the hospital because that’s where my midwife works, but when I called and she wasn’t on call that day, I said, “Screw it. We’re having this baby at home!” There was NO way I was going to have an OB deliver my baby.
Sarah: We’re usually the same way. We only go to the hospital when we’re very sick. My father had some major surgery when my son was about a week away from turning 3. We went to visit him and the poor kid was traumatized. Why was granddad in that hospital bed? About a month later, I went into labor and went to the hospital like a good little sheep. Afterwards, when my mother-in-law brought my son to visit, he went nuts. He wanted me to get up and come home right now because hospitals are bad places. He kept saying, “You not sick mommy!” It broke my heart that I wasn’t even allowed to get up from my bed for fear of a fall! I had no interventions, but they were absolutely sure the shock to my system would cause me to fall. Funny how I just hopped right out of the bathtub after I had my third. 
I’ll do it at home, by myself, again before I go to the hospital to have a baby.
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Thanks for remind me, Doctor, because NOTHING ever happens to women and babies who are born in a hospital. Seriously, how does he think humankind managed to make it this long? Hospital births weren’t the “norm” until the ’20s, and even then it wasn’t to make birth safer, it was to supposedly manage the pain. Silly doctors, birth is for home, as the saying goes!
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Stephanie - Home with the Kids had this to say,
Jul 24, 2010 @ 10:31 am (Quote)
What a complete jerk. Bad enough to say that to a mom, but in front of the kids… time for a new OB and I hope the mom was able to find someone else.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch had this to say,
Jul 24, 2010 @ 11:50 am (Quote)
This doesn’t HAVE to be a “Pit the kids against their mother” situation (oooh, I just made a pun, didn’t I? since we all know that nobody can survive childbirth without a Pit drip to manage the pace of a naturally dysfunctional labour and to prevent postpartum haemmorhage after the baby and its placenta gets shoved, cut, and/or yanked out).
Why, we could turn it to our advantage and make it a teaching moment: we can use it as an object lesson to show our children why blindly trusting authority figures is a bad idea, that authority figures often lie and manipulate just like everybody else when they want their way and don’t care how they get it, and, oh, by the way, most medical doctors don’t know jack about natural birth, although they can be good for other things.
By the way, statistically speaking, having a homebirth does NOT make one likely to haemmorhage and die on the spot. Duh.
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VW Reply:
July 24th, 2010 at 1:16 pm (Quote)
Well, yes, it does, in Dr Amy’s universe of statistics. Oh, wait, no, it’s only the babies that die in her universe. Who cares what happens to the mothers.
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Sarah Dorrance-Minch Reply:
July 26th, 2010 at 9:13 am (Quote)
It amazes me how many fans she has – including mothers. Have they no sense of self worth?
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Alyson Miers had this to say,
Jul 24, 2010 @ 12:22 pm (Quote)
OB to English:
“If you have a home birth, it will not be under MY supervision and therefore I will not get paid for managing your birth. I don’t give a toss about your birthing experience, this is my income we’re talking about!”
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qtberryhead had this to say,
Jul 24, 2010 @ 9:08 pm (Quote)
“…or not”
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WOW! I didn’t realize being dead would be this much work. I mean, since my death via homebirth in 2008, I still somehow have 3 kids to take care of, a job, a house to keep and a husband.
I must say that this death thing is not as restful as I thought it would be.
Now back to reality…
When I took my daughter in for a spouse-insisted upon checkover by our family doctor when she was 3 days old, he asked me what hospital she was born in. I looked at him and said, “I had her at home”, and braced myself.
He smiled and said, “Well women have been doing it for centuries”.
THAT is the kind of response that SHOULD be given when the subject of home birth arises.
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While I think homebirths are riskier (go Moms that have done it!) that is the worst way to discourage one. The last thing the OP needs is her kids being scared if her dying while giving birth.
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Brittney Reply:
August 4th, 2010 at 9:03 am (Quote)
Actually, homebirths are only riskier in certain situations, and that really shouldn’t be lumped into the same group. A woman who doesn’t have a competent attendant, has an UNplanned unassisted delivery, lives too far from adequate emergency medical care, and women with GD, or another medical condition. Now this is not saying that she cannot safely give birth at home, or even that it is much riskier, but it does have the potential to be riskier. In reality, the interventions most commonly used as routine in hospital labor wards are riskier than giving birth at home any day.
The homebirth infant and maternal morbidity and mortality rates are similar or lower than hospital, depending on what research you look at, but the csection rates are closer to 5-10%, instead of 30-50%. AND that doesn’t take into acct the # of the mothers who are injured or die from complications of their csection in subsequent pregnancies. If that was considered then the infant and maternal morbidity and mortality rates would SOAR for hospital births. But since they only look at damage within the first 30 days or so after birth, we are stuck *assuming* that the only difference between hospital birth and homebirth is a slightly lower death and injury rate at home, and more csections at the hospital. Does that make sense?
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CCindy Reply:
August 4th, 2010 at 9:38 am (Quote)
25 years ago I might have agreed with you, but the c-section rate was only 20% then. Now that the c-section rate nation wide is 31% and my part of the country is over 40% I would have to say giving birth is a hospital is too dangerous to consider. If you have no medical conditions and are otherwise healthy and willingly walk into a hospital with a 47% c-section rate YOU ARE A FOOL! Don’t kid yourself about the risk involved. Death is not the only risk. Infection. Premature babies induced too early. Placenta previa or placenta acrecia in the next pregnancy after a c-section. Pit to distress. The list is way too long to risk walking through that door when other options exist.
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This one was mine- said to me by my OB, Dr. McFadden in Greenville, PA, for my fourth birth in front of my children age 5 and under… My daughter remembered it and after I had my peaceful water birth at home, she actually came over to me and said, “Mommy, the doctor was wrong! You didn’t die!”
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Add Your Comment.
As opposed to, “If you have a hospital birth, I will likely do so many interventions that it will cause to you hemorrhage. But I will be there to give you all the medications to ‘save’ you, including going up to my elbow into your uterus to search for those lost pieces of your placenta that tore off when I pulled it out. But I’ll make sure to give you a lot of antibiotics to [hopefully] keep your uterus from being infected.”
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