Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Jan
18
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“Home Birth Should Be Made Illegal! That’s How Babies Die!”
“Home births should be made illegal! That’s how babies die!” – Ultrasound technician to mother who had shared that she had been born at home.
There are 33 comments to this post.
road2vba2c had this to say,
Jan 18, 2012 @ 10:20 am (Quote)
I’ve heard of more babies dying in hospitals lately than homebirths.
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I was going for my 20-week ultrasound and it was at our women’s hospital here in Vancouver. The woman doing the ultrasound was the head tech and was by and large quite good until we got talking about birth plans. You see, I was born with a hole in my heart and so my midwives had arranged for a more complete scan of the heart to see if my baby suffered from the same condition. When the tech started looking for this she started asking me questions about my own hole. I explained I knew very little – actually I’d never known about it until I was pregnant and even then it was my grandmother that told me. All I knew was that it had cleared up on its own. She said I should talk to the hospital where my mother gave birth and ask them for the records, to which I replied that my mother had delivered me at home with a midwife and family doctor so there were no hospital records and any that would have come from a visit to the hospital were in an unknown location. This is when she said,
“Home births should be made illegal! That’s how babies die!”
Oh – did I mention that I was planning a home birth as well? And that I’d done all my research and knew that actually, for normal pregnancies, home birth is as safe or safer than a hospital birth? And that my mother had delivered three healthy babies at home and even when they did discover the hole in my heart, it was a visit to a different part of the hospital than she would have birthed in anyway – a day after I was born! One final point – it was the midwife and family doctor who discovered this at our house and being at home had nothing to do with me having a hole in my heart. I was furious but my husband, who eagerly wanted good pictures of our unborn child (we didn’t know the sex and didn’t find out) gave me his look that said, “Don’t go there”. So I didn’t, but I did report it to my midwives who at least told me they planned to talk to their hospital link about the situation. No idea what ever came from it, but I don’t think I’d ever go back there for another ultrasound.
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sara Reply:
January 18th, 2012 at 10:34 am (Quote)
does that mean you are a zombie about to give birth to a zombie baby??? lol jkjk.. some people need to think about what comes out of their mouths… i hope everything turns (or turned) out the way you planned!
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Tracy Reply:
January 18th, 2012 at 10:41 am (Quote)
Sadly it didn’t. I ended up having to transfer to the hospital after 75 hours of back labour and tons of meconium in my waters. But I still felt in control of the birth and avoided pitocin (another story) though I did end up with an epi 
But 83 hours later, I delivered a healthy little girl 
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Michelle Reply:
January 18th, 2012 at 10:44 am (Quote)
Congrats for feeling in control of your labor! Whether or not you had an epidural is not as important as whether you were able to make decisions that were best for you and your baby.
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Lizzie Reply:
January 18th, 2012 at 10:51 am (Quote)
Wow, that’s a long labour! Well done for doing so amazingly and as Michelle said, for being in control. (I asked this question over on facebook, so reading your answer here )
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Tracy Reply:
January 18th, 2012 at 10:54 am (Quote)
Thank you both. Yes, it was LONG (started on a Saturday and my girl came Wednesday). Hopefully I get the home birth next time, but at least I had the vast majority of it at home, and I do credit that with avoiding a c-section. As my midwife told me after, 9 times out of 10, that would’ve been a c-section.
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Joyce Reply:
January 18th, 2012 at 11:18 am (Quote)
wow, long time, for a back labour, well done!! curious how you avoided the pitocin. and epi: do you mean epidural or episiotomy? Greetings from the Netherlands
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Tracy Reply:
January 18th, 2012 at 11:22 am (Quote)
Epi – epidural. No episiotomy (no tearing either). Pitocin… at the hospital the doctor wanted it after I’d been pushing for an hour. I ended up doing squats which got things going enough that they couldn’t argue that I *needed* pitocin. And I sure as hell didn’t want it!!
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Michelle Reply:
January 18th, 2012 at 10:42 am (Quote)
First off, that’s ridiculous scaremongering, and that ultrasound tech should be ashamed of herself.
Secondly, I am very interested in hearing how the midwife and family doctor discovered the hole in your heart. What kind of symptoms were there that led them to look for it? I am asking because I have a friend who was born with a hole in her heart, and no one knew about it until it started throwing clots when she was nearly 30. She was told that it was not uncommon for such a hole to go undiagnosed unless / until it caused a problem.
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Tracy Reply:
January 18th, 2012 at 10:45 am (Quote)
Hi Michelle,
It was ridiculous! Luckily I knew my facts and so it didn’t scare me in the least (just royally pissed me off).
As to the heart, it was the family doctor who heard the murmur when listening to my heart. He heard it was slightly off and asked my mom to take me to the hospital the following day to get it examined. Since this incident my mom found the hospital records and gave it to me – they x-rayed (which is terrifying in and of itself for a baby) and found a hole but decided it was small enough to not warrant surgery.
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road2vba2c Reply:
January 18th, 2012 at 11:08 am (Quote)
I would have had a hard time holding my tongue. It just sounds like something a kid would say. “That’s how babies die.” ROFL
Hope your birth went/goes smoothly!
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I never usually comment on these, but I felt I had to respond to this, as I’m reading Ina May Gaskin’s guide to childbirth, and had a homebirth myself.
(Good for you OP!!)
Perhaps whoever said this should read the birth statistics for The Farm. It is a community where most of the women have homebirths, or where women from outside the community can come for a ‘home from home’ environment to birth in. When the midwives of The Farm (Ina May Gaskin being the best known) first started working they had little or no medical or even midwifery training. Everything they learned they learned from the Mums themselves. Here are a few examples of some of those statistics:
Outcomes of 2028 pregnancies (1970 to 2000)
Births at home 95.1%
Transports 4.9%
Emergency transports 1.3%
Cesareans 1.4%
Forceps 0.5%
Vacuum-extrac 0.05%
VBACs 5.4% (108 attempted; 106 completed vaginal birth)
Postpartum hemorrhage 1.8%
Intact Perinium 68.8%
Maternal mortality 0
Neonatal mortality inc lethal anomalies 8/2028
Initiation of breastfeeding: 99%
Continued breastfeeding 100% (4-5 women supplemented)
I think I’d rather take my chances with THOSE statistics, and trust my body.
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first time mommy had this to say,
Jan 18, 2012 @ 12:07 pm (Quote)
Because babies NEVER die in hospitals. ::rolls eyes::
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Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!
Seriously?! You had just finished telling her that you were born at home…so what were you, a figment of her imagination?
I’m sure it was horribly frustrating and obnoxious, and I’m angry on your behalf that she dared make such a nasty statement to a mom who planned to homebirth (and she was an ULTRASOUND tech!) but from outside of the situation, just reading it on my screen…the AMAZING ridiculousness of her statement hit me.
can’t stop snickering…
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As a 2nd generation homebirther (with rowdy 2 year old playing nearby) I just have to laugh.
I think the tech should stick to her day job of bouncing sound waves off fetuses and not worry about what’s safe for babies…
And interesting–I had an ultrasound tech 9in the ER after a car wreck) who turned from friendly to nasty after hearing we were planning a home birth. She started talking about her c-sections as if that were somehow related (or that my choice to plan a home birth was insulting to her). Why is that so threatening to some people?
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Jessica S. had this to say,
Jan 18, 2012 @ 4:08 pm (Quote)
Funny story, if I had been born at a hospital instead of at home, I would have died or had brain damage, possibly taking my Mom with me.
I was conceived when my Mom was only 6 months out from delivering my older brother. The dates were most likely a little off, but she was supposedly 44 weeks pregnant when she had me, at home with a midwife. She refused induction or having her water broken for 4+ weeks. I was born in the caul, with a tight double nuchal cord, which would have been fine on its own, but that’s not all. The cord was not sheathed all the way to the placenta, and had they broken my water or used pit, the cord could easily have snapped and caused catastrophic bleeding, requiring an emergency c section.
My birth at home was peaceful, and my Mom recovered quickly, with no complications
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Taylor Hailey Sapurboa had this to say,
May 12, 2012 @ 6:32 pm (Quote)
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Lots of things make babies die. Even in hospitals. I would have had to ask him to explain his theory considering in the US 98% of women give birth in hospitals but we have one of the worst infant and maternal mortality rates of the industrialized nations. Something appears to be contradictory!
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