At least this one could actually be out of concern unlike most posted.

Funny, I know a baby that was born at home with mild spina bifida, they didn’t know she had it until she came out. They just took her to the hospital after she was born. She is now a very healthy, happy, preschooler!

Yep, most people don’t think about it like that. Or think that it’s an automatic c-section because it could be horrble and no one would know, etc. That’s why I said it could possibly not be said with the usual asshattery but who knows.

I actually know of a case where a baby was born with spina bifida, and the hospital swaddled her up and sent her home without telling the mother about it. It wasn’t until she tried to give the baby a bath that she discovered it. Granted, this was a few decades ago, but still.

Because once you give birth at home, you are banned from going to the hospital with your baby. For life.

Um. Take her to the doctor after birth, same as if she was born in a hospital?

I think there are certain forms of spina bifida in which the spinal cord or a bunch of nerves from it, are exposed, or outside the body in a very delicate sack of membranes, and if that is broken, infection, paralysis and even death can follow. Great care is needed in such cases to avoid infection before surgery is done. BUT-it would seem that these cases would most likely be caught on ultrasound.

I had my home births without even having any ultrasounds. (Nine babies, and I never had one.) Had my baby been born with any defect, I would have called my family practice doctor, who was always “on call” for me during my births, and he would have met us at the hospital. He also would have found me the right specialist to deal with the problem, probably by the time I got there.

I suppose there are some conditions which require absolutely immediate intervention. They are not common. To me it was worth some degree of risk in order to have freedom and self determination in birth.
Susan Peterson

How hilarious to me.

It was my friend’s homebirth of a baby with the worse case of spina bifida in our state to live that gave me the courage to have my first homebirth! Because he’d born at home, he got to bond with all his siblings. He got to nurse right away while they waited on the ambulance. He was considered “dirty” by the hospital, so he couldn’t go into the nursery and mom and dad could stay with him until he was transported to a hospital out of state where they could do the (many) complex surgeries he ended up needing.

He went on to be a fine young man.

I agree with the first commenter in the sense that this comment could come out of genuine concern. The problem I see with it is that the Mom wasn’t consulting the pediatrician about her home birth. She was there for a well baby visit with her older child. So while I appreciate his concern, I’m not sure he went about saying it in the best way. Maybe “Have you talked with an OB about your decision to have a home birth? I wonder about the possible ramifications of it if your child were to be born with a birth defect. For example, my daughter was born with spina bifida.” Something along those lines.

Well, according to my midwife, who (a) had children with extremely deep sacral dimples and so studied the topic in depth and (b) does not believe in PUSH PUSH PUUUUUUUSHHHH!, you first get the baby out as gently as possible, then pad the lesion, immobilize the baby on a backboard, and call emergency services. She even had a tiny custom-made backboard.

I believe I saw a study several years ago that didn’t show any benefit to babies with spina bifida being born via c-section. According to the study I read, it’s one of those “common sense” things that doesn’t seem to pan out.

Anyone have access to pub med so they can get an actual study rather than “I remember reading something five years ago”?

BTW, the chance of having SB is something like 1 in 1000 in the general population. So the pediatrician wants EVERYONE to give birth in the hospital because there’s a tenth of a percent chance of spina bifida.

And after all that, I read it wrong! I thought the *mothers* older child had SB.

I am not downing anyone for the choices they make for their families. And I like to think that I’m at least a relatively honest person. But… I wouldn’t lose a milisecond’s peace over lying about my birth plans. If home birth was illegal, I’d say, “Whoops!”

Yes, I think it’s sad that the medical and social services “establishment” forces a decision between lying and slavish obedience. But I would absolutely lie.

My SIL was born with SB 30 years ago in a hospital and she was still sent somewhere else almost immediately. My MIL was still being taken care of when SIL was in an ambulance bound for a Children’s Hospital (she is now a reasonably healthy 30 year old that my kids consider lucky because she gets a fancy chair and a van with a ramp in it). How could that be better than having the baby born at home and calmly waiting for an ambulance there to take the baby to the big fancy hospital? I think this is one of those big risks that you have to accept to have children at all, no matter how you have them. Life is dangerous and unpredictable but if you live it in constant fear of the things that can go wrong, you miss the point. OP, I’m glad you didn’t do that and went on to have a healthy baby.

My baby was born at home after I had had two healthy hospital babies. I had a healthy pregnancy, carefully monitored by my midwife. I opted out of an ultrasound, which the midwife was okay with. In retrospect, I should have gotten one, but I’m glad I did not.
My daughter was born seemingly healthy. The only funny thing about her was that her ears were bent out of shape, but I was certain that was from the way she way lying in the womb.
She grew and her differences became more pronounced. She is not three and a physically healthy little girl. No major health issues. She does have some sort of chromosomal or genetic disorder that we are still trying to find.

I’m very happy that we had a home birth. If I had an ultrasound, I probably would have had to go to the hospital and would not have seen my baby for hours after birth. I’m thinking ahead, though- if I have another child, I will definitely have an ultrasound. I realize how badly my 3 year old daughter’s birth could have turned out because I didn’t have one. But all the same, I’d be scared that the ultrasound would risk me out of a home birth. A lot to think about.