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By Molly Snyder Edler OnMilwaukee.com Staff Writer E-mail author | Author bio More articles by Molly Snyder Edler

Published Nov. 18, 2007 at 5:20 a.m.

Tags: homebirth, labor, delivery, birth, baby

Last week, a friend had a baby girl in a birthing tub that was in the middle of her dining room. A midwife and an assistant attended the birth, along with her husband and a couple of friends. The labor and delivery went extremely well, and everyone is healthy and happy today.

Other home births have not gone as well, and in the most extreme cases, resulted in serious complications or worse.

But what are your thoughts on having a baby at home? Do you think it's dangerous? Inspiring? Negligent? Amazing? Sound-off, Milwaukee by using the talkback feature.

I'm pro-home birth. It is a woman's right to choose where she gives birth, and having a home birth is a safe and responsible choice for healthy women who did not have a high-risk pregnancy. Some women have serious hospital phobias, and do not want to welcome their baby in a place that has negative connotations for them. Other women do not want to deliver at a hospital because they feel it's a less supportive place to attempt a natural childbirth. (Hospitals often require women to wear baby monitors that restrict the mom-to-be 's ability to move around which is crucial when managing pain.) Birth is a natural process that has been unnecessarily made into a scientific procedure.

I would never have a home birth. Having a baby at home is dangerous and barbaric. We are really lucky to live in such a medically advanced world, why wouldn't we take advantage of it? There has been too much bad press about botched home births, and I would never take this kind of risk. Plus, there is more of a chance to recover in the hospital. Recovering at home, especially when older children are around, is difficult for the mom, whereas at the hospital, she gets a couple of days to rest before diving into a very exhausting life job. Finally, who wants that kind of mess in the house?

7 comments about this article. Post a comment / write a review.

Recent Talkbacks ...

Posted by bellymama on Nov. 19, 2007 at 11:28 p.m. (report)

Trained homebirth midwives are well prepared to handle all types of complications and to know when to transfer. We carry oxygen, rescitation equipment and ani-hemorrhagic drugs to all births. A baby born at home should not be deprived of oxygen as long as the midwife is well-prepared. Midwives and homebirths have excellent statistics.

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Posted by bellymama on Nov. 19, 2007 at 11:23 p.m. (report)

Having a baby at home is not dangerous or barbaric, it is a safe and empowering alternative to our over medicalized hospital system. Yes, we are lucky to have the medical advancements for when they are truly necessary. Fortunately, however, birth is a normal process seldom needing intervention. With 1 out of 3 women having their babies cut out of them we can see that medical procedures in birth are far too common. In fact, most complications seen in hospitals are caused by routine intervention. There are plenty of blotched hospital births, but you never hear about those because hospitals don't have to defend their practices or their outcomes, despite the fact that they have NEVER been proven the safest place to have a baby. More than 30 years of scientific research has proven that homebirth with a trained midwife is just as safe, if not safer, than hospital birth, for low-risk women. The U.S. ranks a sad 28th in the world in infant mortality, whereas the countries with the lowest rates- Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Japan- have one thing in commom: they use midwives as the primary care providers for all pregnant women and they have a much higher home birth rate than we do (ours is only 1%). I wouldn't want to take the risk of birthing my baby in the hospital and ending up with an unnecessary cesarean and a hospital acquired infection! And lastly, I can tell you firsthand (as a midwife) birth is not all that messy! Having my baby at home was one of the most deeply satisfying and empowering experiences I have ever had. Birth is a natural, spiritual, life-altering experience and being at home allows you to see this side of it.

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Posted by T15 on Nov. 19, 2007 at 9:46 a.m. (report)

I am neither a mom or a women but I would probably prefer the drugs you can get in the hospitals over street drugs if I were in labor pain.

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Posted by kjtzk on Nov. 19, 2007 at 8:56 a.m. (report)

Having a baby at home is neither dangerous nor barbaric. Dangerous? Every reputible study ever done comparing home birthers to matched hospital birthers has found homebirth to be as safe or safer. The largest study ever done was released in 2005 by the BMJ, and found THE SAME number of moms and babies died between the two groups, and FEWER moms and babies were injured at home. Barbaric? Well, the physical process is the same no matter where you are, so I guess I don't get that sentiment. Sure, hospitals are great when you're sick, or need intervention, and we should be grateful for the technology when it's needed. However, giving birth is not an illness, and why would you want to go into an environment full of sick people and super-germs to have a child? Birth is a normal, natural process that will go just fine 95% of the time, and being in a hospital is no guarantee of a good outcome (as the study results show). Hospitals are very often the cause of complications. Typical interventions can create problems with moms and babies, that then need to be fixed by the very people that caused them. Your risk of a c-section also increases from 1-5% to anywhere from 25-60% just by walking in the door of a hospital. I would never risk myself or my children by birthing in a hospital without a medical reason. People should be asking why a bad outcome at homebirth is splashed all over the media, and the exact same bad outcome in the hospital would never see the light of day. To a hospital, birth is a money-making business. OB departments bring in more hospital revenue than any other department. 24 hours a day, 265 days a year the money comes in. The recovery at home is so much better. No nurses coming in at all hours to poke and prod me or my baby, no pointless tests and procedures, and the food is much better. I also believe it made it easier for my other children to accept the new additions. As opposed to Mom being gone for two days, and bringing home this creature that they are supposed to like, my other children saw their siblings very shortly after the birth. It was more of a, "Oh, that came from Mommy, so it must be okay." Being surrounded by people who I knew and loved, and being taken care of hand and foot in my own space was fantastic. And to address the mess issue...what mess? All the midwives I know clean everything up as part of their services. I've had two homebirths and never even picked up a piece of lint the whole time.

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Posted by a_noid on Nov. 19, 2007 at 8:36 a.m. (report)

Home births sound great... unless something goes wrong. I know someone whose child was deprived of oxygen immediately after a home birth. In a hospital they have the resources to deal with this and it likely would have been fairly routine to open the childs airway. At home these resources were not available and the lack of oxygen caused cerebral palsy. Their child is a wonderful kid with all of his cognitive abilities, but he is confined to a wheel chair, with minimal control of his fingers and unable to speak. Having a child at home is no different than driving around in your car with your child on your lap. It is nice and comfortable, but if something goes wrong it can go horrifically wrong.

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