The Necessity of Home Birth

It's been awhile since we've updated this blog but the natural birthing spirit is alive and well! Life just gets kinda of crazy sometimes. Anyway, I just recently came across this article written by THE home birth guru Ina May Gaskin. She has revolutioned birthing practices since the 70's and has taught doctors a thing or two about birth.
Here's a link to her bio . She is amazing!

This article entitled "Home Birth- Why it's Necessary" is a short piece on the role that home birth has played in the evolution of all birthing practices, even hospital births. I really like that she puts in there how women have to give birth where they're most comfortable and if that is a hospital, then that's where they need to be. Of course I'm paraphrasing but it's all about making the choice that's right for us and that means educating ourselves.

March of Dimes

One of the points that my sister and I try to make on this blog is that while we believe that natural childbirth is best way to go if at all possible, it is an extremely personal choice. What we strive for is to help women choose what kind of birth they want so there are no regrets nor guilt. As long as women know the risks of ALL kinds of births they can make an educated choice for what's right for them. One problem that seems to be out there is that doctors tend to make homebirth look dangerous, natural birth look like a pointless martyrdom, and cesarean like an enlighted convienence. So because the American outlook on childbirth is heavily weighted on the doctor's side we try to balance that with opinions and articles in favor of natural childbirth and homebirth. Doctors tend to not give out all the information about the risks of c-sections and women don't seem to understand what a major surgery it is and it should be used as a last resort. So here is an article from the March of Dimes website that is very unbiased but does a good job of listing the risks of c-sections and the medical reasons that often lead to them.

Article

Here's a link to a great article from CNN about how to avoid cesareans. One interesting statistic they have is that 44% of inducements end up being cesareans whereas only 8% of spontaneous labors do. Read it here. It's a good one!