how common is homebirth death or damage?
i am contacted almost every day by another mother, or family member to a mother who has been affected. After digging through old emails and blog comments i have found so far, 8 mothers who contacted me about their baby's death at a homebirth, one contact from a close friend of a mom, 4 babies with permanent brain damage, 2 mothers who lost their ability to bear children, 4 babies who *almost* died but where saved at the hospital after transfer, and 3 "other" situations that were very bad situations that left the moms with scars of different kinds. i have been contacted by midwives in training who stopped training and prominent midwives who stopped practicing. i have been contacted by doctors and nurses. these people have the same stories to tell. big bad homebirth horror stories and the retaliation that follows from telling them.
what is going on here? why are the stories being buried??
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17 comments:
I have been wondering about that as well Liz.
I believe in informed choice, but if the stories get buried how informed can you really be? Frightening.
"homebirth horror stories and the retaliation that follows from telling them"
Well, I think this has a lot to do with it, honestly. I think many women and families keep quiet because they don't want to deal with the fallout.
Good question.I always kept quiet about what happened at my homebirths and only told select people in the first place. Homebirth is a "hot" topic that most do not agree with--so I guess it was easier to be quiet. I really believe that the birth attendant(whether midwife of doctor)is the deciding factor in the outcome. Some attendants have not seen every possible scenario and are ill-equipped to make decisions. I have had several different midwives attend me over the years over several different births. A couple were really not that great at all and if something life threatening happened, I really do not know if they could have stepped up to the plate. But, who can you complain to? They were not even CNM, just lay midwives.
I have no idea why these stories aren't shared. I do know how difficult that it is when people give you more grief over what happened. How much crap are we given from people for even sharing?? How many times have we heard the "the baby would of died regardless" line?? It's like, because it was at home, nobody wants to hear it. I think we are a threat to the homebirth movement and people feel we must be silenced. So, when a mom has a loss, she's scared. Who is she going to tell aside from another homebirth loss mom privately?? If she says anything on MDC, it's deleted and she's lucky she isn't banned. We are vilified for not knowing what kind of providers we had like we just opened up a webpage and called the first name we saw. We are vilified for not knowing something was wrong or "not using our intuition". I feel bad that so many mothers are silenced. I hope we can change things and give them the support to speak up. Personally, I think our little "trio" has given us more strength and support to continue on. You know the saying, There's stregth in numbers!
I was present at a homebirth shoulder dystocia. That wasn't hushed up at all and in fact a lot of people prayed for the mother and the baby. I did not keep my cord prolapse homebirth quite at all either, so I don't have perception of a "cover up" or a silencing. That said, there were judgements and I would say that the hospital staff seemed extremely judgemental. I can totally understand the stigma attached to a homebirth gone bad.
But at the same time, I remember why I chose homebirth in the first place. Hospital birth doesn't have to be a horrible experience, but there is no denying that for many women it has been.
So is the goal to make home birth safer? To get it in the open and partnered with other heatlh care professionals? I would be for that.
But if it is to shut it down and prevent mothers from having access to it (or driving it further underground) I would oppose that.
I'm not really sure what your goal is Liz.
Her goal, Elena, is that other mother's know the danger of their choice so that no other mother is left with empty arms in a preventable situation. And that goal is a worthy one.
my goal is to tell my story- i have read many, many birth stories over the years, but i had never read a story of an intrapartum death at a homebirth. i really, truly believed that if a baby died at a homebirth it must have been an unpreventable death, and that quite possibly birthing at home was ^safer^ without those pesky "interventions". i do not want to hear another mom say that one day.."i never knew this could happen"
because Elena, I NEVER KNEW. i never for a second thought my daughter could die ONLY because i did not have her in the hospital. i want to warn other moms. i have had countless people contact me and thank me for sharing my story.
what i want to know, is what bothers you so much about me/this blog?
I wouldn't say that your blog bothers me and I certainly support your right to blog whatever you want on your blog. I think women should be very informed of all the choices they make (hospital or homebirth or even birthing center.)In that sense I think all stories with all kinds of outcomes are important for women to read and know about.
I keep reading because I'm trying to figure out your goal, the plan, the overall outcome that you would
like to see.
I would say that it blows my mind to read "I never knew..." That may be a generational thing because I first started looking at homebirth about 18 years ago. At that time the women I knew who were having homebirths were very knowledgable about everything that possibly could go wrong during a birth. Maybe as the movement has grown some, that hasn't been passed on to mother's today? I don't know. I was just surprised to read it. But I agree with you that women need to really educated, especially if they are going to take on the responsibilty of home birthing.
I think perhaps the reason a bad outcome from a homebirth isn't as "advertised" or discussed is that people may sneer "I TOLD you so!"; I mean, you know, the ones who are against homebirth to begin with,and would blame the parents for having made what they consider to be a "foolish" or unsafe choice; they'd blame them for not being a the hospital to begin with.
The way I see it, a complication or baby death can happen ANYWHERE, at home or at the hospital, it's just that at the hospital they are better and ready equipped to deal with any sudden emergencies on hand so less critical time is wasted in such a case so it increases the odds the outcome won't be as bad, but it still does happen.
Impo, you touched on an important point. The hospital can react sooner, but a lot of that depends on "who" is doing the reacting! Granted, there can be incompetent direct entry midwives - there are also inexperienced and incompetent medical professionals. Reminds me of the old joke, what do you call a student who graduates from the bottom of his medical class -
Doctor!!
"
I keep reading because I'm trying to figure out your goal, the plan, the overall outcome that you would
like to see. "
the goal of my blog? this blog was not started for a goal. i started it in 2006 just to chronicle my life. it has always been just that. when we were fostering, it revolved around that, when i home-schooled all my brood it focused on that... when my daughter died my whole world changed, so naturally my blog had some changing to do. but i still feel it is only a reflection of things that are foremost in my mind at a particular time...say 2 years from now- who knows what i will be blogging about- but i can guarantee you two things- it will be honest and it will be real.
Elena did have a point about how homebirth was some years back. My first homebirth was 17 1/2 years ago. Over the years the homebirth movement seems to have grown to a level of "nothing is a problem/hindrance for a homebirth" For eg. twins, triplets--no problem, baby is breech--no problem, 12 lb. baby--no problem, mom has hypertension or diabetes or other disease--no problem. Even when problems may arise in labor they see it as "normal" and "not to worry"(and I have read those stories where the above did happen and everything was OK) The movement seems to be at one extreme and the hospital is perhaps at the other extreme where everything is looked at as a potential problem. Some of the good aspects of homebirth need to be routine at the hospital and medical care needs to be readily available for homebirths.I am blessed to live in an area where I have access to homebirth with midwives and an OB doctor who supports that decision and helps me with any pregnancy care and L&D at the hospital if I need/want it. My OB has said that unfortunately the USA is not set up for homebirth to be as safe as possible like some of the European countries. But, there are true emergencies that a homebirth can not ever handle even when there is an ambulance sitting in the driveway(as in some countries)and moms need to hear those stories too.
Elena, anything related to being pregnant now is called a "variation of normal" and conditions that once made mothers run for the OR now make them find a hippie woman who tells them that if they trust their bodies and trust birth enough nothing bad can happen. We need to look in old cemeteries and see that birth was the leading cause of death for young women. Trusting birth and trusting your body is the ideology that the NBC community has latched onto and nothing can sway them!
If you searched some of Liz's older posts then you would see that her blog has been around fro some time and that she uses it to share her life. There is no agenda, this is her life.
Hi Traceydanelle,
I should probably take some time and lurk over at some of the NBC sites. It was NOT that way 18 years ago, or even 10 years ago. We were encouraged to learn as much about childbirth as possible. My son is an EMT-B and I was surprised to learn that I knew more about childbirth and child birth emergencies than he did. When a cord prolapse was discovered during my last homebirth I knew exactly what it meant and what to do. It was still scary but maybe not as scary as if I had no idea what was going on.
While it is ridiculous for the modern NBC to not recognize some of the age-old birthing emergencies, we need to also be careful I think to imply that all the young women in the cemeteries were homebirth casualties. That's not true and it is the kind of rhetoric that put women like mother on her back tied down and in twightly sleep during her deliveries and it's the reason so many of our young women are getting sectioned today.
We need to be the moderate voices of reason, assurance, wisdom and common sense.
Elena, you may find it rhetoric that lots of women died during or shortly thereafter childbirth but that doesn't make it less truthful. There are all sorts of things that can go wrong. There is a culture of belief that no matte what happens during birth our bodies can handle it. On some NBC boards women are being encourage to birth twins at home unassisted; breech is considered normal since it is the position the baby is in. There is some scary stuff being perpetuated out there and babies are dying because their mothers bought into that belief! 34 years ago I was 4 weeks late and my mom's doctor didn't induce her. It was divine intervention that I survived!
As for the "vast" numbers of women getting C-sections, of the 30+ women I know only 2 have gotten C-sections; 1 was even offered a VBAC by her doctor for her second child. I think there are lots bad OB's out there; I am not denying that. I think that there are lots of bad bankers out there, lots of bad politicians, lots of bad mail carriers, you get the picture. I think when the public take such a small picture of doctors and say that they are the problem and apply their beliefs to every doctor who just wants to cut we are doing a disservice to all doctors.
Tracey, I agree that we can't broad brush ALL doctors. Some are quite remarkable, and maybe even saintly in the way they give of themselves for their patients. Those are rare. Most are extremely competent. Many are afraid of being sued.
I'm surpised you only know 2 plus 30 women with C-sections! I'm more surprised when someone I know DOESN'T get one!! Now, that may be a regional thing, I don't know, but I know lots of women with C-sections - very few for things like prolapse, abruption, shoulder dystocia etc.
On the other hand, Tracey, you can't tell young women that you can discern how every young woman in the cemetery died. That's the kind of scary rhetoric we need to be careful of. Without antibiotics, farm and industrial accidents, epidemics etc., that's just not a fair or even accurate description. Let's stay well-reasoned, logical wise and knowledgeable in how we discuss childbirth with women. It's a disservice to do otherwise.
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