<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote><i>Originally posted by: <b>Scarlett81</b></i>
<br />
<br />i am dying to see it. i don't think that home births are a great thing in all cases (at least for cfers)-in this world, if something did go wrong and you didn't make it to the hosp, i couldn't live with that knowledge, wondering, what if?....
<br />
<br /></end quote>
<br />
<br />After thinking more about this part of your post I felt like I needed to address it a little bit. In life, there are always "what ifs". When someone chooses a place to give birth (home, hospital, or birth center) there are risks and benefits to each location. Here is what the studies say about homebirth - your risk of dying (mortality) is the same as in the hospital but your risk of injury (morbidity) is less at home. In the hospital, as you no doubt experienced, you are occasionally checked in on by a nurse and your doctor may come by once or twice during your labor to see how you're doing. And then he or she comes back at the end to catch the baby. So for the most part you are left alone but most likely connected to electronic fetal and contraction monitors. The nurses rely on the monitors to tell them how you are doing, if baby doing ok or is in distress, if your contractions are adequate, etc. This was my experience to a T.
<br />
<br />At home or a birth center, you have one on one attention with a midwife and her assistant. They stay with you through the whole labor and rely your actions and vocalizations just as much as they rely on the doppler every once in a while to see how baby is tolerating labor. To a midwife, the way a woman in labor is acting is very important in assessing where she is at and how she is doing. I (and many others) believe that a midwife who's been watching you during labor will pick up problems long before someone at the hospital will. There are rarely any true emergencies when it comes to childbirth (my midwife called it "more like urgencies than emergencies"). Maybe midwife or you notice that something isn't quite right and then you talk about your options and decide whether or not to transfer to the hospital.
<br />
<br />Think of this scenario at the hospital - the nurse, looking at your fetal monitor readout, notices the baby's heart rate is going down during contractions (normal) but isn't rebounding like it should be (not normal). She calls the doctor and then rushes into your room to have you change your position. The doctor arrives and decides a c/s is in order. Do you get a c/s right away? no. They have to prep the OR, possibly call the on call anesthesiologist to come in out of bed if it is in the middle of the night, prep you, etc. It can take 30 min to an hour to do all that. THEN you get your c/s.
<br />
<br />So lets say you're at home instead of the hospital - midwife notices baby isn't tolerating labor or maybe you have a prolapsed cord, etc. It is time to transfer to the hospital. So... she calls the hospital and says she has a woman coming in who will most likely need a c/s. They will start to do all the things they would have done had you been in the hospital but instead of waiting in the hospital, you are on your way to the hospital. So the c/s will get performed in the same amount of time as it would have had you been at the hospital in the first place. - But I must stress that the rate of c/s for women choose homebirth is VERY low. I don't remember the exact %.
<br />
<br />Many people believe that homebirth just isn't safe and you are risking the life of you and your baby by having a midwife, not a doctor, in attendance and you aren't at the hospital where all the latest technology is. The studies say that just isn't so. My midwife studied many years under another midwife and has delivered close to 1500 babies. I trust her experience. She brings oxygen, pitocin, etc, to each delivery. So she is prepared for something unexpected
<br />
<br />I feel that <i>for me</i>, the best chance I have at having a safe and healthy mom and baby is by having my baby at home. I don't think that is the right choice for many women, especially since our society has conditioned a fear of birth into most. If a woman feels more comfortable having a baby in the hospital, then by all means, have your baby at the hospital. After all, I chose to have Logan at the hospital. I'm not trying to convince anyone that homebirth is the way to go - only that it isn't dangerous as many believe. Heck, I now feel that giving birth in the hospital is more dangerous than at home, but that is only my personal feeling.
<br />
<br />Sorry for such a long post <img src=""> I didn't know how to say all of that w/o saying it all (if that makes sense).
</end quote></div>