Yesterday I wrote about Natural Birth, it’s a contentious issue with regards to body autonomy. A lot of women defend the practice as “It’s not dangerous” as the stats in home birth are skewed by Home Birth advocates and in the name of patient choice, an inferior system of care is touted and pushed as superior.
I wrote about the complete unreliability of the Midwives who promote this and the testimony of women who support it (It is mainly women since the entire practice wreaths itself in the trappings and language of feminism).
This makes people unwary, this makes male doctors unwary of speaking out and utilising the bodily autonomy argument that we use for Abortions, the practice is defended by mainly women. A man commenting on this is told that “he cannot understand the mysteries of birth”.
There are a lot of husbands who complain after botched home births about how they could never voice their fears, about how they were more likely to find faults in Home Birthers (my personal favourite is the Comedian, Dara O’Briain’s response to a home birth midwife’s defence of “You don’t want to let a doctor near you with their knives, and anyway, a tear is better than a cut!” to which his response boils down to “Which is why the choice instrument for surgical incisions is a bear. Paging Dr. Bear to the OT!”)
You can pull your own teeth out with some string and a door. Won’t recommend it but cannot really stop you. But there aren’t people who call themselves toothiologists running around telling people that this method is SUPERIOR.
Women out there repeatedly claim that a home birth is superior. The fudged safety profile is pulled out. It’s okay! The Midwife has a foetal distress monitor.
So fucking what? You may have a tracheostomy kit but does that make you better than an ENT Surgeon in placing the tracheostomy tube? What’s she going to do? Call an ambulance? Then how long do you think foetal distress will last before foetal it becomes death?
How long can you hold your breath? Is it 10 to 15 minutes? The time taken for the midwife to recognise distress, the ambulance to arrive and transport you to the hospital at the best of circumstances.
What you have is a woefully under-trained, under-equipped and overtly confident person in charge of something that can go wrong and it’s not in their interest to call for help.
Up to 15% of Home Births require emergency services to call out. Let’s take it as 1 in 6 to 7 home births requires hospitalisation. Does that sound safe to you?
If you want to see why I consider this quackery? Then look at the dialogue here. A mother at severe risk of shock required medical intervention and that is regarded as a “well done Home Birth and well handled”. Never mind the fact that the lack of professional medical care nearly caused her death.