Home Birth Among Catholic Women?

[babochka]

Women with all those characteristics can still have a breach baby, a placental abruption, a baby with an abnormal heart or any number of reasons that they might change their mind about having a home birth.

Yes, and those women are encouraged, by doctors and hospitals, to labor at home for as long as possible.

Midwives are generally quite skilled at delivering breech babies, while doctors generally are not. Older doctors often have experience with it, but younger doctors usually have never seen a vaginal breech birth. Midwives (in my state at least) are well trained at dealing with and responding to emergencies. Any of those things you listed (as well as many others) can happen at home, at the hospital, during labor and before labor. Perhaps we should start checking women into the hospital at the end of the third trimester and just waiting it out there?

Childbirth comes with risk. It is part of life and we cannot eliminate it entirely. I don’t think that we should be reckless with our lives and those of our precious children.I’m not saying that there aren’t times when a hospital birth is definitely a good idea. As much as I have wanted a homebirth, I know that it is not a safe option for me. As much as I’ve hated my 4 c-section (out of 5 births), I am eternally grateful that my children and I are alive today. But it is hard to argue with the outcomes, and studies show, worldwide, that planned, midwife attended homebirths are safe.

 

[babochka]

Women with all those characteristics can still have a breach baby, a placental abruption, **a baby with an abnormal heart **or any number of reasons that they might change their mind about having a home birth.

A midwife would be monitoring mother and baby things such as abnormal heart rate. At the first sign of something concerning, mother and baby would be transferred to a doctors care in the hospital.

 

[Allegra]

A midwife would be monitoring mother and baby things such as abnormal heart rate. At the first sign of something concerning, mother and baby would be transferred to a doctors care in the hospital.

Then what’s the point?

 

[babochka]

Then what’s the point?

Because in most cases there will not be an abnormal heartbeat and that birth can and will take place safely at home. Medical care is for those who need it. Part of a midwife’s job is to assess the need for a higher level of care. This assessment takes place throughout pregnancy (prenatal care) and labor.

 

[Xantippe]

“Part of a midwife’s job is to assess the need for a higher level of care. This assessment takes place throughout pregnancy (prenatal care) and labor.”

There’s huge variation in midwife qualifications, though, as somebody was mentioning upthread. You get everything from CNMs (nurse midwives) who are highly trained and able to work in hospitals if they wish all the way to CPMs, who are much more common in the homebirth setting in the US. I once looked up a birth center an acquaintance was going to be using, only to discover that there wasn’t a single nurse midwife in the building. CPMs often just do not have the appropriate training to do appropriate prenatal care for pregnant women, and the term “midwife” is used in ways that are very misleading to the public.

“Midwives are generally quite skilled at delivering breech babies, while doctors generally are not. Older doctors often have experience with it, but younger doctors usually have never seen a vaginal breech birth.”

Breech birth is super dangerous for the baby. There’s a terrible risk of the lower body being delivered and then the head getting entrapped, which could lead to either brain damage from lack of oxygen or death. If it were your head, would you want to take the risk? While it’s not crazy to attempt a vaginal breech birth in the hospital, given that they can do an emergency c-section very quickly if you’re already there, it is kind of crazy to try a vaginal breech birth at home.

 

[TeresaMarie24]

Wow! Quite a conversation going on here! Thanks for all the replies on both sides of the issue. I will say this is typical conversation around the home birth/hospital birth discussion.

Thank you to the posters that responded to my question. And congrats on a bunch of beautiful births, both in the home and the hospital. Like almost anything in life, there are positive and negative experiences on both sides of the coin. Therefore I see no reason to read such things as the “Hurt by Home Birth” article. We could also have a “Hurt by Hospital” and “Hurt by Birth Center” and “Hurt by Pregnancy” and… Well, you get the idea. Of course there is a risk with home births. There is also a risk with hospitals; I’ve personally held two babies that had died in the hospital when I worked as a nurse aide. Bad things can happen in any building.

I asked about the Catholic side of things because I remember my midwife telling me that one of her clients was a devout Catholic, and another a devout Christian. I was just curious if that was a typical occurrence. It would seem not.

A few things. Allegra said she wouldn’t want to be at home with her family around when she couldn’t get out of bed. Just FYI, you would probably rarely be in bed for most, if any, of a home birth, unless you wanted to be. I recall laying down once for my midwife to perform a check, but after that I refused to lay on my back on account of back labor. She performed the rest of her checks while I was standing or squatting. I had a pool set up in the living room and was in there for much of my labor, but gave birth in my bedroom, squatting, while my then-husband held me up (he was sitting on the bed). Much more comfortable. Oh, and someone mentioned the hospital being clean. By no fault of their own, rather the fact that hospitals are full of sick people, they are not all that clean. They are as clean as they can be, but one need only look at the sheer number of MRSA infections to know that your own home and your own germs are safer for you in that respect.

The posters who are quoting statistics about countries with midwife-centered care are correct. Their birth outcomes are much better than the United States. We’re about 27th in the world. pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/07/reducing-infant-mortality-in-the-united-states.html Our infant and maternal mortality rates are actually quite high considering we are a first-world country. cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/parenting/05/08/mothers.index/

Is this because of people having hospital births rather than home births? No, not exactly. Rather, it’s the medical model of birth. The idea that birth requires many interventions and can be scheduled and such. This causes complications. Birth is just fine as it is most of the time. The World Health Organization says a country with a good model of care should have a C-section rate of under 10%. The United States is currently around 33%!! Does that mean a third of all women’s bodies in this country can’t do as they were designed to do? No, again, not at all. It has to do with the cascade of interventions, very common in the hospital setting. Need some proof of that? Just look at the dollar signs - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12892682 Some info about the cascade of interventions - mindthesciencegap.org/2013/04/02/has-labor-become-a-cascade-of-interventions/

Anyway, I’m not knocking hospital births, though of course I go the other direction. (I think many years of working in hospitals helped push me in that direction.) As I said before, I think women and their families should do their research, and then birth where they feel most comfortable and according to the level of risk involved in their pregnancy. Hospitals can achieve great outcomes, if they are letting low-risk births move along as they should. And home births can as well, if they have well-trained midwifes attending them.

Thanks again for your comments!! Love to talk about the babies!

Speaking of which, we are collecting signatures to get a ban on late-term abortions in our city on the ballot this fall. We currently have practitioners performing abortions through all 9 months of pregnancy. While there should be no abortions, we are at least trying to get it back to 20 weeks. Please pray for us!!

 

[Allegra]

Because in most cases there will not be an abnormal heartbeat and that birth can and will take place safely at home. Medical care is for those who need it. Part of a midwife’s job is to assess the need for a higher level of care. This assessment takes place throughout pregnancy (prenatal care) and labor.

I live 20 minutes from my hospital and thats 20 minutes that I do not want to wait. If my mother had had to wait 20 more after her placental abruption, I would not be here and probably neither would she. She had had all the appropriate prenatal screening and they didn’t show anything. It happened that quickly.

 

[Kelfa28]

There’s huge variation in midwife qualifications, though, as somebody was mentioning upthread. You get everything from CNMs (nurse midwives) who are highly trained and able to work in hospitals if they wish all the way to CPMs, who are much more common in the homebirth setting in the US. I once looked up a birth center an acquaintance was going to be using, only to discover that there wasn’t a single nurse midwife in the building. CPMs often just do not have the appropriate training to do appropriate prenatal care for pregnant women, and the term “midwife” is used in ways that are very misleading to the public.

Exactly. I specifically searched for a CNM. Actually, my state is so uptight about insurances and qualifications that I doubt I’d be able to use a CPM anyway.
Midwifery is not too common in my state…from what I’ve seen. Most work in the hospitals anyway.
Home births should be supervised by CNMs because they can instantly recognize a problem and either treat it appropriately and move on or make the decision to go to the hospital.

A really good Midwife will know the difference between a problem that can be dealt with, safely, within the home setting and a problem that needs immediate advanced intervention.

Breeched birth is super dangerous for the baby. There’s a terrible risk of the lower body being delivered and then the head getting entrapped, which could lead to either brain damage from lack of oxygen or death. If it were your head, would you want to take the risk? While it’s not crazy to attempt a vaginal breech birth in the hospital, given that they can do an emergency c-section very quickly if you’re already there, it is kind of crazy to try a vaginal breech birth at home.

This is something I wouldn’t go anywhere near with a ten foot pole. If I’m told my child is breeched…I’d go to the hospital immediately and get a C-Section. Delivering a breeched baby vaginally is dangerous. So much can go wrong. You’re basically holding a pillow over the baby’s face and crossing your fingers.

I get that it can be done…but I agree with Xantippe…why in the world would you take that kind of risk.
Even the CNM, highlighted in the documentary The Business of Being Born, sent the pregnant director to the hospital since the baby was coming and the baby was breeched.
She had an emergency C-Section.

 

[s27dolphin]

Three things because I think they’re important:

1. Birth centers are not a compromise between home and hospital . They are essentially identical to a homebirth, even the midwives that run them will tell you that. Think of it as a homebirth in someone else’s house.
2. Make sure you learn the very important difference between Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs), Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs), and lay or direct-entry midwives.
3. Infant mortality rate does not adequately reflective of birth outcomes. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perinatal_mortality Perinatal rate is what you need to be looking at, and the US has one of the best perinatal rates in the world.

You only get one shot to get a baby born healthy, and both you and baby have the best chance in a hospital. Most Catholic women I know go the hospital route. I do know many homebirthers, and they tend to be Evangelical or pagan-ish.

Read about Melanie Prichard - Catholic speaker I was able to see recently. melaniepritchard.wordpress.com/ She experienced an amniotic fluid embolism and miraculously survived it.

 

[babochka]

Exactly. I specifically searched for a CNM. Actually, my state is so uptight about insurances and qualifications that I doubt I’d be able to use a CPM anyway.
Midwifery is not too common in my state…from what I’ve seen. Most work in the hospitals anyway.
Home births should be supervised by CNMs because they can instantly recognize a problem and either treat it appropriately and move on or make the decision to go to the hospital.

A really good Midwife will know the difference between a problem that can be dealt with, safely, within the home setting and a problem that needs immediate advanced intervention.

My state licenses lay midwives and the licensing requirements are pretty stringent, but they are not required to be nurses. They are well qualified to assess potential problems and deal with emergencies. They carry pitocin and oxygen. They are professionals in their own right and midwifery is a field separate from Obstetrics.

This is something I wouldn’t go anywhere near with a ten foot pole. If I’m told my child is breeched…I’d go to the hospital immediately and get a C-Section. Delivering a breeched baby vaginally is dangerous. So much can go wrong. You’re basically holding a pillow over the baby’s face and crossing your fingers.
.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable attempting a home birth with a breech baby, either, but if that baby was coming ready-or-not, give me the birthing skills of a midwife over an OB any day. Not every woman lives close to a hospital with emergency operating abilities 24 hours a day.

This is the official recommendation from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which is rather well known for risk-aversion:

In light of recent studies that further clarify the long-term risks of vaginal breech delivery, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that the decision regarding mode of delivery should depend on the experience of the health care provider.** Cesarean delivery will be the preferred mode for most physicians because of the diminishing expertise in vaginal breech delivery.** **Planned vaginal delivery of a term singleton breech fetus may be reasonable under hospital-specific protocol guidelines for both eligibility and labor management. **

The recommendation goes on to discuss the risks, both in the short-term and long-term.

 

[EasterJoy]

No, these are well designed studies, dealing with women in similar risk categories. For example, the studies would only include women between the ages of 18 and 35, in good health, normal weight, non-smokers, etc, etc. This is actual science.

I don’t know that there is an ethical way to do a prospective double-blind study of this, because mothers cannot be randomly “placed” in a midwife birth or hospital birth group (as can be done, for instance, with phamaceuticals). You can’t know why they chose what they chose and some information (such as what their physician or midwife chose not to tell them) is impossible to control. Even if you could, the difference in professional standards for midwives, the availability of OB docs, and the relationship between midwives and physicians varies wildly from one locale to another.

At any rate, this isn’t something that has an automatic “Catholic” answer. Just as we have members of the faithful on every point of the political spectrum, so have we Catholics on every point of this discussion.

 

[ExGratia]

I’m not sure what specific benefit you see in trying to give birth in a bathtub with your whole family present. You must have a much larger bathroom than I have!

.

I do not appreciate your disparaging remarks directed at me. The comment about saints being born at home was meant to add levity. I suppose it could also highlight the fact that we trust in doctors more than God, as a culture. But that was not the original intent.

As I stated, only 3 people besides me and the babies were present (2 midwives and my husband). Incidentally, I also did not opt for a water birth. Do not make assumptions about the details of my birth experience and I will not make assumptions about yours.

For posters who would do water birth with many people present, that is okay, too!

I am not going to expound the benefits of homebirth for you right now because I do not have the time to list them all and do not want to make a few seem more important than others.

Our decision involved much prayer, research, and preparation. In the U.S., few babies, Catholic or otherwise, are born at home. But I never assume that a choice is preferable just because the majority choose it. You could call me counter-culture (and likely would, if you knew me). But as faithful Catholics, you and I both could be considered counter-culture! And that isn’t a bad thing!

God’s Peace and Love,

ExGratia

 

[Musician]

I’m a revert to the faith. While I was away, I was married (since divorced and annulled) and had a child during the marriage. I had a home birth; it was wonderful! It even compelled me to be a childbirth educator for time. While I think every woman should give birth where she is most comfortable, for me that place was home, and things went very well.

My child’s godmother had a birth center birth with one of her four children, but the others were born in a hospital. Giving birth at home was something that was somewhat common among the people I knew at that time, but none of us were even non-denominational Christians, let alone Catholics. I’m just curious… Do many Catholic women have home births?

We used midwives, yes, and had natural deliveries. I was determined to give birth the way I felt comfortable. My daughter had home waterbirths for her two children. It was beautiful and peaceful!

 

[Sarabande]

Both of my children were hospital births and I was more than pleased with the care I received there. The entire staff was so attentive and caring. I personally wouldn’t want a home birth because I’d like to be right in the hospital should there be a problem. To me, seconds count and as a person who has had c-sections and eventually decided against a VBAC towards the end of my second pregnancy after researching about potential complications and my child being very large, I wouldn’t want to take the chance however minute it might have been.

BUT I have absolutely no problem with women who want home births, especially when they are low risk pregnancies. I think properly trained midwives can be wonderful. I would have a lot of trust in a licensed nurse-midwife.

My mother is a nurse and actually was trained as a midwife which was common in her country at the time. The nurses delivered the babies, not the doctors. She delivered many babies before coming to the U.S. and she was also a wonderful NICU nurse. It was great having her look after me at the hospital and ready to advocate for me during the birthing process. She was very impressed with the medical professionals there with the exception of the anesthesiologist. It was only much later did I find out that she requested a different anesthesiologist once I had to have an emergency c-section. She didn’t want to take any chances. At the other end, I had the privilege of having my father help with my birth until the OB came, as he was on-call as a resident at the ER when my mother went into labor. How many kids can say that their dads helped deliver them?

 

[Mangaartist]

I’m planning a home birth with my first baby, due in January. The way I see it, for low-risk women with a qualified midwife, it’s a good and safe option. As parents we make so many decisions concerning our children, many of which may be statistically riskier. e.g. car accidents are the single major killer of children under 14 in the US, yet nobody jumps down the throats of parents for driving their children around in cars, telling them that if they really cared about their child, they’d take the bus or walk!

 

[KellyPalmer]

There are no good stats but my guess is that homebirth is slightly more common among faithful Catholics than the general population. It is still uncommon although growing in popularity.

I live in a heavily Protestant area but one of the few homebirth practices here is run by a Catholic homebirth Midwife. Her practice is named after the Blessed Virgin Mary (Full of Grace) and it is “dedicated to St. Margaret of Cartona, Stanislawa Leszczynska, and to Mary, Mother of God, the greatest of all mothers.”

Clearly fear mongering is still rampant among Catholics too, as evidenced here. But this site has a disproportionately low number of young Catholic mothers – mothers of the ‘information age’. Most Catholic Mom groups I belong to warn against this site.

Today, we have access to the science and history at our fingertips. Once you research these things, it does point you towards birthing at home. Studies show that homebirth parents are likely to be college educated upper-middle class, low 30s. Still most prefer hospital for birth and that is perfectly fine. Both homebirth and hospital birth are safe and valid options. If anyone is interested in learning the history of obstetrics in the US, I recommend the following scholarly books:

From Midwives to Medicine: The Birth of American Gynecology, by Deborah Kuhn McGregor, Rutgers University Press, 1998

Lying In: A History of Childbirth in America, by Dorothy Wertz and Robert Wertz, Yale University Press, 1977

Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America 1750-1950, by Judith Walzer Leavitt, Oxford University Press, 1998

Birth as an American Rite of Passage, by Robbie Floyd-Davis, Uni. of California Press, 2nd. ed. 2004

 

[Xantippe]

“As parents we make so many decisions concerning our children, many of which may be statistically riskier. e.g. car accidents are the single major killer of children under 14 in the US, yet nobody jumps down the throats of parents for driving their children around in cars, telling them that if they really cared about their child, they’d take the bus or walk!”

I was just looking up the stats on car accidents, and it looks like there’s one fatal accident for every 100 million miles driven.

statisticbrain.com/car-crash-fatality-statistics-2/

www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

 

[KellyPalmer]

I wish somebody would have pushed a little harder for an epidural with my first baby, as I was turning it down initially for no good reason. I do have a beef with the fact that nobody explained the fact that it’s very safe for the baby, pretty safe for mom, and it doesn’t make a big difference either way with labor, except for making it much more comfortable. Of course, I delivered at 37.5 weeks, so maybe the OBs were planning on having that talk at my next appointment.

With my most recent delivery, it was an induction and I did manage to have a nice chat with the anesthesiologist about the risks of the epidural while I was still able to take everything in well.

I think it’s a huge mistake to go to the hospital with an adversarial attitude. These are by and large very nice people who want to help babies and mommies get safely through delivery. I did fire my first OB (for not explaining stuff), but I’ve been very happy since.

You may want to research epidurals beyond that chat. They do significantly increase the risk for c-sections. For example, they create a fourfold increased risk for occiput posterior presentation even after controlling for other factors.

A myth got started that “epidurals don’t make a big difference either way” and received much media attention. But when I looked up the actual study in question, they compared epidural use to other forms of anesthesia because it was considered unethical to randomize anyone to a natural childbirth. It’s understandable that many mothers would like to be anesthetized during childbirth but it’s important that they be aware of the risks they are taking. This is especially important in the Catholic community where we don’t sterilize ourselves after one or two children given the risks of c-sections and future births. While epidurals aren’t that much riskier than other forms of anesthesia during labor, they do increase the risks significantly over natural childbirth.

 

[KellyPalmer]

“Part of a midwife’s job is to assess the need for a higher level of care. This assessment takes place throughout pregnancy (prenatal care) and labor.”

There’s huge variation in midwife qualifications, though, as somebody was mentioning upthread. You get everything from CNMs (nurse midwives) who are highly trained and able to work in hospitals if they wish all the way to CPMs, who are much more common in the homebirth setting in the US. I once looked up a birth center an acquaintance was going to be using, only to discover that there wasn’t a single nurse midwife in the building. CPMs often just do not have the appropriate training to do appropriate prenatal care for pregnant women, and the term “midwife” is used in ways that are very misleading to the public.

“Midwives are generally quite skilled at delivering breech babies, while doctors generally are not. Older doctors often have experience with it, but younger doctors usually have never seen a vaginal breech birth.”

Breech birth is super dangerous for the baby. There’s a terrible risk of the lower body being delivered and then the head getting entrapped, which could lead to either brain damage from lack of oxygen or death. If it were your head, would you want to take the risk? While it’s not crazy to attempt a vaginal breech birth in the hospital, given that they can do an emergency c-section very quickly if you’re already there, it is kind of crazy to try a vaginal breech birth at home.

If you look at “dr” Amy’s Hurt by Homebirth blog, you will see that the majority of poor outcomes being exploited on her site are attended by CNMs. I personally sought out a CPM for my birth because I found that CNMs often practice similarly to OBs (practicing not based on good evidence). Repeated studies have shown that homebirth with a CPM is a safe option.

Also, it is inaccurate to claim that breech birth is “super dangerous” for the baby. Yes, there are more risks with a vaginal breech birth but that is largely due to the unfamiliarity of the provider as the previous poster correctly pointed out. Providers who are trained in breech birth have safe outcomes. This is shown over and over again in the research, examples – ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16580289 and ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15901270. The reason some mothers choose to take the risks is because most of the research does not take future births into account. As a faithful Catholic, the risks of c-section birth need to be taken into consideration as family size is often limited due to the risks associated with future births.

 

[Allegra]

I do not appreciate your disparaging remarks directed at me. The comment about saints being born at home was meant to add levity. I suppose it could also highlight the fact that we trust in doctors more than God, as a culture. But that was not the original intent.

As I stated, only 3 people besides me and the babies were present (2 midwives and my husband). Incidentally, I also did not opt for a water birth. Do not make assumptions about the details of my birth experience and I will not make assumptions about yours.

For posters who would do water birth with many people present, that is okay, too!

I am not going to expound the benefits of homebirth for you right now because I do not have the time to list them all and do not want to make a few seem more important than others.

Our decision involved much prayer, research, and preparation. In the U.S., few babies, Catholic or otherwise, are born at home. But I never assume that a choice is preferable just because the majority choose it. You could call me counter-culture (and likely would, if you knew me). But as faithful Catholics, you and I both could be considered counter-culture! And that isn’t a bad thing!

God’s Peace and Love,

ExGratia

I haven’t made any disparaging remarks against you. The fact that someone disagrees with you and would never, ever, ever, ever, ever agree to what you proposing does not mean they are disparaging you personally. As I understand it, you have the right to do whatever you want.
I don’t have a problem with a choice being counter-cultural if I think it’s a good choice on its own merit, but I never choose something simply because it’s counter-cultural! That just comes down to being a little snob and thinking the rest of the world is full of idiots while you are uniquely intellectually suprior or gifted with some sort of devine inner eye or something. Sometimes, if most people do something, there’s a good reason that most people do it. I’m certainly not going through the trouble of doing something I don’t want to do and that I feel is risky, bothersome, and unecessary just because that’s what all the self-proclaimed intellectual, counter-cultural crowd is doing! That would be nuts!