Hi Dr. Amy ~I’m curious as to what really is going on that has you so afraid of allowing women to have the birth of their choice. No matter what I, as a safe birth advocate and you as a safe birth advocate ~ yes, we both want birth to be safe ~ believe is actually the safest, the fact is that in America we were meant to have our rights to do what we choose to do with our bodies, ourselves, protected.

Pregnancy is simply one piece of healthcare and care involves nothing less than what is given to all others in all other health care fields regardless of gravity of the situation. I want to know why you feel a need to TELL women not to birth at home. I don’t TELL women not to birth in hospitals. I do what they ask of me: share what I know, point them to resources and let them choose for themselves.

Women who have been my birth clients have chosen from among hospital with OBs, hospital with MW/OB, free standing birth center with MW, homebirth with CPMs and Traditional Birth Attendants, homebirth with CNMs and unassisted childbirth. They made their own choices and collectively they represent a c/s rate right around 10% (the WHO guideline recommendations) and of the almost 90% vaginal birth rate a little over 80% of those were without drugs ~ pain medication ~ and only a few with augmentation.

The reasons for cesareans were breech and less than textbook labor patterns. I don’t believe everyone is either at your end of the “birth is not safe” spectrum or at my end of the “birth is safe” spectrum” rather I believe the greater majority is somewhere in the middle. Certainly statistics show that less than 10% of births take place at home. I wonder that such a small group with healthy birth outcomes would take up so much of your time.

I wish that you devoted the same amount of energy to asking careproviders to give all the facts about every procedure and protecting the right to make our own health care decisions. What exactly is it about homebirth that is so dangerous? I know I can pinpoint the abuse of oxytocin, the abuse of medical privileges in prescribing drugs off label and the untold risks of cesareans, such as putting your future children’s lives at risk, for specifics about medicalized birth that is dangerous.

I’m not alone in that aspect. There are doctors out there who agree these practices bear scrutiny and are unethical. They question America’s maternity health care system in whole. I really am very interested to know exactly what aspects of homebirth are dangerous in your opinion and why you feel a need to use fear to quell an individual’s right to explore and educate themselves, invade a person’s home, privacy, body and right to choose for themselves. I notice that most of what is posted between you and others on the internet is lost in rants.

I don’t need the stats. I can find stats myself and I fully understand anyone can interpret stats however they’d like. I’m interested in hearing what YOU KNOW about birth, your experience with birth.

As a matter of interest, in my case it wasn’t homebirth advocates who advised me to VBAC spontaneously, without medications and especially with my premature son.  My skilled homebirth midwives advised me to birth in a hospital with the underlying medical conditions I had.  It wasn’t the homebirth advocates that encouraged me to VBAC telling me I could do it and I would be fine.   It was two different obstetricians in two different hospitals.  It was obstetricians who weren’t just trained in VBAC and complications of birth, they were SKILLED.

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