True to form, the Midwives Alliance of North America continues its deceptions about the risk of
death at homebirth.
Death at homebirth isn't rare; it is all too common.
Serge Bielanko wrote Don't Be Afraid, It's Just a Home Birth, and he apparently thinks its simply hilarious that people are warning him about the increased rate of
death at homebirth.
Homebirth advocates are fond of claiming that the increased risk of neonatal
death at homebirth is trivial, but CDC statistics indicate that it is in the range of 200 %.
2012 Presided over a neonatal
death at homebirth of a VBA3C mother in Utah, administered Cytotec to induce or augment labor, delivered the baby using a vacuum extractor; massive postpartum hemorrhage.
She has been jailed for allegedly presiding over an intrapartum
death at homebirth... In addition, she was arrested last month for prostitution.
There was only 1 maternal
death at homebirth, but there were only 750 homebirths.
In Missouri, the risk of intrapartum
death at homebirth is nearly 20 times higher than hospital birth.
There really shouldn't be
any deaths at homebirth if candidates are being selected correctly and if transfers are occurring appropriately and in a timely fashion.
How many babies have to die preventable
deaths at homebirth before homebirth advocates acknowledge the obvious?
In a later post, there is a link to de Jong admitting that there were 2
deaths at homebirth (one of which was potentially preventable) and 3 deaths in the hospital group, two of which were unrelated to the birth at all.
Responding to a commentor who pointed out the study actually UNDERCOUNTED homebirth deaths because
some deaths at homebirth happened during or after transfer and were included in the hospital group, she offers this bit of obfuscation:
The first time in the ground, the second time by erasing the existence of the baby so no one will find out the truth about
the deaths at homebirth.
Not exact matches
Summary: The
deaths caused by rare acute condition
at planned attended low risk
homebirth that might have had a better outcome in hospital are outweighed by the
deaths and morbidity due to common acute conditions caused by hospital interventions.
It happens so rarely that the rate of
death from AFE (1/1, 000,000) and cord prolapse (1/100, 000)
at homebirth is a miniscule fraction of the maternal mortality (1/5, 000) and perinatal mortality (1.7 / 1000) from elective cesarean surgery in hospital (34).
The regulars here are pretty up on these things and the most recent studies of
homebirth have as far as I know have universally shown the
homebirth has
at least 3x the perinatal
death rate of similar risk hospital birth.
Dr. Tuteur writes about more than 10
homebirth deaths a year, many of which take place
at or are called
at the hospital, the majority of which meet those criteria for being included in the analysis.
Just because YOU and YOUR babies were fine doesn't negate the mountain of data (including MANA's own study) that clearly indicates the dangers of
homebirth and the hideously higher
death rate
at the hands of
homebirth midwives.
You've got a hospital staff reeling from a
death, trained to comfort the grieving parents, trying to say SOMETHING and «you killed your baby by not being here» is not exactly bedside manner, so they don't say that, they say «there's nothing we could have done» (
at this point), and the people go away thinking «there was nothing they could have done, either,
homebirth wasn't the culprit.»
Leaving aside for the moment that this is the same group who crowed over a 20 % increase in
homebirths from from 0.56 % to 0.67 % of US births, does dismissing the absolute number of
death as low fully convey what is
at stake in the decision to attempt
homebirth?
We want to know how the
death rate
at homebirth compares with the
death rate
at all hospital births, not the
death rate
at tertiary facilities.
The
death rate
at CNM attended
homebirth is double the
death rate of CNM attended hospital birth.
The key point for us is that first, it's the US
homebirth we generally discuss here and second, it's impossible for a midwife to ensure a safe birth when after the mother's
DEATH, a trained midwife feels that she, the midwife, is the victim, because the bereaved husband somehow forgot that his wife had a «really lovely spontaneous birth
at home» and listened to her, the midwife, when she told him over the phone that transfer wasn't necessary because her, the midwife's husband, would not have listened to the midwife but to his wife when she told him, «I want to go to the hospital.»
Other
homebirth advocates emphasize that the absolute risk of
death is low (true) or that only women having first babies are
at risk for
homebirth death (false).
In fact, the authors go so far as to deliberately obfuscate the increased neonatal
death rate
at homebirth.
Simply put, the
death rate was not zero and until the difference (if any) between maternal
deaths at home and in the hospital is determined, we can not draw any conclusions about the safety of
homebirth for Dutch mothers.
Shouldn't self - proclaimed «midwives» Mary Barhite and Jacqueline Proffit look even a tiny bit remorseful or
at least sad in the wake of presiding over yet another
homebirth death in the state of North Carolina?
Evidently, they are taking a page out of the playbook of the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), the organization that represents
homebirth midwives, who conducted a publicly announced collection of safety data from 24,000 planned
homebirths and now are hiding how many
deaths occurred
at the hands of
homebirth midwives.
They compared the
death rate
at homebirth with the
death rate in tertiary [high risk] facilities, but that's not what we want to know.
We don't know exactly how many
deaths homebirth transfers added to the «doctor» category, but anecdotally
at least, it's going to be more than 1 and probably more than 10.
How many babies have to die before the Midwives Alliance of North America is forced to publicly acknowledge that they KNOW that
homebirth at the hands of a CPM dramatically increases the rate of perinatal
death?
Homebirth increases the risk of perinatal
death and brain damage even when,
at the start of labor, breech, twins, VBAC.
In other words, any way you choose to look
at it, no matter how carefully you slice and dice the data, there is simply no getting around the fact that
homebirth increases the risk of perinatal
death and brain damage.
As one
homebirth mother, who was a veteran homebirther and prominent in the
homebirth community, said
at an inquest into the
death of her baby last year, «If you are the «one», it's forever.
It's not a tradeoff - the risk of both
death and serious injury are higher
at homebirth.
I'm grieved to point out a new and growing genre of mommy blogs: blogs set up specifically to recount the
death or serious injury of babies
at homebirth and the aftermath for their devastated mothers and families.
They're raising money to «free» an uncredentialed, unlicensed «midwife» who is charged with misrepresenting her qualifications to parents, presiding over a
homebirth death, and who was arrested for prostitution, without making an attempt
at, indeed without even calling for an investigation of any kind.
It's hardly surprising therefore that
death rates
at the hands of
homebirth midwives are appalling.
What hardly ever gets pointed out, in the «babies die in hospitals» [faux] argument is that, while, yes, babies do die in hospitals, it is after everything possible has been done to save them, whereas in
homebirth babies are put
at the utmost risk of
death by not having proper staff / equipment / conditions, etc. to save them.
The
death rate is horrific, even AFTER Rooks inappropriately eliminated the
death of a baby
at homebirth who had congenital anomalies.
Yet another baby has been placed
at risk of significant brain damage and possible
death because the clueless
homebirth midwives didn't understand how to diagnose fetal distress.
Will MANA, the organization that represents
homebirth midwives, review its requirements in light of the unacceptably high rate of
death and injury
at homebirth?
Babies die all the time
at homebirth, and the biggest risk factors lead to the greatest number of
deaths.
Most studies of
homebirth in other countries have found no statistically significant differences in perinatal outcomes between home and hospital births for women
at low risk of complications.36, 37,39 However, a recent study in the United States showed poorer neonatal outcomes for births occurring
at home or in birth centres.40 A meta - analysis in the same year demonstrated higher perinatal mortality associated with
homebirth41 but has been strongly criticised on methodological grounds.5, 42 The Birthplace in England study, 43 the largest prospective cohort study on place of birth for women
at low risk of complications, analysed a composite outcome, which included stillbirth and early neonatal
death among other serious morbidity.
The overall all rate of perinatal
death at planned
homebirth with a LICENSED midwife was 800 % higher than comparable risk hospital
deaths.
I agree that the database almost certainly under - counts the number of
deaths at CPM attended
homebirth.
To admit that
homebirth led to the preventable
death of the baby is to admit that they weren't educated
at all; that rather than being special for choosing
homebirth, they've marked themselves as gullible and selfish.
At that point, the fallback strategy is to insist that these
homebirth deaths don't count.
National mortality statistics for
homebirth midwives are dismal and individual states like Colorado have truly appalling
death rates
at homebirth.
And then let's look
at the injuries and
deaths that occured in
homebirth with CPMs and the like... how many would have been prevented in a hospital setting?