Is Hospital Birth Better Analysis

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Moreland 1 Jesse Moreland Mrs. Smith Advanced Comp. Back to the Basics of Birth The medical advances in maternity care in hospitals are thought to be safe and effective, and often times they are. Despite this, some women have found that they prefer to give birth at home or in a birthing center with the assistance of a midwife. Midwives tend to be overlooked as an option for birth and are, in some cases, frowned upon. In midwife assisted birth, minimal intervention takes place, and a natural birth is truly natural: the body does what it is physiologically trained to do on its own, rather than using modern medicine to speed it up. This makes the delivery much better on the baby, and the mothers that have had a natural birth found it…show more content…
In a letter entitled “Is Hospital Birth Better?,” which was posted on a midwife education center online, the writer firmly states, “Women are led to believe that they can have a wonderful home-like birth in hospital birthing suits with OBs, when the reality is that childbirth without intervention is virtually nonexistent unless a midwife is in attendance.” Although it is not necessarily their fault, obstetricians typically do not get to know their patients on a personal level; rather they see them simply as one of their many patients, and try to get through routine things quickly so he can move onto the next patient. While doctors are trustworthy for their medical knowledge, they do not know how to assist during natural birth. The Business of Being Born discusses this. They bring up the thought provoking fact that the peak times for cesarian sections are 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. The fact that they are so often finished with surgery right before dinner and bed underlines just how much doctors are accustomed to the convenience of the modern advances in medical technology. It is suggested that physicians should just be there for when something goes wrong, because that is when their skills are needed; midwives should take care of the low risk births, especially when a natural birth is…show more content…
The women in the study that intended on having home deliveries had less infections, lacerations and hemorrhages (243.e2). Their data also showed that babies born in planned home births have much healthier birth weights and are less often premature (243.e3). Similarly, the Canadian Medical Association Journal assures safety in home birth: “The decision to plan a birth attended by a registered midwife at home versus in hospital was associated with very low and comparable rates of perinatal death” (380).

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