Reading Reflection on Home Births

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/nyregion/06midwives.html?src=tptw

To give birth to your child in your home may see to many as archaic, dangerous, and somewhat crazy in this age of medical science. But to many women control over their own bodies is paramount in their decision to give birth at home.Whether on a personal level you agree or not, to control ones own body is a right that is given to each person.

Rates for surgical births are typically higher in New York City than the World Health Organization recommends. For such a educated, sophisticated city its fairly shocking that doctors here are more likely to cut open a woman than many other states in the nation. In the documentary, The Business of Being Born, they tell us how hospitals get paid more for C-sections and that planned medical procedures are preferred over the erratic schedule of natural childbirth. It also turns on its head the myth that women who give birth at home are uneducated hippies. Most women who give birth at home are healthy, low risk pregnancies on their second child. In other words, most women who give birth at home know what they are getting into and chose that for themselves and their child based on prior experience.

Myself, having had a natural out of hospital birth and a hospital birth can only say the true business of being born is gambling. You can give birth at home based on the odds or you can give birth at a hospital hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. Personally, I feel to give birth at home because a mother-to-be is hoping for some sort of birth experience is selfish, considering the child should really be the focus of the birth. But I fully support her right to take that chance, should she chose to. Bringing life into this world is always a gamble and giving birth at home is every woman's right. The only ones who will benefit if this legislation goes through which outlaws home births is the hospitals, which will reap the financial benefits of over billing insurance companies, over medicating women, and overworking obstetric surgeons.