Home Birth Information
About Home Birth
All traditional peoples have birthing
ceremonies. We must go back to our
ancestral practices to ensure the
healthiest passage for our children and
women. Birth opens a woman's body,
mind and spirit. It is a time of
empowerment, a ceremony that allows
women to bring in the next generation.
~ Clare Loprinzi, Traditional Midwife
The United States and Greece’s maternal and infant
mortality rates are amongst the highest in the industrialized
world with cesarean rates in the U.S. at 31% and 50% in
Greece.
United States obstetricians are getting hard to find
with the litigious situation arising, and in Greece there are
no Baby-Friendly Hospitals. In contrast, Holland has a low
maternal/fetal mortality rate where 1/3 of the women give
birth at home and “maximum result with minimal
intervention” is the goal.
Dutch studies show the more
interventions birth has, the more need for further intervention and treatment of chronic problems for both mother
and child. In Holland the more educated a woman
is, the more likely she is to choose to birth at home.
Birth is recognized as a natural process.
The
midwifery model of care in the Netherlands where
there is a unidisciplinary team approach amongst
the homebirth midwives, hospital midwives and
obstetricians is an approach that can help this crisis
of high infant mortality and cost in the United States
and Greece.
England is now following the Dutch
model and their goal is to have a third of their
births back at home by 2009.
*Wiegers, MJNC
Keirse, J van der Zee, G A H Berghs. Outcome of
planned home and planned hospital births in low
risk pregnancies: a prospective study in midwifery
practices in the Netherlands.
BMJ 1996: 313:1309-1313 (23 November)
- Midwifery Model of Care Here