Views on Childbirth - part 3

Doctors vs. Midwives

As I mentioned in part 2, DH & I decided on a hospital birth with a Certified Nurse-Midwife (CNM) for our first birth. The main difference between midwives & OB/GYNs for childbirth is that the midwife will pretty much stay with you throughout the whole labor & delivery whereas a doctor will just check in periodically and show up in time to catch the baby at the very end. Unfortunately for those who deliver in the hospital regardless of who your provider is, you are still at the mercy of all the hospital procedures that are routinely done for everyone unless you put up a big stink about it and are really proactive.

Midwives in general have a more natural philosophy of childbirth and are usually willing to let you try out different techniques & positions for the birth. The midwife group that I saw for Emily's pregnancy had about 6 midwives and I was able to meet them all at least once before the birth. There were two in particular that I really liked and that I really got to know throughout my pregnancy. (Unfortunately neither of them were on call the day I had her.)

Doctors in general just want you to be their patient and do what they tell you to do without questioning anything. They will routinely order pitocin to speed up the labor and are usually more than willing to induce a woman early for no particular reason other than the mother and/or doctor wants to. Now I realize that there are many exceptions to these generalities, but unfortunately those doctors are getting harder and harder to find.

I have never seen an OB/GYN for any of my pregnancies but if I had some complications develop, I wouldn't hesitate to see one because that is what they are trained in - dealing with complications & high-risk cases. Doctors have a hard time just sitting back and letting a woman's body control & dictate the labor - they like to feel like they are in charge and are there to "deliver" the baby for you. The problem with that is that the woman's body knows better what to do during labor & delivery than the doctor knows - and each labor is unique and different - which doesn't always conform to the hospital/doctor time-frame.

I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of a woman being in labor in the hospital and things aren't going as quickly as the doctor would like so he/she orders pitocin to speed up the labor. The pitocin then causes the contractions to be much stronger & closer together so that the woman can no longer manage the pain. The woman then asks for an epidural for the pain. In the meantime the increase in strength of the contractions leads to distress in the baby so that the doctor has to rush in and save the baby by performing a C-section. The sad fact is that in the United States, the C-section rate is over 30%!!! That is an outrageous number! Not only is a C-section major surgery, but it reduces the number of children that a woman can have and a lot of doctors & hospital are now developing the philosophy that once a C-section, always a C-section - which will greatly reduce the number of kids you can have.

The other unfortunate statistic in our generation is that the U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate out of all industrialized nations. Why is that, when we have the best obstetrical care that money can buy? My feeling is that the more interventions that are done during labor, the greater the risk of complications which can lead to infant death. These routine procedures in the hospital are not without risk to both mother & baby and once you start down that path it is harder to reverse the effects.