Patience is a virtue and it also leads to better birth outcomes.

Modern obstetrics needs to be cognizant of its interference in a normal labor. I have found in my own practice, the Midwives of New Jersey, that less is more. The more that we try to control the normal process of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding, the less normal it becomes. When we try to help a woman start labor before it naturally begins, the labor that ensues is often slow, more painful and she may even run out of steam before the baby is out. When we pull on the baby to deliver the shoulders, rather than waiting for the mother to push and the baby to rotate, the birth can become much more dangerous and damaging by impacting the shoulders into the pubic bone or by causing harm to the baby. When we don’t respect the 3^rd stage of labor by talking too much or by separating the baby from the mother, we run the risk of excessive blood loss or retained placenta. And remember, we are TRYING not to interfere too much.

Obstetrics today believes that they are “helping” the normal process go more smoothly and rarely see their own part in actually causing the complications that they encounter.

Studies like these prove midwifery’s respect for the natural process of birth is founded in solid scientific fact.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/02/20/new-guidelines-to-reduce-c-section-births-urge-waiting/