The Best Birth for Mom and Baby

For real people making real choices, let’s open up the discussion with compassion instead of trying to choke it to death.

Transparency and collaboration can make birth safer in all of these settings, but it can’t happen in a hostile environment.  If we can let go of our own biases of where women “should” give birth, maybe we can start making birth safer in all of those locations.” A recent study has taken another look at the safety of home birth, and the responses from people who follow these things have fallen into two predictable camps: The study shows that home births are safe and the study shows that home births are dangerous. A third, more nuanced way of thinking serves both mothers and babies better. Improving Birth’s article takes the opposition out of the conversation. http://www.improvingbirth.org/2014/02/versus/ Different schools of thought about pregnancy and birth seems like a series of oppositional arguments drawn in black and white. Home birth vs hospital birth, midwife vs obstetrician, natural birth vs medicated birth, vaginal vs surgical…Even further its often implied that the ways in which women negotiate these diametrically opposing models somehow reflect upon what kind of mother they will be. Crazy for wanting a home birth. Uninformed for using a obstetrician. Stupid for attempting a natural birth and stupid for elective to give birth surgically. These judgments, whether explicit or implicit, are missing something. We are missing considerations like accessibility to care, familial support, family size, insurance concerns, and all of the other nuanced social, cultural, and practical considerations that individual families must use to find the “best for them” middle ground. Most often that middle ground includes pieces of intuition, information, and experience, unique to an individual woman and her circumstance- with all of its complexity and fluidity. Instead of starting out on the journey of a new baby in an environment of versus, filling in the picture with intuition and experience that promotes health and well- being, both physical and emotionally, for you and your family. Instead of “better or worse”, “good or bad”, “safe or dangerous”, “natural or medical” think in terms of best for me, best for my baby, and the best I can do.