This communication is an effort to make my position clear with regard to home birth or minimal intervention hospital delivery.
I understand the desire for delivery at home with no or minimal intervention in a natural process. This is, of course, the ideal delivery. Parents certainly have the right to choose birth at home. However, as a pediatrician I am a child advocate, and I'm not sure the parents have the child's interest first in choosing a home delivery.
There are at least two times in a person's life that that life is in jeopardy. One is just before a person dies and the other is the time of birth. There are a number of physiologic changes that need to take place in a normal birth process during birth and afterwards. In the vast majority of births, these processes and changes take place automatically without or with minimal intervention. However, there are times at birth, when seconds count, and medical intervention to help these changes is necessary if a child is to grow to her or his maximum genetic potential. In my view, parents have an obligation to optimize the birthing environment to benefit their child.
I've been practicing in Humboldt County for over twenty-five years. During that time I can think of seven incidents where a baby died or suffered life-altering brain damage that probably would not have happened had the labor and delivery taken place in the hospital with medical care.
There are good, scientific studies showing the safety of home deliveries done by highly trained, certified midwives working with the full support of the local medical community. In Humboldt County, midwives doing home deliveries are NOT highly trained, and they do NOT work with the full support of the local medical community. Many of us in the local medical community acknowledge parents who choose home delivery, and the midwives who provide the service, and we work cooperatively with them.
In the last fifteen or twenty years there has been a major change in hospitals throughout the country, including Humboldt County, to make the hospital birthing environment and process more home-like and natural. I hope you'll take advantage of our local hospital birthing facilities and the highly trained physicians, nurses, midwives, doulas and other support staff who provide hospital birthing experiences.
If you choose a home birth, I will, of course, be happy to follow the baby after birth. However, if there is need for attention soon after the birth, I will ask you to bring the baby to the hospital because I need the resources of the hospital to fully evaluate and treat a baby who is having problems in the first few hours of life.
Ted Humphry, M.D.
822-2441
this information last updated 07/06