Unassisted Birth

I can't keep my comments to myself on this one: unassisted births. First of all, WTF? I mean, seriously, I know women have been having babies since time began, and in many countries that is the way it still is, but in America we have people who have worked hard to educate themselves on how to not only deliver a child but make sure the baby is okay once it is born. GMA had a segment on about unassisted births. They interviewed this woman who said that she felt her home was a much safter environment than the hospital for delivering her baby. Now, I know some hospitals can have bad reps - so go to a hospital that has a great rep and check it out! Make sure you see how sterile they are, how attentive the nurses are and how many babies are born there every day/week or year. Do your homework.

I am hopeful she did her homework on how to deliver her child at home. She had a birthing tub set up. Now, this rubber or plastic tub sitting in her bedroom looked kind of scary. I certainly hope there wasn't a puncture hole or something that would have caused it to deflate during labor, or God forbid contain some sort of contaminate that could harm a newborn. (As many of you know, the chemicals they use in furniture or carpeting to keep it stain resistant can be deadly for some children and also the flame retardent chemicals they put on childrens' clothing - so you need to be very careful with that type of thin much less delivering a child into a plastic pool). Then to top it off, she was unassisted - meaning just her and her husband. No midwife, no doula, no NP, no doc on call.....

Are these women truly facing the fact that they could potentially cause the death of their child? Are they willing to accept their child's fate if there are complications?

And, what does the law say about this? I mean, if they are trying to make abortion illegal how can they say it is okay to have an unassisted birth? It makes NO sense to me.

My friend shared this with me - she and I agree on the subject, so I wanted to post her response:

That is completely insane, I mean seriously. People think it is this natural spiritual thing. I think that God gave us the intelligence to become doctors and discover cures, and to keep our babies safe during child birth! He is probably up there saying, dumbass what are you doing???

There is a joke that says that goes something like this. There was a man that was hanging on a cliff and he was praying to God, "God please come down and save me!" A goat herder came and said here grab my hand, I will help you, and the man said, I am not afraid, God will save me. Then a helicopter came and dropped a ladder to rescue him and he said, I am not afraid God will save me, and then a boat came under him and said we will help you and he said the same thing, and he eventually let go and dropped to his death. When he got to heaven he said God where were you? and God said, I sent a goat herder, a helicopter AND a boat, what more do you want???