Natural Child Delivery - Analyzing The Options Between Giving Birth At Home Or In A Hospital
It's surprising when you realize that society often thinks we are strange if we consider having a child anywhere but in the hospital as natural childbirth was previously the only procedure for child birth. A home birth was anything but unique. Then, things changed. Ironically, this didn't mean much for women or their babies, who usually fared better at home compared to in some of the first private hospitals. Early hospital wards often had higher infant death rates and much more mothers who died in child delivery, even 100 years ago, in far larger numbers than moms attended to at home by midwives.
Evidently, medical practice has changed a lot ever since the first days of labor and delivery in a few of those first hospitals, but some things truly haven't. When you line up all the statistics on home birth compared to hospital births, natural childbirth is still less dangerous for the majority of mothers and newborns.
Yes, in some instances, it likely is better to have mother give birth in a medical facility. This is often because the birth is high risk or for the reason that mother is expecting multiples. High risk pregnancy can include a mom with preeclampsia or diabetic issues, or an infant who is preterm. A home birth might also not be the best option if mother has hypertension. For the majority of moms, however, a home birth is an excellent alternative.
Natural childbirth presents alternatives which not all hospitals may provide. Generally, moms have more liberty regarding things like moving around and taking their time, where, at a hospital, mom may be confined to a bed, sometimes even strapped in. Being confined in such a way often itself causes a delay in labor. Depending on what time a year mother goes into labor, the hospital may not permit certain visitors to the labor room. For instance in a few spring months, when the risk of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is greater, visitors are usually limited to adults only. RSV brings up another serious complication of hospital stays and that is infection. Infection is among the leading causes of complications and also death in America's hospitals.
The point is that hospital stays, although at times necessary, expose both mom and newborn to many unnecessary risks and can often limit mother's options for her own labor and delivery.
There are, of course, other factors which make natural births a much better choice as well. Research in the British Medical Journal found that a "planned home births for low risk women in America are associated with similar safety and less medical intervention as low risk hospital births".
Overall, a natural childbirth can be quite a safer option than a hospital birth and provide mom options which she may, actually, not even have in the hospital, not the least of which is a safe delivery, surrounded by the people she loves.