Home delivery: "10% of women end up in the hospital"!

Elisabeth Badinter fumed at the reading of our report in the United States: " These New Yorkers fascinated by the return to natural authenticity are irresponsible sores! And then this woman who makes assist his 2 1/2 year old son to give birth disgusts me. For the philosopher, home birth is, like washable diapers and bread machines, one of the perverse excesses of ecological ideology that insidiously returns women to the home. " Have you seen this film aestheticizing the birth," The first cry "(Gilles de Maistre, ed)? It is never remembered that in the world a woman dies in childbirth every minute, and every day ten thousand babies die of complications during childbirth. I know that we practice too much caesareans in France but, damn it, infant mortality is minimal. We are told that only 10% of women who wanted to give birth at home end up in the hospital, but that's a lot 10%! Even if only one woman dies during a home birth - only one - how can one take a risk? This ideological regression reveals a real aggressiveness vis-à-vis medical technology. In France, in 1945, 45% of deliveries took place at home, 13% ten years later. Of the 820,000 births per year today, there is 1% at home, but expectant mothers who dream of fleeing the hospital would be more numerous, 3 to 5% according to professionals, 25% according to activists of the Evolutionnaire AAD collective. A desire that comes up against the shortage of liberal midwives ready to respond - about sixty throughout France.

Home delivery: "There is always a complication"

" I had unexpected home births (ADDs)," says Paloma Chaumette, a midwife. Every year, 2,500 unannounced deliveries are made in the street, in a taxi, with firefighters, alone or with the future father ... Me I refuse DAAs for a simple reason: we, midwives, are insured only for deliveries performed on a technical platform, that is to say in a hospital. But there is always a bad surprise in this business, a complication at the last minute. "

Professor Dominique Cabrol , head of maternity services in Port-Royal and Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Paris, has a clear opinion: " What do I think of home birth? What trouble! Whatever the activists say, it is not without risks. One of the few studies in this field, conducted in Great Britain in 2007, shows that perinatal mortality is not different between DAAs and hospital deliveries. But patients are handpicked, because at-risk pregnancies go to the hospital. And this study reveals that up to 43% of women who have given birth at home end up in a hospital emergency. We are far from the 10% brandished by pro-AAD. "

Home delivery: 21% of cesarean section in France

" I understand that women reject the hospital, given the number of caesareans practiced - 30% in the United States, 21% home," he continues, but there is no very good home delivery . And when I read your report in New York, where a 2 1/2 year old child attends this and his mother is still breastfeeding, I worry! I agree with Elisabeth Badinter: we must be wary of this Rousseauist vision of an always good nature. The solution is not home birth, but a reflection led by professionals. "

A wishful thinking? Meanwhile, Paloma Chaumette, passionate midwife, listening to her patients who want her by their side throughout the pregnancy, until the delivery, has found her solution: she has a contract with different institutions, hospitals and clinics - in Nanterre, Saint-Cloud, Rueil-Malmaison - which allow access to their technical platform. "I give my patients a safe delivery, and three hours later I bring them home, where I continue to follow them. "

Home birth: the effects of over-medicalization

Today, between the shortage of liberal midwives, provincial maternity wards that disappear - 584 in 2008, against 1,379 in 1975 - and large hospitals that, at a rate of 4,000 deliveries per year average per service, dehumanize relationships, do women have a choice? " I am a feminist, in favor of the right to terminate pregnancy, breastfeeding support, the alternative to epidurals and home births, provided that it does not put women on the line. danger, says Chantal Birman, a liberal midwife. I see that DAA demands are increasing. Which is related to the context. Today, unfortunately, in the hospital, the midwife is at the service of the techniques set up for childbirth. She spends more time with the devices than with the woman who has given birth! We have all campaigned for the establishment of birthing centers in France, as there are elsewhere in Europe. In vain. "

Home birth: birth houses exist ... on paper!

These places halfway between the hospital and the house, managed autonomously by midwives, perfectly meet this request for cocooning while remaining in a secure setting. Recommended by the Kouchner law in 2002, defined by the 2005-2007 Perinatal Plan, these birth centers , which offer parents a less medical pregnancy follow-up, still can not take charge of childbirth because of the lack of a ministerial decree.

To the disappointment of the National College of Midwives: " We are not opposed to home birth, but we do not advocate , says Frédérique Teurnier, president. We want birthing centers, an alternative to hospital service where women give birth as they wish and safely. It is also necessary that liberal midwives access the technical trays of hospitals. It is possible in the law, but not registered in the hospital culture. There is a real lobby for obstetricians in France. Only 20% to 30% of pregnancies are pathological, while they follow them and leave us women who are well. "

We know that French women cross the borders to go to the Netherlands to abort, we do not know that others do to give birth in Belgium, birth houses. Not all women have the same desires when it comes to giving birth. Among those who feel reassured only in a medicalized world, with an obstetrician and an epidural within reach of stirrup, the speedies that require that one triggers their delivery as the holidays approach, and those who dream of a Family cocoon where childbirth respects their rhythm and that of the child ... which really have the choice today? In 2011, a new feminist slogan could well be: " My birth belongs to me! »& Nnbsp;

> End of hope for birthing centers