We have the means with which to ensure healthier and happier birth experiences for both mothers and babies. Unfortunately, most practitioners are too busy to read the news, the research or surf the web for the most up-to-date information on birth care change.
A benefit was recently held to raise funds for a little girl whose facial nerves were injured during a forceps delivery. Forceps injuries are not uncommon. Reading about them in the news is. Why? A comment from a colleague seeking to start a birth circle in her community provided some insight. It seems that a first birth information evening was met with some caution as some mothers were uncomfortable with the picture of cesarean as a medical intervention to be avoided. So much was their aversion that my colleague’s co-host thought perhaps they should ‘pretty up’ the birth message.
I do know that health practitioners also seek ways to ‘soften’ the risks message. Unfortunately, ‘softening’ leads to the omission of important information. It may be scary to hear a risk of cesarean delivery is death during the procedure itself or afterwards (i.e. embolism or a baby that is born too early and not able to live outside the womb). That is not a good reason to not let mothers know death is a risk of cesarean surgery. It’s scary to hear epidural catheters have been placed as to paralyze a woman’s heart and/or lungs causing death. That’s not a good reason to not tell a woman there are risks involved with epidural use beyond that of the drugs themselves.
A large scale global debate on the reporting of the U.S. ranking poorly in Maternal and Infant Mortality rates is of no help in promoting truth in informed consent. The red herring is the definition of mortality as it relates to birth. The definition has little to do with how correct the vital statistics reports are.
The U.S.’s world rank in mother and infant mortality is worse than reported and the current ‘debate’ regarding the definitions of birth mortality rates actually serves to make the U.S. look better. The advances in technology do not serve any of the main causes of maternal and infant mortalities anywhere in the world, much less our home country.
…the CDC reported the MMR in 1983 as 8.0/100,000. The inquiry into the misclassification on birth certificates from 1977 to 1984 shows the rate actually to be 10.9/100,000, a difference of almost 3 percent. The CDC finds that the problem persists into 1996, stating, “In this report, maternal mortality ratios are based solely on vital statistics data and are underestimates because of misclassification. The number of deaths attributed to pregnancy and its complications is estimated to be 1.3 to three times that reported in vital statistics records. ~ Home Birth: The Gold Standard of Cesarean Prevention
