Reply To: Ladies would you consider homebirth?

Sorry LAer, I actually know a lady who was left paralyized from the waist down in the 1980’s from a simple epidural which happened to go into the wrong place in her spine. Today she can barely stand and shift her feet as she moves along the kitchen counter for stability. She has her car adapted for handicap.

The famous story of the Meah Sharim mother who was wrongfully accused of starving her child actually gave birth recently (within the past 12 months) to another child in the midst of that crisis, and was left crippled from the epidural, as well. Who are we to ask Hashem why? But yes, this mother has suffered a lot.

In the news a few months ago there was a very big story about a lady in labor with epidural in place, who just suddenly died. She came back within 3 mins, but there was mass hysteria and panic on the floor as they called code blue for a young mother in the prime of her health and life, who was dead as a result of the epidural. Here are some bits from the article on BBC website that had the story last year.

“Her husband, 37, said his wife was tired after receiving an epidural during the labour but after closing her eyes, she “wasn’t waking up”.

She stopped breathing and she is believed to have suffered a heart attack before her heart stopped beating entirely.

A mother from Colorado who doctors said had died while giving birth to her son, has said it is a miracle that both she and the boy are alive.Tracey Hermanstorfer’s heart stopped beating and her son Coltyn appeared lifeless after the Caesarean section on Christmas Eve (24 December). However a few minutes after he was delivered, both began breathing again. Dr Stephanie Martin told Good Morning America she could not explain how the pair survived. “

Coffeeaddict:

Ina May Gaskin held a M.A in English until her calling as midwife. WHich leds me to suspect she was anyways an avid reader, educated and capable of interpreting information. As a intentional community she just got involved in the births of the families out of sheer necessity. They didn’t have money to go to the hospital, didn’t believe in taking welfare and didn’t believe in leaving debts behind. So they gave birth in their caravans and school buses which were converted into homes, in the early 1970’s. What came out of it, was that once they bought land and started to build their community they got involved with a Doctor in the area who guided and instructed them. THey basically read anything they could on birth, including William’s Obstetrics, the classic text book for doctors, but more overly they operated on the laws of energy, observing what worked and what didn’t. And seeing that relaxing attitudes and environments produced positive results… Todate the farm midwives have delivered somewhere near 2,000 births and have the best statitics for mother/baby outcomes in all of America.

Very low c-sec rates.

you can see their website at http://www.thefarm.org/charities/mid.html