Gosh, I hate to come back in this conversation since I seem to be the one who started all this bashing, which I totally did not mean to do, but I just wanted to make a final point or two.
Health, I did not mean to attack you, but rather your idea that education or lack thereof is the reason for the high #s of home births amongst frum women. I honestly do not think that education is the issue. How many times can a woman take a class on labor and delivery, once, twice at most as a refresher. Well, just keep in mind that we go way past those #s on average in our families, b”H, and since each birth is different, it would not be possible to educate each frum (or even not frum) woman on what could happen during her labor process to ensure that she would get to the hospital on time. Lots of things can happen in the middle of a labor (which was my whole point all along) and no matter how “educated” she may or may not be, it is simply not possible to get to the hospital on time. In my situation, I was alone and without transportation other than an ambulance or taxi and I had been managing my contractions just fine up until a certain point, where things escalated in what seemed like a minute and at that point it was too late, but I couldn’t have known that in advance. Maybe if I had known than regular contractions coming every 10 minutes for a multipara would be the signal to go to the hospital, I might have gone earlier, but I’m not 100% sure.
Finally, the reason I’m not 100% sure is, as someone posted above, the high rate of excessive intervention in births of women who get to the hospital “too early”. What I mean is for that a woman who is in active labor, but not progressing rapidly, many times the doctors start doing all sorts of things to help speed things along that in many cases end up resulting in a cesarean section. I would like to know what are the rates of frum women versus non-frum women having cesarean sections in the overall population in America. I know you can’t provide these #s, but I can say that I only had 1 in my 6 births and it was for a good reason – my baby was in distress. It’s not that I wanted to have my baby at 37 weeks because I couldn’t stand being pregnant anymore (only my last baby – the ambulance one – was born less than 1 1/2 weeks after my due date). The induction rates in America are, in my opinion, horrifying, and show a general “I want it now” syndrome that we all know is prevalent in American society in general, and it is leading to a lot of unnecessary surgeries. I was managing one of my labors just fine at home and went to the hospital early on just to make sure I delivered there, and I ended up having an pleasant experience because I was forced to lie on the bed for more than 3 hours without getting up to walk around simply because I had had a cesarean before and they wanted to monitor me. I was glad for the caution, but it made things very uncomfortable, which, like I originally said, until a man personally delivers a baby, he can never understand what this feels like.
I do know another woman who had a baby on Shabbos and Hatzola came to help her in the birth. One of her friend’s husbands is a Hatzola member and he made sure other Hatzola staff helped before him so that she would not be embarrassed later on if she saw him. Having a man you know personally deliver your baby is a lot different than having him help you when you hit your head, break your arm, or suffer any other of a number of medical emergencies that need help from Hatzola.
OK, I’m finished now. On a personal note, it’s not fair to pigeon-hole people based on your perceptions of what they say in this forum. It’s not possible to convey our whole body of knowledge in one of these posts (simply for time and space for reader and writer both) and you should not assume to understand a person so well to make the assumptions that you do. I have had numerous male OB/Gyn’s over the course of my childbearing years, only taking a female when I was told that she was the best qualified doctor to handle my situation at the time. Also, here in EY, we don’t have the option unless you go private to pick the doctor who will be present at your birth. In both of my hospital births here in EY, there were numerous male doctors and also a female midwife present during my births.
Thanks everybody who stood up to defend me. I don’t think it’s necessary to continue to bash Health since he probably won’t change based on our assessments of his personality anymore than we will based on his assessments of ours. Maybe it’s best to close this thread.