Hospital Births
        "Where do babies come from mommy?" asks a small boy one day.
"Babies come from the hospital, honey."  His mother smoothly answers...  but they don't.
             Millions of babies are born in hospitals every day.  Most women to do not realise that babies were not always born in hospitals, or that they do not have to have their children in hosptials.  Birth is a natural event, and for most women hospitals are not a safe, natural, or happy place.  So why should we as women give birth to our chlidren in this enviroment?  Some women do feel comfortable in the hospital with all the medical staff looking in on them, examining them, and drugging them while they give birth, but some do not.  For most women, to give birth in a hospital is a frightening experince.

          Along with the horror stories are the happy stories where babies are born and lives are saved.  It's about a balance for the woman who is giving birth and it is her choice what sort of birth she wants to have.  There are many choices in today's world to give birth.  Unassisted birth, homebirth with a midwife, giving birth in a birthing centre attended by midwives, and hospitals.  The hospitals offer many birth choices for women like caeseran sections, epidurals, or a natural birth in a special "birthing room."  Some hospitals even have midwives and docotors giving a choice of who will handle a birth.

      Many procedures done in a hospital are unnecessary and humiliate many women.  The risks to an infant in a hospital are greater than those during a homebirth.  Simply put, more babies die in a hospital than are born elsewhere.  Many pocedures that are central to a hospital births endager both mother and child rather than save lives.  Quoting Robert S, Mendelsohn, M. D.
                 More than ninety-five percent of births can and should be done outside the hospital.  Yet doctors still scare mothers and fathers into the delievery-operating room with horror stroies of "complications" which are ususally statistical fantasies of complications which are the result of obstetrical intervention.  Babies born in the hospital are six times more likely to suffer distress during labour and deliver, eight thmes more likely to get caught in the birth canal, four times more likely to need resuscitation, thirty times more likely to be permanently injured, and four times more likely to get caught in the birth canal.  For the mothers, they are three times more likely to hemorrhage.
          For the medical community, pregnancy is a nine-month disease and childbirth goes along with it and it's treated as such.  You're put on intravenous fluid bags, fetal monitors, tonnes of drugs, the unnecssesary episiotomy, and of course, the ever popular Caesarien delivery.
           Fetal monitoring is the listening to the fetal heart through the mother's abdomen or through electrodes screw into the infant's scap during labour is what causes most Caesarian delieveries.  Regardless of if the fetus is actually in trouble, at the first sign the monitor says something's wrong, then they slice into the mother and remove the baby, once again the "life saver."   Caesarians occur three to four times more often in births attended by electronic fetal monitors than those monitored with a stethoscope.
        Not to mention in a hospital all of this comes down to the doctor's calculations of when the baby is due, which are usually innacurate and can be off as much as six weeks.  In labour inductions the doctor induces when he feels like it, not neccessarily when the baby is ready to be born.  An induced labour is more likely to become a Caesarian delievery because a baby that isn't ready to be born will show more distress on fetal monitors than one who is ready.
          There are many mental and physical disabilities associated with premature birth and induced delivery.  A few examples are fetal lung disease, failure of normal growht and development.  Four percent of the babies in the newborn-intensive care nurseries are admitted after a medically induced labour and mothers are also more likely to end up in the intensive care war after an induction.  Half the women who deliver by Caesarian are likely to end up with Postoperative complications and the maternal death reat is 26 times higher than women who deliever vaginally.
          Epidurals too are dangerous to the mother.  In some cases the mothers have become paralyzed after an epidural block. 

        Germs are an issue with hospitals.  There are germs in hospitals that just aren't found elsewhere.  Hospitals over cleanliness isn't as clean as you'd think.  In hospitals there are germs that are resistant to antibiotics that cannot be killed at all.  The staff at hospitals are spreading these germs every day to everyone they touch, with or without gloves.  The staff are not harmed by these germs though because they are exposed every day, but you and your newborn are not immune.  It won't matter that they aren't harmed when nurses, housekeepers, and doctors handle you, your baby, your food, and your things.  You infection of getting an infection of some kind in a hospital are around one it twenty.  The most dangerous place in a hospital is a newborn nursery, due to newborn's immature immune systems.

         There are other concerns that come with a hospital birth too.  What about mix-ups of babies and mothers?  Those little armbands are always falling off babies and footprints are not a reliable sorce of identification as they can be hard to identify after awhile.  The doctors and nurses hygene is also an issues.  In most cases, doctors and nurses do not wash their hands as often as they should, and if they do it's usually just a simple wash though water.  Plus, what about the other issues, patients given the wrong medications or in the wrong doses.  The wrong tests being done, lab test errors, bottles given to breastfed only babies and many other accidents.  Things like complications due to medical interference and sometimes even the wrong surgery being preformed.

         In a hospital birth these are the things you need to be aware of the make an educated descision.  You need to be aware of the riskes, possiable complications, and everything else so you can get the birth you want, not the birth they tell you you "must" have.  Do all your research, read all you can, and talk to as many people as you can before coming to a desicion.  Always remember, having a birth advocate is helpful in avoiding unnecessary interventions and ensuring you get the birth you want.