[Sigh] Oh, Penelope, Penelope, why must you be so opinionated on a subject which you clearly have done NO research on?

This is ALL about the babies.

If a baby had the ability to speak, he would say he prefers to be born vaginally because it is better for his respiratory system and chance of survival. The US is approaching a 40-50% C-Section rate. Even the OBs admit this is alarming and unnecessary, not to mention dangerous.

Baby would also say he prefers to be born without pitocin because it stresses him in utero and deprives him of oxygen. Hospitals use pitocin on the vast majority of mothers.

After baby is born, he cries for his mother. Many hospital protocols ignore this important bonding time, instead subjecting baby to harsh evaluative procedures.

Penelope, please do some research on this subject before posting anymore ignorant assumptions, As you search for statistics showing your hypothesis that babies are at risk in home births, you will be surprised to find that they actually show the opposite.

What has never occurred to the earthtojohns and Penelopes of the anti-midwifery world is that the hospital technologies they think so necessary to birth actually interfere with birth and cause more risk. When a healthy, normal mother is left to labor unhindered she avoids all of the emergencies that the cascade of hospital interventions cause.

Did it ever occur to you that babies can and do die in hospitals? And because of the incompetency of doctors? Hundreds of babies died in the 90s because OBs decided it would be fun to use a non-FDA approved drug Cytotec for induction of labor, without disclosing risks to the mothers. It took a decade of dying mothers and babies for them to decide that perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea, yet, the drug is still in use in hospitals around the country, and still completely unapproved by the FDA for labor.

Please take a look at Holland, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, and many other industrialized nations around the world. These countries have been using the midwifery model of care that this bill represents for decades, and their mothers and babies are MUCH safer than American ones. Loudon’s bill just gives us the chance to choose a better system. Loudon’s bill is based in documented fact, not ignorant conjecture.

Penelope, please, I would appreciate it if you would take the time to do some research and come back with facts, rather than assumptions. Have fun looking. All the documentation and studies stand against you.

Ok,

All I can do is laugh. You obviously have NO idea what you are talking about. John’s wife a midwife? Do you know how to do research? I’m guessing not, but if you can figure it out, look up the records. All of her children were born in hospitals.

A midwife must be on call 24/7 for her clients. She has a full schedule of prenatal appointments. I guess she’s squeezing them in all of her free time while she runs for office?

Don’t know where you get your info, but you’re sadly mistaken.

I appreciate the Senator Loudon’s efforts to craft a rational bill which allows safe choices in childbirth. Home childbirth and childbirth at a birthcenter under the assistance of a trained midwife has proven to be some of the safest choices in childbirth.

However, midwives are not physicians and should not be regulated by boards of physicians. On the other hand, a trained midwife has attended over a hundred births before they finish their certification; therefore, they should be treated like the trained professionals they are and not criminalized.

As others have already pointed out, the medical industry has failed us for far too long. It is past time for Missouri to catch up with the rest of the Union and offer families safe alternatives to hospital childbirths.

Elisabeth

Certified Professional Midwives have far MORE training in natural birth than obstetricians or any other doctor.
Doctors are trained in treating problems. Midwives are trained in preventing and recognizing those problems.

The science shows that when women choose to give birth at home with a Certified Professional Midwife, the outcomes for babies and mothers is better than in hospitals with obstetricians.

Birth is not a medical procedure. Making it one results in more suffering for mothers and babies.

Maybe Penelope is just trying to make a point about how Loudon’s trickery is displayed in the matter of how he developed the bill and not so much about babies being born at home.

I appreciate Lee’s article on the currently debated midwifery bill. I hope that all Missourians will soon have legal options for choosing liscensed and qualified midwives for attending their births. Statistically, midwife-attended homebirths have much better outcomes than doctor-attended hospital births. This might sound incredulous to some people if they have not studied up on the issue, but it is verifiably true. Check out the Five Standards for Safe Child Bearing, by David Stewart, Ph.D. I certainly hope that the senators who are obviously filibustering in the name of “exploring the issue” will think of the rights of Missouri women, and the health and safety of our babies.

Others have commented on the proven safety of miwife attended births, so I will address this from a personal perspective . . . I am a St. Louis County resident and mother of two.

The birth of a baby is not a medical event. It is a rite of passage whose emotional aftermath - for better or for worse - colors the lives of both mother and baby forever. Although I am glad that OB’s, with their life-saving surgical skills, are available to those who need them, their monopoly on maternity care in this country has historically caused at least as many problems as it has solved. Even people who oppose a woman’s right to birth her babies at home cannot help but recognize that procedures such as inductions and C-sections are grossly overused, and by many doctors’ own admission are often performed due to the perceived spectre of malpractice litigation rather than due to any true necessity. These procedures have become so standard that their downside, both medical, emotional, and spiritual, are often conveniently overlooked. So what choices are moms left with if they want to avoid unnecessary interventions (and other proven risks of hospitalization such as MRSA)?

I have no political interest in the pending legislation whatsoever - in fact, I did not even know midwives still existed as a profession until well after I had my first baby. That birth was a standard hospital birth with an OB that ended in a C-section for no good reason other than lack of skilled labor management and the classic “cascade of interventions”. My second was a completely hands-off, wonderful, peaceful birth in the comfort of familiar surroundings. The shocking contrast between these two experiences has motivated me to get the message out to my peers whenever I have a chance that they do indeed have the right to insist on receiving skilled, woman-centered maternity care, and that most MD’s, surprisingly enough, are not qualified to provide this. With the labor intervention rate well over 90% in most hospitals, most medical residents rarely get to SEE a baby born the way Nature intended, let alone learn the skills necessary to gently help out Mom and baby if they hit a road bump along the way. Obstetricians’ skill sets are limited to reaching for either the drugs or the scalpel, necessarily turning many minor difficulties into major emergencies.

I have had two easy pregnancies, but after my first birth, I could not even hold the baby because I was shaking too badly from the anaesthesia, and the emotional devastation of being “absent” from his first moments on this earth haunts me to this day. With my second, the baby did not cry when she was born, just looked around her in wonder . . . her first “sleep smile” was just hours after she arrived. Midwives should not just be legalized - they should be the “standard of care”, leaving OB’s to manage the high-risk cases they are trained for.

Thank you, Senator Loudon, for trying to bring Missouri into at least the late 20th century. This state is so ridden with antiquated laws and dangerous thinking about its citizens healthcare, it is reminiscent of the pocket-lining so prominent in the deep South. Mr Loudon is likely the FIRST and ONLY politician I have met here that is actually pushing legislation for the interest of the people he serves and NOT companies lining his pockets! Imagine that! A Senator that comes to small events and looks you in the eye when he shakes your hand and listens to your story. One who fights for what is right and not what will fit right in his pocket.

Also, thank you to the writer who took time to cover the article. I moved here from one of those famed states where midwifery without a nursing degree is legalized, safe & certified and had a really hard time trying to find a midwife here that would help me with even a hospital birth, never mind a homebirth! There is no voodoo or witch-doctor aspect to midwifery, it is the centuries-old art of assisting a mother birthing her child. An obstetrician is a surgically-trained specialist in maternal health needed when complications arise, going to one for a routine pregnancy is akin to going to a cardiologist for elevated cholesterol. Why would the latter be considered a waste of resources yet not the first? It is a basic human right to select our providers for our healthcare, and needs to stay that way. This whole issue is not whether midwifery is right/better, but that we have choices and we will not allow our state government to take CHOICES away from us because they want money from big business. If you can’t stand up for this today, turn around and apologize to your children, nephew, nieces, and grandchildren for not caring enough to secure THEIR rights and choices.

I am so glad that Senator Loudon is still willing to go to bat for Missouri’s mothers an newborns, despite all the grief the issue has caused him!

We recently moved from Missouri to Silicon Valley for my husband’s work. I had my first child last spring in a Missouri hospital. She was supposed to be born at home with one of the few midwives MO has–ladies that are brave enough to help birthing families, despite the personal risks. However I was in a wreck, and my little girl was born a month early–just the sort of emergency situation that is NOT appropriate for homebirth–so I didn’t have one. I had a reasonably natural birth, despite being in the hospital, but largely because I am a stubborn person. Because of the current legal situation our midwives are in, even though I had excellent prenatal care, I could not give the hospital access to my prenatal records, or even safely tell them my midwife’s name.

Midwifery care is the gold standard in countries that have MUCH better outcomes for mothers and newborns than the USA does. Midwives are trained in how to help with normal pregnancy and childbirth. Obstetricians are NOT trained in this. They are trained in what to do in complicated, emergency, and high-risk pregnancies and childbirths. I am nearsighted, but don’t have any other eye problems. When I need a new contact lens prescription, I don’t go to an eye surgeon, or generally even an opthamologist. The care I need is most appropriately provided by an optician–a specialist in normal, everyday, eye issues. So that’s where I go.

I am expecting my second child in October. In California, midwives are legal. They have been legal for many years. They are listed in the yellow pages. They are able to order lab tests. They are NOT able to prescribe medicine or do abortions, but if you do need to see a doctor for a pregnancy complication, one of the more involved tests, or a prescription, your midwife and your doctor can work together to give you the best possible care. If you do need to transfer to the hospital during labor, your midwife can accompany you without risking arrest–and she will be treated by hospital staff as what she is–a specialist in her field. California has had legal midwives since before the Certified Professional Midwife credential that is in the Missouri bill existed, so they had to go to the trouble of setting up their own credentialing system–but the two are close enough that most of the midwives in this area have both the California “Licensed Midwife” credential and the national “Certified Professional Midwife” credential Missouri should be using. My baby, barring wrecks or other emergencies, will be born at home this fall with the assistance of a skilled, credentialed, LEGAL midwife who does not have to risk her very _freedom_ to practice her calling.

The situation in Missouri is nothing short of criminal. Especially in a very rural state, it is quite likely that the lack of skilled, home-centered, midwife-based prenatal and childbirth care costs lives every year. Midwives care for women and babies in their homes. They take on fewer patients at once, so they can be available to each family 24/7–and will actually be with the family all through labor and delivery. Contrast this with an OB, who is only available during office hours, who won’t even guarantee to be there when your baby is born, does not make house calls, and whose office, in some parts of MO, might be over 50 miles away, in the town where the hospital also is. Anyone with a brain can see that this is a bad situation from the outset. And that’s before you even get to the inappropriate actions often taken simply because an obstetrician is not the appropriate specialist for a normal, pregnancy, labor, and birth.

I’m not sure what more can be said on this issue than what has already been defended by comments 5-10. I agree with every one of them 100%. And I think it is a sad day when a Senator who is supposed to be representing the people of this state is willing to allow money and unfounded scare tactics to prevent the vote of the majority. I resent being “dumbed down” to as a woman and a mother, as if I cannot possibly know what is best for me and my baby. I should not be forced to have someone with “impaired” judgement choosing where and with whom I have my baby. I can do the research, thank you very much.