Natural Birthing

"If left alone in labor, the body of a woman produces most easily the baby that is not interfered with... If left alone, just courage and patience are required."

~ Grantly Dick-Read, Childbirth without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth


To ensure a safer easier birth for the mother and baby, chiropractic care is essential. More and more birth practitioners are recommending that their mothers receive chiropractic care throughout pregnancy. Find a Doctor in your area who offers specific adjusments for pregnancy.

Visit the Lamaze website and view a wonderful, empowering, natural birthing experience.
www.lamaze.org/ExpectantParents/PregnancyBirthResources

 

Research Supporting Home Birth
www.changesurfer.com/Hlth/homebirth.html

 

More on Birthing and the Chiropractic Perspective:

Chiropractic Care in Pregnancy for Safer, Easier Births

Midwifery and Chiropractic

The Importance of a Non-Invasive Birth

Birth - What are the Philosophical Options?

Visit our research section on birth trauma

 

Holistic Midwifery Care for Mother and Baby
A Licensed Midwife's Homepage with many links about safe and gentle birth options. www.gentlebirth.org/ronnie

Midwife Archives
Information about all aspects of pregnancy, birth and well-woman care from a midwifery perspective. www.gentlebirth.org/archives/index.html

Perspectives on Normal Birth
by Ronnie Falcao
How a birth center achieves a cesarean rate of less than 1% without compromising the well-being of the mother or baby. www.gentlebirth.org/ronnie/birthrf.html

Home birth is safer than you've been led to believe:

1- Homebirth Safety and Benefits
Information about the superior safety and intangible benefits of homebirth, with links to corroborating resources.
Keywords: birth, home birth, homebirth, childbirth, midwifery, midwife, pregnant, pregnancy, baby, babies, safety, benefits, advantages

2-Is Homebirth for You? 6 Myths About Childbirth Exposed
A pamphlet discussing why homebirth is safer than hospital birth for most healthy women. An online version of the booklet produced by Friends of Homebirth.
Keywords: NAPSAC, Stewart, Friends of Homebirth, home birth, homebirth, birth, midwife, midwifery, pregnant, pregnancy, baby, babies, safety, benefits, advantages

2- Home Birth Reference Site

3 - There's no place like home

3- The Home Birth Choice

4- Home Birth International

5- Why Homebirth?


Research Articles Supporting Home Birth

Unassisted Birth on the Rise:
More and more mothers are choosing to have their babies at home without assistance. This practice is increasing in both the US an UK. Read more about it here: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18817370

To read more about natural, home birthing visit: www.icpa4kids.org/research/pregnancy/natural.htm

 

The Safety of Home Birth:
Home birth can be a safe option for 90% of mothers, with appropriate prenatal care and attendant personnel. It makes both financial sense and medical sense for state laws to permit home birth attended by midwives, for insurers to reimburse for home delivery, and for hospitals and obstetricians to provide medical back-up.

Visit this site for current research articles supporting home birth:
http://www.changesurfer.com/Hlth/homebirth.html

Landmark Study Shows Giving Birth at Home is Safe

“ Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America.” Kenneth C Johnson, senior epidemiologist, Betty-Anne Daviss, project manager. BMJ 2005;330:1416 (18 June).
Published online at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/330/7505/1416?ehom

The largest prospective study of planned home birth with a direct-entry midwife shows that homebirth is as safe as hospital birth for low risk women, yet carries a much lower rate of medical interventions, including Cesarean section.

This landmark study is reported in the latest issue of British Medical Journal, June 2005. Planning a home birth attended by a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) offers as safe an outcome for low-risk mothers and babies as does hospital birth. This study is the largest yet of its kind. The researchers used prospective data on more than 5400 planned home births in North America attended by Certified Professional Midwives during the year 2000.

Canadian researchers Kenneth Johnson and Betty-Anne Daviss studied over 5,400 low-risk pregnant women planning to birth at home in the United States and Canada in 2000. The researchers analyzed outcomes and medical interventions for planned home births, including transports to hospital care, and compared these results to the outcomes of 3,360,868 low risk hospital births. According to the British Medical Journal press release, they found:

• 88% of the women birthed at home, with 12% transferring to hospital.
• Planned home birth carried a rate of 1.7 infant deaths per 1,000 births, a rate "consistent with most North American studies of intended births out of hospital and low risk hospital births."
• There were no maternal deaths.
• Medical intervention rates of planned home births were dramatically lower than of planned hospital births, including: episiotomy rate of 2.1% (33.0% in hospital), cesarean section rate of 3.7% (19.0% in hospital), forceps rate of 1.0% (2.2% in hospital), induction rate of 9.6% (21% in hospital), and electronic fetal monitoring rate of 9.6% (84.3% in hospital).
• 97% of over 500 participants who were randomly contacted to validate birth outcomes reported that they were extremely or very satisfied with the care they received.

"SAFETY OF ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO CHILDBIRTH"

"Under no circumstances do the California data for 1989 and 1990 allow the obstetric profession to uphold the claim that for the large majority of low-risk women hospital birth is "safer" with respect to perinatal mortality. Our data also suggest that even for the high-risk levels of our Study Population the natural approach (including transfers) produces the same perinatal mortality outcomes as the obstetric approach."

"Given no differences in perinatal mortality it must be noted that the natural approach shows significant advantages with respect to lower maternity care cost as well as reduced mortality and morbidity from unnecessary cesareans and other obstetric interventions, and significant benefits from avoiding negative long-term consequences from unnecessary obstetric interventions and procedures. These advantages of the natural approach are of such a large order of magnitude as to raise serious doubts concerning the appropriateness of conventional "obstetric" treatment for low-risk childbirth."
Read the article



Natural Labor, Natural Birth:

1- There are natural non-invasive methods to manage pain in labor. The Bonapace Program offers a vialble program and has the substantiating research to support it.

2- Accupressure in labor is another natural way to address pain.

3- Comfort measures for labor

4- The Instinct of Birth

5- Natural Birthing Links in Mothering

Visit our Links page for even more resources.



Support in Labor is Essential:

1- Childbirth.org on Doulas

2- Doulas of North America



Mothers Report that Home Birth has Spiritual Quality

Why do women choose home birth over hospital delivery? To answer this question, Pamela Klassen, a researcher at the University of Toronto, interviewed 45 mothers who had given birth at home. Although the women were from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, they agreed that home birth was a "spiritual experience."

"I was surprised at these results," explains Klassen, "because you would stereotypically assume that these mothers would be ideologically opposed to each other ranging as they were from feminists to Orthodox Jews to conservative Pentecostal women. Yet they ended up having similar understandings of the significance a home birth could have on their spiritual beliefs, their family relationships and their identity as women."

University of Toronto Centre for the Study of Religion - August 2, 1999.

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