VBAC in USA Today

This is simply a consequence of increased liability pressure in medicine. Limit the liability with tort reform and you get back options in your care.

Here's my favorite part of the article:
"Moving four hours from her family was out of the question, Roebuck says. So was scheduling a C-section. So, on June 29, Roebuck delivered 9-pound, 13-ounce Shane at home with only friends and family in attendance."

>>Uh, oh, crazy, nutty homebirthing! Don't you know that babies that big have to be cut out of you???

"The thought of laboring or delivering at home after a C-section, without electronic fetal monitoring and an operating room close by in case of a uterine rupture, sends chills down Bruce Flamm's spine.

"It sounds like it is kind of spreading, which is just a disaster," says Flamm, a Kaiser Permanente OB/GYN in Riverside, Calif., who has written extensively about VBACs."

>>Choosing a hbac because the doctors won't allow a normal birth in a hospital? That's a disaster? Shut up, Flamm...

"Roebuck was lucky; her home VBAC went smoothly, Flamm says. But it's only a matter of time before one goes wrong and a baby dies because a C-section could not be performed quickly enough, he says."

>>It's only a matter of time. Oh, births never ever go wrong in the hospital, do they? Sorry, I forgot that we women need to be saved from ourselves...

Flamm urges women to "search for the middle ground. Talk to the doctor, see if they would just be willing to stick around the hospital that one day they're in labor."

"Unfortunately," Flamm says, "nobody wants to do the middle ground."

>>Yeah, nobody, including the doctors. Why would a doctor want to stick around the hospital? And if they *do* stick around, aren't they then tempted to force the labor into Friedman's Curve, augmenting and then assisting delivery if deemed "necessary"? How is THAT less disastrous then planning a normal, unaugmented labor and birth at home???

:-)

>Oh, births never ever go wrong in the hospital, >do they? Sorry, I forgot that we women need to >be saved from ourselves...

Yeah, Valerie, I was thinking that regarding this quote:

>The VBAC rupture complication rate may seem >quite low, says Hankins, chief of obstetrics and >maternal-fetal medicine at the University of >Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, but "it's >damn high if you're the one."

Um, yeah, 7 out of 18,000!!! How many iatrogenic damages happen to babies in C-sections?

--Amanda

Wow, that article was really negative. Negative toward c-sections, negative toward lawyers, negative toward homebirth.

I liked how they tried to phrase it as a "choice" issue, though. But I guess choice and a woman's body being her own only has to do with a fetus you don't want, not for one you do want.