HOUSTON—Home births have gone up dramatically in recent years. According to the Centers for Disease Control, planned home births are up 29 percent from 2004 – 2009. They are typically attended by midwives, who are licensed by the state of Texas.
Sandra McDonald has been a midwife for nearly 30 years. She brings oxygen, a baby resuscitator, a fetal monitor, drugs, syringes and more when goes to work. She has delivered a lot of babies. McDonald estimates "somewhere over 1,300."
Recently, McDonald sat down with KHOU 11 News and a group of moms who chose home births.
One of those moms, Lila Sawyer, did not like her hospital delivery with her oldest, now 12.
"It was not like it was me giving birth, but someone was taking the baby from me," she said.
In fact, she—like many other home birth moms—chose a midwife instead of a doctor for prenatal care.
"I was healthier, had better blood pressure, better blood sugar," she said.
McDonald said home-birth mothers are likely to take better care of themselves.
She believes emergency C-sections are used too freely in hospitals and carry substantial risks.
A study published in 2010 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology does show planned home-births involve significantly fewer medical interventions for moms. For example, the sometimes controversial C-section occurs at 5 percent with planned home-births, versus 9.3 percent with planned hospital-births. Heidi Baker believes hospital labors get cut short because of external factors.
"Close to dinner time, typically the doctors want to go home," she said.
OB/GYN Dr. Sherri Levin disagrees.
"I usually don’t have dinner, and I certainly don’t have a dinner schedule," she said.
Levin argues long labors can be dangerous, and that driving from home to the hospital can take too long if there’s a problem.
The home-birth moms say they can make it in the recommended 30 minutes from decision to completion of an emergency C-section.
"In my case, I was 15 minutes from three different hospitals," Baker said.
Levin believes that’s naïve.
"That getting in and out of the car, traffic, getting into an operating room with an IV and anesthesia will invariably take longer than half an hour," she said.
She recalled a recent case of hers where it was "probably eight minutes between the baby looking bad on the monitor and when we had her out."
Levin said she’s delivered 8,000 babies in her career without losing one. But it could have been different, had the emergency births taken longer.
"In truth, I would have lost many babies in my life if it really took 30 minutes," she said.
That same study printed in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology also showed that, during the first month of life, babies die at a rate two to three times higher following a planned home-birth, compared to a planned hospital-birth.
The study concluded that fewer medical interventions are associated with the higher death rate.
For Dr. Levin, there simply isn’t a choice. She will not accept a patient looking for a home-birth.
"I’ll send you a registered letter and tell you I think you’re doing the wrong thing, but I won’t handcuff you and bring you to the hospital," she said.
Click here to see the study on home-births versus planned hospital-births.
