A different route : Practice of home-birth midwifery stands tall amid online buzz
Posted on Sunday, July 6, 2008
Most of the attention was focused on him, yet he was hardly aware.
Instead, Elian Kaden Connors turned his mother's arms into a hammock.
"He's always like this," Katinka Connors said.
That same peaceful feeling had appeared to wash over both the mother and her husband, John, on Tuesday as they still basked in the birth - the home birth - of their son, which happened at 12: 37 p.m. June 23.
All three were gathered in their Fayetteville home in the late morning to take part in the post-partum visit by local licensed midwife Maria Chowdhury, who along with fellow midwife Jennifer Creel runs the Fayetteville-based Birthroot Midwifery.
"A lot of people would like to have a natural birth in the hospital but they don't go to the hospital because they know they won't get to have a 100-percent natural birth," Chowdhury said. Katinka Connors, a local chiropractor who had a water birth standing up inside an inflatable tub in her home, said she determined long ago that she would never have her baby in a hospital after researching extensively and listening to the maternity-ward complaints of her patients. "I think outside of emergencies, the less you interfere with the natural process, the better," she said. "Just let the body do its thing."
National news Several major medical organizations do not share the same sentiment. Although the practice of midwifery has been in existence for ages, recent headlines both on a national and regional front have bumped the practice to the top of Internet search engines.
At its recent annual meeting three weeks ago, the American Medical Association adopted two amended policies concerning home deliveries and the "midwifery scope of practice. "The resolutions were formed largely in response to a documentary on the birth process by former talk show host Ricki Lake," The Business of Being Born."
The first resolution supported a recent statement by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that "the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is the hospital, or a birthing center within a hospital complex."
The second resolution formed an official policy of the AMA "to support state legislation regarding appropriate physician and regulatory oversight of midwifery practice, under the jurisdiction of state nursing and / or medical boards."
Many have interpreted the statements as the AMA's declaration of an intent to ban home births, but that is simply not the case, according to the organization's policy regarding the subject, said AMA spokesperson Lisa Lecas. She said she wasn't authorized to elaborate but provided the following statement from Dr. Steven Stack, AMA board member.
"The AMA supports a woman's right to make an informed decision regarding her delivery and to choose her health care provider," Stack said. "Serious complications can arise with little or no warning even among women with low-risk pregnancies. The health and safety of the mother and baby are our top priority. "The AMA's recent reactions have puzzled Creel. "The medical community hasn't given the home-birth the community the time of day up until this point," Creel said. "Something has caught their attention and I believe it has to be consumer-driven."
Show-Me change Regionally, the Missouri State Supreme Court ruled on June 24 that a 2007 law that allowed midwifery in the state is constitutional, thereby dropping a previous ban on the practice.
Up until then, any such practices could have resulted in a seven-year prison term. Chowdhury said that before the ruling she had clients from southern Missouri who would travel to Fayetteville for pre-natal visits, but have the baby at a relative's house in northern Benton County.
Arkansas is one of 21 states that regulates the practice of home-birth midwifery although about 40 allow it in general. According to the Arkansas Department of Health, there are 31 licensed lay midwives in the state, including three who reside in Washington County besides Chowdhury and Creel. Fayetteville used to be home of one of a few institutions in the country devoted to midwifery education before the Arkansas Midwives School and Services closed because of financial problems in 2005.
Out all the births in the United States, Creel said that only 2 percent of expected parents hire midwives and 1 percent of that percentage who hire midwives use a home-birth practice. Still, the practice has experienced growth in the area. Chowdhury said there has been a shift in her clientele from parents who are looking to save money - at a flat rate of $ 3, 000, about half of what one without medical insurance would pay for a hospital birth - to highly-educated professionals who have chosen an alternative route. This demographic has increased 30 to 50 percent since the start of Birthroot. Furthermore, 50 to 70 percent of her clientele have opted to go with a water birth, she said.
Any notion of a ban on home-birth midwifery strikes a nerve with John Connors.
"You miss out on this experience because this, last week, it wasn't just about the birth. It was about us. [I'm ] not trying to force people and say this the best way to do it. My thing is be informed. Make your own decision. For us, it made sense and it makes sense because you get in a place where you couldn't imagine. You couldn't imagine what it's doing for our baby and just seeing how he was born.
"I feel like it's about awareness. If you don't know, how are you going to be able to chose ? And I am finding out that people just don't know. How can you make a choice if you don't know what your options are ? … People just aren't aware of what's possible."
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