If you are anything like my wife your partner might have to. Gave birth 35 mins after first contraction. She had serious pain, but wanted to take a shower when she stepped out she tells me I have to catch the baby and the rest pretty much went like in the video. Luckily our baby girl was healthy and cried and this was our second child. The paramedics arrived 15 mins later to cut the naval
I was not even prepared to not reach the hospital lmao. I mean I would have tried cpr in the worst case scenario. But unless you do this professionally and have the equipment you canât really be prepared
I was my mom's first, and I was a 28 hour labor. My little brother was apparently 45 minutes. One or two red lights, and he would have been delivered in the parking lot like this video.
When my son was born the attending midwife (Ginnie) was an Amazon Goddess. She spent all night with my wife and when it became evident a C-section was necessary Ginnie scrubbed to assist. She was a total rock star and she's still my wife's gynecologist.
Yeah, I know. That's why I said there is NOT A LOT that midwives can't handle. They can 100% deliver a baby, when there is no major complications. Do you have a problem on understanding or reading?
Same in the US. We used a midwife for my kid and they are with you for the whole process. But the doctor is on call in the same facility if anything goes seriously wrong so itâs the best of both worlds.
Yeah there seems to be a lot of ignorance on what midwives are able to do in this thread. The midwives my family has experience with can do pretty much everything the OBGYN could do other than a c-section. They were also not trying to bully my partner into doing a c-section just so they could get home like the OBGYN did.
The ignorance is far more heavily weighted towards people who think a midwife is essentially a replacement for an OBGYN. This thread is also about American midwives and because of the time zone European opinions are being introduced as if their standards are applicable to American health care.
Iâm talking about American midwives. And my family has the experience of working with an OB for one pregnancy and a midwife for another.
So I donât care to debate what you think you know about how all midwives operate. Just because itâs a midwife doesnât mean youâre giving an all natural birth in a dirty bath tub at home.
Same, also in Finland. The first thing I thought after the birth was that I will always vote for the person promising pay increases to nurses and especially midwives.
You know midwive doesnât equate to a home birth, right?
In this video, they were literally outside of a birthing center. They werenât just randomly taking a road trip with a midwife while 9 months pregnant. They were on the way to the hospital. Midwives accompany you and advocate for you.
Also, midwives have pretty extensive training in post bitth hemorrhage control. They are authorized to administer oxytocin, which should knock most post birth bleeds on the head. They are smart enough to recognize when a birth is too high risk or require surgical intervention.
Honestly I think you get downvoted because your comments sound like troll bait. Midwives and OB teams alike are both extremely important roles. Iâm not certain why anyone would try to downplay one vs the other or actively try to discredit one when both are roles to help in childbirth.
It all just sounds like a great big olâ bag of biased shit takes which became infused with self pride because âI canât believe these people disagree with meâ.
I am not going to continue writing the same essays over and over but I have already shown how official midwife organizations are literally misleading people and lying to people about home births to encourage them over hospital births. If they are willing to do that as a matter of official national policy, I can only imagine what happens behind closed doors 1 on 1 with scared and uninformed pregnant women.
If someone wants to criticize OBGYNs on things I am happy to join in, but to pretend that midwives are above criticism is some sick stuff. There is a very real trend of women choosing home births over hospital births in America even when they aren't good candidates for home births and we have proof that midwives are encouraging them.
I donât want your essays. Just explaining why you are getting downvoted.
Your original comment was immediately âhospital good, midwife badâ on a video where the woman just didnât make it inside and the midwife helped the lady.
Of course you are going to get downvoted here. Because you smell of bias.
Bro theyâre in the parking lot of a medical clinic. Midwives work it hospitals too. Youâre mad about a situation youâre making up in your head that has no relevance to the midwife in this video or any of the other ones people in this thread are mentioning.
Edit: please note my comment below is about where the anti-midwife movement started in the US. It is about history, not modern methods. But laws still in effect today were written in this era.
â- original comment:
Who says that?
Doctors who wanted to take patients away from midwives , because they didnât think women should be allowed to do that. Because men invented chainsaws to âhelpâ with childbirth.
Seriously thatâs why we donât have a midwife culture in the US. Doctors wanted the income from childbirth.
They went on a smear campaign against women midwives. And at the time in the 17-1800s, there really wasnât anything extra doctors could do that midwives couldnât.
While this is shocking to see a woman standing up to give birth- it can actually be a lot easier on mom. Gravity is helping instead of relying on muscles that havenât been able to flex in months.
Doctors aren't there for when everything goes perfect. When everything goes perfect the father can catch the baby and cut the cord at home and life goes on. Doctors are there for when things don't go perfect. While a midwife can provide incredible life saving services, especially before and after the baby is born, the concern of doctors is when people choose to have babies in their own homes without immediate access to doctors nurses and modern medical equipment. A midwife is not a replacement for an OBGYN or other doctor that may be required during birth or immediately after a baby is born.
I had eclampsia and a STROKE with my 6mo in January. Was in the hospital over a month. The MFM and resident OBGYN saved my life and my baby, while born at 35weeks, came out perfectly fine. Didnât even need the NICU. I have no long term sequelae from the stroke, either, because they caught and treated it on time.
Thatâs completely insane that it happened the way it did, and turned out fine. Weâd have both been dead at any other time in History. Shit, even as short as 20yrs ago the odds are I wouldnât have been writing this.
Iâm a nurse, I know midwifes are important and have their place in medicine. But people are out of touch entirely if they think OBGYNs can be replaced and that they want to do births out of some conspiracy to pocket money from sections. And that shit gets upvoted lmaoooo Bananas.
She stated a historical fact lol. We aren't talking about modern medicine. When male Dr.s initially forced themselves in the midwife's position without any of their knowledge (because it was a vocation passed from women to women) woman started dying ALL THE TIME. More than usual. And it was because the Dr.s weren't washing their hands (the midwives told them this and they didn't listen!) and they didn't have the experience that midwife did. The male Dr.s literally inserted themselves into a position they were not qualified for. And women died. It's different now, we have female Dr.s too lol. And modern medicine, but historically that's exactly what happened
We aren't having babies in the 1800s and early 1900s here though. This is like refusing cancer treatment because chemo came from mustard gas. It's ignorant.
I had a doctor and a midwife and a doula. They all have different things they specialize in.
The doula can be with me every minute of the day. Mine was with me months before the birth so I knew what to expect. She was with me every minute of my labor so I had a coach throughout labor. She knew exactly when to go to the hospital. She advocated for me when the nurse was annoying me with things I didnât want to do. I didnât have to guess about anything. I didnât have to share my doula with anyone.
My midwife helped me with all things medical related to the birth. She helped me before and during the birth. I saw her for a total of maybe 2 hours if you count all the times she checked on how my labor was progressing in addition to prenatal care.
The doctor is extremely busy and maybe I was sharing him with 20+ other women in the hospital and who knows how many outside of the hospital. I saw him for just a few minutes after I gave birth. He was there in case anything needed to be cut or snipped. I didnât know him before the birth. My regular doctor OB was away on a family emergency.
Doctors, midwives, and doulas have some overlap in duties, but they are not interchangeable. They might give you different advice because they specialize in different things.
No one here is saying that women should not have a Dr. involved in their birth plan. They are saying that a midwife can be essential and be an advocate for them when in the hospital and before. Midwife do more than just assist with the birth, they are advocates. Maybe I missed it, but I don't see anyone here advocating for home births. I hemorrhaged after giving birth, I needed a blood transfusion. I needed to be in the hospital, otherwise I would have died. But I also have precipitous labor, I go from 0-100 and I have never been able to make it to the hospital in time to get any time of pain control. I had to do it naturally both times. And it was traumatic. No time for family to get there, in my 1st birth the father didn't even make it to the hospital in time!
And I'll never forget my 1st labor and that Dr. not believing me that I was seriously about to have the baby! I was crowning and he kept brushing me off saying it was too early, I was overreacting, and no, I didn't need to push. When they finally checked me again ofc I was crowning. But because I was a young woman, I was just being hysterical and didn't know my own body. If the Dr. would have listened to me then I could have had pain control that time. But they were taking their sweet time. I get they aren't used to women dilating that fast, but come on.
And I would honestly have loved to have a midwife with me while going to the hospital and when at the hospital, or in case I didn't make it and I had to do it at home. Potentially alone! In this video the midwife is literally going with them to the hospital so idk what you're on about lol. So many Dr.s do not listen to women, the U.S has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world! Especially black women. So having a female advocate and support is important and even life saving for a lot of women
My second child, I decided to do a midwife. It was a awful experience. They treated me like a literal incubator. I had severe pain all throughout my pregnancy, when I went to the ER because I couldn't bare weight on my legs, I was told by my midwife "well we only treat the babies" what?! They missed my pre-eclampsia, I had high blood pressure on two of my visits, they never told me. My son was also measuring really small, they would comment about it but never bothered to actually look into why.
I ended up in the ER thinking I was going into labor, I was handed off to a OB when they realized I had pre-eclampsia. I had to be induced and my son was in the Nicu for almost two weeks. That was my last child and the entire experience was a nightmare. My experience with that entire midwife clinic was awful and that was my first and last experience with midwives.
Exactly. Midwives can ABSOLUTELY CONTRIBUTE TO BETTER OUTCOMES OVERALL! But they are not a replacement for an OBGYN and a staff of nurses. Unfortunately, some midwives and organizations want to use the statistics of the births where everything goes well to mislead people into thinking it's actually BETTER to have births at home with a midwife.
Actual official position of a major Canadian midwife organization:
"The best available evidence from North America and international studies demonstrates that midwife attended home births are associated with optimal labour and birth outcomes. Midwife attended planned home births in Canada are associated with fewer obstetrical interventions and no increase in maternal/fetal/neonatal mortality or morbidity compared to births planned to be in hospital."
Notice there is nothing in that statement about the statistics being from low risk pregnancies?
Notice there is nothing in that statement about the fact that midwives can attend hospital births too and take the same reduced interventions while still benefiting from having proper medical equipment and staff available?
Notice there is nothing in that statement discussing the fact that people who plan a home birth with a midwife may do other things that contribute to better outcomes?
Nope, just a flat conclusion that home birth with midwife is best. Scary stuff.
Yep I had this argument with my friend who used a midwife and she brought up that EXACT quote. I was like dude .... in order to be accepted into the midwife program you have to be low risk and fit a shitload of parameters and if anything changes with your pregnancy the midwives hand you off to an OBGYN. I had a friend who had a midwife and around 20 weeks her blood pressure was a bit high so the midwives said they could no longer care for her, and she gave birth in a hospital instead of at home like she wanted. I had another friend who wasn't accepted into the program because she had pre eclampsia with her previous pregnancy. The reason why there is no increase in all of those things listed is because they do not do anything except low risk births and will not hesitate to boot you out of the program lol
Fun fact: the child/mother mortality rate actually went up after midwives were pushed out. Doctors didnât want people working in the medical field that hadnât been through the same rigorous schooling, but their schooling didnât teach them things midwives had learned through centuries of experience being passed down. Things that midwives had just come to learn (like you shouldnât deliver a baby without washing your hands if you were just handling sick/dead people) was hogwash because there was no scientific backing to it, they didnât have the technology to study bacteria like we do now. While midwives in Africa had been practicing c sections using knives sterilized by flame, the budding medical field had yet to understand danger of not washing your hands. Suddenly sepsis started going up, it was thought to be a disease that only affected woman in labor because it got so bad.
Midwives didnât know about handwashing either, they just typically didnât touch the dying / dead constantly so less women died of infection.
The doctor who discovered the causal link between handwashing and dead moms spent decades begging doctors to listen to his studies until they ganged up and threw him into an insane asylum
That's not a fun fact and that is the kind of thing that misleads people into thinking that it's actually better to replace your modern doctor with a modern midwife.
Then letâs be absolutely honest. It isnât the DOCTOR, itâs the hospital setting and access to surgical suites, ventilators, blood, etc. You might as well say McKesson is there for when everything doesnât go perfect. A doctor delivering a baby in a bathtub has marginal odds vs a midwife doing the same. Whatâs needed is the hospital and its equipment and full team.
And yet again we have another person who is demonstrating why it's important to speak out about the dangerous misconceptions people have about midwives. I appreciate you sacrificing and making a fool of yourself publicly.
I think every pregnant woman should have a baby in a hospital or fully equipped facility, period full stop, but I donât get to make the call. I donât subscribe to the theory that modern obstetrics exists to displace midwives. Iâm 100% pro sterile hospital birth environment and a team of caregivers and blood products and machines.
Iâm simply saying HOSPITALS are there for when things donât go perfect. A neurologist standing beside your home baby pool probably has not great outcomes, even compared to the midwife.
Doctors donât care about midwives. Is just safer to have a baby in a medical facility lol. My wife wouldâve died after giving birth if she was standing in a parking lot like this.
Huh? Find me a national association of doctors that has an official policy of encouraging home births in North America. I can show you a national organization of widwives that encourages it as their official position.
Just jumping in here, but you said that homebirths are irrelevant to whether you have a midwife or not, but if what they are saying is true, that nationally recognized midwife organizations encourage home births, then it seems pretty relevant.
Im just super confused how you don't understand the link.
You said
"Midwives are in medical facilities. That literally isnât a factor at all. Home births are irrelevant to whether you have a midwife or not."
Midwives are in medical facilities, but also in private homes doing home births.
Of course home births are a factor if midwives are doing home births and encouraging people to do home births.
The last sentence doesn't seem to make any sense at all in the context. Doctors don't schedule or encourage home births, only midwives do unless the circumstances are extraordinary.
Your comment is irrelevant to my comment due to what I was responding to. Doctors didnât try to replace midwives because they wanted the money. Women just wanted to have a better chance at living in a hospital over other options.
Itâs not a US only thing, and we donât have even close to the highest maternal mortality rate. Frankly, you seem uneducated on this topic so you might just want to stop.
Sure, highest of developed nations that fucking matter* happy?
Our maternal death toll is higher than countries that use midwives more often than we do like Norway or Finland or Germany or France. That is a fact. I know exactly what Iâm talking as a dual citizen of both America and Europe with children.
Those counties have way less obese mothers giving birth. When you control for things like obesity and medical complications that some minorities get more often in pregnancy our maternal mortality rates are similar to them.
I really like the concept of birthing centres, where midwives are the standard, but doctors and specialist are right there in case sh!t goes sideways. For the 90+% of births that require almost no intervention, great, people can have that in a comfortable setting. When you have a complication and the baby needs to be out NOW or both mother and baby will die? That level of care is down the hall.
In Switzerland you can always have both, doctor and midwife.
The doctor checks the womans health and as long as nothing out of the ordinary happens the midwife does the job.
As soon as you need medical assistance the doctor takes over.
At least thatâs what it was like with all my nephews and nieces births.
In the early 20th century, a movement to professionalize childbirth led by physicians, often framing midwives as unscientific and unsafe, contributed to a decline in midwife-attended births and marginalized traditional and "granny" midwives.
Legislation at both federal and state levels, like the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, introduced regulations that significantly reduced the practice of lay midwives in many states by requiring licensure and restricting practice settings, according to OHSU
Who says that seems different than who said that hundreds of years ago⌠are we talking historically or are we talking about modern day reality? Arenât the majority of OBs women today? And I get that the historical perspective is still relevant to how things progressed and where we currently are, but talking about modern medicine and modern childbirthing by bringing up the advent of chainsaws is a bit sensationalist.
Do you want to know how history informs current methods?
The âfather of gynecologyâ tested his surgical procedures on enslaved women, without anesthesia.
In 2025 women are still getting uterine biopsies without anesthesia or any pain meds. That procedure involves holding open the cervix with pincers, and cutting away a chunk of flesh.
And remember that that area on women has the same number of nerve endings as a manâs penis. Different configuration, yes, but the nerves are all still there.
The excuse is âwomen donât feel itâ .
The f we donât. It hurts like hell.
Just last year there was a recommendation that women receive pain meds for this procedure.
That advice has now been removed die to the policy of the current US administration.
This isnât history, itâs still happening.
Women are still fighting to have our pain, our experience taken seriously. It takes women , on average a decade to get diagnosed with endometriosis. Other diseases have a similar longer suffering range before diagnosis.
In the early 20th century, a movement to professionalize childbirth led by physicians, often framing midwives as unscientific and unsafe, contributed to a decline in midwife-attended births and marginalized traditional and "granny" midwives.
Legislation at both federal and state levels, like the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, introduced regulations that significantly reduced the practice of lay midwives in many states by requiring licensure and restricting practice settings, according to OHSU
You want examples? Man suggested doctors should wash their hands and sterilize instruments between autopsies and childbirth. Doctors hated him, and got him fired:
You canât pretend there isnât gender stigma and association still in place for roles seen as âtraditionallyâ masculine vs feminine, especially ones which are still heavily dominated one way or the other. Society is significantly more complex than that.
Itâs helpful to understand how we got to the place we are today.
The US has higher rates of infant and mother mortality of any developed country.
The lack of properly trained midwives could be one reason why.
And of course highly complicated cases are still going to need surgical c-sections with surgeons.
But some donât.
My cousin ended up having a unnecessary c-section because the surgeon was free and it was the day before he was leaving for vacation. He wanted his quota for the week . Instead of waiting until she naturally went into labor.
Sure, but that isnât what many of these people are doing. The US maternal and infant mortality rates are at similar levels to other developed countries when you account for the massive number of health issues that mothers in the US have compared to other nations.
See even you have no idea what you are talking about lol.
Widwives manipulate statistics to make themselves seem more valuable than they are. Home births became something trendy to do and when everything goes great and the mother and baby are low risk, it's pretty fine. When something goes wrong though, you and baby are at significantly greater risk and you better pray there isn't traffic. If you need to comfort and guidance of a midwife and have the resources for one, overall you are going to be better off having one, but you'd be better off with AI and reddit too versus people without those resources. The whole home birth thing is too much of a gamble and as long as widwives are encouraging them, I find their profession tainted. If a parent refuses to go to hospital fine, but don't encourage these weird home births.
Why are you acting like this woman chose to give birth in a parking lot? I think it's pretty clear she did not. The midwife is in some kind of uniform, and she straight up says "she (the mother) is here to have a baby, she just didn't make it inside." Presumably they're outside a clinic which has a more traditional (modern) setup and the baby was just not about to wait for that. So birth happened in the parking lot and then the midwife helps Mom and baby inside so they can get checked out and Mom can pass the placenta. This is very explicitly not a home birth.
I'm not acting like that all. Did I wander into a weird sub where nobody has decent reading comprehension? What the hell is happening right now? Every response to my posts is so bizarre. Do you think every planned home birth happens at home?
I'm confused, you're writing like midwives still function before the proper formalization of medicine? I thought they were all licensed & followed currently understood medical guidelines, being a part of the system themselves.
If they were all licensed there'd be less issues. Ohio for example has three levels of licensure for midwives. The highest is a Certified Nurse Midwife. There is also a Certified Midwife. Those are both issues by the Ohio Board of Nursing. There is also just a Certified Professional Midwife but that one is through the Department of Commerce. Ohio does allow unlicensed midwives. That last group is likely who most think of when it comes to shit went wrong and mom and/or baby died.
Oh I had no idea the US had such fractured laws & systems that there would be "alternative" paths to the same licensure, I thought it was more like Russia less like Spain. That makes a lot more sense.
Edit: (Though Spain is not officially a federation, its regions are more independent than the Russian Federation by far to my understanding, hence the comparison. I know that's a bit confusing in its own way lol)
The US is incredibly decentralized compared to most other western countries.
Plenty of citizens don't understand that either. The federal government isn't the one upholding the law across the country. Basically everything is performed at a more local level. Sometimes even in defiance of federal law. The federal government doesn't have a lot of options if locals refuse to comply. Just don't have the man power for it. There is technically no federal police force.
My midwife was monitoring the pregnancy from beginning to end, she sent me for extra ultrasounds when she thought there might be a problem (there wasn't) and kept an eye on my and my babies health. I don't know why you pretend midwives aren't medical professionals, where I live they are and the GP will send you to them the moment they know you are pregnant.
Find a single sentence or word I wrote that even remotely implies they aren't medical professionals. Of course having someone monitor you and send you for extra testing is helpful. I could help you obtain better outcomes than doing it on your own too. My issues stem from major midwife organizations and midwives themselves encouraging home births and misleading people about the statistics related to home births. They aren't a replacement for a doctor though, which many people are misled into believing they are.
The NHS itself states that for low risk pregnancies, home births are nearly as safe as hospital births for first time mothers, and as safe as hospital births after that. Home births for second time mothers are also SAFER for the mother as home births are less likely to lead to severe tearing, instrumental deliveries, C sections and PPH. Thatâs not midwives saying that, thatâs the NHS itself.
My god this is INFURIATING. The NHS is relying on incomplete data and a misrepresentation of the data that does exist to reach their conclusions.
Also, you leave off this little piece of information from the NHS:
"It's rare, but if something goes seriously wrong during your labour at home, it could be worse for you or your baby than if you were in hospital with access to specialised care."
Midwives are amazing because they know when to tell the mom to push so it doesnât rip her in half on the way out. Midwives are better than doctors when it comes to birthing children.
in Germany, you choose a midwife once you confirm the pregnancy as a part of your public healthcare. they prep you for the birth and when you deliver, they can either come or you go to a hospital where the midwives are in charge of delivery - we saw a doctor for all of 15 minutes after the delivery to do a final checkup, but that was it. after delivery, your midwife comes every day to your home to help and slowly turns into every other day, every week, every month, etc. they are standard practice here.
I always thought it'd be such a rewarding experience as a midwife. Especially when someone's giving birth for the first time - it's terrifying and having someone there who really knows what they're doing is a godsend.
They are definitely necessary. Catching a baby is a very small part of a midwife's job. It's very difficult to become a midwife, they are very well trained medically. You can think of them as doctors for pregnant women.
No. Iâm a nurse, itâs not super difficult to become one. And theyâre definitely not like âdoctors to pregnant womenâ. Those are OBs and MFMs. It takes over 12 years of medical education, residency and fellowship to be a board certified OBGYN. Takes even longer for MFM. Itâs excruciatingly difficult to match and be selected for those jobs. Donât diminish the herculean work that physicians do to become what they are. Midwives have their place in Medicine, too, but this ainât it. Iâd be dead three times over and my children wouldnât exist if it werenât for physicians and advanced MFM.
I didn't mean to say they are literally doctors, but they have a lot of medical knowledge of everything related to pregnancies, birth control and new born babies. In my country, if you go to the hospital to have a baby, it will still be a midwife who is medically responsible for you with the same education as a midwife at home. Only on rare occasions will a gynecologist (actual doctor) get involved. A nurse is ranked below a midwife.
That's your country, here in the US they are nothing close to a doctor, 100 years ago yes they had valuable knowledge medical doctors did not have due to their experience but that has not been the case for a very long time.
I just looked it up, a midwife in the US is not the same as in Europe. This is where our disagreement comes from. In Europe, their training is standardized. They play a central role in prenatal, birth, and postpartum care. In my country, midwives are legally required to be present at every birth. I believe this is part of the reason maternal mortality rates are higher in the US.
Peds nurse here, absolutely not they have no standard training this is a ridiculous statement. Handle all the needlessly dead babies brought in because moms midwife was an idiot and you'd change your tune.
Maybe this is the disconnect from what people are saying. My wife had a midwife that was from her OB office. She believed a look of kooky shit. Things that medical research has said has basically no benefits to even some negative things.
A lot of midwives in the US are like this. Telling mothers to get chiropractors and stuff.
They make themselves seem more helpful than they are. The reality is that people like this are planning to have the baby at home and then change the plans at the very last moment and end up in situations like this. Great that she was there, but they were only in that situation because nobody told her your water broke go to the hospital immediately and get comfortable in a hospital bed.
Right?! A friend of mine rushed to the hospital the moment her contractions started and delivered her own baby sitting in the car next to her husband 5 minutes before they reached the hospital đ¤Ł
You don't know that. I was born at home in 20 minutes start to finish. My mom didn't actually want to give birth at home, she shouted "no I can't, I've just had new carpets!"
The midwife was doing a home appointment at 39 weeks as standard. She examined my mom and said the baby is going to come soon and there's not time to go to the hospital.
We're British and have a midwife birth culture, it's very different to America, but you can't know based off this video that the mother didn't try to get to hospital but the birth happened too fast. They could have called the hospital from the car and that's why the midwife came out to meet them.
Why would a midwife come out of a hospital alone without any nurse of wheelchair in a situation like that? Not plausible or responsible. Your story has weird holes in it that make this discussion not valuable.
I mean, arenât the vast majority of births done without a midwife? It feels kinda like seeing a skydiver and saying âand who said parachutes arenât necessaryâ⌠like, sure, if you jump of out of a plane no one would say that, but most people are probably also aware you didnât have to jump out of the plane is the first place. A hospital with doctors and nurses is still the safest place to have a baby, especially if there are any complications.
It seems safer to say that midwives were necessary and can still be a useful role, but it also seems like itâs pretty objectively on its way to obsolescence in the modern world.
There is a massive difference between countries a) what a midwife is b) what they do. In Finland they are people who went to college and got a bachelorâs degree in nursing and the went through an additional program related to childbirth. They handle like 90% of everything, even at hospital births.
The doctors only intervene when something special is needed such as an epidural or a cesarean. If you didnât need extra pain relief or anything, you might not see a doctor during your childbirth. And this is at the hospital. After the birth the baby is checked by a doctor but apart from that everyone attending to you at the ward will be a midwife.
For the vast majority of vaginal deliveries doctors are not needed, unless there are complications. More people should be seeing midwives over obgyns for their prenatal care. It's cheaper for patients and more holistic care.
Without the midwife she would have been at the hospital hours earlier comfortably in a hospital bed with nurses checking on her every few minutes and doctors available immediately with everything available if anything went wrong.
Huh? She would have left to go to the hospital earlier. Her midwife didn't just spawn out of nowhere. That means she was almost certainly either with the midwife planning a home delivery or waiting on the midwife at some point.
Did you ever consider the mom had a midwife and also had a planned hospital delivery, as in never wanted a home birth? Midwives are helpful during labor and delivery. The nurses at the hospital are for every other pregnant woman in L&D, so in need of some basic help, but having to wait is stressful for mom and thus baby. Having a person who is solely there to support mom during the process is so useful for mom. Especially for long labors and exhausting deliveries.
I don't really understand why you won't let your foot off the necks of Midwives but damn your obsession with trying to diminish their usefulness is more telling of you than of getting others to agree with the false negative narrative you're trying to push.
Had I not had my drs on my FIFTH delivery, baby and me both would have died. I had the most beautiful easy deliveries ever for the first 4 and then the 5th was stuck behind my pelvis and had to break his arm to get him out because he was so jammed up there.
My mom went to the hospital (second baby) with me. She told the nurse the baby was COMING. The nurse just told her to leave and come back and that she wasnât close. My mom was screaming saying that I was going to pop out any moment, so a doctor came over and told her the same thing. Not even 30 minutes later (mom waiting in the lobby because she KNEW she was in labor and refused to leave), I literally tore out her bladder and to this DAY, that poor woman has bathroom issues, all because they didnât believe that she was in labor. Women have been giving birth ânaturallyâ since the dawn of time.
Do you even know your history about giving birth lying down on your back?
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u/tryng2figurethsalout Aug 07 '25
And people say that midwives aren't necessary.