Hospital Birth vs. Non-Hospital Birth Essay examples

As a doula, I provide educational, physical, and emotional support to clients in a unique and customizable manner. This past year I have continued my education and gained valuable experience by supporting multiple families throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and into postpartum.

A postpartum doula services are designed to be able to assist in the physical and emotional care of mothers and families in the daysand nights, weeks and months following the birth/adoption of a child. Postpartum doulas are professionals experienced in:

A postpartum doula is someone who comes into the home after birth and provides education, assistance, and support. The experience is intimate and transformational. As a postpartum doula, the hope is to help make this transition for families as easy and comfortable as possible.

A doula is a professional that provides judgement free informative, emotional, and physical care to pregnant woman and their families through the pregnancy, birth, and postpartum time.

Finding out you are pregnant is one of the most exciting and often times scary moments for a woman. After the initial excitement of being pregnant wares off, many woman are left with a lot of fear, anxiety, and apprehension, of their impeding birth. I know when I was pregnant with my first child, I initially had a lot of hear and anxiety about giving birth. It wasn’t until I started doing research on how I wanted to give birth that I started to feel at ease. I decided that for me the best choice was to give birth with a midwife and to have a doula. I choice to use a midwife because I liked the idea of a more traditional birthing method. The midwife I chose had been delivering babies for 20+ years. I liked the idea of using a midwife because they tend to be more client focused and less medically driven. I also chose to use a doula so I had additional support during my labor. So what is a doula?

North America’s childbirth conditions and practice have been revolutionized throughout time. Today, many aspects of childbirth are carefully inspected to create, in their opinion, the healthiest environment for the women and child. The vast majority of Americans birthing environment takes place at a “hospital, birthing-centers, and homes,” while “planned home births” are fewer then 1% of birth (347). When having a planned at home birth, a birthing center will bring all the required equipment to your

According to the American Pregnancy organization “more than 50% of woman giving birth at hospitals use Epidural Anesthesia”. These women turn to epidural to relieve the pain of labor; however this decision poses many risks to both mother and child. An epidural is a type of regional anesthesia where pain medication is administered to the lumbar and sacral region of the back near clusters of nerves. The placement allows for nerve impulses to be blocked from the lower regions of the body resulting in decreased sensations. Although the epidural is known for taking pain away it could very well cause it too. Epidurals include the use of various narcotics and have side effects like hypotension, fever, fetal malposition, decreased fetal heart rate, respiratory depression, breastfeeding complications, an increased likelihood of operative vaginal delivery and cesarean and many more. These are the effects faced in result to a procedure that is not definite to work. In Fact “One in every 8 women” (OAA) will experience inadequate pain relief and must venture to other means of medication. Therefore, mothers should abstain from epidural anesthesia due to the risks it poses to themselves and to the fetus.

In my opinion, many factors about continuous labor support work together to decrease the use of birthing interventions. I think it is the key that the doulas’ can focus solely on the mother and her needs throughout the entire birth. As stated in An Economic Model of the Benefits of Professional Doula Support in Wisconsin Births, “a doula is a woman who provides physical, emotional and informational support to the laboring mother throughout her entire labor” (Chapple, Gilliland, Li, Shier, & Wright, 2013). It is not feasible for medical professionals, such as the nurse, doctor or midwife, to be in the delivery room throughout the entire laboring and birthing process. Labor is not on a time schedule and the mother is not their only patient. The doula is able to provide guidance and positioning to enhance fetal descent and is able to give the constant support and encouragement to progress labor (Chapple, Gilliland, Li, Shier, & Wright, 2013). When the doula helps the laboring mother progress, there is a decreased need for interventions. The doula is also able to provide breathing techniques and comfort that can decrease the need for pain medication and thus decrease the likelihood of using an intervention such as an epidural. Through certification, doulas are knowledgeable about a variety of positions that they can recommend to laboring woman throughout the entire birthing process.

Delivering a baby in the home and in the hospital both provide comfort to some, but homebirth offers decreased cost and hospital births offer more options. Some women have different birthing methods in mind when it comes to delivering a child. Some women feel that it is more convenient to stay home to deliver their child. Mothers-to-be will choose to have a hospital birth because they may feel safer or more secure knowing that if something is not right or if she has had complications, the doctor is there and she is in a hospital and everything will be okay.

“In the United States, approximately 25,000 births (0.6%) per year occur in the home. Approximately one fourth of these births are unplanned or unattended. Among women who originally intend to give birth in a hospital or those who make no provisions for professional care during childbirth, subsequent unplanned home births are associated with high rates of perinatal and neonatal mortality. The relative risk versus benefit of a planned home birth, however, remains the subject of current debate” (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists).

Home birth versus hospital birth is one of the more controversial topics in the world today. It is a delicate topic because the safety and well-being of mothers and babies is in question. The majority of the information out there is subjective, making it difficult to reach an unbiased conclusion.

It is unfair to the newborn to reap consequences because the mother decided to receive a pain free delivery. Epidurals take 2.7 hours to leave an adult body but it takes over 8 hours for a newborn. Some babies still had the epidural medication within their bloodstream up to 30 hours later. If an epidural causes immobility within in the women, then it causes the same for the baby. It causes the baby to become lethargic, decrease its heart rate, and poor latching after birth. No mother wants their baby to suffer. Doctor fail to tell women how a medicated assist birth can cause more complication than assistants. The epidural causes labor to decrease which causes an increased risk for the doctor to have to use delivery instruments. The use of delivery instruments such as birthing vacuum or forceps increase the chance of injuring the baby. Short term bruising, facial injuries, and displacement of skull bones have occurred with the use of the delivery instruments. This can simply be avoided by women having non-medicated births. Not everyone would

Birth Doula- Someone trained and certified to aid and coach a family, specifically the mother, during pregnancy leading up to birth and throughout the birth.

In the case of the CNM who delivered a 35 week breeched infant, several factors need to

Home births have been done for centuries, however they are uncommon in today’s world. Gone are the days where women had babies on the kitchen tables. So why are women beginning to yet again seek out home births? Most women have reasons such as they want to be in a more comfortable environment, and they want the process to be as natural as possible. Those women are still the vast minority in america, as most women prefer hospital births, due to the proximity to critical care in case of emergencies, painkillers, and simply because that it the way things are done here.