By no stretch of the imagination can a CPM be called uneducated and untrained. Dr. LeHew cited the 1999 study on home birth and midwife attended birth by the Virginia Department of Health. That report cited a ten percent incidence of complications during childbirth. That statistic in itself, however, doesn t mean much. It s widely accepted, not only by obstetricians but also by midwives and home birth families, that not every birth unfolds perfectly.
Medical intervention is essential in some cases.
But to get to a meaningful statistic, it s necessary to look at pregnancy and labor outcomes. As the Joint Commission on Health Care stated in its 1999 report on midwives, there is no empirical evidence showing hospital birth to be safer than home birth. This means that midwives are successfully referring clients who need medical care, they are preventing some complications through the exceptional care they give to women, and they are managing other complications successfully at home or transporting clients to the hospital in a timely manner. Families accept that pregnancy and birth are inherently risky to some degree. We look to solid research to help us discern where and how we might minimize that risk.