Talk:Home birth

message: This paragraph does not make sense:
"In 37 states it is legal to acquire the services of a midwife. Many midwives continue to attend mothers in states where it is illegal, while efforts are underway to change the law."
Practicing as a certified nurse midwife is legal in all states. Is this statement meant to refer to legality of direct-entry midwifery? If so, it should be clarified.
Also, I think the statement that it "is legal to acquire the services of a midwife" is misleading, as it implies that in some states, it is illegal to hire a midwife. To the best of my knowledge (and please correct me if someone knows otherwise) it is not illegal to hire any type of midwife anywhere in the United States, rather, direct-entry midwives can be prosecuted for practicing in some states.Jane Snow (talk) 22:50, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Alabama decriminalized midwifery recently. --Lo Ximiendo (talk) 04:06, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Legality of Midwives in US 

message: The page makes a couple of references to "low risk" when considering the safety of home birth. What is "low risk"? A quick googling only found one definition - from a 1997 paper by Rosenblatt et al ["Interspecialty differences in the obstetric care of low-risk women.", Am J Public Health, March 1997]. This mentioned "a major medical condition, a previous obstetrical complication, a serious risk factor in the current pregnancy, no obstetrical care in the first trimester, or were under 18 or over 34 years old." as all meaning "not low risk". According to this definition, 53% of the pregnancies in that study were "not low risk". So, what's the general definition of "low risk", and what proportion of pregnancies meet that criterion? Pvanheus (talk) 10:40, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: What is low risk pregnancy?

message: Regarding the safety for the baby, it would not be helpful to use the apgar score as the measure of safety. Apgar was invented to describe what state the child was in at the time of the delivery, and has been shown not to correlate well with long-term outcomes (unless the score is very low at 10 minutes of age).   — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.154.134.70 (talk) 22:20, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apgar Scoring 

message: I came across this article and was wondering if it would be suited for this page? If not, could  you point me in the right direction. Cap020570 (talk) 13:28, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Vitamin K

message: this research, showing a 450% higher death rate among US homebirths than hospital biths, merits inclusion but I would prefer to cite a formal paper rather than a blog (even one written by an OB/GYN). No time now - just wanted to post it here. Wormcast (talk) 16:37, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The paper is at ; it's already used as cite 24, though the 2.06 number is not used. I'm hesitant to dig too far into that paper as the number of births (~17000) is so low that a single death swings each number pretty far- there's only 35 deaths in the "low-risk" table, and even the skepticalOB post, when noting the 20x death rate for breach babies, is comparing a 5 out of 222 rate to a national 0.8/1000 average- a single death would have already been 5x+. Especially as the JME meta-study from the same time period has a larger sample size and gives a 300% higher neonatal death rate instead. --PresN 17:20, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense to me. Wormcast (talk) 03:52, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: MANA death rate statistics

message: Aronoel, good addition to the lede about the American Medical Association and College of ObGYn's opposition. However, the lede is supposed to summarize the body. Can you add some content to the body describing their opposition? (Like the AMA's "Resolution 205 on Home Deliveries," passed in 2008.) Here are some possible links:
* Ricki Lake's home-birth film upsets AMA
* Thoughts on the AMA Homebirth “Ban,” Ricki Lake, and Midwifery
* American Medical Association passes resolution to outlaw homebirth
* Missouri court says midwives can continue to practice
* American Medical Association House of Delegates (A-08)  p. 15.
AMA Resolution 205 in full:
:Resolution 205 (1) that our American Medical Association support the recent American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) statement that “the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital, or a birthing center within a hospital complex, that meets standards jointly outlined by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and ACOG, or in a freestanding birthing center that meets the standards of the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, The Joint Commission, or the American Association of Birth Centers”; and (2) that our AMA develop model legislation in support of the concept that the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital, or a birthing center within a hospital complex, that meets standards jointly outlined by the AAP and ACOG, or in a freestanding birthing center that meets the standards of the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, The Joint Commission, or the American Association of Birth Centers.”
Note that self-published sources like blogs are not generally acceptable as third-party sources, although this generally applies to individually-published content. Exceptions may include professional organizations. Use your discretion.
I think the basic thrust of the arguments that the AMA and College of ObGyns have is against midwives and not home birth per se, because the midwives are competing for a piece of their business. They don't say that, but their critics do. So presenting both the medical association's and the professional midwives association's point of view should be helpful.
-- btphelps (talk) (contribs) 22:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I want to add the professional midwives association's response, but I'm having trouble finding a press release or a published article where they explain their criticism. Do you know of one or a good place to look? -Aronoel (talk) 16:44, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Professional resistance

message: Based on the research on home birth would some of you still recommend home birth after knowing the benefits and the risks of it to other women who wants to have home birth?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.63.209.120 (talk) 23:35, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Home Birth Opinions 

message: How is that relevant to article about home birth?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seriem (talk • contribs) 11:14, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that it may not be relevant, but I restored the list you deleted, renaming it "notable mothers" instead of "celebrities", in hopes that some discussion might be had before undoing so much referenced work. -- Guðsþegn (talk) 18:19, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: coming in a year after the fact, but "notables" who choose home birth is more an advertisement than reference. Cap020570 (talk) 13:26, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Celebrities who chose Home Birth? 

message: An earlier version of the article incorrectly stated that a study showed a risk of stillbirth when, in fact, it showed a increase in Apgar scores of 0 at 5 minutes. I changed it to make it clear that the study focused on Apgar scores of 0 rather than stillbirth. Important given that plenty of babies survive after having a 5 minute score of 0. A further contribution clarified that an apgar score require no pulse and no breathing. I removed the clarification, because I think it might make some readers believe that it was the same as stillbirth. It's better, I think, that the follow the link to Apgar score. Just my opinion. I thought an discussion here, might be warranted. 77.99.168.133 (talk) 18:20, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Apgar score and stillbirth

message: Special article: doi:10.1056/NEJMsa1501738. Not a secondary source but will probably stir up debate again. JFW | T@lk 09:56, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  NEJM 

message: Content says:
ACOG says:
The paper by Wax et al. cited by ACOG is:
ACOG also says:
The two citations in this quote (21, 22) are:
and
These three sources (Wax, Hutton, and Janssen) are not cited by the article at all. Perhaps they could be helpful.
The content says that "perinatal mortality rates for home births were triple that of hospital births" and that "This finding echoes that of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists," citing the ACOG source quoted above, but the ACOG source says perinatal mortality is similar, and neonatal mortality is about two-fold, not three-fold as implied by the content. The content says something else. Later in the section, it does say perinatal mortality is similar. The section is also long and has much repetition. It also seems biased toward giving a negative impression toward homebirth. SageRad (talk) 22:34, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improving content on mortality rates 

message: The article as it is written now frames home birth as a medical event. It also heavily focuses on modern Western home birth issues. While we can address these, the very ideas of birth as a medical event and framing birth as such hijacks and distorts encyclopedic information on homebirth that by definition must be free of biases and present neutral objective information (if there is such a thing in contested and hot areas of inquiry). MtUllaHistorian (talk) 16:18, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, the article is pretty bad and not comprehensive at all. I picked it up a few years ago when it was nothing but thinly-veiled propaganda for (American) home births being not just as safe but in fact better in as many ways as the editors could squeeze sources than births in hospitals. So it's at least more unbiased in that respect, but it's still not a great article- as you say, it focuses on medical differences between home births and hospital births, primarily in America, and doesn't really touch at all on social or historical norms and practices around birthing at home or give any real global perspective on the issue, in history or modern times. Any changes you want to make in that respect are welcomed, I'll try to avoid stepping on your edits. --PresN 16:27, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thank you very much! It is a controversial topic but a fascinating one for sure.MtUllaHistorian (talk) 16:46, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restructuring the article 

message: Currently the article is classified as Medical. There is problem with that because for most of the history birth was not medical event, thus it is very hard to discuss what birth and home birth were historically because of the previous attempts of authors to make the article into a debate on legality and safety of it from modern day perspective. While safety and legality of home birth in modern context warrants separate sections, these issues should not be the main focus of the article. I propose removing the Medical tag or at least adding some form a Social Sciences tag - Sociology? Anthropology? If anybody has other suggestions, it would be great to collaborate between several people. MtUllaHistorian (talk) 15:09, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure what you mean by "classified" as medical- you mean the template at the top of this talk page? That just means that it's in the scope of the medicine project; such scopes are non-exclusive, it's completely reasonable for this article to be in the scopes of both the medicine project and multiple others, such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Sociology. The presence or lack of such tags does not restrict the article content to only what would be in that focus. --PresN 15:22, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classification 

message: I would suggest discussing safety and/or mortality trends in context of other causes of morbidity and mortality in a specific historical period and tied to a specific location to make discussion of birth issues meaningful in context of place and time not historical data compared to modern day statistics. This would provide for meaningful comparisons, not propaganda driven fear mongering.MtUllaHistorian (talk) 15:14, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Safety 

message: I would like to remove this section in the etymology of Home Birth 
“Since the beginning of the 20th century, home birth rates have fallen in most developed countries, generally to less than 1% of all births” This was a single study made in reference to the year 2010 in the United States. It should not be used to describe and overall description of Home Birth statistics. SarahJeanDixon (talk) 23:09, 3 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

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