Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdiddly | Hacker News Reader

A midwife delivered my kid in the bedroom for two orders of magnitude less money.

Not to mention, thousands of years of doing it without even a midwife was somehow good enough to keep the species alive long enough for hospitals to be invented so people could think having a baby requires one.

EDIT: Sorry to distract you with that last bit. A midwife, you're paying for a license and a sterile pair of scissors. It works fine. The idea that you need a huge medical apparatus and to pay $10 grand for it, to do something humans evolved to do, is pretty FUDdish.

View on HN

Which shows that a high infant mortality rate is insufficient to extinct a species, not that home birth is safe.

That why it says "not to mention." It's an additional/supplemental point on top of the main one about my child's birth, which shows that at least that one home birth was safe. And cheap.

No, one wasn't safe. One was risky, but luckily happened to end all right. Just like driving drunk is unsafe even if you make it home in one piece. Safety is statistical, not anecdotal. Here are the statistics: http://www.skepticalob.com/2014/01/homebirth-midwives-reveal...

In my youth once changed a ceiling light standing on a swivel office chair that was on a desk.

I suffered no injuries. That doesn't mean it was safe.

We saw a doctor beforehand who ruled out all the usual risk factors. In fact it was safe.

No. Are you willfully ignoring the statistics? The death rate for low risk births is 320% higher. http://www.skepticalob.com/2014/01/homebirth-midwives-reveal...

Home birth doesn't have to be unsafe as long as you have well-trained mid-people and easy access to a hospital in case of complications. An uncomplicated birth doesn't need a hospital, and most births in Netherland still happen at home. It works fine if your system is designed to allow it.

Home birth is not safe. In the Netherlands, as elsewhere, it causes deaths: http://www.skepticalob.com/2010/07/netherlands-homebirth-and...

And the majority of Dutch births are not home births. Due to the safety issues, the rate has fallen to only 13%: http://www.skepticalob.com/2017/02/dutch-homebirth-rate-cont...

I stand corrected.

Although if birth-related mortality is rising while home births are dropping, doesn't that suggest there's something else going on? The relatively high age of Dutch mothers may also be a factor (I believe the average age at which women have their first child is around 30).

Having read a bit more about the issue, it appears the jury is still out.

>Although if birth-related mortality is rising while home births are dropping, doesn't that suggest there's something else going on?

Huh, where do you see mortality rising? The link refers to a decrease: "Historical data show that 7-day (28-day) mortality declined from 4.25 (5.35) deaths per 1,000 births in 1980–1985 to 2.42 (3.18) deaths in 2005-2009"

>Having read a bit more about the issue, it appears the jury is still out.

I don't know how you can think that. Every statistical comparison shows home births kill babies. Unfortunately, there are still people who claim otherwise, but none of them have data to support their claims.

> most births in Netherland still happen at home

The number of home births is at 13% according to https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/typisch-hollands-fenome...

"I've never been in a car crash, why should I wear a seatbelt again?"

You utter prat. My sister is an NHS midwife and went through three years of highly technical university education for it. It's a skilled job and she's saved lives when things have gone wrong. Should we all go back to living in mud huts instead of professionally-built houses, too?

What’s an American equivalent to a ‘prat’?

If you google it, you'll see it's synonymous with "idiot".

Interesting question, and I can't really answer it, not being American - "prat" basically means an idiot, but it's quite a useful word because it conveys a real sense of contempt (but often more for the opinion or act than the person responsible for it, in a weird way), and can easily be intensified as in this instance, without actually being vulgar. You can also use it as a verb, eg. "Stop pratting around on Hacker News and do some work!"

I also feel like it was 100% the correct word to use in this instance!

It's a soft version of "idiot". So maybe an affectionately spoken "doofus"?

You seem to be making two contrary points: that midwives are trained and skilled, and that they're primitive and unprofessional like mud huts. This is consistent with, for example, someone's pretending to respect their sister's line of work because they're family. Pretty sure you're also afoul of the site guidelines by openly name-calling.

To be fair there was a far higher mortality rate up until relatively recently. (I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of sterile conditions did give the surviving kids immune system a good kick start though).

It works fine as long as there are not complications. Births are incredibly dangerous for the mother and the infant compared to almost anything else we do.

Midwife led care in the UK is free.

Research isn't great but it seems to show that home births are more risky than hospital births; that midwife led care is safer but only if there are both obstetricians available and strong multidisciplinary working.

Research isn't great but it seems to show that home births are more risky than hospital births

I wonder if home births can ever be safer/less risky than a hospital birth.

My wife had emergency surgery (not all cesareans) with each of my kids but even if you just take the first time when she was low/no-risk, she would most likely be dead if she'd chosen to give birth at home. Both me and her were also born by emergency caesarean, so I might be a bit biased in favour of hospitals here though ;-)

And people used to have 20 kids to offset the high mortality rates.

Which would appear to be a much less costly solution to the problem.

some people still have the "must have 20 children gene" too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com