Apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force (1963)

> "trim figure"

Where are you getting these quotes from?

It divides people into "primitive" and "civilized", which delineates an ingroup and outgroup;

Right, in the context of "look at us poor pathetic civilized people whose broken bodies need this apparatus to reproduce unlike those strong primitives who can do it in the normal way.

We've decided that it will be safer and more comfortable for us to do it at home with professional help. Thankfully the public hospital here had a home birthing unit, which was only started about 3 years ago.

Look at common complications, like postpartum hemmorrhage (usually > 500 ml blood loss). "estimated 76.7m delivery hospitalizations, 2.3 million (3.0%) were complicated by postpartum hemorrhage. From 2000 to 2019, the rate of postpartum hemorrhage increased from 2.7% to 4.3% ... proportion of deliveries to individuals with at least one postpartum hemorrhage risk factor increased from 18.6% to 26.9% ."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36701615/

Bottom line with a home birth, everyones training is around when things go smooth. Medical center is where people have thousands of hours of training on how to save your life.

science isnt a religion, you cant deny it or follow it, there is a rigorous process and sometimes the results are wrong, misleading, or lead to the wrong decisions.

Do not pretend there's an absolute in science, especially medicine, where one can say "this is the only good way" and know it to be true.

After a C-section once my wife were back in our postpartum room, no one seemed concerned at all with her sleep. Every 15-20 minutes there was another visitor. At this point she had been awake more than a day, had a few hours of extreme exertion before a pivot to surgery, and was full of pain killing narcotics.

She could barely stay awake.

I ended up being her sleep guardian. Every time I heard the sliding door to our room crack open I was on my feet to turn people away.

In retrospect it was good exercise in being assertive with authority figures in service of others. I think I’ll be doing plenty of that as a father.

As far as high US mortality rate, I wonder if this is more of a reflection of general poor health issues from terrible dietary choices rather than the birth process itself.

Does this factor in that high-risk births might be more likely had in the hospital?

How does that compare to 1920, or even 1820 when home births were the norm?

This has been a thing for a while:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

Now, people who live in a modern society actively pursue ignorance as they perceive it to be some sort of virtue. Many people want to aspire to home water birth, exclusively breastfeed and only used organic cotton diapers, because…

Others seek cures from goop.com or gurus of various stripes because it makes them feel empowered. Look at Steve Jobs - a fricking billionaire with access to anything possible, who delayed meaningful treatment to chug papaya juice or whatever for his cancer.

It dogmatic thinking just as wrong as the doctor who pushes for a c-section so he doesn’t get called on Christmas morning or miss his football game.

Empowerment and ego can often fool us. And marketers have monetized or.

It's one thing if you've studied a given field, are aware of the limitations in current research, and have a well-informed opinion. It's something completely different if you don't seem to understand the blood is transmitted through the UC and the concern around it being wrapped around the neck has nothing to do with the respiratory system, or that asking if a pregnant patient is safe at home is completely routine and happens in 100% of cases.

It is a problem because if you run out of the pre determined terminus based on erroneous scans you will get c-section because protocol.

Of course this is a personal anecdote and may not apply to your country.

Might be worth reviewing the ACOG's recommendations on post-term deliveries https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-op...

I think it's stupid to disregard a doctor's advice, but as someone without a medical degree you really have no good way of knowing whether you're getting the healthcare version of "use version control" or "I just used Svelte for 5 minutes and it's the best thing ever!!!!!!!". You just have to roll with it like you'd roll with a shit dev over someone who's never written a line of code in their life.

As example of your ignorance is your lecture about the dangers of an umbilical cord wrapped around the neck. That is, in fact, very common and it is incredibly rare for it to lead to complications. https://unmhealth.org/stories/2022/12/nuchal-cord-managing-d...

Which leads to your willful ignorance of the fact that the guy was exposed to a lot of research about problems in medicalized interventions. "This guy"'s critical experience was almost certainly running across that research. And not on his personal anecdote. I've seen enough of that research myself to know that the interventions that he's questioning really aren't equivalent to any of the software best practices in your straw man comparison.

As for an example of your being an asshole, take your question about what he's upset about with due dates. You are right that it is a medical fact that the date chosen is imprecise. He knew that as well. But you are wrong to have not noticed his story about having his wife be asked about abuse because she wasn't getting induced 2 days after her due date. That behavior on the part of the doctor is an excellent reason to get unhappy.

Now why do doctors behave that way? According to research I saw close to 20 years ago, because they really want to control when the baby comes. It is more convenient for them to have a baby come during the work week rather than interrupting their Sunday golf game, and so they pressure mothers to make that happen. They do this both by recommending medically unnecessary Caesarians, and by inducing when there is no medical need.

Which is an example of the arrogance of the medical industry that illustrates why people get upset about this.

>they're concerned about occlusion of bloodflow through the cord and/or the carotid artery.

Yep. Our #5's cord was looped 3 times. He was born with no vitals but staff was able to resuscitate him. He was effectively dead for the intervening time.

And I had a college roommate (male, no children) who espoused the idea that making women give birth without the benefit of a Caesarean section was barbaric.

Anecdata, but my sister-in-law had 3 children, her first was at the same hospital I was born (in the Texas Medical Center), and he was a standard birth, the last 3 were at our small region hospital. With her second child after only an hour of labor they told her they HAD to do a C-Section, and to top it off, they only gave her 2 nights to recover from what is major surgery (first night being the night she gave birth). The reason for the remaining C-Section was that she "needed" a C-Section before.

I'm not saying that its so the doctor can go play golf or something personally repugnant like that, but that they are short staffed doctors, and a C-Section typically has no complications and they know how long it takes to get a baby out when they cut you open versus you taking up a bed that could be turned over to the next C-Section. There is an incentive to flip beds as often as possible.

https://www.bellybelly.com.au/birth/highest-c-section-rates-...

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/c-section...

First is Mexico and Turkey with more than 50%! USA is 32%. Norway seems to be quite low with 16% as far as first world countries go.

I would also recommend to let the soon-to-be-mother decide how she feels about squatting? You don't read evidence what's the best positure for shitting when you need to shit like hell. I promise you will take up the best positure for your shit.

Also there is more to childbirth than a new life as there is an already existing life it very much affect - the one who's giving birth and I see no such consideration in the linked evidence.

Data would be nicer than anecdote. But even at 10%, if you are a woman, at 10% probability of needing experienced professionals with medical training and equipment, are you taking a chance at home or at the hospital?

More common than mortality is morbidity, and evolution does not quite care about that as long a woman survives well enough to procreate again. But women themselves most certainly care about hemorrhoids, tears, pain, infections, etc.

Back to the point though, if the implication of comparing it to vomiting is to say that the mechanism is "simple" enough so as to be reliable enough to not need intervention, I think most women would disagree and prefer having intervention available if necessary. Perhaps many interventions are unhelpful, or the tradeoffs not worth it, but many are helpful, and the medical field does seem to eventually abandon the bad ideas once shown unhelpful.