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Comment by tinok | Hacker News Reader

So let me get this:

- baby's heart rate was of concern to your doctor - no progress for several hours - baby pooped - your wife had fever during labor - baby and mother now have an infection - c-section - big commotion, no communication with the wife

And people still think epidural is a normal part of child birthing?

On top of that - this couple will go on to tell other parents how lucky they were that they gave birth at the hospital! Yet this whole thing happened BECAUSE they thought child birth is a medical event. It's not.

They inject chemicals into a mother about to give birth and then say - well, baby doesn't want to come out, must do c-section (read: doctor wants to go home, doesn't want to rub olive oil around the vagina, let's cut her up).

I feel sorry for mothers who give birth at hospitals. Stories such as these make me so mad. People have no clue.

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Yes, laypeople have no clue...except those who have been trained for years, both theoretically and practically, in medicine. Child birthing is a natural event, but so is dying from cancer. Does that mean one should eschew chemotherapy and radiation treatment?

Hospitals are not where mothers are supposed to give birth. They are constantly rushed to get the baby out, doctors are terrible at patient management and very quick to suggest chemical interventions, are very happy to use suctions to get the baby out and go home early, etc. 100,000 people die every year in the US from infections contracted during hospital visits, completely unrelated to the original reason for the visit. Why would you want your infant child in that sick environment?

As for cancer, ignoring the fact that you compare it to child birth, it's completely natural. We all have cancer cells in our bodies at various times. Weak, unhealthy bodies do not know how to fight it, hence the so-called cancer breaks out so to speak. And you're correct that there are many other treatments to consider before traditional methods, but I'll get downvoted for speaking, so why bother.

Steve Jobs at one point would have agreed with you.

That's a large part of why he's now dead.

> I'll get downvoted for speaking

Only if you say stuff without bothering to back any of it up with evidence, so people can tell if you're getting your information from a real source, or Alex Jones, Natural News, and that merry band of lunatics.

Potocin and an epidural are not treatments. C-sections are emergency procedures and should only be done in emergency and high risk situations. Unfortunately, they are the norm now.

The problem is not C-sections and epidurals. The problem is that both are sometimes unecessarily given without much thought and for non-emergencies.

I'm extremely thankful we were at a hospital when my wife had an emergency c-section. I'm quite sure modern medical facilities and capabilities contributed significantly to us having a healthy baby.

tinok - way to make presumptions about our preparation for birth, what my wife's medical history was, the research we did, our conversations with a close friend who is a midwife, my wife's predisposition to extreme pain, and what we've been telling others since having the baby. For you and others in this thread, home births may be the choice you make. A denial of any sort of frugs may be your decision as well. That's great. We decided a hospital environment was more appropriate for us.

To me the decision of how you want to deliver your baby that you and you alone conceived is as personal as religion, abortion, and numerous other topics which I believe people should be left to make their own decisions about. The quick fire judgments of absolute strangers proselytizing from up high should be checked at the door.

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