Yesterday I wrote about the fact that pediatricians and neonatologists do not support the empirical claims of natural childbirth and homebirth advocates. They do not think that NCB is safer for babies, healthier for babies or better for babies than childbirth with pain relief. Pediatricians and neonatologists strongly believe that homebirth increases the risk of perinatal death. Moreover, they assert that giving birth in water, far from being “gentle” or beneficial, actually poses serious risks of freshwater drowning for the baby.
I asked the question, if homebirth is safe, why do pediatricians oppose it? As far as I could tell, no NCB or homebirth advocates could answer the question.
Now I’d like to ask the corollary: is there any information purporting to show that homebirth is safe that comes from anyone other than homebirth advocates?
I don’t think so, but I’d be happy to look at any evidence that anyone would like to present. Can you find a study, a set of statistics, an international dataset that demonstrates that homebirth is as safe as hospital birth for comparable risk women that wasn’t created, collected or collated by homebirth advocates.
If you can’t find anything, and I suspect that is the case, you need to ask yourself an even more important question: if the only people who insist that homebirth is safe are homebirth advocates themselves, isn’t it time to acknowledge that homebirth isn’t safe?
