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From: [email protected] (Mark Fulk)
Subject: Re: Breech Baby Info Needed
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Kate Gregory) writes:
>In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Mark Fulk) writes:
>>
>>Another uncommon problem is maternal hemorrhage. I don't remember the
>>incidence, but it is something like 1 in 1,000 or 10,000 births. It is hard
>>to see how you could handle it at home, and you wouldn't have very much time.
>>
>>thing you might consider is that people's risk tradeoffs vary. I consider
>>a 1/1,000 risk of loss of a loved one to require considerable effort in
>>the avoiding.
>
>Mark, you seem to be terrified of the birth process
That's ridiculous!
>and unable to
>believe that women's bodies are actually designed to do it.
They aren't designed, they evolved. And, much as it discomforts us, in
humans a trouble-free birth process was sacrificed to increased brain and
cranial size. Wild animals have a much easier time with birth than humans do.
Domestic horses and cows typically have a worse time. To give you an idea:
my family tree is complicated because a few of my pioneer great-great-
grandfathers had several wives, and we never could figure out which wife
had each child. One might ask why this happened. My great-great-
grandfathers were, by the time they reached their forties, quite prosperous
farmers. Nonetheless, they lost several wives each to the rigors of
childbirth; the graveyards in Spencer, Indiana, and Boswell, North Dakota,
contain quite a few gravestones like "Ida, wf. of Jacob Liptrap, and
baby, May 6, 1853."
>You wanted
>to section all women carrying breech in case one in a hundred or a
>thousand breech babies get hung up in second stage,
More like one in ten. And the consequences can be devastating; I have
direct experience of more than a dozen victims of a fouled-up breech birth.
>and now you want
>all babies born in hospital based on a guess of how likely maternal
>hemorrhage is and a false belief that it is fatal.
It isn't always fatal. But it is often fatal, when it happens out of
reach of adequate help. More often, it permanently damages one's health.
Clearly women's bodies _evolved_ to give birth (I am no believer in divine
design); however, evolution did not favor trouble-free births for humans.
>You have your kids where you want. You encourage your wife to
>get six inch holes cut through her stomach muscles, expose herself
>to anesthesia and infection, and whatever other "just in case" measures
>you think are necessary.
My, aren't we wroth! I haven't read a more outrageous straw man attack
in months! I can practically see your mouth foam.
We're statistically sophisticated enough to balance the risks. Although
I can't produce exact statistics 5 years after the last time we looked
them up, rest assured that we balanced C-section risks against other risks.
I wouldn't encourage my wife to have a Caesarean unless it was clearly
indicated; on the other hand, I am opposed (on obvious grounds) to waiting
until an emergency to give in.
And bear this in mind: my wife took the lead in all of these decisions.
We talked things over, and I did a lot of the leg work, but the main
decisions were really hers.
>But I for one am bothered by your continued
>suggestions, especially to the misc.kidders pregnant for the first
>time, that birth is dangerous, even fatal, and that all these
>unpleasant things are far better than the risks you run just doing
>it naturally.
I don't know of very many home birth advocates, even, that think that
a first-time mother should have her baby at home.
>I'm no Luddite. I've had a section. I'm planning a hospital birth
>this time. But for heaven's sake, not everyone needs that!
But people should bother to find out the relative risks. My wife was
unwilling to take any significant risks in order to have nice surroundings.
In view of the intensity of the birth experience, I doubt surroundings
have much importance anyway. Somehow the values you're advocating seem
all lopsided to me: taking risks, even if fairly small, of serious
permanent harm in order to preserve something that is, after all,
an esthetic consideration.
--
Mark A. Fulk University of Rochester
Computer Science Department [email protected]
