13. Home birth is just more fun!
22. You can cut the umbilical cord when you are good and ready. The speed at which they want to snip our newborn’s lifeline is unbelievable.
32. Nobody comes in, wakes you up, and checks your vitals every half hour at home.
34. Having a home birth is different. Different is cool.
Once reserved for cases in which the life of the baby or mother was in danger, the cesarean is now routine. The most common operation in the U.S., it is performed in 31% of births, up from 4.5% in 1965.
With that surge has come an explosion in medical bills, an increase in complications -- and a reconsideration of the cesarean as a sometimes unnecessary risk.
It is a big reason childbirth often is held up in healthcare reform debates as an example of how the intensive and expensive U.S. brand of medicine has failed to deliver better results and may, in fact, be doing more harm than good.
The investigators found support only for inducing labor at or beyond 41 completed weeks of gestation and under some conditions when a woman's membranes break before labor. However, there is not good evidence for inducing labor in many other situations, including when the fetus is believed to be large or to have restricted growth, or when a woman is pregnant with twins, has insulin-dependent diabetes, or has low levels of amniotic fluid.
Last year, for the first time, more babies in Miami-Dade County were born by cesarean section than were born vaginally, according to state records, and Broward's not far behind, with a rate of 43.7 percent -- both far above the national average.
At Kendall Regional Medical Center in Southwest Miami-Dade, seven out of 10 babies were delivered by C-section, a rate that University of Miami obstetrician Gene Burkett called ``just astounding.''
Locally and nationally, the cesarean rate has been creeping up annually for years. In 2007, the U.S. rate reached 31.8 percent, according to the National Center for Health Statistics -- an increase of more than 50 percent over the past decade.
Obstetrician/gynecologist Lauren Plante has a remarkable essay in the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics in which she condemns the rising cesarean rate and compares current U.S. childbirth practices to the industrial revolution.
A woman who gave birth to a set of sextuplets over the weekend in Nigeria has died of complications.
Ajoke Bello, 32, gave birth to the six babies by Caesarean section operation on Thursday and was initially in a stable condition.
Seeing that there is a world wide quest for governments to save money right now, I am putting my mind to ways that I would cut waste if I were in charge of the medical budget.
I invite you to add to this list. Just as the Wall Street tycoons are raiding the piggy bank with their inside deals, the obstetrics community wastes the medical budget with practices that are not only medically expensive but also harmful to the health of the population.
