After my wonderful home VBAC, I can’t imagine being faced with the choice of having an ‘illegal’ home VBAC or going to the hospital, yet this is the fate of the women in Utah if this bill passes.
Full story from the Salt Lake Tribune:
For the second year in a row, Sen. Margaret Dayton is sponsoring a bill that midwives claim will put them out of business.
Dayton, a former labor and delivery nurse, said Thursday her intent with SB93 is not to eliminate home births. Instead, she said, she and the Utah Medical Association want to stop midwives from attending “high-risk” pregnancies that could result in the harm or death of baby or mother.
The bill would put new limits on direct-entry midwives, who are licensed and attend home births. By defining a “normal” birth, it bans them from administering to women with a host of medical conditions, from diabetes to hypertension.
They also would be stopped from assisting women whose babies are breech or who want a vaginal birth after a previous cesarean section (VBAC).
Ann Deneris, a certified nurse midwife who works in hospitals, said she supports both the bill and a mother’s right to deliver at home. She pointed out discrepancies in the law that bar her from attending breech deliveries or VBACs without doctor assistance, but allow midwives to do it at home.
“I am in support of women to deliver at home,” she said, adding, “I’m passionate about the safety and well-being of mothers and babies,” she said.
But a dozen or so women at Thursday’s committee hearing opposed the bill, concerned it would severely curtail their right to choose an unmedicated, home birth.
“For the rest of my children, I’d like to have them at home,” said Heather Farrell, while holding 8-week-old Asher, whom she delivered in her living room. “I’d like to protect my right to do that.”
The bill passed the Senate Health and Human Services Committee 3-2 on Republican-Democrat lines. Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake City, objected it would “essentially eliminate any kind of home birth.” The midwife community – there were 16 licensed direct-entry midwives as of June – supports parts of the bill. Midwife and registered nurse Holly Richardson said they don’t want to deliver women with HIV or pulmonary disease. But she said other portions of the bill – including one stopping them from attending women with a history of babies weighing less than 5 1/2 pounds or more than 9 lb. 14 oz. – would eliminate 90 percent of their practice.
The Utah Medical Association disputes that, saying midwives would be excluded from 10 percent of births.
Midwives also want to continue delivering twins, babies who are breech, and certain VBACs.
Direct-entry midwives have cared for 334 women since 2006, when the state started licensing them and tracking their outcomes. They have delivered six breech babies, three sets of twins and 17 VBACs.
Just one of those women went to the hospital, according to state-mandated reviews. The reports, written by Richardson, deem the outcomes of those complicated births “excellent.”
But Deneris said 1 percent of VBACs will result in a rupture of the uterus, which could kill the mother and baby without immediate surgical care. “Do we need to have a bad outcome to change the law?”
When I heard about this bill I was terrified as it would literally force me into a c-section (due to two prior unnecessary c-sections that I was pushed into)or I could face charges for delivering at home (my only option for a vaginal delivery). In January 2008 I successfully delivered a VBAC, a 9 lb baby in the comfort of my home so I proved to myself and many others that I am not broken and that I can indeed still birth without interventions. I guess if this bill ever does pass I will have to face the criminal charges for knowing what is best for me and my child.
Most women who want VBAC’s at home do so because their options are so severely limited at the hospital. Being at home increases their chances of giving birth in a safe environment and actually reduces the risk of a problem (because they’re not having to fight off all the unnecessary interventions that increase the likelihood of a birth emergency in the hospital). But of course a former L&D nurse has little to no experience with truly natural childbirth with no interventions. She has no experience with the beauty of a home birth where you’re constantly attended by a trained midwife (instead of the L&D nurse who is watching her 4 patients’ “progress” on a computer screen from the nurses’ station and the OB who shows up for a few seconds at a time every few hours). To compare the “safety” of such births is impossible. I do think a birthing mother should be close to a hospital, 10 minutes or less, in case there is an emergency, but I believe 100% that the absolute safest way to have a VBAC is NOT inside the walls of a hospital.
first off I want to say noone so think the have the right to take the choice of having YOUR baby at home away from you, it is the rights of the poeple to have their baby’s at HOME. I know from having my own kid’s that if it come’s to the pont were the midwife’s dont feel like things are going how they should you will be taken to the hospitl. i Also Know that at the hospitle you get push in to thing’s that you don’t want. at the hospitle they know that if they push you you will give in or in my case i felt like i was lied to. i was toled that I had to have a cesarean or my baby would’nt be okay. well i found out Later after the cesarean that we could have gone a LOT longer and things should have been just fine. I feel very strongly that the hospitles for the most part are just out to get as much money from you as they can. I would love to have a vbac with my baby and Im planing on it and that is MY GOD given Right and i’ll be damb if I let you or anyone els take that from me
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