Midwifery
August 10th, 2007 . by Ed RicciottiAccording to an article in the Columbia Tribune, a Cole county judge has thrown out the midwifery part of the health insurance bill, citing that since midwives can’t bill insurance companies, their presence in the bill wasn’t related to the purpose of the bill. Confused? Essentially there is a train of thought that midwives should be licensed and under supervision of a physician. While the proponents of the midwife measure believe that since midwives have been around for thousands of years and have safely delivered babies comparable or even exceeding the survivability of infants born in hospitals. There also point to the alarming rate of cesareans that are performed in the US. The rate is 29.1% of all births, according to the CDC. I do believe that women should choose where and how to give birth, but i do believe in some sort of oversight. It doesn’t have to be a government entity. It can be a non-profit accrediting agency like CARF or any other reputable accrediting organization. The proponents will be appealing the judges decision
August 10th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Incidentally, the law that was thrown out requires that midwives have a current credential from an organization accredited by NOCA, the accrediting agency that oversees credentialling programs for many occupations. The North American Registry of Midwives (NARM), who issues the the certified professional midwife (CPM) credential, is accredited by NOCA.
So the law that was passed had the requirement you mentioned.
August 11th, 2007 at 2:18 am
Laurel, you wouldn’t happen to have a link showing infant mortality rates in hospitals vs. home births?
August 15th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Ed, I apologize for being so slow to respond.
Here’s a link to a study published in the British Medical Journal last year, which looked at planned home births with certified professional midwives (CPM’s). The conclusion to the study states, “Planned home birth for low risk women in North America using certified professional midwives was associated with lower rates of medical intervention but similar intrapartum and neonatal mortality to that of low risk hospital births in the United States.” See the link for the specific numbers from the study.
Dr. David Stewart has written an book with hundreds of citations to show his research concerning safety in childbirth. There are many charts and figures comparing the options available. It’s called The Five Standards for Safe Childbearing and is available here. The mass of research indicating the safety of midwives as birth care providers is astounding. If you have questions and I don’t respond here directly, feel free to follow the link to my blog and leave a comment there.
September 2nd, 2007 at 3:28 am
If the baby goes south, say the cord gets a kink in it, you have 7 minutes before you can count on enjoying a brain-dead baby. Whatever you decide, you keep that in mind. This is not about “choice.” This is about having a certified surgeon there who is ready to take out the little critter if there is a problem. I don’t give a flying squirrel about feelings. You have 7 minutes, and in order to know whether or not that baby has gone south, you need to have monitoring (not perfect, by the way, but better safe than brain-dead or really actually dead). It should remain criminal to have a new age, back-alley birth.
Thus endeth the lesson.
HJ