I find that statement extremely dangerous.

I suppose that depends quite on your background and what sort of research you're willing to do.

As an example, knowing what we do now about risks of stillbirth, etc., my wife and I would never have let her first pregnancy go to 40 weeks and 5 days. The doctor was quite comfortable with it, but I feel quite comfortable saying that doctor was wrong.

The other point you were making about how important it is to find out the overall quality/track record of the maternity ward is right on, especially considering that most of the time you won't have any idea which doctors will be on ahead of time.

Hi guys.

Guess what this post means.

We took a hypnobirthing class and it cost $400 for 17 hours over 4 sessions. We still haven't had the baby so I can't really report on how effective it will be for us. I think you would really benefit from it. It will probably convince you to have a natural home birth since you're on the fence.

Nielsio is pregnant?

Ah, I miss that avatar.

Hey Poin. I do know your story, thanks so much for giving your thoughts here. I agree that we need to be double-checking advice we get from our doctors and our authority figures in general. Blindly accepting advice from so-called experts is one of the fastest tracks to possible regret, whether it's trading in the stock market, birthing your baby, buying a home, whatever. I like what you said about looking into modern epidural procedure more --- I think a lot of the horror stories I have read about seem to be somewhat unlikely given modern advacnes, but I will continue to look into it before helping my wife make the decision.

You said you would never let your baby go to 40 weeks, 5 days again. I was wondering why? Does your research indicate that you should induce labor before you reach that point? Even if you have a link with information about this stuff that would be very helpful, as obviously being a prospective father makes me very nervous about the whole birthing process in general, and I want to be as prepared as possible.

Nice, AR! I think we will look into it if you recommend it. It certainly couldn't hurt.

Thanks a lot for everyone's thoughts on this stuff, I really do appreciate it.

James

Hi James,

When I looked seriously (about 2 years ago), the research was pretty clear on this point. There are risks for pre-term birth and risks for late birth, and the risk curves looked like they crossed at around 38 weeks. After that point, risks for stillbirth, etc., start going way up. The consensus among the articles I read was that it was best to induce somewhere around 38 weeks, and it's generally a very bad idea to go all the way to 40 weeks, much less to go beyond it.

Part of the weirdness with this subject is the fact that we're way better at dating a pregnancy now than we used to be; early ultrasounds are super precise, and they really can tell you the date of conception to within a few days. It used to be that we had to rely on the last menstrual period, which led to an error of +/- 2 weeks.

You really have to look at large studies for this sort of thing or else you get blinded by statistically insignificant sampling (e.g. "all of my friends went to 40 weeks with no problem" ... if you have say 100 friends who've given birth and the rate of stillbirth is around 1 in 120, you're very far from statistical significance).

Anyway, you'd be better served by some actual articles/references, so I'll dig some up and post back here. I have my stuff from a couple of years ago, but I'll bet some good review articles have been written since then.

Edit: I should mention that irieguy knows a ton about this just in case you know him.

Jack at 16 months:

I don't know him - but this is pretty sobering news. I had for sure not known anything like this and would love to read any primary source stuff you have on the issue.

Thanks!

James

Wow, I have never ran across anything about inducing that early. Seems like the earliest any hospital does it is around 41 weeks. Looking forward to some sources.

I think its time for a change Boro!

Met with our Doula tonight...she was pretty great. I posed the question about early labor being safer for the baby wrt still births. She said that there is an increased likelihood for stillbirths after 42 weeks, but that first time mothers typically go to 41 weeks, 1 day, and that they are not more likely to have a stillborn child than a mother who goes to 40 weeks. I didn't check her research, but she was pretty quick with the info. Would love to look into it further if you have the info, poin.

James

I'm a big fan of doulas, but I think yours might be misinformed here. I've found two good refs from 2006, but I'm looking to see if there's anything more current. I'm also looking to see if I can find anything in particular about first time moms. I'll let you know.

I mean it's possible she has never even looked at numbers before 40 weeks. She also mentioned that since ultrasound technology has become so pinpoint accurate wrt establishing a conception date, there is a lot less risk of babies going way past term accidentally now. She didn't mention anything about the risks being less before 40 weeks since her information leads her to believe that inducing labor is a riskier practice in general than letting the baby/mom dictate labor, so I doubt those who taught her even mentioned the possibility of inducing before 40 weeks. She mentioned the cochran studies, which indicate that inducing in general is highly correlated with less successful births(whatever that means). This is all 2nd hand and was just my take, btw, so if I am in error anywhere for sure let me know!

Thanks again for your help.

James

Sorry for grunching if this has been discussed, but my wife has basically turned me into a crunchy homebirth hippy, and I wanted to know what people's thoughts are on the subject.

My wife and I will be having a homebirth with hospital backup five minutes away. I have avoided bringing it up here for a variety of reasons, mainly not interested in arguing about it or trying to change peoples minds. I think it's the right choice for us but definitely not for everyone.

If you scroll back 100 or so posts there are a few posts about natural child birth and home birth, mostly against.

Thanks. I definitely am not interested in arguing or trying to change anyone's mind. I'll discuss it though if the conversation is polite.

It's certainly not a trivial choice. My wife's entire family is at the very least skeptical if not outright hostile to the idea. But all the research that we've done has 100% reinforced our decision. It's really not even close.

Have you watched The Business of Being Born?

I actually watched it after we made the decision and tbh I am glad I didn't do it earlier. It was a little one sided and Michael Moore/muckrackingish for my tastes.

Our home hospital in San Francisco is St. Lukes., which has a women's center. It's a very granola place and we were with them for the first 5 months of our pregnancy. I think if we were giving birth in another town in another hospital business of being born would have been more of a concern. In our hospital I am not really worried about an OB doing a C section so he can make his dinner date. They actually recommended us to a few birthing classes that had a large part in our choosing a home birth.

A quick list of things off the top of my head that made us go for home.

- We want to do a natural child birth. We have learned a lot about common interventions at local hospitals and have decided they are not for us. If we are planning to go natural the hospital doesn't really have much to offer.

- My wife was born C Section in a hospital hallway with no anesthetic for the mother in 1976, they were rushing her to the O.R. and decided they didn't have time. The details are kind of hazy for her parents but it sounds like a heart monitor malfunction of some kind that lead to the decision. Her Apgar scores were very hi when she came out and her mother didn't sense any distress with the baby. This was the beginning of my wife's general distrust and hatred of hospitals. Her father runs a hospital and her sister is a scrub tech and they don't help either. My father in law treats medicine like a business and my sister in law has constant worst case scenario stories.

Sorry for the long paragraph but I think comfort of the mother is very important when you have decided to go natural, and my wife has a hard time getting comfortable at a routine doctors visit and hates dealing with strangers. Airport pat downs to her are too much an invasion of privacy, I can't imagine a stranger doing a vaginal exam would go over very well.

- aorn we have a low risk pregnancy, everything I have read and researched points towards low risk home births being just as safe as hospital births. The midwife we have hired says that if our risk category changes she will be the first to recommend a hospital transfer. So if something comes up our plan will change to the hospital pretty quickly I think.

- My wife really wants the option of a water birth and you can't get that at our hospital.

- The transfer from home to hospital sounds terrible. Early labor at home, followed by a car ride, parking, dealing with admittance to the hospital + triage before getting to the birth room sounds like stress. It is hard for mammals to give birth when stressed.

- We love our midwife. She comes to us for appointments that can last 2 hours. At the women's center we are lucky to get 10 minutes. When we give birth we will know exactly who is gonna be with us. This is huge I think. If we go to the hospital we get whoever's shift it is out of 10 people plus countless nurses. Not to mention all the new people when there is a shift change.

At our birth it will be my wife, me, our doula, two midwifes, two apprentice midwifes, and our dog. We are pretty excited about it.

The one book I would recommend for you Borodog is Birthing From Within by England and Horowitz. Other than Google, the chapter on home birth is the best thing you can read.

You may also want to look into some of the more natural birthing centers as well. Obviously it will vary per place and what the law allows, but there might be some options that give you some "backup" plan along with some help, but without the kind of problems you are running from a hospital. Or maybe she could just go into labor at work .

Fortunately my wife found a practice that has a philosophy that is strongly against intervention and to provide things as natural as possible, but in a hospital setting. Those kinds of practices exist, but might be hard to find.

Camryn at 3 months:



Man, she'll drive me crazy with her fussing sometimes especially after a long day at work, but then she'll smile or laugh at me and all is forgiven.

Careful, that baby looks poisonous.

3 weeks from yesterday till a scheduled c-section for my twins. Wife is getting pretty sore and tired. I don't know if she's gonna make it without going into labor first.

Had an ultrasound today and the babies are 6.5 and 6 pounds. She's carrying almost 13 pounds of baby! I have only ever held one baby that was under 6 months old.

I am terrified.

It's OK to be terrified Freakin. Many new parents are. Six months from now you'll have settled in to your new routine and it will seem like old hat. Keep us posted!

the baby is probably closer to half that actually....they overshot the estimate on mine by almost 5lb and ive heard thats very common.