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Home › Articles › Birth Methods and Philosophies › Active Birth

Active Birth

The New Approach to Giving Birth Naturally

Part Two

By Janet Balaskas

Pages:  1  2  3  4  5  

If you, like most American women, choose to have your baby in a hospital with an obstetrician, you can still have something like the constant nurturing a midwife provides. You can have an experienced friend or relative, a trained labor support provider, a lay midwife, or a childbirth educator accompany you to the hospital to provide support throughout your labor.

Nowadays many hospitals have special, private birthing rooms that are used for both labor and delivery, and some have alternative birth centers where routines and interventions are greatly reduced. Also available in some areas are freestanding birth centers, which combine the comforts of home with proximity to emergency facilities. See "Resources" for more information on the choices available.

If you have any of the following problems, you may need to have your baby in a hospital.

Preeclampsia
Sometimes called toxemia, this condition can occur when blood pressure rises to dangerous levels. I do not mean the slight rise in blood pressure that is quite common at the end of pregnancy, and that needs careful observation but generally presents no problems. Blood pressure is connected with emotions, and sometimes the excitement of the approaching birth can cause a slight rise. But when the diastolic pressure (the second figure in the reading) rises by 15, you are considered to have hypertension. This can be, though it isn't necessarily, a symptom of preeclampsia. Other symptoms include edema (swelling) and protein in the urine. These can be signs of kidney and liver failure, and may result in premature labor or deprivation of oxygen and nutrients to the baby, and convulsions or coma (eclampsia) in the mother. Fortunately, eclampsia is very rare these days.


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