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Unassisted Births
The Pros and Cons of This New Birthing Trend
By Kelly Burgess
"The majority of women who are going unassisted are pushed out of the system because they can't find the care they want in traditional obstetrics and maternity wards," Block says. "These women are rebelling and they're saying, 'I'll be at home and if anything goes wrong I'll be at the emergency room.' In my opinion, this is not ideal. Most women should have a trained professional at their side, but we should be looking at these women not as risk-takers, but as a signal that these things are broken and need to be fixed."
As chief of maternal-fetal medicine for Virtua Health (www.virtua.org), Dr. Ronald Librizzi, sees women whose pregnancies have been deemed high risk. These are women who might not even know they or their babies are at risk if they go the route that some women who choose unassisted birth advocate – a route that excludes prenatal care. He notes that even in a population that appears to be glowingly healthy, in about 20 percent of all pregnancies something will go seriously wrong and require medical intervention. Only a trained professional, he says, can recognize those at high risk.
As for the effect of stress on pregnancy, Dr. Librizzi notes that there is no credible evidence that a hospital birth is any more stressful than that of a woman trying to act as her own obstetrician, or the worries she might have with an untrained partner delivering her baby. Unassisted birth may be perceived as Mother Nature's way, but, as Dr. Librizzi points out, nature can be cruel.
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