Malice abounds amongst the state-trained Dr's who don't approve of midwives delivering babies at home. I just visited a blogspot where I felt too scared to comment. However, if we were to get the full details on bodged deliveries in the context of all the medical equipment and highly-trained staff, we might better be able to put the bodged home-deliveries in perspective.
To state that 'flying squads' would have to be available for every birth is blatant nonsense. With the closure of increasing numbers of maternity units mothers are having to travel futher while in labour resulting in increased births in transit (or landrover, or fiesta....) which, as far as I have heard, are not consistently disasterous in any meanigful way. The Dr's need to read the statistical analysis of home v hospital births presented in Marjorie Tew's book 'Safer Childbirth' and also to consider that, for many women, being in hospital interferes negetively with the birth process such that the outcome is bound to be less good.
It still astonishes me to consider the schizoid behaviour of State-trained medicos who think nothing of destroying perfectly healthy babies (who may, at this time be beyond playing ball with their fathers and could have been tax-payers....) before birth and reason with themselves that this person happened to be no more than a 'collection of cells'.
Can we not be allowed to consider the options and given the choice to deliver at home are we so untrustworthy that we can't be given this freedom? If we are prepared to accept the consequences (under God) can we not choose to avoid the alien territory of hospital where all looks normal? Statistics (as we are often told) can be made to 'say anything' but it would be helpful to look at the percentage of planned home-births which are bodged compared to the percentage of planned hospital births which are bodged - then we could make our choice.
Hearing what Lucy says about her encounters with real midwifery made me think that the midwifing crisis might be alleviated if they had the liberty to practice, under the NHS, in the homes of the women they are caring for.
Either way, we are living in a world where things go wrong sometimes - seems the Dr's ought to know that better than anyone - lets be grown-up and accept this fact.