A few days ago we talked about the tragic death of Caroline Lovell, an Australian woman, defender of childbirth at home, who died the day after giving birth at home, due to complications during childbirth.
As I said at the entrance, this event was igniting again the debate about the safety or suitability of giving birth at home and now voices of important and influential people have begun to be heard in the world of healing and motherhood.
This is the case, for example, of Mr. Santiago Dexeus, son of Santiago Dexeus Sr. (founder in 1935 of the Dexeus Clinic), who at 76 is a benchmark in the world of gynecology and has said that “Women already they don't have the necessary physical condition for this type of delivery ”.
The well-known gynecologist strongly discourages giving birth at home and, to avoid misunderstandings, I leave you with his complete statement:
Women no longer have the necessary physical condition for such births. Much research has been done to avoid the complications of childbirth for both mothers and children. Home births are a fad that involves taking many health risks.
But women do have the physical condition for this type of births.
I don't know very well what Mr. Dexeus refers to in his words "physical condition". Perhaps he means that now women are not fit, that they have narrower hips than thousands of years ago or that they walk with two feet instead of “on all fours” as they were millions of years ago. In any case, without being a gynecologist or having a famous name, I dare to say that Today's women do have the physical condition to give birth without the help of a thousand medical instruments, and I do not say it alone, but hundreds (thousands) of professionals who have made hospital protocols have changed to promote as little intervention as possible.
The theoretical work is done, the protocols exist, the Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs has published guides to explain what a normal birth should be like, all this because it is known that the less you bother a woman and the more power you leave her, the more capable she is of giving birth without complications.
That means that, until proven otherwise, a woman can give birth alone, without anyone's help, both in a hospital and at home. Now, there can always be some complication, some problem, and that must be the time when health professionals intervene.
Years ago, when gynecologists and midwives welcomed mothers with the "quiet, you're here, leave us your birth in our hands" what happened is that it was about controlling everything and preventing any complications. They intervened so much that in the end there were complications that probably would not have happened if no one had tried to prevent anything.
That is why WHO, in 1985 (many years ago and look at how little things have changed), made a statement of strength explaining that women should have control of childbirth, all information, freedom of movement, avoid the lithotomy position (lying on your back with your legs up), among other things, tips that only now begin to be followed in some specific hospitals.
Why the woman decided to give birth at home
As I have said many times and I will continue to say, I would not dare to give birth at home (If I were a woman, of course) because as I said above, there is a small percentage of births that can have complications and, before them, I feel safer in a hospital than at home. This, however, does not mean that I fully understand the reasons why many women prefer to give birth at home.
In the hospitals many barbarities happen because of an excess of control and many barbarities at the level of treatment, leaving much to be desired with screams and absurd threats, treating the woman as if she were an inferior being, as if she were a rude child who He refuses to do things well (be careful, I don't generalize, it's not always, but it happens and has happened too often).
This has motivated many mothers to embrace the Dutch model, where the odd thing is to give birth in the hospital. Some will call it extravagance and others will say that it is a flight backwards, but it is only a logical consequence of seeing that it has been advised for more than 25 years that women be an active part of childbirth and find that what is done in a hospital is precisely the opposite.
I have seen women cry like disconsolate girls as they remember what their birth was and what they expected it to be (and not just a few) and this is due to the lack of respect and childishness to which they have been subjected. The logical thing, after a bad experience is that a woman says, in the end, that she does not want to go through the same thing again: “next time I give birth at home, where nobody will mistreat me, nobody will do anything unnecessary to me and nobody will separate me of my baby. "
As I say, I understand that this has happened, although I am one of the romantics who think that people in white, because I am one of them, will someday learn to be a passive part of the process and to activate only if necessary, without absurd protagonisms or abuses of unnecessary power. Meanwhile we must keep fighting, as I say, so that you can give birth in the hospital as if we were at home (We're still far from it, unfortunately, but every day closer, luckily).
Update (07/02/2012): Thanks to elenasgd's comment, we have learned that Santiago Dexeus has written an explanatory note on his website in reference to his words. Apparently, Dexeus' statements were broader and more explanatory and could have been taken out of context in the newspaper Ara, the first that echoed his statements.
