Safety

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/82/3/450

Attached above is a link to a study conducted in 1992, where the authors were surprised by finding that home-births, given the right conditions, were as safe and possibly safer than "conventional" or hospital based births.

I am opening with this material because I would like to talk about risk, and its counterpart, safety.  It seems, no matter the topic, whether it be politics, religion or child birthing, when people of differing persuasions sit down to talk out an issue, a normative, or value based, discussion develops.  Each party begins with the same goal: a safe birth, a good life, an active citizenry.  However moments into the discussion differing assumptions about what events will unfold, in the yet to be existed future, and the influence of varying past experiences begin to pull the parties into seemingly competing directions.  It is at this point that values, not reality, start to guide the conversation.  Details disappear and large sweeping meta-statements take control.  The moment, or what is, becomes lost in theory, or what will be, what if.

Karen and I are exploring home birth with a midwife.  Existence cannot fully be known and therefore we will be making no decisions under certainty.  Rather every decision will be partial, imperfect, and temporal, i.e. under conditions of relative uncertainty.  In situations like this it seems that details matter.  That the moment, the thing that we are right now...right now....right now....is the only thing that can possibly keep us grounded in reality and prove to be most beneficial in influencing our decisions.  With that said our assumptions about what events will unfold and our varying past experiences are explicitly guiding the decisions we are making in the moment.

It is for these reasons that home birth with a midwife is not for everyone: details, fears, faiths, and assumptions matter.  I can only speak for myself when I say that I hope it is for me.  I hope that the "right conditions" are realized by us and by the universe (are they two different things?).  It is in this hope that what ifs disappear because only what is, reality, can realize hope.  Only the moment, that which is composed of all that has come before it, can manifest or not manifest the conditions that lend themselves to safe child birth at home.  Details matter.