The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS, a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA

A Nurse Speaks Out About Hospital Care

I don't think things are going to change until the hospitals and obstetricians get hit in their pockets.  Healthy, well-screened women with good prenatal care do not need either hospitals or obstetricians.  They need information and education, confidence and trust in their bodies, a good midwife, and good labor support.

As a Labor/Delivery/Postpartum/Newborn nurse in a small level one community hospital, I am constantly pushed to "go faster"...get in and out of those rooms at night on the postpartum side (despite mothers who desperately need extra support and assistance with breastfeeding, and get that labor room turned over quickly, because we never know what is going to be coming off the elevators next, and we might need the room;  It makes it difficult to give the kind of care I want to give to mothers.  I do my best; but sometimes I feel like I'm being "chewed up and spit out" for trying to give mothers and babies the time and attention they need to get off to a good start.

Change will only come when women stop thinking of hospitals as the safest place to give birth; when they demand that insurance companies pay for midwives and out of hospital birth; When they learn to trust their bodies and the process, and have confidence that it can neither scheduled, or free of pain.

Hospitals and obstetricians should be reserved for only those mothers who are experiencing true complication with their pregnancies.  Most obstetricians go into the field for the surgical OB-GYN opportunities anyway, and consider delivering babies the "price" one has to pay to do so. Why else would so large a contingent of ACOG be pushing for routine elective Cesarean section for "prevention" of pelvic floor "dysfunction"...a practice itself based on garbage research!  Modern obstetrics for healthy pregnancy, in addition to being a profession that largely ignores the research on which its practice should be based, is also, in my not so humble opinion, is the biggest waste of health care dollars imaginable.  We cannot expect those who profit from our unwillingness to educate and empower ourselves to make childbirth more humane.  The current status quo is too lucrative!;   It's not fair for us to say "hospitals need to change", or "obstetrics needs to change", if we continue to expect them to manage a physiological process in a system set up to manage pathological processes.  WE have to make the changes.

Kimberly W. RN

[NOTE - There is an entire section about Nurses at birthlove.com.  The small subscription fee to this web site is well worth it!] [Ed: birthlove.com is not available at this time.]