I just had lunch with a former colleague who just had his third kid. I was asking if the level of confusion during pregnancy was any lower during subsequent pregnancies since it seemed to me that nobody had any real answers to our questions - just opinions. The conversation turned to how much contradictory information is out there (on many topics but, especially, pre/neonatal care). He brought up the fact that the single unifying factor for the countries with the lowest
infant mortality rates was that home birth with a midwife was the norm, not hospital/doctor births.
It's hard to deny an especially compelling statistic like that, but I looked at the list and it is mostly asian and euro countries at the top of the list (USA is 36th, by the way). That got me wondering if home births aren't really an indicator of a deeper cultural division.
Isn't it possible that neonatal care and childbirth are viewed in a more relaxed, natural manner in these other countries? It's really only been since around WWII that childbirth in this country became a more clinical, almost surgical, affair. I'd be interested to see how the mortality rate was effected by that.
It also occurred to me that the clinical nature of child birth in this country is made necessary by the litigious climate here? If I were in danger of being sued for every action I took, I would make damn sure that, for each action, I had a series of steps which were approved ahead of time, never vary from them, and do my best to distance myself from any liability.
It also seems to me that the number of lawsuits in this country results from the fact that we're a bunch of self-centered jerks with a sense of entitlement. For some reason, we got it in our heads that if something bad happens to us, it must be somebody else's fault, and that person should pay handsomely. I'm not saying we should give a free pass to the incompetant (or elect them President, for that matter), but sometimes bad shit just happens.
If we, as a country, can get our pea-sized brains around that then we can free our medical professionals to do their jobs instead of avoid lawsuits. That opens up more choices for us and allows us to make decisions we're more comfortable with and, ultimately, do what's best for ourselves and our children.
