Birthing Stool

Catching.
The.
Placenta.

Well, I guess you don't want it all over the floor....

It's weird how giving birth and going to the bathroom have been moved from the easier, healthier squatting positions (horrible though "squatting" sounds) to this stuff that hurts more and causes hemorrhoids and what-have-you. And how much I still feel resistant to the squatting idea!

Sooooooo very glad I have a Y chromosome.

Supposedly, midwives treat childbirth less like a disease and more like something the body is supposed to be doing.

But having never personally experienced a birth from any vantage point, that's just hearsay unless someone else can verify it.

Birthing stools are great! Personal experience speaking.

"...will get you to the hospital if there is a medical reason"

So why don't you go to the hospital first?!!!!

Besides hospital availability, I do not understand why some couple put their baby's life at risk (as well as the mother's) by choosing "home delivery".
When my little boy was delivered in the Mount Auburn hospital in Cambridge, MA, he had the umbilical cord tightened around his neck and his pulse was stopping. The medical team saved his life thanks to all the monitoring, technical support, training and organization they had. At home, he would have, at best, lost brain cells with random impact.

So, if you want a birthing stool, with your doula and whatnot, at least bring it to the hospital!

I should bring that photo with me on my next date : " see that? its a birthing stool. If you want to be my girl expect to get reeeal familiar with it!"

"he had the umbilical cord tightened around his neck"

i suppose that thats where the midwifes come in. They have medical training, and it's fairly common to have home birth here in the netherlands, But you are free to choose. Ambulance response time is supposed to be 15 minuntes.

Well, it's not like that stool is standard equipment here in the Netherlands at all. I never saw it before, so I don't know who made that up. It is true that home-delivery is the preferred birthing method here, though, been like that a long time, and no, it's none more risky than rushing to the hospital first. Remember, giving birth isn't a disease, it's quite natural :). Of course all precautions are taken to keep it as hygenic and safe as possible.

"So why don’t you go to the hospital first?!!!!" Christophe: because giving birth is not a matter of three seconds but of mere hours. The best way to give birth is to be in a comfortable environment to let the birth canal open up the first hours and when the real delivery is due, go to the hospital. This way the woman is relaxed and not extremely exhausted when she has to deliver. Doing the pre-work at home helps a lot: more distractions in between the contractions (taking a shower, a short walk), no unnecessary people attending and as it appears, the more relaxed: the better and faster the delivery goes. In the hospital, you have no place for yourself, it is always possible to be interrupted by anyone who can come into your room and into your personal sphere and as it happens, all that is able to cause a kind of fleeing reaction where the body feels threatened and the delivery is more difficult. I prefer to rely on my body first and then seek help if that is needed.
PLUS: If there is ANY medical indication, women over here also go to the hospital, because we also don't want unnecessary complications. Therefore in the end, only 30% of the women does have a homebirth at all.
I myself live in the city and even by bike the hospital is within 10 minutes distance (no, don't worry, we'll go by taxi!)

Indeed, this is not the regular birthing stool: the midwife will bring the regular one and this bucket is indeed used to catch the placenta afterwards. I will not let my newborn be ripped open by the plugs on the inside! We're not barbarians!

Christophe is right on. Sure, 97% of the time you can probably give birth at home with a doula or midwife or witchdoctor or whatever and everything will turn out fine -- it (usually) worked OK for thousands of years that way. For the other 3% of the time or so, things like a trained obstetrician, a fetal heartrate monitor, availability of IV blood/drugs, defibrillators, and an operating room are the different between everybody coming out healthy and a dead mom and dead or retarded baby.

In emergencies, you have to make do with what is available and pray for the best, but *planning* to deliver outside the reach of medical care is plain stupid. If a mother wishes to risk her own life needlessly, that is one thing but to risk her baby's health is pathetic.

This quote made me shudder:
"who’s trained and will get you to the hospital if there is a medical reason). "

OK, be real... Exactly how much training does a midwife have compared to an obstetrician??? What happens when things go wrong? Sure she'll make sure your dead wife and blue oxygen-deprived baby get there. Too bad it's a half hour too late! Will she be there to get the kid to special ed classes for the rest of his life? He won't have a mother to drive him.

What's more, the American system of delivering infants is fairly terrible. In our state the cesarean rate is about 30%! That's ten times higher than it needs to be, because the doctors are so afraid of being sued and they want the birth to go by quickly. What's more, think of this: if you go to a birth center, it's ten minutes away from the hospital emergency room if something does go wrong. That ten minute wait time is identical to the time it would take you to get into the ER if something went wrong at a hospital. Do the research; you'll see.

Really, only women who are considered high-risk should go to the hospital for a delivery.

Ya right, that is ridiculous.

Typical it's (only two) males who get hysterical about home deliveries.

I love the random ads that come up based on the post titles. At the moment, I'm looking at "Blood in Stool" and "Constipation is Deadly". Nice.

It seems like some people don't like home birthing because it gives the power back to the women. We can't have that. No! Get them to a hospital where the doctor can cut them open or induce labour. He's got a game of golf to get to, you know. Silly, inconvenient childbirth...

I am a man , and i just wish I could open these two other mens minds. yes give the power back to women. men make WAR and other bad crap. I cant believe that the c section rate is so high, waut yes hospitals are another form of corporation, who really cant care about youy personnaly. your just a number. and yes doctors love their golf and maybe their mistress. I also fully support breast feeding, hospitals dont ,they give you a bag from another corporation!!! we are living in a society where we hardy know our kids with cell phones and the like. we need to slow down and realize we are still animals. and hey if your baby does die that was their purpose to fulfill. to teach somthing so hard to learn and easily forgotton..............

sorry about my grammer those idiots and all the other idiots in the world drive me crazy.
"People with no minds do an awful lot of talking"
-scarecrow

We moved the blog around, the milk bucket post is now over here: http://farqmazone.nl/2007/12/30/birthing-stool-out-of-a-milk-bucket/

Ob is a surgical specialty. All they really know how to do is surgery. They ARENT TRAINED for any of the normal variances of childbirth. Some hospitals even limit a mother to 30 mins in which to labor before they insist on a c section. Baby breach? Gotta have a c section. Baby breech and already have a foot hanging out when you reach the hospital? Gotta SHOVE that baby BACK up through the birth canal and have an emergency c section. Is anyone here REALLY stupid enough to think that that was safer for the baby OR mother than just reaching up, taking the baby by the other heel and letting him be born? He'd already DONE 98% of the work himself....but nope....no breech deliveries allowed. And believe it or not...babies AND mothers DO die from c sections. C sections have a much higher rate of infection than do vaginal births. Imagine being 23 and having a c section, and having SO MUCH scar tissue that sex is painful for THE REST of your life. They do NOT tell you all the things that could go wrong. They dont tell you how easy it is to screw up your back by having an epidural. You find that out yourself when youre walking through the grocery store and suddenly your back spasms and you hit the floor. The drugs they give you for the pain actually slow down or stop contractions, making labor last much longer (as in you wind up being in more pain, longer), and the drugs they give you to induce you gives you strong contractions before your body is ready for them. Women have been taught by Hollywood that labor is a terrifying painful experience to be feared. In labor? PANIC!!! (which CAUSES you to be in SO much more pain). In reality that stage only lasts (on average) approximately 2 hours. What sane KNOWLEDGEABLE woman would RISK that if unless she was high risk? What woman WANTS to put herself THROUGH that? You ask why not go to the hospital first? I ask WHY you think you NEED to go to the hospital? It sounds like fear. We, as a nation, have been taught to fear birth and trust doctors blindly. Currently OBs arent being taught HOW to handle the MANY variations of birth that midwives see all the time. Which means in all reality, where normal birth is concerned, the average midwife has MORE training than your average Ob. Kinda a scary thought. So hey go to a hospital if you are high risk, or think you can relax while having unnecessary interventions foisted on you by overworked panicky doctors and bitchy nurses. That's YOUR right. Just as much as it's MY right to have a beautiful, calm, SAFE delivery at HOME.
As to this particular birthing "bucket". It doesnt really look close enough to the ground to allow for a useful squatting position, but hey if nothing else it's a cute family heirloom.