Dawn Cockrell, LM, CPM, Midwife Services 432-563-3297, Midland, Odessa, Texas, Midwives, Homebirth, Waterbirth, Maternity, Pregnancy, Birth, Midwifery

Home Birth Advantage

What is the Home Birth Advantage?

The term 'home advantage' originates in team sports (also called home field/court/diamond/ice advantage). In team sports, the home or hosting team is considered to have a significant advantage over the visitors. It describes the advantage - usually a psychological advantage, but may include any number of physical advantages, that the home team is said to have over the visiting team as a result of playing in familiar territory and in front of supportive fans.

So, you may be wondering how this term applies to homebirth. Here it is in a nutshell:

The warm familiar home territory and freedom to choose your own birth options, allows for a "safe and secure" response which releases endorphins creating a sense of well being and providing natural pain relief. Just the opposite is true of the cold unfamiliar territory of a restrictive hospital or birthing center facility setting, which triggers the "fight or flight" response that releases excess adrenaline potentially stalling labor and creating tension and pain.

Now there is also a biological explaination for these responses. Inside of you is an extraordinary system that either excites you or sedates you. It's your nervous system. If your nervous system is excited to the extreme it causes stress, anxiety, tension, and pain. If it's sedated to the extreme it causes you to be tranquilized. But if it's just right, you relax and become calm. Relaxing is the natural response of your body calming down. And when you calm down you feel better, with less tension and pain, especially during active labor.

There are two parts to your nervous system:

The sympathetic signals the fight or flight response. It's the ancient response of your human body to preserve it's own life from danger, or percieved danger. You literally inherited it from your ancestors. It's also called the stress response. The fight or flight response makes us feel on alert, anxious and scattered. Thankfully, it's an excellent reaction to have when there's a real emergency. The fight or flight response, also called the stress response, kicks in when:

Your nerves send data to the brain saying, "Danger. Threat to our life or wellbeing." The brain fires off commands. Hormones like cortisol, adrenaline and others flood your entire body. Your whole body is charged with energy so that you can take action to preserve your life: you are on alert to either fight or take flight.

Next enter your parasympathetic nervous system. This part of your nervous system turns on the relaxation response. And it turns off the fight or fight switch. Your external environment can also be perceived as safe. When you feel safe and secure, your nerves send data to the brain saying, "Our life is not in danger. We are safe." Literally, hormones flood the body. These hormones, dopamine, endorphins and more, calm and sedate the body.

The relaxation response brings feelings of being unified and coming together. During childbirth, a safe and familar environment such as your home, can invoke this safe and secure response. This is the basis for our reference to the Home Advantage during labor and birth.

To fully appreciate the value of the Home Advantage in childbirth, we must also look closely at the opposite side, the unfamiliar territory, of which we may, or may not, plan to visit as our birth location.

The Role of a Hospital

Before we focus on the risks of giving birth in a hospital, we must first acknowledge that when a rare but true high risk medical complication occurs that is outside of the scope of practice of a midwife, hospitals can play an important role for these women and babies. Additionally, when a rare emergency cesarean section is truly needed, we are grateful that hospitals are available to us. This is also true for purposes of natural childbirth under the care of Certified Professional Midwife (CPM, non-medical midwife). Hospitals can be a beneficial provision for midwife back-ups when they are truly needed. The same can be said for the availability of medical doctors who work in hospitals and private practices that care for high risk maternity issues.

To illustrate, if a pregnant woman or newborn under the care of a CPM midwife develops a true high risk condition that cannot be resolved within the scope of practice of the midwife, it would be appropriate for the midwife to refer them to an appropriate high risk medical specialist for that condition. So it is in this case, that hospitals and medical doctors can play an important role in maternity care.

However, with that said, it must be noted that high risk medical conditions are rarely developed in most pregnant women and babies when under the careful supervision of a Certified Professional Midwife. This is because CPM midwives follow the Midwife Model of Care, which includes a non-interventive, holistic, proactive, natural, and preventative approach to maternity care. Nonetheless, in the extremely rare case that a true high risk medical condition does arise, then a collaborative consultation with a medical professional, specializing in that specific condition, would be appropriate. In some cases, this may subsequently lead to the specialist providing co-care with the midwife. In other cases, the symptom may be resolved over time and the midwife care can be resumed. Or, it may be that the symptom worsens or cannot be resolved, and may even mean a complete transfer of care to a high risk medical specialist. A transfer of this type typically results in an appropriate hospital based birth, and at which in our case, the midwife remains present as a support person.

Your Planned Birth Location

We are here specifically focusing on making the choice of a planned birthing location, not one based on an unexpected (but maybe necessary) birth location that was not planned, over which of course you may have little control. Currently, maternity care practitioners may legally delivery babies in three different planned birthing locations. Within this legal parameter, families may choose to plan their birth expirience to take place either in a private home, at a birthing center, or at a hospital (note: we will address the birth center option later under the question "What is the difference between a Homebirth and a birth center?" in our FAQ's page). We know of course, that birth can occur anywhere at any time, and no law can prevent that. And this fact is the very reason why birthplace planning and preparation in advance are so important. It helps us to be prepared for (as much as reasonable possible) the intended sucessful birth at the planned location, and also for the potential unplanned birth location as well.

For example, if a pregnant couple were detained unexpectedly while in active labor, and had no advance knowledge on the natural birthing process, they would not be well prepared for what is commonly called 'emergency childbirth' (with no attendant present). In this case, it's only viewed as an 'emergency' because the parents are unprepared for it. The point is, for parents to be responsible for their own healthcare decisions, some advanced planning and preparation is necessary, which should be provided and supported by the chosen healthcare practitioner. Therefore, your planned birth location is one of the most important decisions to make, as it will usually determine the type and quality of health care provider you will have available for your birth.

Your Planned Practitioner

It is important to know that hospitals provide only high risk medical obstetrics, received from a medical doctor or a certified nurse-midwife (CNM), who will also be practicing obstetrics (note: for more information on nurse-midwives or medical midwives - see FAQ "How are your midwife services different than a hospital midwife?"). Therefore, for most parents, the choice of giving birth at home or a hospital is prudently addressed early in pregnancy. As the parents research, read, and contemplate their options, they will inevitably choose the best location for their unique family wants and needs. It is our desire throughout this website to give out balanced and truthful information on what to expect from a specific planned birth location.

Currently in the United States, a medical doctor attended hospital birth is the conventional mainstream idea that most newly pregnant families first think of for their choice of a birth location. However, this is not the case in most other countries around the world. In most countries, pregnant women see midwives first for their maternity care, and only if a high risk medical condition arises (which is statistically rare under non-medical midwife care) are they referred to an obstetrician. As a matter of fact, in most cases they cannot even see an obstetrician unless they are referred to the obstetrician in writing by midwife orders. These countries have some of the best statistics for low rates of newborn and maternal death. Conversely, the United States currently has the second worst statistics for newborn and maternal death rates in all of the worlds industrialized countries, as it is dominated by medicalized birth in a hospital setting. This status is certainly ironic. Shouldn't the United States, who spends more on healthcare than any other country, have the best statistical outcomes for maternity care that money can buy? How could this poor status possibly have developed?

The Medical Doctor and Modern Obstetrics

To begin with, let us briefly consider how modern obstetrics gained a monopoly on childbirth in the United States. In the early 1900's obstetricians made a business decision to force women in the U.S. to give birth in hospitals, even though they knew that homebirth was safer. Medicalized maternity care was recognized as the 'bread and butter' of revenue for hospitals, and continues to be so today. Thereafter, midwives who continued to provide homebirth maternity care

were deliberately marginalized, persecuted, and all but eradicated, solely for financial profit by the enshrined medial industry. This was both done historically, and continues to be done today, by using propaganda, fear, frivolous litigation, malice, and other forms of persecution. You can find rich sources of this history by doing a simple web search on this topic. Yet, despite childbirth being pushed into the hospital through medical fear and propaganda, in recent years midwives have resurfaced in response to an unstoppable consumer demand for midwife attended natural childbirth, which is growing rapidly each year. This has no doubt developed because of the de-humanized hospitalization and medicalization of healthy childbirth that has caused more harm than good to women and babies.

More harm than good? How can we say this? Haven't obstetrics lowered the maternal and newborn death rate since the 1800's? Surprisingly, the maternal and newborn death rate has been lowered primarily because medical doctors finally learned the importance of washing their hands. For example, during the late 1800's and early 1900's medical doctors went from a surgical autopsy, straight to a hospital delivery, without washing their hands. Thus the spread of childbed fever was the most prominent cause of hospital deaths during that time period. Any statistical reduction of the death rate of women and children was not due to the practice of obstetrics, but rather to good hygiene.

What about today? Are routine obstetrics harming women and babies? The answer is yes. Why? To illustrate this, consider how the practice of conventional obstetrics requires medical doctors to view all of their patients as 'high risk', even though statistically over 98% of all women start out low risk, and are able to maintain their low risk status throughout pregnancy and birth with the careful supervision and counseling of a Certified Professional Midwife. This means that all of the testing, Rx drugs, routine intervention, and invasive medical management, done to high risk patients in a hospital birth, will also be routinely done to all low risk patients, all without any true medical indication whatsoever.

Fear, propaganda, institutional pressure, and financial greed, has caused mainstream medical doctors to treat all pregnant patients as the same - high risk. Powerful drugs such as Pitocin, Stadol, Epidural (to mention a few), are routinely used. Hospitals have a profit agenda and a timeframe to work within, and if your labor does not fit into their time limit, they will most certainly intervene to make things happen 'faster.' Add to this the unnecessary and fear-based intervention and invasive management, and you have a medicalized system that actually causes more complications than they are supposedly preventing. Just look at the sky-rocking cesarean section rate, and poor maternal and newborn death rates for proof of this fact.

The Training of the Medical Doctor

Of course, we must acknowledge that medical doctors are specifically trained to look for pathology, and manage the symptoms of any potential medical concern allopathically, with both pharmaceutical drugs and with surgery. Since medical doctors are only trained to look for and manage pathology, often pathology can be 'found' when in reality it may not exist. Why does this happen?

It happens because that is how medical doctors are trained, and this is why they are in practice. They are trained in the 'management of disease', rather than the prevention or cure of health concerns. Unfortunately, that is all mainstream medical doctors have to offer, since that is all they know. However, to apply a medical modality to healthy low risk pregnant women is most certainly inappropriate. And this is a prime example of the conventional overuse and abuse of technology and pharmacology that we frequently see in hospitals today.

"Unfortunately, the role of obstetrics has never been to help women give birth. There is a big difference between the medical discipline we call "obstetrics" and something completely different, the art of midwifery.

If we want to find safe alternatives to obstetrics, we must rediscover midwifery. To rediscover midwifery is the same as giving back childbirth to women.

And imagine the future, if surgical teams were at the service of the midwives and the women, instead of controlling them."

-Michel Odent, MD (An obstetrician with the heart of a midwife)

This may seem surprising to some, since from early childhood most of us have been taught by medical industry propaganda, that medical doctors are health experts, and as such should be elevated to the top of the 'pyramid' of healthcare. However, in reality, medical doctors are not 'health' experts at all. They are 'experts' in disease, illness, and death. Nevertheless, this false perception from medical doctors and patients themselves, has no doubt caused some medical doctors to have an artificially elevated view of themselves. For example, some modern medical doctors literally want their patients to be quiet and simply obey their instructions. If a patient asks a question, these types of medical doctors are impatient and annoyed. If asked for a second opinion, they are personally offended. These types of mainstream medical doctors should be avoided at all costs by low risk pregnant women.

When we refer here to 'low risk pregnant women', we are including the 98% of pregnant women who are subjected to the medical myths propagated by most mainstream medical doctors, who view and treat all pregnancies as high risk. For example, mainstream medical doctors commonly use fear and technical medical jargon to manipulate pregnant women to view themselves as high risk without any true medical indication. Since the medical doctor typically does not trust a woman's body to work properly, he promotes his own fear and need for control over the childbirth process to his patients, who as a consequence also tend to not trust their own bodies to function properly during normal pregnancy and childbirth, and therefore unwittingly subject themselves to unnecessary and potentially harmful intervention.

To illustrate, one common overused diagnosis for laboring women is 'failure to progress'. This is used whenever the labor does not progress according to the medical doctor's textbook model, or according to the hospitals profit driven timeframe. This diagnosis infers that the woman's body 'failed' to function properly, when in reality this may not be the case. This is not to say that 'failure to progress' could never actually happen. But within modern obstetrics, if a laboring woman refuses to allow her labor be artificially and medically induced after a certain number of hours in the hospital, most medical doctors are just not willing to wait around for labor to progress naturally, and commonly rely on various conspicuous and ambiguous diagnosis's to justify their unnecessary intervention. When medical doctors use an implied medical diagnosis or warning without true medical indication, who will challenge their decision? The woman in labor? Her family? The courts that rely on other obstetricians for 'expert' testimony? The truth is that any caring parent would want to make the best possible decision to protect their unborn child from potential harm. And parents likewise expect to be able to trust the judgment of their chosen maternity care provider to genuinely put the interests of the mother and baby ahead of his own. But when a medical doctor uses medical fear in this way, and for this purpose - and knows better, it is most certainly manipulative and abusive. Then again, perhaps it's really true that mainstream medical doctors simply do not know any better.

Interestingly, the guidelines from ACOG (the regulatory governing body for obstetricians) allow obstetricians to use any medical intervention, including elective c-sections, based on the individual obstetricians belief that such an intervention will promote the overall health and welfare of the patient and her baby. This means that obstetricians have been given a pass by ACOG to perform such interventions solely based on their 'belief', even if such belief is not within the other guidelines set forth by ACOG. But what are these 'beliefs' based on? As we mentioned before, modern obstetrics as taught in medical school does not include any training for natural childbirth. Therefore, these beliefs are often rooted in a combination of lack of experience in the normal physiology of childbirth, and/or from having experienced, observed, or heard of a tragic birth with irreversible injury or death to mother or child. Therefore, if a surgeon holds onto the belief that his or her medical intervention, including a scalpel, can prevent the mother, baby, family, nurses, and HIMSELF or HERSELF from experiencing the pain of a birth that doesn't go well, then that belief, at least from their own perspective, allows them the premise to 'ethically' justify using their entire skill set to 'spare' women from the perceived dangers of childbirth. The point here is that when you hire an obstetrician for maternity care, you are also hiring his or her medical training, experience, personal philosophy, and beliefs.

In any event, for the most part it is the patient that praises the medical doctor for making life and death decisions each day, and often appropriately so. But when it comes to normal maternity care, it's a whole different ball game, so to speak. Although medical doctors are very good at putting our bodies back together from injuries, when it comes to the natural physiological process of healthy childbirth, this elevated perception of the role of a medical doctor is certainly not appropriate, let alone safe. As we mentioned before, unlike the modern fallacy of a medical doctor being an expert in health, modern mainstream medical doctors are actually only 'experts' at illness, disease, and death - not in health. Therefore, when it comes to maternity care, medical doctors are only trained to attend medicalized births in a hospital setting for 'high risk' patients, resolving symptoms by prescribing Rx drugs and/or surgery, and managing the birth with machines, devices, and technology.

Of course, most of us appreciate the relative value of the obstetrical management of labor and birth when it is applied appropriately, which is only to the rare cases of true high risk complications. However, when this approach is applied to healthy normal laboring women, it is an inappropriate and feeble attempt to 'predict' the unpredictable and 'control' the uncontrollable. As a result, the far majority of medical doctors have actually never even seen a true natural childbirth.

So then, with 98% of pregnant women, the ones that are healthy and low risk, medical doctors are literally unqualified to attend these women, even dangerously so. Notice here that we chose to use the word "unqualified" instead of 'overqualified.' Overqualified implies that, although the provider has more training than necessary he is still qualified to adequately provide the service. However in this case, not only does the specialty of modern obstetrics NOT include training for natural childbirth, it is also a specialty that is completely unnecessary and inherently harmful when applied to healthy pregnant women.

To illustrate this, when we take a close look at the the schooling required for modern medical doctors (and the medical nurse-midwives and nurses who assist them), we see only training for hospital based medicalized childbirth that results in practitioners who are completely untrained and unprepared to provide natural childbirth. This also explains why natural childbirth is never supported in mainstream hospital settings, even if it were planned.

Now we are not referring here to the so called 'natural birth' scenario where a laboring woman arrives at a hospital with precipitous active labor, and there is literally no time to administer any form of drugs or medical intervention prior to her giving birth. Or to the extremely rare case where a medical doctor has actually voluntarily (or under coercion) adopted (long after medical school of course) a more natural approach to childbirth, and surprisingly has so much clout with the hospital administrators, that the patient is actually allowed (secretly or not) to have some of the natural alternative options that were requested on their birth plan from the very beginning (believe it or not, this anomaly has presumably happened in some rare cases according to some women - but please, don't quote us on this). We are only here referring to a planned natural birth, where the birth plan is completely natural and actually honored. The truth is, that in 99.9% of hospital births, the hospital will absolutely not support a truly natural childbirth. Even when a medical doctor agrees to and signs your birth plan, once you arrive at the hospital in active labor, in the far majority of cases, all agreements (written or verbal) are 'thrown out the window', so to speak.

At times, it is not the fault of the sincere medical doctor, who is only doing what he was trained to do, believing it is best. The problem is that some consumers also have also adopted this view, promoted primarily from medical propaganda. So when new parents plan a hospital birth, they are in effect asking for a medical doctor (or a medical midwife) to practice high risk modern obstetrics on them for their maternity care, no matter what their risk status is. This type of request from parents typically is not the fault of the parents either, since they have been taught to believe the fallacy that a medicalized birth in a hospital is safe and appropriate for all women. So who is really responsible for this misinformation?

The Role of Propaganda

How could so many people in one country be duped and deceived? Do not underestimate the power of the strategic propaganda and fear-mongering being done by the enshrined medical industry, which has been spearheaded by the financial trade organizations like the AMA or ACOG. Midwives however, are not alone when it comes to attacks from the conventional medical industry.

All alternative healthcare practitioners in the USA (and other countries for that matter), are routinely attacked with propaganda, frivolous lawsuits, and abuse of the legal complaint system. Consumer Activist Tim Bolen of Quackpot Watch explains that this is an organized scam of whom the primary players are the board, management, and staff of the FSMB (Federation of States Medical Boards).

Of course, we must acknowledge that there are a few medical doctors out there that are not part of this. Some physicians openly support homebirth midwives, and they are furious that their own professional organizations would not only try to dictate what women should do, but also how they themselves should practice. Additionally, some medical doctors have actually changed to integrate alternative medicine, or have even started practicing a natural form of healthcare. But these are a rare breed, and are frequently persecuted and maligned by the enshrined conventional medical industry, and are almost never allowed to practice maternity care in a hospital.

Understandably, most consumers are genuinely surprised to realize that for mainstram medical doctors the practice of medicine (especially obstetrics) is actually more like a 'religion' than a science. Shockingly, the practice of obstetrics, which is really a combination of philosophy, business, and religion, does not have true science as its base.

With physician attended hospital births, we see how pregnant women are tested, medicated, and operated on to excess every day by the obstetrical profession in an unethical and harmful way. As a result, US hospitals produce more premature infants than any other country with an obstetrical interventionist technology, and then they praise themselves for 'saving' some of their lives. Many medical doctors are aware of this perplexing dilemma, but are afraid to speak out for change. For instance, any medical practitioner who strays from the medical model of 'faith' is typically vehemently hated as if he/she were a heretic, and subsequently ostracized from the mainstream medical community. Dr. Marsden Wagner refers to this as "tribal obstetrics" in his book "Born in the USA".

But again, is it really the fault of the individual medical doctor who sincerely wants to help people? Like all of us, after spending many years of schooling to learn a chosen profession, medical doctors expect to make an honest living, practicing what they were trained to do. However, if they are threatened with losing hospital privileges, verses not following the status quo, or not entering into any given form of integrative, alternative, or natural healthcare should they so desire, then they are stuck with a moral and ethical dilemma, and with making a decision that they must live with thereafter. Either way, sincere medical dotors are typically backed in a corner, and often see no alternative but to practice defensively.

Practicing Defensive Medicine

Medical doctors practicing maternity care, especially obstetricians, often believe they are forced to practice 'defensive medicine' because they are constantly under the threat of malpractice lawsuits for not doing 'everything possible' to prevent a negative outcome, and paying huge amounts of malpractice insurance as a result. And, when they are sued, the 'expert' testimonies come from other obstetricians who must either likewise conform to the medical model for their own economic survival, or worse, they are the true fear-based medical advocates who actually believe that a cesarean section is ultimately the only 'safe' way to deliver a baby.

On the other hand, as consumers we do expect our chosen healthcare practitioner to be benevolent, putting the interests of mother and baby ahead of their own, and rightly so. And yet, we continually see fear of litigation on the forefront of every obstetricians mind. Why is this?

It is primarily because when a patient comes to a medical doctor with a problem, typically they expect their medical doctor to decide what course of action needs to be taken (pregnancy is treated as a medical 'problem' by mainstream medical doctors). Likewise, mainstream medical doctors are trained to make decisions for patients, rather than with patients. After all, why would a medical doctor want to rely on the opinion of someone who doesn't have a medical degree?

We are likewise trained to think this is the way it should be. For example, the current cultural trend in the United States is for women to check themselves into hospitals in labor with the mentality that they are going to receive a series of safe technologically and scientifically based management services from medical doctors or medical midwives and nurses which will result in the following:

If the consumer is not happy with the end result of the services that they feel the hospital was responsible for providing them, they might demand reparations as consumers do when they are not content with a product or a service. Knowing this, hospitals now create a paper trail and preemptively counter the unrealistic expectation that their medical training and expensive technology will guarantee a safe birth experience for mother and baby by over managing pregnancy and labor, unnecessary tests and drugs, induction drugs of unproven safety, and frequently the cesarean section.

So many consumers think that 'if we let the medical doctor choose what's best for us, it frees us of any (percieved) 'responsibility' (at least from a linear perspective).' If things go wrong ... we can and will sue them! No wonder our own insurance premiums and the medical doctors' medical malpractice costs are through the roof. Not to mention the position this puts the medical doctor in. Many of them believe that they are financially forced to make decisions based more on litigation than the actual need of the patient, practicing what is called 'defensive medicine.' These decisions, of course, include all of the unnecessary testing, induction, and intervention we see today.

But this is not the way it should be. All healthcare practitoners have an legal and ethical obligation to educate thier patients with complete and true informed consent. In an ideal world for maternity care, this would include offering childbirth education classes that educate the family on all aspects of the birthing process, and thus fully preparing them to be responsible for thier own healthcare choices (not simply following hospital rules). In this case, if a patient has weighed their options and chooses an option that is not offered by her provider, it is that providers legal and ethical obligation to refer that patient to a provider who can best meet those needs.

Unfortunately, in the industry of medicalized hospital childbirth, this will likely never happen. Nonetheless, if the 98% majority of healthy families actually decided to stop hiring mainstream medical doctors for low risk maternity care, and only hired non-medical midwives instead, this problem would no doubt solve itself over time, and the United States would certainly move up the list for positive outcomes in maternity care.

"It is estimated that if the U.S. switched to a midwife-based system for childbirth, the country would save $8.5 billion a year."

- Marsden Wagner, M.D.

You Have a Choice

The point is, is that you do have a choice in both your birth location and in your healthcare practitioner. If you have had a poor birth experience in the past, please do not blame yourself for it. You made a decision based on what you knew at the time, and what you believed was right for you and your family at the time.

If you are planning a family in the near future or are pregnant now, and your choice is made based on your current knowledge, reasonable research, and life experience - rather than purely on peer pressure from others, chances are you will be able to comfortably live with your decision, no matter what the outcome of your birth experience turns out to be.

The Home Birth Advantage

There are many reasons for choosing to have your baby with a Certified Professional Midwife Attended Birth at Home. Here are just a few of the "Home Birth Advantage" benefits:

BENEFITS TO THE MOTHER, BABY, AND FAMILY

1. Midwifery is a safe, gentle, non-interventive approach to birth, unlike obstetrics which provide routine unnecessary, invasive, and potentially harmful interventions.

Note: Select this link to read the article Technology in Birth: First Do No Harm, By Marsden Wagner, MD, which shows that putting yourself in the hands of a high-tech doctor and a high-tech hospital does not guarantee you the safest birth.

2. The warm familiar home territory and freedom to choose your own birth options allows a "safe and secure" response which releases endorphins creating a sense of well being and providing natural pain relief. Just the opposite is true of the cold unfamiliar territory of a restrictive hospital or birthing center setting, which triggers the "fight or flight" response that releases excess adrenaline potentially stalling labor and creating tension and pain.

3. Freedom to move about, eat, drink, and choose your own birth options, including a labor pool or water birth.

Note: Select this link to see evidence that Electronic Fetal Monitors are associated with a higher rate of Cesarean deliveries, which increases surgical risks to mothers.

4. The mother and father are never separated from each other or from their baby, allowing for uninterrupted natural bonding.

5. No Epidural Anesthesia, Episiotomy, Fetal Monitors, or Vacuum Extraction / Forceps, are ever used.

Note: Select this link to read the article Drugs in Labor: What effects do they have? which shows that all drugs have unwanted side effects, including long term effects.

6. Since the homebirth mother is already immune to the bacteria in her own home, she avoids the potential contraction of infectious germs in a hospital or birthing center setting.

7. The Mother is helped to maintain low to moderate risk status through counseling, proper nutrition, and excellent prenatal care, thus avoiding unnecessary C/sections and other complications.

"Midwives form the bridge between communities and facilities. They transcend the levels of care within health systems, and are essential to the continuum of care during the childbearing cycle."

- Kathy Herschderfer, Secretary-General of ICM.

A WORD ABOUT CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL MIDWIVES

After extensive state approved schooling and a comprehensive apprenticeship, all Licensed Midwives (LM's) are Licensed by the State to legally practice midwifery (in Texas, New Mexico, and most US states). The title "Certified Professional Midwife" is a legally protected title that differentiates the midwife as also being certified by the North American Registry of Midwives (NARM), the only national organization that certifies direct entry or licensed midwives.

Although NARM certification is not a legal requirement, it does certify that your midwife has not only met the state requirements, but has also met additional educational requirements, received testimonials from peer midwives and from clients, demonstrated familiarity with and experience in all procedures of normal prenatal, delivery, and postnatal care, and has passed a written examination and complete skills requirement of NARM. A Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) will be able to show you her certificate or wallet card from NARM. Please call Dawn Cockrell, LM, CPM today for your free consultation and information packet!
432-563-3297

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