Elena LaVictoire's Library tagged homebirth →  View Popular

"There are many in the legislature who feel a need to have this option — they need to be educated," said Dr. Shastri Swaminathan, the society's president. "We're in strong opposition to licensing midwives who don't have the medical training to provide safe home births."

Cost is a major element in the debate. A routine hospital birth often can cost $8,000 to $10,000, with higher bills for cesarean section deliveries that now account for 31 percent of U.S. births.

Midwives' fees for home births are often less than a third of the hospital cost, in part because the mothers generally don't receive epidural anesthesia or various other medical interventions at home.

For pregnant women, insurance coverage can be a decisive factor in their choice. Many insurers cover care by nurse-midwives in hospitals; coverage is less common for midwives who aren't nurses or who assist with home births.

Many obstetricians acknowledge that the spiraling cost of maternity care and high rate of C-sections are problems.

Jane Peterson of Iola, Wis., is an example. She began a midwife apprenticeship in 1980 and has attended more than 1,330 births since then, many of them before she and her counterparts were legally authorized to practice under a 2005 state law.

Peterson, 56, said she strives to develop collaborative relations with local doctors so that transfers to hospitals go smoothly if risk factors develop. She believes such cooperation should be encouraged nationwide, so more women can feel comfortable about choosing home births.

"People will tell you that you changed their lives," said Peterson, reflecting on the rewards of her job.

"It's hard work — getting up on a cold winter night, going out one more time through the snow. What keeps you going is the recognition women feel — as though they are a different kind of mother when they've been able to give birth their way."

To take birthing out of women’s hands and deny us the continuum of
eons of wisdom and experience is to eject us from the very seat of our
power. I believe that women in hospitals are prevented from being able
to have normal, healthy birthing experiences because of the
intimidation of being on the clock, being pressured to take drugs to
make it quicker, being inhibited in their movement and activities, and
alienated by a sterile, fluorescent lit, feet-in-the-air type
environment.

You know the classic “performance anxiety” of not being able to pee
or poo because somebody’s watching you? Multiply that by a million! A
cervix is a sphincter after all!

Then to add tragic insult to injury women are numbed through their
great moment of revelation. I believe the act of giving birth to be the
single most miraculous thing a human being can do and it is surely the
moment when a lot of women finally understand the depth of their power
and connection to all of nature. You think it can’t possibly be done,
you think you can’t possibly take the pain, and then you do — and
afterward you look at yourself in a whole new way. If you can do that,
you can do anything.

But CPMs or direct-entry midwives like Helwig, who care for women giving birth in their homes, lack official approval.

"Direct-entry midwives are at risk of legal prosecution for practicing medicine," Beck Borden says. "In Ohio there is no protection, no regulatory body for direct-entry midwives. (They can be) prosecuted for practicing advanced-practice nursing without a license or practicing medicine without a license, which is a felony."

"It's insanity," she says. "I've been serving the community for 10 years, on call night and day, and my life has completely stopped. Now I'm sitting and waiting for the state to decide if they're going to punish me or give me back my stuff and send me on my way."

Beck Borden recently gave birth to her second child at home.