Home-birth choice should be left open, midwife says

Press, 12 February 1982, Page 4

Home-birth choice should be left open, midwife says

The choice between home and hospital births should always be available to women, a domiciliary midwife in Christchurch, Mrs Ursula Helem, said yesterday.

She was commenting on an attack by the Minister of Health (Mr Malcolm) on “trendy” home births.

Mr Malcolm said on Wednesday that the “trendy advocacy” for home confinements in New Zealand should be discouraged. . , “I hope it will not take tragedies to convince the community that hospital deliveries are the safest and most effective method of caring for both the mother and child,” he said in a speech to the Asia-Oceania Congress of Perinatology. But Mrs Helem said that home births should not be discouraged.

Home births set a better base for family life if the mother found them more pleasing and they provided a better result than hospital deliveries, she said. Mrs Helem attended about 50 home confinements in the Christchurch health district each year. The number had not increased significantly

since 1976, when there were 30 home births. In the two years before that there had been only five home confinements.

Home births did not suit everybody but the women who'preferred them had a “reasonable" attitude towards birth. About a third of home confinements attended by Mrs Helem were for firstborn babies. Of the 230 home confinements attended by Mrs Helem since 1974 between 15 and 20 had developed complications and the expectant mothers had been taken to hospital. Most of these were because the mother was unable to progress further in labour without help. Mr Malcolm also said that the birth was not a big event just for the parents but also for the baby. “The baby hasn't got any say about where his or her birth will take place but he or she does have rights, and one of them is for adequate care at birth and thereafter," he said.

No delivery should be made without two professionally qualified people present — one for the baby and one for the mother.

Hospital staff should consider why it was that some parents preferred to have their children born at home, he said. From Wellington the Press Association reports that Mrs Henriette Kemp, national secretary of the Homebirth Association, says that having a home birth is not the prerogative of hippies and people following alternative lifestyles. Mrs Kemp said that the type of home births evolving in New Zealand are very different from the concept of home births that the politicians seemed to have. “It seems to me a typical reaction of the majority of the medical profession.” she said.

“They are taking an alarmist attitude, more based on personal prejudice than on objectively stating the pros and cons. “What we are into now is a really responsible, prepared home birth." She said that a home birth was supervised by two professionals. Mothers were carefully prepared, advised on nutrition, and screened out if they were likely to be at risk The numbers of women.

midwives, and doctors involved with home births had increased so much in the last few years that it could not be regarded as a trend. The women opting for a home birth were average New Zealand mothers, not hippies and not necessarily people following an alternative lifestyle.

Dr Bassett, Labour's spokesman on health matters until he was dropped from the Shadow Cabinet last week, said that Mr Malcolm's comments were "an insult." Mr Malcolm was instructing medical experts in an area in which he possessed “not the faintest expertise." "The Minister is also overlooking the fact that with many small maternity hospitals being threatened with closure around the country, home birth is an alternative that manv pregnant mothers are forced to consider these days through no fault of their own.

“So long as accepted medical standards are being met — and there is no evidence that they are not being met - the Minister has no right to complain about home births.” Dr Bassett said.