Specialist warns on home births

Press, 27 October 1982, Page 6

Specialist warns on home births

Any woman who planned to have her baby at home ran a real risk, said Professor Charles Whitfield, a Scots professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, in Christchurch yesterday. "Complications can arise quickly, and need attention immediately. From the baby’s and the mother’s point of view, home births, can be dangerous,” he said.

Professor Whitfield, who is based at Glasgow University and its teaching hospital, is on a Canterbury Savings Bank-sponsored scheme visit. He will be in the South Island for a month to lecture to gynaecologists, obstetricians, general practitioners,

and medical students. “We will have to make hospitals more homely places, because any labour should be in a hospital where full facilities are available to deal with any complications,” Professor Whitfield said.

“I think it is a great pity for people to get carried away about having a home birth. It is like crossing the road without looking to see if any traffic is coming — sooner or later you are going to get hit,” he said.

Water births are also unacceptable to Professor Whitfield.

“There is no place in a civilised community for

water births," he said. “Just because most babies can survive that sort of treatment does not mean that all of them should be subjected to it.”

Assertions that babies born under water developed into brighter and better people were only theories. Proving such theories would be very difficult because usually the women who insisted on water births were better educated and more outspoken and so the chances were that they would have a higher proportion of brighter children anyway, Professor Whitfield said.

■ Instead of .following such dangerous fads as water

births and home births, women should be encouraged to have their babies in hospitals. The atmosphere was more homely, and they could usually go home after only a short time.

"Homely does not mean cheap. A hospital still has to have all the sophisticated intensive care equipment,” Professor Whitfield said.

“Homely means a bit of give and take. If the woman wants to have her baby sitting down, or whatever way she fancies, she should be allowed to try it,” he said. "If she wants to listen to music, watch television, or get up and walk round while she is in labour, she should be allowed to.”

Unfortunately, a lot of hospitals had labour rooms that were too small to allow for much activity. That was where the give and take had to come in.