What are the benefits and drawbacks to a hospital birth?

The benefits to a hospital birth are, of course, that interventions and immediate medical care is available when she is actually giving birth in the hospital. The hospital birth can be very beneficial to a high risk mother, a mother carrying twins or expecting a breech baby or a mother who experiences complications in her last part of the pregnancy. She would benefit the most from being in the hospital setting to give birth because the intervention is so readily available to her and to her baby. If the mother is high risk or if the mother just feels safer being in the hospital, where the mother feels safest giving birth is where her birth will unfold the most naturally for her. If she feels safest being in the hospital that’s where she should give birth. The biggest draw back is that, right now at least in our birth culture, there are routine interventions that are used that are not necessary. The biggest one being continuos fetal monitoring. We know from decades of research that continuos fetal monitoring does not improve the health outcome for mothers and babies. We know all it does is increase the caesarian rate. This continuos fetal monitoring may sound like a good idea; we could continuously listen to the baby and know what’s going on with the baby and labor. The drawback is that it doesn’t let the laboring women be instinctual with her movements. Instead, it requires her to be strapped down. It limits her movement. It doesn’t allow for the mother to move more fluently and so when we decrease the mother’s movement we increase her pain and therefore increase the way her baby tolerates her labor. Again, like I said earlier, the mother who moves intuitively is moving in a way that helps enhance her labor and helps her baby move to the pelvis. But if we attach the mother to a monitor and require her to be in bed lying on her back then she is not moving intuitively which may actually cause fetal distress. So continuos fetal monitoring is the biggest drawback. The other things that are part of the hospital birth experience is an I.V. which we know is not necessary in low risk births. Mothers don’t necessarily need I.V’s, especially when they have access to food and drink of their choice. Laboring mothers will keep themselves hydrated if given the chance and they don’t need have to be hooked up to IV for hydration. The separation of mothers and babies is also sometimes a part of the hospital birth experience. Even with separation right there in the room. The baby is sometimes separated from the mother’s arms and this can sometimes be very harmful to the baby’s transition. So that could be a drawback as well.