I was excited to see Hypnobabies talked about on National TV. I wish they had time to share some more information. I actually have met that couple at one of my monthly Hypnobabies Open House I co-host with other Hypnobabies Doulas. They shared their beautiful birth story and slide show.
I was disappointed to see the OB use fear tactics to scare the couple trying to get information about homebirth. The OB quoted a statistic which I have never heard before and I find hard to believe it is true. That Shoulder Distocia occurs in 10-15% of births. That is absurd to me. It was full of a lot of scary things and a clip or two of positive things. Also the one negative birth center birth they shared was sad, but the outcome wouldn’t have been different if in the hospital, as they didn’t realize the baby had kidney problems until after the baby was born. So she would have had a vaginal birth in a hospital as well.
I don’t know, I feel mixed about it. I hope that more moms will learn about the option of Hypnobabies for birth and I hope moms who are thinking about homebirth will gather more information before making a decision for their family.
SD is nowhere near that common. Anne Frye’s section on SD says between 1/150 and 1/300, although that includes all births, including ones which may precipitate a SD because of position and/or labor management. I’ve also seen 1/500 used too.
so is this episode viewable somewhere online?
I completely agree with you. I was excited to tune in since I am doing a Hypnobabies birth but I am also planning a home birth. The misinformation and fear mongering was awful. They didn’t mention the World Health Organization has statistical studies that show home birth is just as safe if not safer than a hospital birth. The Dr. was outright lying. It made me so angry that all of those people watching it that got scared out of home birth. Yes, that lady whose son had kidney issues would have had the same result in a hospital. AWFUL show!! The doctor didn’t mention either that out of all of the developed countries, America has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates…
http://www.thedoctorstv.com/main/show_page/13
I don’t know of anywhere where the whole show is, but there are clips and highlights here.
I think The Doctors has an agenda to promote against homebirth. I’ve heard that they were looking for negative homebirth stories by posing questions like:
Did you have a homebirth and wished you’d gone to the hospital instead?
and
Did you have a bad experience with a midwife?
I would be wary of spin they would put on a show no matter how glowing the participants originally made homebirth appear.
I looked up shoulder dystocia and came up with this link which talks about shoulder dystocia occurring about like what Rixa said, and that it might be a subjective diagnosis, and some docs are unwilling to code SD unless they used some specific technique to resolve it (which makes me wonder if it really was SD). Anyway, on the 2nd page of that link, it says that *the recurrence* of SD is 10-15% — that if a woman has SD in one birth, she has a 10-15% likelihood that it will reoccur in a second birth. So, that’s where the doc got 10-15% — not in *occurrence* but in *re*occurrence.
I had a wonderful homebirth/waterbirth and was interviewed by someone from the show. Not sure why I wasn’t selected (perhaps not a good looking enough family – lol – since I had to send in my photos) but I feel I dodged a bullet. I’m surprised that Dr. Phil would be associated with such a biased perspective and misinformation, not to mention totally ignoring WHO stats and our *#$& ranking as a developed country for healthy birth outcomes. At the time other countries like Canada and England are looking at the empirical evidence and promoting natural + homebirth and in our country ACOG comes out with ridiculous position statements NOT based on evidence (anyone else find it ironic that these same professionals were supposedly trained as scientists), I guess it’s not surprising that a show in the US named “The Doctors” would be full of fearmongering and an OB presenting incorrect information as fact.
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