Safe Births and Sad Stories

Today, CBC Manitoba highlighted concerns about the new Birth Centre from a woman who lost her newborn son in 1996, due to medical complications.

I don’t know Ms. Dorber, but my heart goes out to her: it appears hers was a very sad story.

Still, I’m disappointed over how this dialogue emerged. The CBC article highlights that “some are questioning” the Birth Centre’s “safety.” To support that, they present Ms. Dorber’s concerns: it’s clear those fears stem from her own experience of tragedy. But while living through tragedy can indeed impart a certain kind of wisdom, it doesn’t make someone a medical expert, and it does not mean that their concerns can or should form the basis of a troubled dialogue about a largely separate issue.

As they say, the plural of “anecdote” isn’t “data.

But we do have data on the safety of midwife-attended births, though that data is not referenced in the CBC story. In general, the data points very strongly to the fact that planned home- or birth centre-births attended by midwife professionals is as safe or safer than hospital births; it reinforces the fact that midwives are extremely capable medical professionals who are highly educated in facilitating safe births for mothers and infants.

What worries me is that this story plays into tired tropes about the “safety” of midwife-attended birth, tropes that are still hurting our health-care system, and all for nothing: several erroneous statements in the CBC story are left uncorrected. As Tanya observes:

She answered the question: “Were you considered a high-risk pregnancy” by saying, “No no. Just age.” What?! Age is a major risk factor! This is not ageist to say: if you’re over 35 years old, your pregnancy is considered high-risk. Period.

On one hand, it occurs to me that there are so many people who are misinformed about the safety of midwife-attended birth (the comments on the CBC story deliver more of that), perhaps it’s a good thing that these concerns were brought into the open. Perhaps it’s a good thing that we can address them and have this dialogue.

That’s the optimistic side of me speaking, here.

The cynical side of me suspects that the way this dialogue emerged has just knocked back the long and often fraught process of normalizing normal birth, by allowing whispers and worries about “safety” to slip silently into the minds of those who have little chance to hear otherwise. Ms. Dorber’s tragedy does not appear to have a systemic link to the new Birth Centre, and it appears that the issues that caused her son’s death are unlikely to have relevance to this new institution.

So I say: until we have data on our own Birth Centre, let’s judge its potential for safety on what we already know about the safety of similar birthing choices, and not give power to fear drawn from elsewhere. That, I opine, is the best and most responsible approach for women and the babies they bear.