Week 3 blog post

Part 1: In countries like Vietnam and the Netherlands home births are common and preferred over hospital births. This is very different from the United States where home births are very uncommon, the only reason a mother might have a child at home in the United States would be because she could not make it to a hospital. In Vietnam culture is very important and a birth comes with many customs that must be performed after the birth. Examples are cutting the umbilical cord with their own scissors and burying the placenta under the bed. If a mother were to go to a hospital to have a baby than these customs could not be performed. What is interesting about this is that they believe that by doing these customs they are giving the child good health but in reality it is very dangerous and could make the baby sick. 

The study from the Netherlands about home births versus hospital births does not favor either side surprisingly. It found that there was still the same amount of infants brought into a neonatal intensive care unit after birth and no significant difference between the two groups of mothers when comparing maternal mortality.  This could allow mothers in the Netherlands to continue thinking that home births are okay and not dangerous at all. The study did note however that the mothers who planned to have home births were 25 years old or older and had given birth to more than one child before. This is significant because older women who have had children previously are less likely to have complications during birth than younger women who have not had any children before. Young girls who are pregnant for the first time and are planning on having a home birth are more likely to experience complications. 

Births in the United States have been extremely medicalized. There is a debate whether it is the mother giving birth and life to a child or the hospital giving life to that child. When a mother gives birth in a hospital in the United States a nurse and physician are present in the room, the physician is the one who decides when it is the right time for the mother to start pushing, not the mother. As soon as the baby is birthed the physician takes the baby from the mother and has someone besides the mother cut the umbilical cord. After this the baby is immediately taken away for an examination, the mothers only get to see the baby for a brief moment before it is taken from her. Personally I agree with the argument that the hospitals are really the ones who give the baby life, at least they have taken that role from the mother. I understand why people in the Netherlands and Vietnam chose to have a home birth, it may be more risky but it is more personal. 

Part 2: I chose to use an image of a home birth in the United States. This type of birth, a water birth, is becoming the most common way to have a home birth in the United States. Home births are less than one percent of all births in the United States so this is a very uncommon occurrence. I think its interesting how vastly different an image of a home birth is to an image of a hospital birth. The home birth seems much more intimate and the focus is on the mother and the child. Images of a hospital birth showed that the primary focus is all on the child and the mother is simply the vessel where the child come froms. 

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