My wife and I have three kids, and while that pregnancy and childbirth thing is way, way back in the past, we did have some strong opinions after our experience. Midwives were wonderful, we had only the best and most positive experiences with them, and they were the indispensable supporters we were glad to have there. The doctors…meh. They didn’t seem to be involved much, and it was rather strange when they’d come by after all the work was done and sign the birth certificate, as if they were taking credit. But my wife had relatively uneventful, uncomplicated deliveries (the second was a bit rough, and she had to stay overnight for observation afterwards; that kid was gigantic), and we knew that the doctors were essential if things went wrong, and we would have been horrified and greatly worried if they hadn’t been there. All our kids were born in clinics, with professionals all around us, because we weren’t going to take any risks. Childbirth is dangerous when things go wrong, and they really can go very, very wrong.

But now I’ve discovered The Skeptical OB, and it’s all about this crazy kooky weird world of homebirthers — people who, just like anti-vaxxers and HIV denialists, refuse to recognize that modern medicine is actually incredibly powerful and useful, and have these bizarre myths about what is “natural”. So they insist on having their babies at home, away from those horrible doctors, and they end up with dead mothers and dead babies.

That last case is particularly eye-opening. A woman writes into a forum dispensing this quackery, and complains about ditching her OBGYN and going with an unlicensed midwife, and proceeded to go into labor for eight days and delivered a dead baby.

Or this case, where a homebirther is irate because doctors recommend against her desired natural childbirthing experience, because she’s “high risk”. She thinks she isn’t, because her first delivery was easy. But then she mentions that her second delivery had a minor problem: the kid got “stuck” and required resuscitation (!) after delivery, and her third child was born unresponsive and died two days later. And then she wonders why doctors are so worried!

It’s all very disturbing and new to me, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. There are all these strange people around who, for some unfathomable reason, worship pre-18th century medicine and make a fetish of “natural”. Heart attacks are also entirely “natural”, but you won’t catch me suggesting that we skip the doctor if I have one.

(Also on Sb)