Midwives and Home Births

By Michael Dorausch, D.C.

Midwifery, a term traditionally used to describe the art of assisting a woman through childbirth, is a practice that is often closely associated with chiropractic care through a woman’s pregnancy.

Someone called me today seeking out a midwife in the Santa Monica area, and they motivated me to do some searching through planet chiropractic news archives, in hopes of finding some related midwife content. Here is what I came across…

A July 2006 Attended Births article by Darrel Crain (chiropractor in San Diego). Darrel writes… Babies, it has been discovered, are a major cause of children. This is the conclusion reached by researchers after careful observation and replication of identical results in virtually every corner of the globe. The cause of babies themselves is certainly a stimulating and controversial topic on its own, but we shall modestly postpone that discussion for the time being.

A March 2001 Fellow Midwives article by Stew Bittman (chiropractor in South Lake Tahoe). Stew writes… Having just watched a video of hospital births, put out by Jeanne Ohm, D.C., and nearly losing my lunch, I have a clearer than ever understanding of the horrible impact of birth trauma on our world. There has never been a more critical time for both professions to remember their own principles. What would the world be like if the principle of midwifery was applied to childbirth, and then the principle of chiropractic was applied to the rest of life’s transitions?

A December 1999 blip of an article regarding midwives. Source pages are coming up dead so I’m checking for fresh links.

An August 2006 Having Babies article by Darrel Crain. Darrel writes… Perhaps they missed this report: $13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding, according to Frank Oski, M.D., Director of the Department of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Isn’t saving money profitable?

I also came across this 2006 article regarding flu vaccination and pregnant moms and then there was an article from October of 2007 that involved me interviewing a mom who had her second child at home.