Born In The Wild?…I Can’t Even

I love me some Lifetime Channel . There is nothing that gets me going more than a torrid love affair turned murder mystery starring an old cast member from Beverly Hills 90210.

There are also a plethora of great featured series; Project Runway, Child Genius and even one featuring my old stomping grounds, Life Flight Trauma Center Houston, but this month they started a new series, Born in the Wild and…

I can’t even.

The show tells the stories of couples who are choosing to deliver their babies outside in remote locations miles away from a hospital or a physician. “To give birth in nature like our ancestors did,” one couple explains.

That’s cool, I guess. Do you plan on building a hut out of clay to raise your family in as well?

There are many proponents of home birth out there claiming that modern medicine interferes with the natural process of labor. Maybe so, but the natural process also can end in catastrophe. Heart attacks are a natural process as well, do you want to ask modern medicine to back away from those too?

So for Ricki Lake and all the people out there that think that I spent my twenties studying all night and sleeping most nights in a call room simply because I am part of a national conspiracy to pocket some cash and scam a lady out of her “right” to have her child at home, here are some facts:

1.Post Partum Hemorrhage (bleeding after a delivery) is still the number one cause of maternal death worldwide and the disparity between underdeveloped countries and developed countries is  huge. How many people do you know whose mothers died giving birth to them? Now get on a plane fly to a remote location “In The Wild” in a third world country and ask the same question.

2. Delivery complication is still one of the top ten reasons for female death worldwide, but as of now it doesn’t make the list in the US.

3. The risk of neonatal death is two to three times greater in a home birth than a hospital birth.

4. The majority of home births in the US are by well-off white women. These are the same people that are pushing the anti-vaccination movement. It has become a privilege in this country to reject the medical care that women world wide are literally dying to have.

5. Even under the care of an OB GYN and a super specialized medical team, there are complications. And some home birth advocates even point to this as part of their argument. But it is like an awful car wreck—even if you drive carefully, they can still occur and if you do end up in a life threatening crash would you rather be ambulanced to a top tier trauma center or your bathroom where some dude that took a two week course on trauma surgery is ready and waiting to help you out?

Overall, the labor and delivery of a child is not something to be taken lightly. I will admit that most of the time things go well, but it is in the rare occasion that things do not go well, you need a doctor and a hospital on your side.

I always tell my patients that it is their experience—they can bounce on a ball, get in a tub, light some candles and sing kumbaya for all I care, but do it in a hospital. Advancement is a good thing. Women bleed, babies’ heart beats drop, people get infections, babies get stuck and the list goes on and on and none of these things can be helped by untrained professionals in your kitchen, bathroom, or in a forest.

With that said, I haven’t completely done away with Lifetime. I am super stoked for Stalked by my Neighbor, a traumatic home invasion recovery turned disaster when a mom and her daughter are stalked by their new neighbor. Seems dangerous, stupid and will likely end in death.

Call me crazy, but I think I may be seeing a trend.