Hi All,

I am not sure if I have chosen the right area to post this thread as I couldn't see it neatly fitting into either the birth or Vacc sections. Mods please move this thread if you know of a more suitable place.

Please let me start by saying that I am going to raise a question that could be controversial but I am doing so to begin a objective conversation and I am not trying to troll or specifically offend anybody on this forum. I fully respect everyone's private right to choice and honestly believe that nobody here would actively chose to do anything harmful/potentially harmful to their child.

The subject I raise is what I see to be the conflicting reasoning of Homebirth activism and Anti-vaccination activism which seem to go hand in hand for many (but not as a rule for all)

So here goes.

The anti-vaccination movement moves on motivations of it being somewhat uneccesary for some things (like mumps vacc for girls as they wont go sterile if they catch mumps like a boy could) to the fear of Autism caused by the MMR which I believe to have been sufficiently dis-proven (My opinion, I know that this debate still rages) through to the fact that there are cases in which the child can have severe allergic reactions.

Boiled down it seems that there is a general acceptance that the majority of people who are vaccinated have no lasting side effects but regardless of how statistically small the potential risk of causing harm is considered unnaceptable. This is the point I will come back to.

Compared with the Home birth movement which essentially encourages mothers to allow the body to tell you what is going on and relies on the simple fact that we have only very recently considered pregnancy to be a medical condion. At it's extreme edge shuns almost all medical intervention and monitoring bar a birthing partner/s.

It is known that we are our most fragile at the time of our birth and it is a source of great fear for all expecting parents (I myself have never felt so fragile in the moments between placing my newborn son on his mothers chest and hearing his first cries, a space of maybe 15 seconds that felt like an eternity).

I wont go into the whole birth rape thing but I do find that phrase a bit sensationalist in the same way that I find telling a mother if she does not take a specific course of action that she will kill her unborn baby (outside of true emergency situations of course) a method of fear-mongering.

I couldnt find any specifically statistically significant data that either paragons or demonises either choice in any way other than showing that the great majority of the population are still going to hospital to birth so lets for the sake of this argument place both options on an equal plane of "assumed safety" up to the point of a serious complication such as prolapsed cord or rapid decrease in fetal heartbeat etc.

100% of babies that tragically do not survive birth at hospital would share the same fate were they birthed at home but some of the babies who tracially do not survive at home could possibly have been saved with rapid emergency medical intervention (definitely not all but some). Same goes for the low chances of serious complications for the mother (post natal haemorraging etc..)

So based on that would not the desire to homebirth and the low chance of maternal/perinatal mortality be viewed in the same light as the desire to vaccinate with the low chance of lasting side effects/allergic reactions?

Again, I hope to start a discussion about this mindset and I am not trying to troll or upset anyone. If I have upset you with this post I unreservedly apologise

Ta,
Spence