Ohio Shame

I lived in Stark County in Ohio for about 6 months in 2008. During that time I paired up with another doula, in hopes of re-starting my doula business in Ohio. This other doula had at least of decade of expereince working in Ohio and one of the first things she pointed out was how slow it was and how many cesereans she had attended. When I got my first phone call from a potential client for an interview I immediately began calling the local hospitals to ask for statistics and was horrified at what I was finding out...one hospital reported that nearly 50% of their patients had cesereans (they claimed it was because of how many high risk patients they had)!! HOLY CRAP!! So when I became pregnant with my third son, Trent, I was able to convince Paul that a homebirth would be so much safer. Though with the legislation as it was then, it was pretty risky to have a midwife too..it would all have to be "underground". So with the plan of possibly having an unattended pregnancy and birth, we set out to hire our midwife. Thank goodness we ended up coming back to Utah when I was only 3 months pregnant. I did have my homebirth, but rather than having to hide it I have been able to announce it to the world and share my fabulous midwife's name, Raeann, with everyone and recommend her to all. With all this in mind, I made a very disturbing discovery today...Ohio's 2008 ceserean rate for FIRST TIME, LOW RISK MOTHERS is 27.1%!! 1 in 3 perfectly healthy pregnant women are subjected to all the risks of having an ceserean for no good reason. No wonder America's maternal and fetal mortality rate is so awful.

http://www.theunnecesarean.com/blog/2010/1/5/ohio-releases-hospitals-2008-c-section-rates-for-low-risk-fi.html