Licensed midwife Aleksandra Evanguelidi (www.SacredEntrance.com) explains how plans are always set in place in case of complications and what is to be expected if a complication does happen. No. 7 of 7 interviews.
Birth itself is a natural process. It is not an emergency. It is an emergence, but it is something that happens over time. And as a medical professional, it’s our responsibility to make sure that baby and mother are both being monitored through the process, and as long as everything sounds great, we continue as planned in a home birth or in a birth center birth. If something sounds a little bit outside of the range of normal, then, if we can’t mediate it, we transport to the hospital. And it’s something really important to know in birth process, home birth process, we always have a backup plan. We call it a Statement of Disclosure—it’s a legal document that basically outlines exactly what’s going to happen in the event of transport. So we know where we’re going, under whose care we’re going into. We’re not sitting at the last moment going, “Hmm, I wonder what we’re going to do now.” We always have a plan of action in place in the event of a need to transport.
Complications can happen, and they are few and far between, and we’re trained on how to deal with those complications when they arise so that we are proficient in handling them. We carry our resuscitation equipment with us and we know how to use it. We renew our license on resuscitation about every two years. There’s anti-hemorrhage drugs that we carry with us as we are allowed to in our license to do so, and they work great. We also use herbs and homeopathy and acupuncture points, which are also equally effective, and sometimes quicker at stopping a bleed postpartum.
