In a message dated 97-03-06 00:08:30 EST, Kathleen notes: << there are other issues here, and yes, if a baby is lost at home, this is a *terrible* tragedy. There are victims from hospital births also, though, and I personally can attest that many breastfeeding relationships are lost, victim to hospital intervention that is unnecessary, untried, and *dangerous.* I spend most of my time fixing screw ups where I live, of the medical establishment, of which I am a dubious participant. >> I wonder if we ever look at the fact that yes, babies also die in hospitals, and would they have been saved had the mother given birth in a SAFE environment -- at home or in a birthing center such as Kathleen described. I too was the victim of two terrible hospital experiences -- the second one wasn't as bad as the first -- and chose to have baby number three at home primarily because we were no longer in Michigan where there IS a wonderful out-of-hospital birthing center (of which I was privileged to help develop and was the first head nurse), and because I had no intention of submitting to all the rules and regs of the hospital. Often when a woman has a dreadful experience, and she or the baby suffers from multiple interventions leading to problems, our response often is, "but all that counts is that you have a healthy baby." While having a healthy baby and a safe birth is OF COURSE the number one desire of all health professionals and parents, why must that healthy baby and safe birth come at the cost of a pleasurable experience? We all know the cascade effect of birth interventions -- even those that seem innocuous at the time. I've recently had to pick up the pieces r/t breastfeeding from women that were offered the option of being induced because the doc was going out of town; she's 38 weeks, and "could deliver any time." When will we learn to stop messing around and sit on our collective hands??!! Scuse me, but this too touched a sore point with me. At the BSC conference in Nashville was one of the nurses that was with me in the birthing room when Torrey was born, nearly 19 years ago! (WOW!) She too worked in the birthing center a lot -- she was the nurse for the OB that was medical director of the FBC. Her coment to me at some point was that "we didn't seem to have the problems with breastfeeding in the birthing center that we had with moms in the hospital....." Truly truly. Babies went to breast immediately after birth; there was no separation of mom & baby; no drugs, no inductions, no stimulation with Pitocin, no epidurals....committed staff; committed moms; happy, breastfed babies. If it hadn't been for all the politics that go along with doing something a bit out of the ordinary, especially given that this was 1979 (!), working at the FBC would have been -- and I guess truly was -- the dream job. Jan Barger -- who still considers the Family Birthing Center, affiliated with Providence Hospital in Southfield, MI "hers" even though she's been gone for 15 years!!!