Natural Birth Home is closing its doors

[Tiffany]

Natural Birth Home is closing its doors

By Matt Carter, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area

PLEASANTON — A 94-year-old house on Railroad Avenue where hundreds of mothers gave birth without the use of pain-killing drugs is closing its doors.
Since founding The Birth Home in 1997, midwife Beah Haber and Dr. Michael Bleecker have helped bring 450 babies into the world.

Most of those births took place at the historic Larkin Locke house in downtown Pleasanton, using natural childbirth techniques.

Advocates of natural child birth say doctors and nurses who attend to births in hospitals are sometimes too quick to use surgical procedures and pain-killing drugs.

At The Birth Home and at similar natural child birth centers around the country, less than 5 percent of births involve cesarean sections, compared to about one in every four births in U.S. hospitals.

But The Birth Home never generated enough business to be able to hire the midwives it needed to be available on call 24 hours a day.

We never seemed to average beyond five or six babies per month, Haber said. We couldnt (hire) enough midwives ... so I was on call 30 days a month.

Haber, a certified nurse midwife, will still attend to mothers who want to experience natural child birth in their own homes. Bleecker, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will continue to deliver babies at ValleyCare Medical Center.

But expectant mothers will no longer be able to hire Haber and Bleecker to attend to them at The Birth Home, an arts-and-crafts style home on a shady street in downtown Pleasanton.

Built in 1911, the house at 4441 Railroad Ave. sits across the street from an old fire station the city plans to convert into a theater and art gallery. Its also a short walk from businesses on Main Street and several downtown parks.

Louise Layer, who owns the home with her husband, Les, said she hopes to lease the home to another small business.

Having given birth to a daughter at The Birth Homes original location — an office suite on Santa Rita Road — Layer was rooting for The Birth Home to succeed.

Its really sad they couldnt make a swing of it, she said.

The Layers invited Haber and Bleecker to set up shop on Railroad Avenue in the summer of 2001, after neighbors objected to a plan to relocate The Birth Home from Santa Rita Road to a home on Second Street.

Kate Bauer, executive director of the National Association of Childbearing Centers in Perkiomenville, Pa., said the first natural childbirth center was established in 1975 in New York City. There are now 175 birth centers in the U.S., Bauer said. The associations Web site lists nine in California, including the soon-to-close Birth Home.

Each year, we have birth centers opening and birth centers closing, because a birth center is a small businesses, Bauer said. But their numbers are growing, because birth centers have a survival rate that is much higher than the average small businesses.

Like other medical care providers, birth centers are struggling with rising malpractice insurance costs, Bauer said. For a time, Bleeckers malpractice coverage would not allow him to attend to patients at The Birth Home, he said.

But, more importantly, Bleecker said, many insurance companies arent willing to reimburse patients who want to use a birth center instead of a hospital — even though birth centers can be cheaper.

With less than 1 percent of births taking place outside of hospitals, It just doesnt represent enough volume to make it worth their while to consider, Bleecker said.

Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley and Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Walnut Creek offer midwives, while ValleyCare in Pleasanton and San Ramon Regional Medical Center do not.

Haber said expectant mothers who want to attempt natural childbirth in a hospital can hire a doula, which is an attendant who provides comfort and support while acting as a go-between with medical care givers.

Midwives and doulas can go with you to the hospital, and make sure you have an advocate for translating the rules of the game — they just cant manage the delivery, Haber said.

SOURCE: http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivall...ews/ci_2932727

[Breck]

This is so sad when another birth center closes. If we only have 1% of births happening outside of the hospital then that means we aren't getting the right information out to new moms and local media. Our country is number 30 out of 32 industrialized countries who have the worse mortality rates for births. Number 1 being the best which is Singapore. Cuba is number 31 and we spend more money on birthing then any of the other 31 countries mentioned. The countries who had the least mortality rates were countries who used midwives as their primary provider for birthing.. and with the mortality rate in the US at 6.3 per 1,000 births it was only 2.1 in births in the US that used midwives. This is the info we need to get to the media and moms. Also we need to find information about the use of Pitocin and epidurals and the long term effects it has on babies. LIke Pitocin having a possible link to autism, and ultra sound causing hearing loss in newborns. This may help get parents attention on their babies and not how convenient it is to induce and freely use epidurals.
Oh by the way my name is Breck and I'm new here hi.

[BirthLove]

This is so sad.. there aren't many birth centers in Califorinia for it's size and to lose one is just disheartening..

[BirthLove]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Breck This is so sad when another birth center closes. If we only have 1% of births happening outside of the hospital then that means we aren't getting the right information out to new moms and local media. Our country is number 30 out of 32 industrialized countries who have the worse mortality rates for births. Number 1 being the best which is Singapore. Cuba is number 31 and we spend more money on birthing then any of the other 31 countries mentioned. The countries who had the least mortality rates were countries who used midwives as their primary provider for birthing.. and with the mortality rate in the US at 6.3 per 1,000 births it was only 2.1 in births in the US that used midwives. This is the info we need to get to the media and moms. Also we need to find information about the use of Pitocin and epidurals and the long term effects it has on babies. LIke Pitocin having a possible link to autism, and ultra sound causing hearing loss in newborns. This may help get parents attention on their babies and not how convenient it is to induce and freely use epidurals. Oh by the way my name is Breck and I'm new here hi.

Hi there.. I want to thank you for this post! I am training to be a childbirth educator with one of my friends and we are discussing how to get this info out in the open without it falling on deaf ears.. Also I think that women taking private childbirth classes may be a little more in tune with the realities of childbirth, and we are trying to brainstorm about how to get it out to the the general public. I find that many women the minute I ask them a question regarding their birth if they are having a birth in the hospital or anywhere else seem to feel offended and clam up like they are just dealing with it. I have a friend that was recently pregnant (she miscarried) and we were talking about her prenatal visits with her OB and she said to me "I guess I am just going to have to get use to the fact that I am going to be violated everytime I got ther" my heart completely sunk and I was so confused to why she just accepted this form of care.. and then I started to wonder if a bunch of women felt like this.. I was completely outraged with not on ly the doctor but with her for not finding some alternative that she was comfortable with. The point in me telling that was that every single time I tried to ask her about why she didn't find other care she brushed it off, clammed up and changed the subject.. How do we get through on some things that are so important to mother's health and the health of their babies?

[ErininVA]

We have a pretty big birth center closing down in our area too. I hate to see that!

[Bex]

We have one here in the triad area of NC that is closing it's doors as well

[LovingArmsBirthSupport]

we only have 1 birth center that i know about here in GA!

[b'earth angel]

No BC locally. Not that people don't want the alternative, but Kansas legislature has seen fit to limit the location of BC to right across the street from NICU hossys (my paraphrase of the law). So that means, large city only in our state.

"Haber said expectant mothers who want to attempt natural childbirth in a hospital can hire a doula, which is an attendant who provides comfort and support while acting as a go-between with medical care givers"

I thought that this comment was interesting. I can add "go-between" to my list of titles now!

[megananna22]

My second was born here 26 days before it closed (almost 2 years ago). I still cry. But at least now I get my homebirth on the next one (if it were still open DH would probably insist on using it again instead of doing homebirth). I just feel for all the couples who are where we were last time - homebirth not an option (DH) hospital not an option (mom) - that now don't have this choice. It was awesome, it was perfect for us at the time.

Next one will be caught by DH at home with the LM (then apprentice) who caught her and hopefully also my favorite CNM (who wasn't the one on call at the time she was born unfortunately).

Megan