Quick post - the case for home births

What happened to my quick posts in between longer ones? hmmm.  OK, have to get better at that part.  So, here is a quick one.  Just wanted to share this article from the Huffington Post.  It's worth a read and a brilliant response to this article that an OB wrote in the Atlantic Monthly recently.  The Huffington Post writer does a great job of showing why the OB's account of this birth actually MAKES the case for home births that are done in coordinated way with hospitals.  She's right.  If only we could get the systems to work in tandem, we would shoot up from having some of the worst maternity care in a western nation to perhaps having the best! Midwife model of care is not about "rogue midwives" and women working in isolation - there is an aspect of cooperation between midwives, home births, birth centers, OBs and hospitals that I think is the real core of this whole "movement" (I've talked before about how I think the use of that word for women choosing midwives, home births and natural births is not appropriate) and that I think women really crave.  Anyway, I'd love to know that if I need to transfer to a hospital next time I am in the baby-having way, I will not get crap over it and will get the care I need without prejudice.  In the OB's story, he actually does all the right things, mostly because the mom makes her preferences known and forces him to utilize all choices before getting out the scalpel as he so clearly would have preferred (don't you know- he has a golf game/birthday party/is afraid of being sued?).  The OB does what he should have done but because he is forced to do so and then complains that this is the problem with home births and midwives and that he had to clean up the midwife's "mess!" He makes himself sound like an ass, frankly.  What isn't he getting? You did the right thing and the baby ended up being born healthy by vaginal delivery instead of mom having to endure major surgery after the midwife correctly transferred her to the hospital in a timely fashion - doesn't that mean the home birth and midwife care worked? Doesn't that mean it all turned out well? I want to thank this OB for posting this though - he so clearly can't see the forest for the trees and instead of making the case against home births, he makes the case for them!
Also, please note women, you have choices.  They can't do anything to you without obtaining informed consent - it is illegal to do otherwise.  Unless it is a dire emergency for you and/or baby.  This mom was smart - she questioned the doctor's push for a c-section and asked him to try other options before resorting to that.  The OB admits repeatedly in the article that a c-section was never at any time medically necessary - that to me, is malpractice.  Trying to push surgery on women who don't medically need it is a violation of their Hippocratic oath at the very least.  Good for this prepared mom who had her midwife by her side, was prepared for labor and birth, knew about all the possible interventions and made her choices known!