Birth by Design PREGNANCY, MATERNITY CARE, AND MIDWIFERY IN NORTH AMERICA AND EUROPE doc

[...]... societal and cultural differences in maternity care policies and practices Why should it matter where a baby is born? Simply stated, the place of birth shapes the experience, determining who is in control and the technologies to be employed In a home birth, those attending are visitors in the family’s domain, and midwives and doctors must rely on the family for an understanding of local customs and practices... including gynecologists, anesthesiologists, and perinatologists, have taken a more prominent role in birth The first maternity hospital (with eight beds) in Finland was established in 1816 as a teaching hospital for midwives assisting in home births in rural areas The hospitalization of births in rural areas began in 1861 under an order from the Russian Czar to establish three maternity beds in every... fraction in the movement advocating home birth as a choice; however, less than 0.001 percent of births were planned home births in 1991–1995 (Viisainen et al 1999) Like the United States, although in a different context, the transition of births into hospitals in Finland was swift, peaking in the postwar years of rapid urbanization, industrialization, and modernization The change in living setting and the... consider including countries in Latin America, South America, and Southern and Eastern Europe (we know researchers working in these parts of the world as well), but we decided that inclusion of countries from these regions would introduce a flood of variables that would limit our ability to compare In restricting our comparisons to the countries of Western Europe and North America we seek to control some intercountry... institutionalization of birth in the 10 BIRTH BY DESIGN United Kingdom and the Netherlands, Torres and Reich (1989) point to several elements that slowed the move to hospital birth in the Netherlands Compared to the United Kingdom, they found that in the Netherlands: (1) midwives were in a stronger position relative to physicians, (2) safety was one of several goals in the birth process, and (3) the financing system supported... collaborate, using the work they had originally done, to tease out certain themes in the social organization of maternity care Rather than generating a book of parallel readings ( Maternity Care in France,” Maternity Care in Germany,” Maternity Care in the United Kingdom”), we hoped to produce a book that used existing work to illuminate transnational patterns in maternity care: the in uence of the... arrangement of maternity care On Collaboration Birth by Design began as a project entitled The Evolution of Obstetric Care in North America and Northern Europe, funded by the Council for European Studies at Columbia University The primary goal of that project was to bring together a group of researchers from Europe and North America, all of whom had done studies on maternity care The intent was to allow... true for a mother in a hospital In a hospital birth a 7 8 BIRTH BY DESIGN mother is placed in a dependent condition reinforced by the use of unfamiliar language and machinery The place of birth also determines the way care is organized Birth at home is patterned around the values of the family In hospitals—where hundreds, or even thousands, of births occur each year birth is a routine event, accomplished... poliklinische (polyclincal) birth Under the current insurance system a new mother is entitled to up to one week of care by a kraamverzorgster (postpartum caregiver) Kraamverzorgsters follow a three-year training program and offer a range of services, including newborn care, help initiating and sustaining breastfeeding, health advice for mother and child, and help with housework (Van Teijlingen 1990) These... distinctive cultural values that play an important role in the design of maternity care The Nordic countries are marked by a thoroughgoing pragmatism that seeks to combine cost-effectiveness with best results This same attitude is found in the United Kingdom—with its strong emphasis on randomized clinical trials and in the Netherlands—where the government has invested much money in researching and . Congress Cataloging -in- Publication Data Birth by design : pregnancy, maternity care, and midwifery in North America and Europe / edited by Raymond DeVries. Western Europe and North America. In the early stages of this project we did consider including countries in Latin America, South America, and Southern and