"Since the 1970s, Gaskin and the other midwives at the Farm have attended an estimated 3,000 births of women who live on the property, are from the local Amish community or have come to the Farm to give birth because they have read Gaskin’s books. Approximately 2 percent of them have ended up with C-sections, and none have labored under epidural anesthesia save for one “princess,” Gaskin told me, who rented white leather furniture for her birthing cabin and ultimately had to be taken to the hospital for pain relief.
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The United States spends more on health care than any other country and more on maternal health than any other type of hospital care but is ranked 50th in maternal mortality and 41st in neonatal mortality.
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Gaskin and many of her fellow midwives have no formal medical training, and the fact that they have good outcomes even with births that obstetricians consider high-risk — breeches, big babies and vaginal births after C-section or VBACs — is evidence, she says, that for most women less interventionist care is better."
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The United States spends more on health care than any other country and more on maternal health than any other type of hospital care but is ranked 50th in maternal mortality and 41st in neonatal mortality.
...
Gaskin and many of her fellow midwives have no formal medical training, and the fact that they have good outcomes even with births that obstetricians consider high-risk — breeches, big babies and vaginal births after C-section or VBACs — is evidence, she says, that for most women less interventionist care is better."