• Homeopathic Medicines in Pregnancy
  
• Homeopathic Medicines During Labor
  
• Homeopathic Treatment of Mother and Infant

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) commonly asserts that its members deserve credit for the decline in infant and maternal death rates during the past century. ACOG however doesn't readily acknowledge that most of the countries with the lowest infant mortality rates have the largest numbers of midwives who provide home births and rarely utilize technological interventions. Despite spending more money per person on health care than any other country, the U.S. ranks 18th in infant mortality according to 1984 statistics. (1) It is startling to learn that not only are all Scandanavian countriesahead of the U.S. in having lower infant mortality rates, but so are Ireland, Spain, and East Germany.

Despite the various shortcomings of modern obstetrical care, the present regime is an improvement over the way physicians delivered babies in the 1800s. In the 1870s women were commonly given regular doses of quinine before birth to prevent fever, plus a powerful cathartic to "cleanse their body," then ergot to induce labor, and morphine to lessen any after pains. (2) The use of these powerful drugs increased, rather than lowered, instances of infant and maternal mortality during childbirth.

With the fear of germs so prominent at the turn of the century, hospitals did all they could to eradicate infectious organisms. Nurses washed women's head with kerosene, ether, and ammonia. They sometimes shaved pubic hair because they thought that it harbored germs. And they performed enemas on women in labor every 12 hours and gave continual douches of saline solutions to which whisky and bichloride of mercury were added. (3) The increased effort to protect the mother and infant led to interventions and manipulations of the birthing process that made giving birth both traumatic and dangerous. Describing the 19th century obstetrician, historians Richard and Dorothy Wertz have also unfortunately characterized the 20th century obstetrician:

"Doctors were on the lookout for trouble in birth. That seemed to them to be their primary purpose. They found a lot of trouble--so much, in fact, that they came to think that every birth was a potential disaster and that it was best to prepare each woman for the worst eventualities. In line with that perception, doctors increased their control over the patients during labor and delivery, rendering them more powerless to experience or participate in birth. Women acceded to the doctors' increasing control because they also believed that their methods would make birth safer." (4)

The underlying assumption of obstetricians has tended to be that women need technological interventions in order to have a healthy and safe pregnancy and birth. Although some medical interventions are certainly of great value, there is general consensus that birth has become over-medicalized. Some of this overmedicalization is the result of doctors doing all they can to prevent malpractice suits,* and some of it is the result of doctors assuming that more medical interventions improve the chances of having a healthy mother and infant.

[* It is rare for physicians to be sued for over-utilizing medical interventions, but it is common for suits to arise after a doctor waits before intervention. Dr. David Rubsamen, a physician, attorney and insurance company consultant, notes, "It's very uncommon for an obstetrician to be sued because he did an unnecessary Caesarean section. But cases where the charge is that you waited 45 minutes too long, are very common." (5)]