Almost four years ago we explained the story of the death of Caroline lovell, a woman who died hours after giving birth at home, after years of struggle to get home births funded in Australia, as they were then in other countries.
Today we talk about it again because although four years have passed its name is still very valid in the media and debates about home birth, to the point that the poor one has died hundreds of times, and those that remain.
How he died?
Good question of which there is still no clear answer. The investigations were delayed for years and it was not until last year when more details were known, without knowing yet if in fact everything happened exactly that way. As explained, Lovell wanted to have a natural birth that was not promised in hospitals and decided to give birth at home.
He struggled to be attended by professionals regulated through the health system, asking for protection for them and more means, without achieving it, and was attended by two midwives who, apparently, they didn't know how to see that Lovell was suffering a hemorrhage. After the birth of her baby in a birth pool, the mother stayed in it for a long time, until she commented that she was not well and that she needed help. Finally, she asked to be notified to an ambulance, which transferred her to a hospital, where she died hours later.
The defender of home births
Some means, by giving more hype to the news, they raised Lovell to the status of world spokesperson for home birth, baptizing her as "the defender of home births." So they talked about her in the news, when she talked about her death, as if she had commanded a rebellion of women against hospitals, in favor of giving birth at home, and at the time of doing so she would have died.
But no, I wasn't the defender. She was an advocate, like so many others in Australia and like so many others around the world. And not only of home birth, but of giving birth with respect, with dignity, with affection, feeling an active part of the process and responsible for your decisions, in what remains a direct criticism of the treatment received in hospitals, because if there women could give birth as they wish (which on the other hand is as recommended by WHO for decades and in most protocols for years) they would not have to do it in their homes, and only who would really I would like to do so for the place, rather than for the treatment to be received.
Would he have been saved in a hospital?
The big question is this. Having been in a hospital, Would it have been saved? To which it is necessary to answer: probably yes, because if he died by a hemorrhage it could have been controlled. The problem is that in case of bleeding, it can also be controlled at a home: oxytocin is given so that the uterus is contracted, uterine massage is done for the same purpose or even the placenta is removed manually to avoid bleeding, and Then he moves to the hospital.
In fact, a posteriori it has been known that Lovell also had a hemorrhage in his first birth, in the hospital, and that the midwives who attended him had not explained this. Perhaps, had they done so, they would have acted in a preventive manner before, performing an active management of the delivery, which is associated with a two-fold reduction in the risk of postpartum hemorrhage.
In the hospital they calculated that in total he had suffered a loss of 3 liters of blood. The midwives explained that they calculated that they would have lost about 400 ml in the pool, but since there was water, it was considered impossible to know for sure how much they had lost before arriving at the hospital.
So who knows if the same thing would not have happened in a hospital, if they had given birth in the water. Would anyone have read "the defender of childbirth dies at home in a hospital birth"? Because surely the news would not have transpired, as deaths that occur in hospital deliveries are not usually known.
And anyway, as I say, if we had detected bleeding at home now we would not be talking about this.
Have you died more than a hundred times?
Insurance. From time to time news of her appears, as if she had just died recently when it happened almost four years ago (in Ideal, for example, they explained her death again in June last year). In addition, it is in the minds of defenders of hospital birth contrary to home delivery, that when they run out of arguments they say that of "yes, as the defender of home birth who died giving birth at home recently." And of course, as they always talk about the same case, the same person and the “recently”, because it seems that the poor does not stop dying again and again.
