Cesarean Rates

As a doula, I support all kinds of birth, from scheduled cesarean births, home births, to natural intervention-free hospital births.  Each birth is as individual as the woman who is doing the birthing!  Many women who choose to have natural births also choose to birth in the hospital.  While the hospital may not be the most ideal place to have an intervention-free birth, it is completely possible.  As a doula, I do my best within my scope of practice to ensure that all is done to make that possible.  Even still, a large piece of the puzzle is the individual birth place.  For those who don’t want or cannot have an out-of-hospital birth, many thanks to The Unnecesarean for pointing us to a site that has all of the cesarean rates of every hospital in the country.  I cannot overemphasis what a valuable piece of information this provides to birthing women everywhere.  Go here to see the rates for every Pennsylvania hospital and see where yours ranks.  Keep in mind that if your chosen hospital has a very high cesarean rate that you look at the big picture.  Some hospitals are very natural birth friendly, but because they are metropolitan hospitals they handle very complicated cases (high order multiples, for example), which may inflate the rate a bit.  The average for all of PA is around 31%.