Home births

The Royal Gazette's recent stories about home births have sparked some welcome debate on the issue.

And it is good news that the Island's obstetricians plan to meet to discuss the question as well.

Doctors in Bermuda have traditionally discouraged home births, primarily for safety reasons. If something were to go wrong during the delivery that required surgery - and things can and do go wrong - the time lost getting to the hospital from the home could result in injury to the child and/or the mother, if not death.

That is the most extreme scenario, but it should not be dismissed out of hand. In addition, babies born with potential problems - they may be premature and underweight, they may have difficulty feeding and so on - may require 24-hour medical attention after the birth, meaning that the mother, having delivered the child at home, would then have to move to hospital with the child. That may be more jarring for all concerned than delivering the baby in hospital in the first place.

Bermuda is fortunate in that the Maternity Ward is one of the best things about King Edward VII Memorial Hospital. The vast majority of the nurses are hard-working, caring and dedicated. And the Island also has very capable obstetricians and paediatricians.

But that does not mean that there is not room for another alternative, albeit one that must be regulated and must take into account the worst case scenarios, as well as the best cases.

There also needs to be a full study of the most recent medical research done on the topic because there seems to be some conflict in the research that has been cited in the recent stories.

But in the event that a pregnancy has gone very well without any complications, it should be possible for a mother to deliver a child at home, provided there are a midwife and a doctor present to guard against any unforeseen complications. It would also make sense for the father or friend to be trained in labour coaching and the like.

A tragic life

Bermuda's teachers would give their students the most valuable lesson they will have this year if they were to read out loud Jerome Campbell's eloquent and tragic tribute to his brother Cleaveland (Clevie) Campbell, which appeared in The Royal Gazette on Thursday.

In it, Mr. Campbell described how his brother's promising life went wrong and how he fell victim to drugs and alcohol and a life on the street. Mr. Campbell died, alone, on a Hamilton construction site last weekend. He was 42 years old.

Just one day before he died, Jerome Campbell told his brother: "Our lives are getting short. There has to come a time in your life when you have to shake this thing off and do something for yourself. Those were the last words I said to him."

If Bermuda's young - and not so young - people could take these words to heart and vow to stay off drugs, then Clevie Campbell's death would not have been in vain.

The full story can be seen on www.theroyalgazette.com