week 17: op-ed course
As part of my resolution to expand my creative horizons in the first half of the year, I signed up for a workshop to improve my opinion writing skills. I had taken the day-long introduction course several years ago, and had since attempted several times to get published in the Opinion Page of state and national newspapers. I hadn’t had much luck, only managed to publish a letter to the editor in Harpers Magazine last December.
The non-profit organization that runs this course is phenomenal. Started by a woman who noticed that fewer than 10% of opinion pieces are written by women, the founder decided to tour the country teaching able and ambitious girls the tricks of the op-ed trade. Her pupils have had phenomenal success and her course is now taught to hundreds of women every year. Read the website for more information.
The follow-up course was four 2 hour meetings on a Monday night, for four consecutive weeks. On the first night of the course my daughter was one month old. I was very proud of making it out of the house at such an early stage in my baby’s life - though i was probably over-ambitious, as fell ill a few days later.
I wrote an opinion piece and pitched it to three different newspapers (USA Today, SF Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal): all refused it.
Read on to see what I wrote and contact me if you have any ideas as to where and how I should pitch it!
Cristel de Rouvray has a bachelors and masters degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D from the London School of Economics. She gave birth at home in January 2010.
Cutting health care costs is within your reach, not just a matter of politics.
Like many other San Franciscans I drive a Honda, shop at Whole Foods and take yoga classes. Yet, when it comes to delivering babies I’m a 1% girl: out of 14,000 babies born here every year, less than 130 are born at home.
I don’t like taking risks. After due consideration, my husband and I found that home birth was the safe and responsible choice for our second child. Thus, I expected more people to give birth at home, especially in San Francisco, city of the curious and ambitious!
Home birth is considerably cheaper than hospital birth. After my first child’s birth in 2007 I took one look at the bill and exclaimed: I did all the work and someone else got paid $30,000! My insurance was billed $10,000 for nurses, residents and a midwife to watch me labor and push. Add $20,000 for two subsequent nights and tests as inpatients- all for a low-tech, no drugs hospital birth.
In contrast my daughter’s home birth cost $4000, including all pre and post-partum care. Yet, we did not personally save money as we had only paid a $100 co-pay for our hospital birth three years ago, and our insurance company did not cover our home birth. This is a problem as it dissuades couples from considering home birth and translates into higher medical insurance premiums for all. If our nation is looking for places to cut medical costs, covering safe and responsible home births is an obvious opportunity.
Another issue is safety. Many couples shy away from even considering home birth for fear that it is not safe. Yet, home birth with a licensed midwife is safe for both mother and child. A study published in The British Medical Journal in 2005 analyzed 5500 planned home births in the U.S. and found that no mothers died, and that C-section and infant mortality rates were lower than for low risk women having hospital births. So home birth is actually safer for healthy people like me!
Fear of pain is another reason women don’t consider home birth. Having now given birth twice, I certainly understand this fear, but I can also say that my home birth was considerably less painful than my hospital birth. I believe this difference is linked to the environment in which I labored: the calmer environment allowed me to focus on the work at hand and labor effectively. And my midwife supported me in ways I would never receive in a hospital.
There are plenty of times a hospital setting is necessary in ensuring the safety of mother and child. But you’d be surprised at how many times this setting is not necessary. If the U.S. had the right mechanisms in place to triage between women who could safely labor at home and those who shouldn’t, a conservative estimate is that one third of parents would chose home birth. That’s the ratio in the Netherlands and in Taos where a midwifery practice delivers 30% of babies in northern New Mexico. Imagine the money we would all save if a third of US babies were born at home!
My recommendation for your safety and the betterment of our health system? If you are pregnant, have a pregnant partner or are of child-bearing age, go and meet your local midwife and fully understand your options for labor and delivery (visit www.mothersnaturally.org to find a midwife near you): you could be a 1% girl too.
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