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Duggar Family Admonished by Obstetrician for Jessa Duggar Seewald, Jill Duggar Dillard’s Home Births

The Duggar family came under recent fire by an obstetrician for daughter Jessa Duggar Seewald and Jill Duggar Dillard’s home birthing plans. Last week, Jessa Duggar had a baby boy at home, but w...
Duggar Family Admonished by Obstetrician for Jessa Duggar Seewald, Jill Duggar Dillard’s Home Births
Written by Kimberly Ripley
  • The Duggar family came under recent fire by an obstetrician for daughter Jessa Duggar Seewald and Jill Duggar Dillard’s home birthing plans. Last week, Jessa Duggar had a baby boy at home, but was rushed to a local hospital immediately thereafter because of heavy bleeding.

    Dr. Amy Tuteur is an obstetrician known for her blog, The Skeptical OB. The former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School shared what might have happened to the two members of the Duggar family who recently planned on home births. Dr. Tuteur writes that “without modern obstetrics, both Jill and Jessa Duggar would probably be dead.”

    “Jessa Duggar Seewald and Jill Duggar Dillard are two, young healthy women who planned homebirths. They were about as low risk as low risk can be, yet, in an object lesson for homebirth advocates, both had to be rescued by obstetricians,” she writes.

    “So both Jill and Jessa trusted birth and birth nearly killed them. Obstetricians, in contrast, saved them. They’ve given us an object lesson in why homebirth can be dangerous and even deadly,” the doctor adds.

    The Duggar family planned on a home birth when Jill Dillard was expecting her baby. She labored for 70 hours at home before being rushed to the hospital for an emergency C-section.

    Dr. Tuteur explains Jill had what professional call as “obstructed labor.”

    “It’s the technical term for a baby too big or too poorly positioned to fit through the pelvis,” she writes, noting that both mothers and babies died from this prior to the innovation of modern obstetrics.

    Jessa Duggar Seewald was rushed to the hospital for excessive bleeding last week. Some think the Duggar family tried to obscure Jessa’s identity, with Michelle Duggar even providing an incorrect age for her daughter when talking to the EMS dispatcher before help arrived.

    Of this, Dr. Tuteur shares five possible reasons for Jessa’s bleeding–failure of the uterus to contract, partial retention of the placenta, cervical tears, vaginal lacerations, and pre-eclampsia. All of those conditions were treatable if the delivery had taken place in a hospital. Without medical intervention, Jessa Duggar could have died.

    Does the Duggar family believe so strongly in home births because they trust the Lord in all things? Michelle Duggar delivered her babies in a hospital.

    The Duggar family released a photo of Ben and Jessa’s baby shortly after his birth, and one of the Seewald family shortly thereafter. Dr. Tuteur noted a few concerns when observing the photos.

    “It’s hard not to feel sorry for Jessa,” she wrote. “She was probably contractually bound to news outlets to provide pictures of the baby, but she wasn’t there to be in them. She was probably contractually bound to provide a family photo as soon as possible so her husband brought the baby to the hospital and it appears that they hung a sheet behind her hospital bed; she was probably sitting in the bed (too weak to stand?) and husband was standing beside her.”

    Do you think the Duggar family is so beholden to TLC, and so wanting this new reality show to replace the now-cancelled 19 Kids and Counting, that they were willing to jeopardize the health of both mother and child?

    Do you think Dr. Tuteur, because she fully embraces obstetrics, believes there is only one way to have a baby?

    Whose side do you lean toward?

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