Be Excellent To Each Other

That's not what the research suggests at all.

It's that if you are in any sort of risk category then you are definitely better off in hospital but if you aren't then you are still better off in hospital but only very slightly.

I didn't say it said anything about maternity patients, either in the bit you quote or the remainder of my post. The report says those deaths are across hospital admissions AS A WHOLE. Unless there's some prediliction towards ineptitude in thorassic surgeons, your point is irrelevant.

Not what I was reading. Also, if you have 150-250k deaths per year in hospital which are related to hospital problems rather than the medical issue you presented with, you clearly are better off at home if you've got no complications.

EDIt - ah, are you referring to the NHS one? I hadn't read that bit. I was relying on the other two reports.

Clearly we have spectacularly dirty home birth midwives in this country, then.

My point is that lacking in any specifics about maternity, that report can't tell you anything about whether there is an increased risk of nosocosmial infection or botched care for women giving birth if they go into hospital.

The conclusion you're drawing is like saying "In England, 1000 people are killed every year by London taxis. Therefore, I will assume that if I am in Bradford, I have the same likelihood of being killed by a London taxi as someone in Peckham".

Heh. I think people misunderstand what I meant by "attentive"

I think we can all agree that the safest place to give birth is in a car, midway between the home and the hospital.

Do the midwifes that do home births never make any mistakes, then? Seems like the hospitals should hire these infallible immortals.

Grim... talking about Grimlet's school parent's evening made me think about a little Zioette update!

She turned 3 at the end of last May and myself and the ex had her most recent report from her nursery last week, where they tell us the only thing she's a little behind on is her number and letter recognition, so we're trying to go a little to town hammering that into her now.

She did make me a very happy daddy when I popped round to see her last night. She's very, very excited about Halloween coming up and apparently they were making a big spiders web in nursery. Zioette suddenly piped up that she'd already made the spiders for it, and produced sheet upon sheet of paper covered in little spiders she'd drawn, each with 8 legs and a big smiley face in the middle of their circular bodies! She's always loved drawing, but up to this point it's pretty much just been shapes and scribbles (although she does ocasionally draw very abstract looking people, with big eyes, big nose, spikey hair and two long legs and arms sticking out of the nose!).

She also told me that the other children at nursery have mummies and daddies that live together, which did make me feel a wee bit sad.

I'm sure they do. But if many of the home deaths are due to midwives' screw ups, then the risk of home births is much less to do with not being near all the ZOMG the so wonderful doctorz and machines! that curio's going on about.

Let us assume that 99.5% of births proceed relatively normally and 0.5% have serious complications that require medical intervention.

Then for 99.5% of births, hospital birth and home birth are interchangeable dangerous from the perspective of an error by the medical staff. I see no reason to believe the midwifes working home births are any more or less reliable than those working hospital births. [1]

For the other 0.5%, in the event of a home birth, mother and child will have to be rushed into hospital [2]; for hospital births, they'll be treated in situ or wheeled into surgery or whatever. In both of these scenarios, the chances of someone making a mistake are the same, because the processes and staff are the same whether you're dealing with a home birth or a hospital birth.

I therefore contend that the "hospitals make mistakes" line of argument is irrelevant to any discussion about home birthing. It trivially devolves to "medical staff make mistakes" and there are medical staff present at any planned birth.

[1] However, the widwifes in a hospital are under supervision of a doctor, whereas at a home birth I understand they are not.
[2] The unavoidable delay introduced here is, of course, critical in many cases.

Must be tough mate.

Glad she's doing well.

Especially with her drawing

But the hospital deaths are going to include anyone who would have died at home anyway, as the most risky ones will happen there!

The 'hospital risk' factor is going to be lower for birth units than, say, brain surgery or heart surgery units, or disease units, for spectacularly obvious reasons.

Thirdly, Mr Kissyfur's understanding of statistics is on a par with Craster's understanding of grenades.

[/quote]
Supposition, chap.

Kissyfur, it's all very well blaming the NHS for your medical woes but you're omitting the fact that you disturbed the rest of a Japanese Demon Sword.

Couple of points, though obviously speaking from a position of ignorance regarding births

1) I reiterate - you cannot interpolate infection statistics for a hospital as a whole to incidents among maternity admissions. In, for example, a transplant ward, you've got patients who have undergone significant surgery, and are on immunosuppressants. Compare that to a maternity ward, where far fewer patients will have undergone surgery, and (a little hazy on this one) aren't mothers' immune systems usually more resiliant than average anyway as a result of pregnancy?

2) If there is a medical reason to induce or operate, wouldn't that same decision be made whether you were in hospital or not? So you're just as likely to need an IV at home as you are in hospital (unless you're deliberately refusing everything of course, which you could do just as easily in hospital). So, unless there's some good reason to expect that midwives visiting at home are significantly better at their jobs than those in hospitals, surely the risk of, for example, an IV induced arterial blockage is exactly the same whether you're at home or in hospital?

Science question – why, when one is carrying a cup of tea, does the liquid slosh around more if you’re not looking at the cup?

Try it. When you look at the cup, the liquid stops sloshing. It becomes almost entirely still. Either my eyes are telling my brain to tell my hand to make tiny subconscious corrections to stop even the most minor sloshing, or my mind is controlling the liquid.

It's this.

When you're looking at something, your mind subconsciously focuses attention on it in subtle ways. It's probably the same reason that you tend to steer your car towards whatever you're looking at, so if you stare at a bikini-clad woman on the side of the road, you'll subconsciously steer towards her.

"And that's why I ran her over, Your Honour"

It's the same for me I'd say. But then I am awesome.

It sloshes more if I'm running/dancing with my brew though.

Just like pissing really.

Indeed. If you hold a small plumb line or pendulum in your hand, look at the end of it and simply think strongly of it moving in a circle, it will do so.

Like pissing.

When I have a bowl of cereal in the evenings, and I have to transport it from the kitchen to the living room, I pass through the dining room.

Most of the time the lights are off in the dining room and I end up leaving a trail of milk behind on the floor. It's true, If I can't see the bowl.. then I can't balance it properly.

Use a tray, problem solved.

Buy a bigger bowl, problem solved.

I do like cereal so I'm leaning towards the bigger bowl option...

How about switching the light on?

How about sitting down in the lounge and getting your Mrs to bring you stuff.

Bacon butty in lieu of cereal?

Alternatively, apply clingfilm to cereal bowl prior to transportation.

(NB! remove prior to eating, though)

Or take the milk with you and put the milk in the bowl once safely in the bedroom.

Eat in the dining room.

Setup a tube and funnel system, with the entry point in the kitchen and the exit point in the lounge.
Pour in the milk, run through the dining room with dry cereal (hence no spillage no matter the speed), put bowl under exit point and wait.

Keep a cow in the living room and get the milk fresh.

Grow cereal crops in your living room all year round (using hydroponics as required) and, developing Trooper's idea further, keep a cow there also and have it graze on a portion of these (but not all, obv.). Fit cereal processing plant (e.g. rotary kiln) to convert the grains into Cheerios etc.

Thus you'll have a self-sustaining supply of cereal and milk; the route between your kitchen and lounge will remain milk-spillage-free. You can sell the cow manure to keen gardeners and, if you become really peckish later in the day, roast beef is always a possibility too.

Toast

*Taps glass*

To, your Mum!

You can probably use the manure to create biogas to burn to power the rotary kiln, just to make it even more self-sufficient. However, if you want sugar on your cereal growing sugar beet rather than sugar cane would probably be easier.

Hire a servant.

The cows skulls and leg bones could be fashioned into large bowls and spoons.

Indeed mate. Using a manifold system to collect the cow fart-gas (and then flaring it off in the kiln) would cut down on unpleasant smells in the living room, as well as saving the planet. It would also mean the manure would be collected as well - less pesky carpet shampooer use ahoy!



You're right again mate, plus the beet leaves byproduct could also form the basis of a silage feed for the cattle, too.

Beex: solving complex problems with great simplicity(TM)

I think we can all give ourselves a pat on the back, here. Hope TheVision appreciates this thoughtful input to his household dilemma.

Board feature request (which I'm sticking in here because it's not very important): URL button to work like other forums I've used wherein you highlight the text you want to make into a link and then, when you click the URL button, a pop-up text box appears into which you paste the actual URL. After doing this you dismiss the pop-up and it's all made clickable automatically. Currently you need to highlight the text, click the URL button, the manually edit the URL tags to add "=blah.com" into them which is a real pain.

Or is it just me that likes that feature?

This is where someone points out that it somehow already does this and I'm just doing it wrong.

You only need to add the =blah.com bit if you want the text in the url to be different.
(url=http://www.blah.com)a site(/url)
(url)http://www.blah.com(/url)

both link to blah.com but with the first one saying 'a site' and the second one displaying the URL.

Why not inject heroin instead of making supper?

Anyone fancy looking over my CV and ripping it to shreds giving constructive criticism?

Well, yes; that is the specific scenario I'm talking about. Especially because, in the other case, the board software makes raw URLs clickable anyway so the only reason anyone would want to use the URL button is to do what I'm talking about.

You don't even need to use [url], just post the link and let us lazy fucks take our chances with the auto-hyperlinking phpBB does.

Edit: I swear that last post wasn't there when I caught up, and I only just opened the thread. Weird.

Details here http://phpbb.com

Only if you've fixed it from the last time I ripped it to shreds.

I dont actually remember if I changed it from your comments!
Think I was busy writing it in swedish.