The OBGYN Who Says "Hire a Midwife!"... An Interview with Dr. Stu from Birthing Instincts
How can you support your doula clients to advocate for themselves in an environment that pushes total compliance?
In this episode of the Birthworker Podcast, I'm joined by Dr. Stu Fischbein from The Birthing Instincts podcast, who is sharing his insight and experience from working as the only home birth obstetrician in Southern California.
In this podcast interview with Dr. Fischbein, we discuss:
Understanding hospital culture as an outsider…
The changes in the children’s vaccination schedules…
How healthcare and politics are more related than you might think…
… and a whole lot more!
Dr. Stu Fischbein
"Industry" and "patient", terms and things that I've tried to undo for myself, because anything that becomes an industry, becomes an assembly line, becomes depersonalized, becomes algorithmic. I don't want to start off by by saying that, but I want your listeners to understand that birth is not an industry. I mean, it is in the medical profession, it's an industry. That's correct.
What we're trying to do, what you're trying to do, what I'm trying to do is change that mindset. It's a very personal life event that you can't place in a column A or B, or C and say, you know, all people who have this type of thing A are the same, because that's not how it works. But yet, it's interesting this morning, I was listening to, Candace Owens has a new series out as a mom called "A Shot in the Dark", and I was listening to the first episode. And the propaganda and the stuff that's in my profession, to get people to do stuff without thinking, blindly, it's overwhelming. And it's actually been in our profession for a really long time. Calling it a profession is fine. Calling it an industry... Yeah, now it's an industry. Because what's the motive of an industry?
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, financial gain. Yeah. And you're so right, that that's something that is just normalized to say, but that's part of the problem.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, it just rolls off the tongue. I do it all the time, I catch myself all the time. And Blyss and I have this thing about, if she ever says the word "provider", I have my little my little, *rings bell* my little school bell, because "provider" was a term that was created by insurance companies to distance themselves from the doctor-patient relationship. And if you want to use a general term for all of us in the health industry, we can call us practitioners, which gives us at least some credibility, I guess.
A provider is the guy that makes your pizza, a pizza provider. It's a very generic term. And it's meant to be that. It's designed, these things are not random, these things that happen. They're all designed to make us distance ourselves from individual thought, or even trusting our gut instinct. I mean, would you rather go to a midwife? Or would you rather go to a birth provider?
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, there's no question.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
But what the insurance companies or what the medical community would do would rather have you think of us all as the same, as opposed to individual professions like Midwifery.
Kyleigh Banks
And then they're doing the opposite and want the practitioners to think of moms as all the same.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, yeah. If you have a one in 16,000 chance of having something happen, then you need to take this medicine, because it could happen to you. Whereas giving people information allows them to make an informed decision, and not all people are the same risk factor groups. Like, Candace was talking about HPV vaccine this morning. And with HPV vaccine, the chance of dying from cervical cancer is like .00025% or something like that. But if you look at certain risk populations, it's much higher, and certain low risk populations, it's much lower.
But the thought process in the medical world pushed by Pharma is that all women should have this, because any woman could be struck down at any moment by cervical cancer. And that's just not true. And so she's got a great way of thinking. I'm listening to her and I want to like, I want to interrupt her. I want to add stuff, but I would, again, I don't know how good this series is gonna be. And I know that she's a polarizing figure sometimes for some people, but this is not a political issue. It shouldn't be.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah. Did she drop the whole thing at once?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
This is episode one. I don't know how many there will be.
Kyleigh Banks
Great. Yeah, I heard about it.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
She was on Instagram a month or so ago where she started to take a deep dive into the vaccine schedule. And you know why she did that is because she's the mom about like a two-year-old, and she's pregnant again, and her doctors are telling her she needs to get the COVID vaccine in pregnancy, or the TDAP vaccine, or the flu vaccine in pregnancy. And her kid's now at that age where in certain states, you know, you've got to get on the vaccine schedule or you can't go to school. You can't go to preschool. You can't go anywhere. And yeah, I know we got off topic. So anyway, I just sort of start to ramble.
Kyleigh Banks
That's good. That's what we're here for. That's what we sign up for. I want to take you back to like, pre-residency, pre-med school. Was there a point where you ever drank the Kool Aid, where you were doing things that you're not proud of now? And just like blindly following along?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Well, I think when I was about 11 years old, I stole a comic book from the store. I'm not proud of that. I still remember that. Other than that, before that, I didn't know anything. So no, I mean, I was raised in the Midwest, and I had a mother and a father and a sister and a pretty normal family for the 60s. So no, I don't know that. But I do regret a lot of the stuff that I did as a resident. And in the early years of my- well, I don't regret it, because you can't regret what you don't know. But I guess I get frustrated with the fact that, why didn't I know that? Why wasn't I taught those things? Why was I taught to follow this particular path and think that pregnancy is an illness that needs to be treated? Why did I think that?
Kyleigh Banks
Did you think that before getting excited about becoming an obstetrician?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
I didn't think about it at all. Yeah. When you know, you're 18-19 years old, you're not thinking about that sort of thing.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, that's true. And then it's interesting because you don't have any of those original thoughts of your own. So the very first thought that gets put in your head is from the medical school, from the residency program.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, I mean, I know my birth story from what my mom told me and that I was born in the 50s. And in the 50s, they gave women ether. And they put forceps on and pulled babies out. And they cut episiotomies. And they kept you in the hospital for seven days afterward. And I saw the bill from my mom's obstetrician. And it was $300.
Kyleigh Banks
Wow.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
So yeah, it was a different era. $300 in the 50s was probably like, you know, $5,000 is now, I don't know. It just seemed ridiculously low. The hospital bill, they itemized like
$76 for a day in the maternity ward.” I have the paperwork somewhere. I've kept it. But I just remember that she told me those stories. And at that time, it was considered normal. Women came in they were knocked out. And the babies were pulled out.
Kyleigh Banks
Do you think they use that as making it today seem better? Like, "Well, that's what it used to be. Look how great it is today."
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Um, I don't know what they're thinking, quite frankly, really. I don't know that they're thinking at all. I say this all the time, I think that it looks like they just regurgitate information. It's the long habit of not thinking something is wrong that gives it the superficial appearance of being right. And when you've done something one way for a really long time, you think that that's the way to do it. And if somebody comes along and tries to tell you you're doing it wrong, there's a huge cognitive dissonance there.
Because that means that wait a minute, I've been doing it wrong for... I can't believe that, that guy must be crazy. Because that's the way we rationalize things in our brain, when we find out that maybe we've been doing something wrong. It's like, we're gonna see a massive, I don't know if you'll see remorse or anger, but as more and more information comes out about, say, the COVID vaccine, and the propaganda that was used to push it. And the fact that there may be long term complications. There was just a paper out this week about the possibility of it altering your DNA, in vitro, not in vivo, but it's beginning.
This stuff is going to be coming out over the years, and we may see some other chronic illnesses. Are people going to have buyer's remorse? Are they going to say that they did the wrong thing? Or are they going to say that, you know, they're going to just put their fingers in their ears and go na-na-na, I don't want to hear this stuff, because there's nothing I can do about it now anyway, so why would I want to pay attention to it? And there is something you can do about it, you can not let it happen again. Because history just keeps repeating itself. We keep doing the same things over and over again, and expecting a different result, and we all know what that means.
Kyleigh Banks
Did you come to your own conclusion that what was happening in your residency program and in your first years as an obstetrician was not right?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, but it took me 20 years to do it. And it took me integrating my practice with midwives. First as just taking the transports. And I've said many times on other podcasts that I didn't take the transports because I thought homebirth midwifery was a good idea... I took the transports because I was a mercenary. I was trying to make money, and it was a different era back then you didn't come out and get a job working for HMO or something, you came out and hung up your shingle, and you try to hustle and build a practice.
So that's how I got into midwifery, exposed to midwifery at all. And then I began to see, talking to them, a whole different way of doing things. And then I started a collaborative midwifery practice in a hospital with two CNMs back in '95, or '96, I think. And we practiced together for 15 years, and we had really good outcomes. And over that period of time, I began to change everything that I was doing. But the first 10-15 years in practice, I practiced just like most obstetricians do now. You know, recommending interventions, recommending artificial rupture of membranes, recommending, you know, Pitocin postpartum, recommending taking the baby from the mother when it's born and showing it to the mother, and then walking it over to the warmer.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, it's almost crazier that when you're in it, you think it's normal. And now looking at it from the outside, you're just like, they must not even be thinking.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Well, they do think it's normal, because when a when one of our clients or maybe one of your clients goes into hospital and says, "You know, I really don't want vitamin K." I mean, Vitamin K, it's like innocuous, but they don't want it. But the postpartum nurse sometimes gets upset about that. And they often don't know what to do with a person who breaks with the algorithm.
I love this analogy so much that I'm gonna use it again. But have you ever seen the movie A Bug's Life? I think most people have seen A Bug's Life, it's a Pixar movie. Pixar almost never misses. Their movies are always great. There's a scene in the beginning where the ants are all bringing food to the offering for the grasshoppers, and they're walking along, and on the big island where the tree is, a leaf falls off the tree and falls down and falls in front of the ants in the line. And the ants are panicking and they go, "What do we do? What do we do? Oh, no, what do we do?" One ant winds up on a rock, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he says something like, "Calm down. We'll go around the leaf."
Sometimes I feel like... Now, I haven't been in the hospital in a while because right now they don't really let other, you know the last two years. Normally, when we transported somebody to the hospital, we would go with them. And we'd give reports, and we make sure they get tucked in, and stuff like that, then I would go because as a physician, I'm not you. I'm not going to sit there and watch people contract and be able to do nothing. But now we don't, so I really don't know what it's like, but I hear from the doulas and the other clients that I've been sending, or have to transport to the hospital, or get their care transferred. That there's still this stuff still goes on. And it's sometimes even worse, some of the ridiculousness with the swabbing of the nose before the dad can come upstairs, and all that stuff is sort of strange because the woman's sleeping with the dad every night and, you know, they're going into a private room. I don't know.
Kyleigh Banks
You can't make it make sense.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
No, you can't, you cannot make it make sense. I mean, you just watch what's going on in the news or on TV and you know, you've got people, politicians, celebrities wearing masks in certain events, and then they're in crowded rooms without masks. And then they're sitting around children who are masks while they're not masked, and you're trying to make sense of it. And then suddenly, by the way, I don't know when this is going to air. But I read something this morning. Isn't it interesting for the last two-three weeks, you have not heard from Anthony Fauci?
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, I didn't think about it till just now.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Neither did I. I read something on an email this morning, and it said we're putting out a, they call it instead of an Amber Alert, they called it a Silver Alert. But putting out a Silver Alert, where's Anthony Fauci?
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah. Should be the one making the announcements and things like that.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, where is he? So anyway, not again. This is what's going to happen throughout this whole interview, is I'm gonna go off-topic. My brain has what's called a "flight of Ideas." I think it's when you get too much going on in your head, your mouth and brain can't keep up together. So they just go off on their own tangent.
Kyleigh Banks
So before COVID regulations, so do you have hospital privileges still?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
No, I left the hospital world in 2010. I worked in the hospital for 24 years after my residency. I finished my residency in '86 and I practiced as an obstetrician for 24 years. The first 10 were like every other obstetrician, and then I decided I wanted to try to do a collaborative practice. Again, part of it was mercenary. Part of it was trying to have physician extenders, it's interesting in my business.
In a lot of businesses, when you're not working, you still have income. Because you have passive income, you have people working for you, or you have mail order, or you have something. As a physician, you have ongoing overhead every single day. But if you take a day off, or if you take a two-week vacation, your overhead continues, and your income is zero. So what I wanted to do was, maybe have midwives working for me so that on days where I'm not working, I'd still have revenue-generating. And it worked great for the midwives because they got a good salary. But at the end of the day, when you own a business, you're the last person to get paid. And so I found out that, yeah, it didn't really change anything.
So it's hard as an individual, it's hard in the medical field, unless you're in the management aspect of it, to have income when you're not working. They don't think about it. If I took a vacation that cost $10,000 to take my family to New York for a week. All right. The trip would actually cost me like $30,000, because $10,000 plus $20,000 lost income, that sort of thing. An ongoing overhead. So it has to be factored in. It's not like I have a job where I get paid vacation, paid family leave, that sort of thing.
Kyleigh Banks
Is that what the majority of Obstetricians, or just physicians in general, is that what's normal?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Now? Yeah, now almost all of them are employees. So they get their two or three weeks paid vacation, and they get their pension plan, and they work to shift and they, you know, for lifestyle reasons, it's so much better. But does it provide better medical care or job satisfaction? You know, there are priorities, and it just depends on what your priorities are. I wouldn't ever work in a situation like that.
People ask me sometimes, when could I ever go back and teach in a university setting or something. First of all, they wouldn't have me. But second, I know, they wouldn't. But second of all, I could never go back into that rigid environment where I'm, I'm told that I have to take this seminar, I have to show up here, or I have to go to this meeting where people talk for two hours and nothing gets accomplished.
You know, I have examples when I was a resident, I remember, we had a microscope that broke, I'm going to go off another tangent here. But in labor and delivery, when I was a resident, we had a microscope, we could look at urinalysis, we could look at vaginal discharge, we could look for ferning for ruptured membranes, up in labor and delivery. Well, the hospital figured out eventually, that's lost revenue. And so they took away our tools and all that stuff. And before they took away our microscope, the microscope broke. Now, if you had something in your house that broke that was, let's say, you had a disposal in your house and it broke. What would you do?
Kyleigh Banks
Call someone to fix it.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah. And how many days would it take for you to do that?
Kyleigh Banks
About less than a week.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, okay. But you don't have to go through committee meetings where you have to get approval, and then three bids, and then wait till the next committee meeting, but they only meet once a month. So it took eight months to get a new microscope, when I could have gone out the next day to a warehouse that sells used medical equipment, bought a new microscope for a couple hundred bucks, and had a new microscope. But you couldn't do that. Because it wasn't approved by the bureaucrats who sit in administration and decide which microscope you can buy, and who's going to buy it. So that was crazy. But eventually, they took the microscope away too. Because if I'm looking at urine under the microscope, they're not billing for that. So then they took that away.
You have to remember, that every decision that's made in the hospital is a financial decision. For instance, if you have a baby that's born in the hospital, and say it's breathing a little fast. At home, we would put the baby skin to skin. We would watch the baby. It's not retracting, it's not flaring, its O₂ stats are over 90. It's doing fine. Then we'd watch the baby for a few hours on mom, and by the end of the time, it's all resolved. What happens in the hospital?
Kyleigh Banks
It goes to the nursery for a few hours just to watch, yeah.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Baby has to be observed in the nursery. Why? Why? Well, because that's the way it's done. Don't you understand, Dr. Fishbein? That's the way it's done. How dare you say otherwise? All right. It's just not me, I mean, it's all the midwives I know, too. We all just talk about these things and roll our eyes and get so frustrated when we send people to the hospital, we know that we really don't want to send them in, because we know what's going to happen. And it happens pretty much every time, even when you have a physician who is like-minded who works at the hospital, they have very little say, or very little power, because these are policies that are brought down from people that actually aren't doing the work. They're administrators.
Kyleigh Banks
Can you talk about that a little bit? Who's making these policies?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
The full-time faculty, the nursing staff. And you know the old adage them that do, wait, how's it go? Them that, them that do, do? Them that can't do, teach. And then those that can't teach, administrate. I forgot the first part of it, but people know what I'm talking about. Yeah. So the administrators, except for rare exceptions, where people find that to be their life's calling, do you really go to nursing school to become a nursing administrator? Really? Yeah. I don't think so. Yeah, so what's to talk about? I mean, that's where the decisions are coming down. And their decisions are made by people that work from nine in the morning till five in the afternoon, but they affect you at two in the morning. They never come in and see the consequences of their decision.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah. And the obstetricians are feeling a lot of pressure.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Oh, there's immense pressure if you go off the reservation, you know you're gonna get yelled at. And that's been happening in our profession for a really long time. Say they don't allow VBAC at your hospital, and you bring somebody in and they want a VBAC, and you say, "Well, I'm gonna let her VBAC because that's what she wants," you know you're gonna get called in on Monday morning, and you're gonna get peer-reviewed for that. And depending on what your connection is, like in politics, if you're well connected, you don't have to worry about getting peer-reviewed or getting disciplined. But if you're outspoken, or outside of the good old boys club, which includes women, by the way, female physicians are just as bad as male physicians when it comes to these sorts of things. But then you're gonna get picked on.
I mean, I clearly remember when one of my midwives had a broken clavicle, and it got peer-reviewed, and one of the OBs had a broken clavicle and didn't get peer-reviewed. And I got peer-reviewed once for wearing the wrong scrubs. I came from Cedars and I was working at a different hospital, and I ran over there to catch a baby in the wrong colored scrubs, and I got written up.
Yeah, we had the chairman of the department do a C-section on a baby woman who'd had two previous vaginal deliveries for breech on her third baby. And didn't bother to check to see if the baby was still breech in the pre-op area, and did a C-section on her, the baby had turned and was vertex, and did not get peer-reviewed for that. So if people who are listening are dropping their jaw right now, don't. That's how the system works. If you're a protected class, you're fine.
Kyleigh Banks
Wow.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
And maternal fetal medicine is another part of the whole process. A lot of the decisions that are made for the 90% of women who are normal, in labor and delivery, are made by people who only take care of high risk stuff. So they look at, and it's not their fault, this is what they're trained to do, but they shouldn't be running programs.
One of the tenants I learned from the whole COVID thing is that experts might be expert in a very narrow field, but they should never be given full decision-making power. Because they don't know anything except their little field. And we've all seen it. And the destruction that's occurred. And again, on a smaller scale, it's been going on in labor and delivery and obstetrics for our entire lives, my entire career. The decisions are made by people who don't have to... They're not made for the individual woman, they're not made for the benefit of allowing those of us that went through all this training to come out only to be told how we're supposed to practice and what we're supposed to prescribe.
Why bother going to medical school and residency anymore? Why? They come out they tell you okay, you can't you know, if you're on a HMO, you can't use this medicine because it’s not on our formulary. And you can't do VBAC, and you have to induce everyone by 40 weeks, or 41 weeks, and you can't use this, and you can't do that, and they can't eat. Again, I can't imagine that the best and brightest people, I mean, I wouldn't say the brightest. People that go to medical school are still extremely bright, but they're more sheep than shepherd. You have to be more sheep than shepherd, because shepherds don't want to be herded. They want to do the herding.
And you just see people falling in line. All these doctors who are pushing and pushing and pushing the Coronavirus vaccine, down to six months of age, who encouraged you to do that, every time you go to your dentist, every time you go to your your OBGYN, they say, one of the nurses, the questions now they ask you, and they ask you, by the way, often at the window in the lobby where there's other people sitting, "Have you been vaccinated?" Since when did that become a public question? Since when did I have to be picked on for that? It's like when you walk into the some grocery store, they'd say, "Are you planning a home birth?" In front of everybody in line? That's where we're headed.
We're dividing people by the decisions that they're making. And it is, it's so destructive. Just because you don't agree with that, like, we in the home birth world, we're not against hospital birthing. We think what goes on in the hospital is crazy, and so unnecessary for most women. But we would never tell a woman who plans a hospital birth, you know, "Oh, you're an idiot for doing that." We might think that, but we really wouldn't do that. I don't think we would do that. Overtly, maybe some people in our profession would. But the alternative is almost always true. When an OB hears that one of their clients is thinking about doing a home birth, I mean, what are the first words out of their mouth?
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, dead baby.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah. That's even better than I was coming up with.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah. And they jump right to it. It's inappropriate. At best.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Inappropriate is kind. Yeah, it's evil, it's unethical, it's immoral. And it's, and it's stupid. Because it's not true. Yeah, when you undermine the confidence in your doctor or in the medical profession, or in Big Pharma, or the media, or the politics when you undermine them, then you can really never get that back. And if people have been lying to you, or you find out your doctor has been telling you things that aren't true all along, why would you ever believe them now? Why? Don't. Don't. Run for the hills. Again, this is one of the things that you probably tell your clients, but if your doctor doesn't want to answer your questions, or doesn't have the time, or sort of rolls their eyes or whatever, get the hell out of there. You know, as one of my friends says, "Run Forrest, run!"
Kyleigh Banks
It's important. And it's important to nail that down in pregnancy. And I know a lot of women wait till birth to stand up for themselves, and to say no. Or like the doctor is like, "Okay, we're scheduling induction." And that's the first time the moms mentioning like, "No," and that's a really hard place to be when you're walking that line, but like, you're going to labor land, and you should be able to just go there with your mind, but you're having to, like stay grounded and, and fighting for your rights.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
We tell women who this happens to, to maybe seek out a second opinion. The problem, of course, is that many of my colleagues will not see a woman at 39 weeks for a consult. You know, it reminds me of just something, when I said that, that I heard a month ago or maybe two months ago, there are pediatricians out there during COVID who won't see sick kids. They send them to urgent care. So you call your doctor, you say my kid has a fever, and he's not feeling well, "Take them to urgent care." What? Yeah, so who are you seeing in your office? Well check, what's the other euphemism? Well check is a euphemism for what?
Kyleigh Banks
Vaccinations.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Vaccination visit, right?
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Why would you take a well person, again this is a brainwashing thing we've done since I was born, is we go in for our annual physical or our well check. How often, you should ask doctors, and then maybe they'll lie or maybe they maybe sometimes it's true, but ask doctors how often that a well person visit who comes in with no complaints, they actually find something wrong. Almost everything that's wrong with a person is discovered by who?
Kyleigh Banks
The parents or the person, yeah. Absolutlely.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
I'm not saying if you have high risk, don't get a screening colonoscopy. But getting annual mammograms, annual pap smears after, you know, you've been married for 10 years, and you're monogamous and you're in your early 40s, to come in for an annual pap smear is insane. But that's what's recommended by American College of OBGYN. And it's almost like a knee jerk reflex. There's no thought given. Why are we doing this? Well, I know why the profession does it, because if you don't have people coming in for well checks, your revenue falls.
Kyleigh Banks
Now, do you still have people over your head, like malpractice insurance, or the board or anything like that?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Well, everybody has the medical boards over their head? Sure. I don't have malpractice insurance. I don't take health insurance. I don't work at a hospital. So I'm not being told that I have to be vaccinated to come to work. Or that, you know, I have to wear the right colored scrubs. So no, I have a great job. The hardest part about my job is that up until recently, I've been the only one, the only homebirth obstetrician in Southern California.
So, when California passed laws in 2014, that really made it harder for midwives to do some of the things they're quite capable of doing, like breeches, and even twin births. So I'm the only one. The hardest part for me was always just being on call all the time. Like I told you, I think I might even have texted you when we were messaging back and forth that I'll be here this morning, except for the caveat that we all add "Unless I'm at a birth. Unless i'm at a birth."
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah. Always.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
So that's the hardest part. But no, I don't have any restrictions on what I do other than my good judgment, my ethical responsibility to do the best that I can. And because I can charge what I want, or not charge anyone, if I want to give them a gratis visit. I can spend as much time with somebody as I want. Like our prenatal visits are generally an hour long. Now, I know that midwives can talk for an hour. I tend to run out of things to talk about. By the third trimester, we've gone through all the political stuff and all the sports stuff and all the other stuff the raising kids stuff, but you get to know your clients really well that way, but I can do that.
Whereas in the medical model, if you're working for an HMO and you're on a salary, they're going to schedule a OB visit every 10 minutes, maybe every 12 minutes, whatever they do at Kaiser here down in Southern California. And if you're having a private doctor with overhead, and your overhead is say, 300 bucks an hour, which is probably small, but it takes 300 bucks an hour to run your office, and your insurance company is paid $60 for an annual visit, well that means you got to do five annual visits in an hour, which means you give everybody 12 minutes, but you can't really give everybody 12 minutes, because you got to write notes, and you got to pee. So you're really down to about nine minutes a person, and how much can you get in eight or nine minutes when people have a problem? If they don't have a problem, then it's fine.
You know, I had a partner once who was seeing like 45 patients a day. And I would see 10. And I was happy with my 10. But I just asked him, How does he do it? And he says, Well, you know, by the way, the patients loved him. And they all felt like they spent an hour with him when they spent like five minutes with him, because he had that skill. But I said, "What happens when a patient comes in and starts to complain about something that needs more time?" And he says "I don't ask. They're coming in for an annual that's what they get. I don't ask them, “How's your relationship? How's your mother doing?” You know? And I don't go off script because I can't."
So that's a good explanation of why health care is one of the worst euphemisms of all time. Because it really isn't about caring. You can't care for somebody in six minutes. I mean, you can treat vaginitis or a urinary tract infection in six minutes, but what about the cause of that? What about talking about habits? Or what happened? Or, you know, did you have contact with somebody you shouldn't have had contact with? Or whatever. Or are you worried about your partner having a contact, you know, you don't have time to get into that, in that model. And I could never do that, even when I was in that model. I could never do volume.
But the system now is designed, as the reimbursement decreases from insurers and Medicare and MediCal, or you guys call Medicaid. Your overhead isn't going down, if anything, your overhead goes up. Salaries go up, rent goes up, cost of supplies certainly is going up now. How does an individual practitioner, or even a larger group make that up? You know, if the widgets that you bought last week cost $10, and now they're costing $14, you've got to make that up somewhere. How do you do that? You have to see more people, you have to see more people, right.
Kyleigh Banks
I read that there's a shortage of OBs. How's that gonna play into this?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Well, maybe that's a good thing, actually. I mean, if you think about it, in hindsight, because that means that midwives will probably step into the void, and that would be better. You know, England, for all its imperfections, has a better system than we do. I mean, most of the prenatal care in England, and even encouraging people to stay at home, although the COVID changed everything, but this is all before COVID, midwives do all the work, and the OBs take care of the high risk stuff. I mean, there are exceptions to the private sector, but if you're talking about the National Health Service in England, most of the prenatal care is done by midwives. And they do it better. They just do it better.
Their profession is caring for well-women pregnancies. And most women are well women pregnancies. OBs are trained in, just to make it simple, sick-women pregnancies. Problem pregnancies. But yet 90% of those we're taking care of, we're not even trained to take care of because they're normal.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, residency is about proving that you can do the interventions.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
It's about it's about pathology. It's about diagnosing pathology. So you look at every pregnant woman, potentially as pathology. And you treat them and all the same. And again, you have your algorithm for how to take care of people, and if your algorithm says everyone needs to be delivered by 41 weeks, then you start meddling earlier on ,you start doing cervical sweeps, and planting seeds of doubt, and planting seeds of as you said, the dead baby, or whatever else if you go beyond 41 weeks. You talk about relative risk, you don't talk about actual risk either. Talk, after talk, after talk.
Kyleigh Banks
Right. You said that now there's another OB in Southern California that's gonna be doing homebirths?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, yeah. Dr. Flores is here in Southern California. And she is young, but she's bold, and she's skilled. And she's eager, eager, eager to learn. And we've been working together, sort of mentoring each other. I mean, for me, it's nice having a colleague. And she comes to my office on Thursdays.
I'm going to be taking a sabbatical coming up soon, where I'm just taking some time off to reevaluate everything and she's going to keep my practice going, keep covering that so that women in Southern California still have this option of breaches and twins. And having a physician at the birth if they need to, and you know, I get called to put on a vacuum sometimes or to come and repair a third or fourth degree tear. I can keep them at home and midwife does a birth and then they call me and say, "Are you available?" and I'll come in and do that sort of thing. And so it's great to have that. But I wish she would have been around 10 years ago. But no, things happen for a reason, and I'm just so excited. I've got about five or six births left this month, and then I don't have any. For the first time in 40 years.
Kyleigh Banks
Wow, that must feel weird. Very weird.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Weird is a good word for it. I think it's going to be good, I take a month or two, then I'm going nuts and I gotta come back. I may look to work in another state, I may consider moving to another country for a year, you know, I may I may look at going to places like Bali, and talking to Robin Lim and maybe working there if that's possible. Or just hiding somewhere on a Caribbean island and not telling anybody where I'm at.
Kyleigh Banks
That sounds just as good. Why aren't there more OBs like you?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Indoctrination. Indoctrination, again, the type of person choosing to go into obstetrics right now has a different mentality. 80 to 90% of people going into OB residence right now are women. And this isn't anything about their personality in general, but here's a here's a quiz, lets see if you can get the right answer. A woman goes to medical school and residency. She finishes her residency when she's about 30 years old. What happens to a woman when she's about 30 years old?
Kyleigh Banks
She has her own babies.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Right. Does a woman who has her own babies want to be on call 24/7?
Kyleigh Banks
Absolutely not.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
No, they're very happy working in a system that gives them a shift. And so it all fits well for the business model. But it doesn't fit well for somebody wanting to be entrepreneurial or... entrepreneurial isn't even the right word. Doing what you said, doing what I'm doing.
Kyleigh Banks
It doesn't fit well for the moms either.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
No, it doesn't fit well as a lifestyle for people. They're also fear based. Everything they learn in residency is fear based. I've had people say to me, "How can you have a baby? How can you do that without an anesthesiologist?" And they're serious. Because they've not seen a birth, or feel safe with a birth without having an anesthesiologist. Even if a woman doesn't have an epidural, they know the anesthesiologist is there, so just in case. "And then what do you do if a baby is having trouble?"
You know, in the medical model in obstetrics, one of my tenants is that the thing that matters most, if you look at research papers, and if you look at hospital policies, the the only endpoint that really matters is a crying baby in the bassinet. And how it gets there doesn't really matter. If you look at research papers, the endpoint they always use is neonatal morbidity and mortality. There's nothing about long term health of the baby, the microbiome, the epigenetics, the long term health of the mother, the mother's psyche, the mother's future babies, these are never, ever considered in the in the formula.
And so when you have a system where the only thing that matters is the baby in the bassinet, and unless the baby is out in the hospital model, who does the baby belong to? It belongs to the pediatric department. It's not the OBs problem anymore. Where the midwifery model, mother and baby are a unit. There's unity between the two. And midwives are trained in mother-baby. So midwives are quite capable of doing newborn assessment, breastfeeding, latching, all the things that you know, we don't have a course on. We don't have a lecture on in residency on breastfeeding. At least we didn't when I was there, or nutrition for that matter. And yet midwives spend a large portion of each prenatal visit doing dietary recall and suggestions and supplements and herbs and things that are trying to keep a woman healthy.
Midwives are experts at keeping women healthy, doctors are experts at fixing… we talked earlier, they're experts at treating people who have problems, but not necessarily preventing the problems.
Kyleigh Banks
As you can see very, very clearly, just by the direction the country's been heading in the last 50 years.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah. Well, it's been longer than 50 years, but that's all we can see that's happened. So it probably started happening in the 1600s. But, but, yeah. And you know, there was a point where we improved some safety, but safety is a canard. It's used as a weapon to get people to comply. And there's a famous saying, I think might have been, was it Ben Franklin or somebody who said, those that would forego freedom, for liberty, for safety would end up with neither, or something like that.
And when it comes to safety, you end up with a system where they determine what safe is, as if safety means the same thing to everyone. And it doesn't. You know, one in 200 might be huge to some people, and not a risk they're willing to take. Other people will say, "Well, that's a 99.5% chance it's not going to happen. I'm okay with that risk." But it really just depends on how these things are presented, and when doctors live in a world where they're indoctrinated to present things as relative risk or risky. And these are terms that you can't unsee once you start to see them. "Well, that's risky." Well, could you define what the actual risk is? "Oh, it's just really risky." And they actually don't know.
And I'm guilty of this too. But I often have the time to actually look stuff up. So I try not to say that that's risky. I try to give people, "Yeah, there's a seven per 10,000 risk of that happening. All right. So what is that in numbers less than 99.93% chance it's not going to happen." And then let people figure that out. Sometimes that's too many numbers for people, and I totally get that. Then and then our model of care might not be for them.
Kyleigh Banks
Exactly, yeah. And it's interesting too, that the physicians, they're saying things like, oh, no, it's risky because they have a direction they want the mom to go, they need the mom to stay in these lines. Like when you were leaving the hospital, when they didn't want you to do VBAC or breach. And you're like, what does that mean? I have to tell the mom she has to go somewhere else? Like, that's not ethical. But that's what they wanted you to do. Right?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, they did. I mean, they passed the policy that said no breeches. And they pass a policy that said no VBAC. Even though I'm not a big fan of ACOG, and some of the things that they do, ACOG supports breeches, and supports VBACs. So under what guise are you saying that a woman can come in here, and you can tell her that you can't do something? And you don't get an answer. You know, it's the old adage, it's their football, and if they don't want you to play with it, they just can take their football and go home.
And ultimately, most of my colleagues will just comply with that sort of thing, because it's easier to keep your head down. You know, it's the ostrich theory of life, that if you put your head in the sand, there's no there's no lions nearby. You don't see them, they're not there. And it's just easier not to see them. Because it is hard fighting City Hall, figuratively. Well, literally too, but figuratively, it's hard fighting. They're big, you're small. They've got endless resources, you don't. They've got the power of allowing you to continue to make a living or not.
I mean, there's stuff coming down in states like mine, where there's legislation being proposed that if you give out information that isn't falling into party line, and following the narrative, on say, the COVID vaccine, or ivermectin, or anything like that, that will be referred to the medical board for discipline. And I would say that any doctor that doesn't discuss the risks of the vaccine, or the possibility that ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine can do some good early on, is the one that' s being unethical. And yet, it's the doctor who talks about those things, or has some vaccine hesitancy, well deserved, that is going to get their license threatened.
I mean, everything that's happening in our country, and in the world right now, is upside down. If I and my colleagues were running, like my midwife colleagues, were running the world right now, everything we'd be doing would be the opposite of what they're doing. If you wanted to ruin a profession, you couldn't do it better than they're doing it right now.
Kyleigh Banks
It's interesting to watch for sure. It's not it's like you're watching a bad movie.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, I mean, it's frightening. You know, you want to have a knee replacement. But do you really want to go into a hospital right now?
Kyleigh Banks
It'll be interesting to look back, like you said, 10-20 years from now. And just seeing the impact that the mainstream didn't even consider. But other people like you haven't seen it this entire time.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, I'm in awe of some of the people that have been speaking out. One of my favorite guys is Del Bigtree in his Highwire podcast, because I get so much information from that. And it's well researched. And you know that when the fact checkers, and the censors, the people come after you, they're coming after you because you're because you're probably right over the target. And you're probably right. Because if you're afraid of players saying stupid stuff, they're not going to bother with you. And if you're confident in your position, then you don't have to ridicule your opponent, you can just beat them. So when people ridicule, or they diminish, or they start calling names of people that, you know that that person that they're calling is probably right.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah. That's the first sign that the person calling the names doesn't doesn't have any information to back up their theory.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
And you know Kyleigh, there's the smell test too, your gut instinct. Does your gut instinct tell you that, if the research behind the Pfizer vaccine was good, that the FDA, which is supposed to be our watchdog organization, is fighting to not release the information on the research that was done before the vaccine was released for 75 or 55 or 75 years? And people are still arguing that it's a good vaccine. If it's a good vaccine, then why are you hiding stuff until everyone who got it is dead? Why 75 years? Think about it. You're 12 years old now, you got the vaccine, are you gonna make a stink when you're 87?
Kyleigh Banks
Ugh, yeah. It's a shitshow. You know, my mom is a dentist, and my dad is a rabbi. And they very much like following the rules and not getting in trouble. And I'm very glad that not not for a single day in my life that I feed into that bullshit. And I have just, I've had my sensors up from day one.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah. Again, you just have to love your family, because you cannot convince people who have a different mindset than you, nor should you really try. I have family members who I've had conversations with, and they really don't want to hear what I have to say, and they don't want me to send them any information. Okay, they don't. And it gets back to that cognitive dissonance we talked about earlier, where it's too uncomfortable for them to actually think that maybe they were wrong, or they made the wrong decision.
You know, my family trusts me for all my medical decisions, they often will come to me for that. But on this one topic of COVID, they've completely gone 180 degrees. So there's no explaining that. But the propaganda campaign was, and it still is intense. I don't really know. But you get a sense, from looking at the really, really wealthy people who have access to everything they could possibly have access to, and a lot of them are the people that are most likely not to get something done. They're not going to vaccinate their kids, they're not going to do certain things. They're not going to fly in a private jet. They're gonna not wear a mask because they don't want to wear masks. They're gonna go to the Academy Awards without it.
Kyleigh Banks
Their kids go to private schools.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Kids go to private schools, yeah, whatever. But they're advocating one thing, and then they're practicing another. And I'm not sure exactly how that relates to the obstetrical world that we were talking about. But I think that most OBs believe that what they're doing is right, because the alternative is unthinkable.
Kyleigh Banks
Do you know the stats on female obstetricians who are having children? They're giving birth, mostly in the hospital, the same cesarean rate as the majority?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Well, I don't know enough to comment on that. But no, there's a there's a documentary out, which again, it's just a documentary. It's about five moms called "Why Not Home," I think you might have seen it. It's about five physicians who work at a hospital. I think it's in Portland. There's maybe a midwife, a doctor, a NICU person, whatever. And they all chose to give birth at home, and they talk about why. And I think four out of the five were successful, which is about the right rate. It's about 80% success rate for those who have tried to have a home birth that will be successful. When it comes to multiparous women, the success rate is literally about 99%. And women should know that. The problem is, it's women having their first baby that need to avoid that cesarean section. And by walking into a hospital, you have a 25-30% chance as a first time mom of having a cesarean, when there's nothing wrong with you.
In the home birthing world, you have about a, somewhere between 2 and 7%, chance. It depends. Most of the midwives around here have about a 7-8% C-section rate, and overall, the national average is over 30%. And in some countries like Brazil or South Africa, it's 70-80%. And we have no idea, well we do. I mean, I already have an idea, but there's no data yet to tell you what the long term consequences of altering the human epigenetics and microbiome of doing that to these women and what's going to happen in the future.
There is a really interesting theory about women who have a pre-labor cesarean section. Because when you're in labor, your pituitary is releasing oxytocin, which makes you contract, but it also crosses the placenta, and it's your bonding hormone. And you're giving that bonding hormone to your baby, and maybe even stimulating your baby, especially your female babies, but also maybe your males, to develop oxytocin receptors. When you do a scheduled C-section, the babies are never exposed to that. And he's concerned that that might affect the way their brains work. And also that young, female, babies, oh young female babies, that's a that's a tautology. Yeah, all babies are young. But that it main effect of oxytocin receptors down in their uterus, and that 30 years from now, they'll have dysfunctional labors because they never experienced labors, as a fetus.
So, I don't know how you prove that. It's an interesting theory. But when a theory, when you think about it, it starts to make sense to you, you know, you don't necessarily need a study. The medical profession, you know, they're asking about ivermectin. Where's the randomized double blinded controlled studies? It's like, you don't necessarily need that. If it's working, try it. You've got nothing else, try it. You don't need a study to tell you it's safer to cross the street when the light is green than when it's red, alright. But there are people in academia who would say, well, we can't determine that until we have a study.
Kyleigh Banks
Isn't that interesting? And then you could say that right back to them for most vaccines on the schedule. Like, where's the double blind placebo study? Oh, we can't do that. We couldn't not vaccinate people, that's dangerous. It's not fair to them. It's like, well, you're doing that for cancer treatments. You're doing that for the kid who's potentially dying of cancer. So why can't you do it for healthy Timmy down the street? Who's probably not gonna get, you know, whatever.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Rotavirus? Right. Now, there's some vaccines that we give to kids that... Again, right now, the way I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure that any vaccine is good. And I know that that's a statement that could get blown out of proportion. But when you look since the '86, when the law was put in place where there's a liability, and then the vaccine schedule went from about 23 vaccines to 72 vaccines in a matter of a decade or so, and then you look at the diseases that we're treating, and how many of them are actually lethal. And what is the death rate from pertussis in children, or what is even the hospitalization rate? And maybe shouldn't parents know that before they decide to give their kid four tetanus vaccines before they're five years old?
I know I'm having flight of ideas here, but with pertussis, shouldn't you know what the death rate is, or the hospitalization rate is for pertussis before you give your kid all these DTAP shots? And by the way, if your kid gets the first DTAP shot, and now as has antibodies to pertussis, why does he need a second and a third and a fourth? And why are we giving the same dose of pertussis vaccine mixed with tetanus and diphtheria? Why can't we just get pertussis? Why can't we just get that?
Well, the pharmaceutical companies don't make it that way. Well, why don't they make it that way? And when I was a kid, when you got a tetanus shot, it was a tetanus shot. Now if I want to get a tetanus shot, I have to get the diptheria and pertussis along with it. I don't want diptheria and pertussis, but you have to get it. By the way, if you step on a rusty nail, or you have an industrial accident, you're always told as a kid, you need to get a tetanus shot. I'm not sure that that's always true, but let's say it's true. But if you get a tetanus shot, we've always been told that you probably don't need another one for at least 10 years. Yet we're giving kids under five four tetanus shots. Why are we doing that?
Kyleigh Banks
In pregnancy too, every time you're pregnant. You get pregnant next year and they're gonna want to give you another.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. You get a TDAP shot when you're pregnant, which we don't do, but OBs, most of them will recommend it, and then you're pregnant a year later and they want to give you another one. Why? If you were getting a TDAP shot as an adult without being pregnant, they would wouldn't give it to you but every 10 years, or if at all. And there's no thought process. I mean, you ask an OB why they're doing this. Like my old associates in Century City used to do this. Still, I mean they do it now.
Every single woman is encouraged to get a flu shot, which by the way contains mercury, and TDAP shot, which contains a lot of aluminum. Actually far more than they should. And they're giving it to a pregnant woman, and what's the risk of the flu or diphtheria, pertussis or tetanus to a pregnant woman or her fetus? And they won't know the answer to that. I guarantee you that there is no doctor practicing... Well not "no". I should never say never. But there's almost no doctor practicing and knows the answer to that.
As Blyss likes to say in my podcast, they're just regurgitating information that is given, that's sent to them in a flyer or a notice or an email or a journal, and they're just regurgitating it, and thinking that they're just being progressively modern, and they're doing the right thing. Because I know that my fellow physicians are not ethically bad. So they have to believe they're doing the right thing. But I would look at them, and would tell them to think about it, because you're actually not doing the right thing. Are children healthier today, with 72 vaccines, than they were 20-30 years ago?
Kyleigh Banks
Absolutely not.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
No. It's the exact opposite. What does your gut tell you? I mean, the healthiest kids that I know are the kids that are unvaccinated. And if you look at Paul Thomas's information, he put out a paper which which cost him his license for a while. The Oregon Medical Board immediately suspended his license when he put out a paper looking at 10,000 of his own patients over 16 years. And in every category of chronic disease, from autism, to psoriasis, to eczema, to allergies, to everything, the vaccinated kids were worse off than the unvaccinated kids. Every single category, not one. And for that he lost his license. Think about the tyranny that's going on here. Think about, and we're supposed to trust the medical professionals. Why would, God, with the most precious cargo you could ever carry? And and we're supposed to trust that the medical professional has your best interest at heart.
You know, that's an interesting thing too. I was speaking to somebody, and they told me, I asked them, why are they so COVID fearful? Why are they so excited to get the vaccine and the booster shots? And they said, "Because the CDC recommends it." And I go, "Well, have you looked into the CDC's history? And you know, how often they've been wrong?" And this person said to me, "I trust the CDC and the government to look out for me, I can't believe that they would not have my best interests at heart." And this is a very, very intelligent person. So they have the ostrich theory, where they can't believe that the government or the CDC couldn't be influenced by nefarious forces, or monetary issues or gains. They just can't believe it. And there's no explaining that to them. You cannot, nor should you try to convince those people otherwise.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, when it's very clear, just take a look in history. You don't even have to dig very far to find multiple circumstances where they did not have our backs or our best interest.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
They never have your back or best interest. They sometimes may coincide. Okay. Their financial gain, their political gain, whatever it is, may coincide with your best interest, but they didn't make that decision because of your best interest. People may think that what I'm saying is like, way at the far end of the spectrum. Just stop, and before you judge me for that, just stop and think about what I'm saying. And prove me wrong. Don't just say that, you know, that I'm ranting. Which I am. But don't just say that, because everything that I'm saying is, I've thought about for a really long time. And I have a very logical brain that can look into a situation, which makes me really good at what I do, and try to solve the problem quickly. I don't need eight months to order a microscope. All right. I can look at a woman who's in labor with a problem and I can solve the problem fairly quickly.
It's one of the things I taught my kids all along, if you ask my kids, what did dad always say, they would say one, they would say solve the problem, and the other one they would say is “get a job that you love doing where you don't have to be licensed by the state to do it.” Those are the two things I kept repeating to my kids, and fortunately, all four of them followed that. None of my kids work where they're licensed to do it, their work.
Because when you're licensed by the state to do your work, whether you're a hairdresser, or a physician, or a lawyer or a real estate agent, if you do something the state doesn't like, they can take away your ability to make a living in an instant. Whereas if you work for Nordstroms, or you work in Hollywood, or you work at a restaurant, and you get a DUI, alright, shame on you, but you can go to work the next day and you're not going to get fired, most likely. But if you have a license, and you get a DUI, which can happen to anybody, because we're all a little bit idiotic sometimes, your licensing board will potentially, probably take away your license.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, I'm even, I'm on that spectrum, too. And I'm like, I don't even want to get married. Because why? I just don't want the government in my business at all. Or like anyone else above me, tell me what to do.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Do you have kids? You have kids?
Kyleigh Banks
I have one two year old.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
So you had to like, get a birth certificate?
Kyleigh Banks
We did do a birth certificate. My partner wishes we didn't, and tried to convince me, but I didn't know enough. I didn't know enough. Well, I still don't know enough.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah. But you know, it's hard to get a job without a social security number, and you can't get a Social Security Number unless you have a birth certificate.
Kyleigh Banks
And he says, “Well she'll work for herself like we do.” And it's like, yeah, that's true. It's true.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Passport?
Kyleigh Banks
She doesn't have one yet.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
If you don't have a birth certificate, how do you get a passport?
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, it's true.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
I'm not trying to get nefarious here. But you know, you want to travel. Of course, if you're not gonna get, if you want to stay off the grid, you're probably not gonna get your COVID vaccine. And if you don't get your COVID vaccine, eventually you're not going to have your QR code to go, you know, into this store, or that country, or whatever else. It's all coming.
Kyleigh Banks
You think it's coming?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Oh, yeah. It won't necessarily be vaccine passports, but it'll be some sort of digital thing, I don't know if it'll be digital money. You know, the government's would love to get rid of cash, because they can't control it. That's why they don't want you living in your own house. It's why they're against the private automobile. They want people renting, and they want people taking public transportation.
Because then you can control it. And they're gonna probably have a carbon, there'll be a carbon footprint app, sooner or later, where they can, they know what you're setting the thermostat in your house at, and how many miles per gallon your car's getting. And then if you overuse your thing, they'll probably put a tax on it. I mean, these things sound futuristic. They sound Orwellian.
Kyleigh Banks
But they're happening.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
If you would have said 10 years ago that we're at where we at now, you would have sounded like you were crazy. And now everything that you would have thought was crazy 10 years ago, is actually not even abnormal anymore. The Babylon Bee, which is a satirical site that I like to follow on Instagram, you know, I think his name is Seth Rich. I don't know, the head of Babylon Bee. I don't want to confuse him with a comedian, but he said something. He said that, you know, it's hard doing satire nowadays, because what was satire in the old days used to at least be satire for a few years before it was true. Now it's weeks.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah, and specifically with that Instagram account, it pops up and before I recognize that it's the Babylon Bee, I believe it for a split second, you know. Putin gets the Nobel Peace Prize.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Some of them are a little ridiculous. But a lot of them are extremely believable. Yeah.
Kyleigh Banks
I think the message of today is, do your own, use your own brain. Think your own thoughts. Don't think something just because someone else told you to, or just because it's normal. Whether we're talking about birth, hospital birth, home birth, doesn't matter, vaccinations, whatever. Use your own brain.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
And for obstetrics, really, unless you have some really significant medical issue, you should really, your primary person should be a midwife. You should stay away from the obstetrical profession unless necessary, right. But your midwife is going to have your best interests at heart, and your midwife is an expert in "normal" birthing, so if something isn't "normal," people that are experts in normal will recognize immediately that something's outside of their comfort zone.
And that's so different than what doctors do, which is, we think everything's a problem. So we find problems even in "normal." And we tend to then make that into a bigger problem than it is. And we tend to say stupid things and plant stupid seeds in women's mouths. Like at 10 weeks, you find somebody who's over 35, and you say, you know, we'd better start thinking about it, your placenta is gonna get old. So we've got to do this. Or you find twins at 10 weeks, and you say, well, you know, we're going to need to do this and this and this and this and this, and all these things. You're planting all these seeds of doubt.
And what does that do inside your brain? When you have a woman that has a 20 week ultrasound that's perfectly normal, and they find a little echogenic focus in the heart, which means absolutely nothing if they've had a normal NIPT, and they got no other findings. And yet, the doctor will say, this is probably nothing, but I want to see back in six weeks. So that's great. So what is the woman thinking about for six weeks? That there's something wrong with her baby's heart. And there's no reason for that. And yet, that's what's done. And why do they do that? I think the maternal fetal medicine doctors do it, they're trained that way, there's a monetary reason for doing that, and they're also believing that what they're doing is right. But somehow, it's really weird, that every time they think they're doing something that's right, they can bill for it.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah. It's true. It's very true.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, like my hospital now, locally here, the hospital used to work at, from what I understand, when they do the newborn screen, they're doing a serum bilirubin on every baby. Why are they doing a serum bilirubin on every baby? Well, one, they can charge for a serum bilirubin. And two, if it comes back a little bit high, they can then say, "Well, we need to keep the baby another day, in the nursery on bilirubin lights. They can charge for the nursery, they can charge for the bilirubin lights, they can charge for the serum billirubins that they're going to be doing on your baby, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When you and I, in the birth world, would just look at the baby and say "The baby doesn't look jaundice to me."
Kyleigh Banks
Why are we looking for problems that aren't there?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Because 1 in 16,000 people might have it.
Kyleigh Banks
Yeah. Does this fear of litigation play as big of a role as we think it does?
Dr. Stu Fischbein
No, it's used as a, again, it's used as a canard. But that should not come into play. I know that we're human, and the process is horrible when you get sued. So it is aversion therapy, it's kind of like spanking or something else. It's like why we have laws. Alright, so people don't rob banks. So it's aversion therapy. So it makes people do things they wouldn't normally do. And it's not medically inclined. And it's used as a hammer against physicians, or against patients to get them to do things that you want them to do. It's an excuse.
Doctors will often say, "Well my malpractice carrier won't let me do VBAC." That's a lie. Because they could seek out a malpractice carrier that allows them to do VBAC. They’ve chosen, if the if there is such a thing. And then insurance companies are charging often a stipend for every time you do a VBAC, you have to pay the insurance company more money. So it makes it so untenable. So rather than just fighting the insurance company, everybody just gives in. Anyway, I'm gonna have to go soon because, there's a documentary film thing going on. I gotta go.
Kyleigh Banks
Just tell us where we can find you. Tell us about your podcast and where we can find you.
Dr. Stu Fischbein
Yeah, on your podcast app or on Spotify, it's The Birthing Instincts podcast with me and Blyss Young. She's a midwife, and a very wise woman. And then my website is birthinginstincts.com and Instagram @birthinginstincts. I don't use Facebook much anymore. I think things tend to go to Facebook from Instagram, but I don't really look at it much. That's it. You can reach me through my website birthinginstincts.com. If people want to reach out.
Just find a midwife, question everything. It's one of the most important things events you're ever going to have in your life. As Blyss likes to say, I've said this a million times, when it comes to your wedding, which is another important event, you plan everything. You plan the napkins, you plan the cake, you plan the dress, you plan the venue, you pick out your invitations, you invite people you like, you spend 1,000s of dollars of your own money on your wedding. When it comes to your baby, don't rely on your insurance card to pick all those things for you. Alright? If it costs money to do that, and say it costs 5, 8, 10 thousand dollars to have a home birth, or to look into that option, two years, three years from now, that money will be nothing. But the experience will be with you your entire life.
So a lot of women don't have great birth experiences. And that's why they often seek out home birth for their second pregnancy. But we still only are only at 1-1.5% of people in America that are having a home birth. So it's not very large. We had an increase of about 70% during COVID. But that means going from 1% to 1.7%, it's not a huge number. That's one of those statistical things, that can mess with people's heads.
But I will tell you for sure one last thing, and that's that when the powers that be tell you that that homebirth is a problem, alright, the problem that we have with the statistics that you pointed out earlier, and the problem we have in maternal health care United States about neonatal morbidity and mortality and how we're doing, it's not because 1% of people are having their babies at home.
thank you for listening
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Meet your host, Kyleigh Banks, a side-gig doula turned CEO of a multi-six-figure birth-focused business. Her passion? Teaching birth nerds, like you, how to build an incredibly successful doula business that allows you to quit your day job, stay home with your kids, and most importantly, make a lasting impact on the world.