My favorite doctor

is Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D.  He's passed away but thankfully his books are still around. 

I am going to quote his books every so often. 

This is from his book, Male Practice, How Doctors Manipulate Women.

"Your doctor won't tell you, so I will: your own bedroom is safer than the hospital delivery room, and the hospital nursery is infinitely more threatening to your baby than a crib next to your bed.  I tell all healthy women, including my own daughters, that they should refuse to have their babies in the hospital precisely because of the potentially dangerous technological wizardry that is available to their doctor there.
I have always told my patients that they should avoid hospitals as they would avoid war.  Do your utmost to stay out of them and, if you find yourself in one, do everything possible to get out as soon as you can.  After working in hospitals for most of my life, I can assure you that they are the dirtiest and most deadly places in town. 
That may not square with your perception of all those glistening corridors and sparkling white sheets.  I'll grant that most hospitals look awesomely antiseptic, but if you examined them with a microscope you'd know that they are not.  They are actually so germ-laden that 5 percent of all hospital patients contract new infections that they didn't have when they arrived.  As a result, they are stuck there for an average of seven extra days.
I am also concerned that the obligatory ritual of placing silver nitrate in the eyes of the newborn-theoretically to guard against gonorrheal infection-may be responsible for the higher incidence of astigmatism and myopia in the United States than in countries that don't perform this ridicuous rite.  It's a useless procedure, and there is no scientific basis to believe that it's safe, yet in may states it is required by law.  I tell my students to comply with the law but to do it by squirting the chemical in the general direction of the baby from ten feet away. 
The fact about the hazards of being in a hospital should cause any person, man or woman, to think at least twice before entering one, except for emergency treatment of injuries or in situations that are demonstrably a matter of life and death.  Certainly it is folly to go to the hospital to have a baby , or even for treament of any disease that can be dealt with at home.  Comparative studies show that even patients who suffer severe heart attacks fare no better when they are admitted to the hospital than they do when they are treated at home. 
The complications that a pregnant woman is told to fear are rarely a hazard when the baby is delivered at home.  Most of them are real, all right, but they occur only because of the things that the obstetrician does to the mother in the hospital after she gets there. 
One complication that the doctor is sure to warn you about is the possibility that your baby will have the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck.  He will tell you that this can kill your baby in a matter of minutes, so he must have you in the hospital where he can deal with the problem in time.   What he doesn't tell you is that it is very common for the baby to have the cord wrapped around its neck, and that is it not inherently dangerous, whether it is wrapped around once, twice, or several times.  However, it can be a serious complication when it occurs in the hospital where there has been induced labor, profuse analgesia and anesthesia, and other intervention and the cord has been unduly compressed.  It is not a good reason for going to the hospital, but  it's a very good reason for having your baby at home.
The same principle holds for most of the other hazards your doctor will use to frighten you. A prolapsed cord is not uncommon in hospital deliveries becaue the doctor ruptured the membranes, but it rearely happens in births at home.  Hemorrhage-another complication your doctor will point to-often occurs in the hospital because of premature delivery of the placenta and for other reaason, but it rarely occurs in the more relaxed environment of your home. 
Your doctor will probably refer to the unsanitary conditions in your household and use that as an excuse to send you to the most unsanitary facility to be found.  He will tell you that there isn't enough technology in your home to monitor your labor properly, when in fact it is the inaccuracy of the fetal monitoring equipment in the hospital that provides him with many excuses to intervene needlessly.  He will say that there isn't adequate personnel at home.  That may sound reasonable unless you know that the multiple vaginal examinations you will receive form the cadre of doctors, nurses, and students in the hospital often prodcue a pathology of their own. 
The interest in natural, home birth is growing so rapidly that the obstretricians and the hospitals know that they are in trouble.  They are fighting back with a cosmetic approach that provides "birthing rooms" with a homelike atmosphere within the hospital environment.  Unfortunately, the cozy atmosphere simply masks the fact that the obstetricians are still doing business in the same old and indefensible way.  A wolf in sheep's clothing may look less threatening, but he still bites. 
American obstetrical practice is the centerpiece of my contention that Modern Medicine is so crisis-oriented that it will invent a crisis if none exists.  Almost every stage of obstetrical procedure in the hospital is part of the mechanims that enables the doctor to create his own pathology.  Once he has created the pathology, he has his excuse to intervene. 
Tragically, it doesn't end there.  The complications produced by the intervention often set the woman up as a candidate for the obstetrician's gynecological practice for the rest of her life. 
Women would find having babies a lot less painful, risky, and demeaning if the obstetrical specialty were simply abolished.  Except for a handful of doctors who encourage natural birth, obstetricians are guilty of perpetuating an unhealthy, unscientific medical disgrace.  As you know by now, I have a low regard for Modern Medicine in general but obstretics set my teeth on edge.  It is the only medical specialty in which almost everything that the doctor does is medically infefensible and terribly wrong. 
I said earlier that doctors have converted pregnancy-a natural,normal, inspiring physiological event-into a nine-month disease."

I'd better stop before I end up copying the whole book.  I wish I knew about his books before I had my first child.  I pray that women would be discerning and trust God and not allow doctors and hospitals to manipulate them into turning their childbirths into nightmares.