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From the Jamaica Observer
“Technology has increased now in such a way that every pregnant woman can
book into a hospital and give birth with trained doctors and midwives. It is
against the law to give birth at home or an institution without the presence
of a trained midwife or without taking the newborn to a hospital. Mothers
even have the option of avoiding the long hours of labour pain with the
introduction of epidurals that make delivery more comfortable.”
How frightening and sad that this has happened, Once again, patriarchy has staked it’s claim over the bodies of wimmin. I’ll have more later, but it’s 5 a.m. and I have early pregnancy insomnia and a cough.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/65090.php
The highlights of the article (Thanks for the article go to Belletheacd over at the MDC forum):
“– Women whose labors are induced for non-medical reasons are more likely to suffer from intrapartum fever and more likely to end up needing forceps, vacuum extraction and a cesarean surgery.
— Inductions add to the risk of poor outcomes for the health of the baby. Artificially-induced labors increase the rate of fetal distress and a serious complication of labor called shoulder dystocia (when the baby’s shoulders have difficulty passing through the mother’s pelvic bones). Elective induction babies are also more likely to need phototherapy to treat jaundice after birth, and are at higher risk for breathing difficulties and admission to neonatal intensive care.
— Use of electronic fetal monitors is more than 85 percent on low-risk women. They fail to reduce the number of perinatal deaths, the incidence of cerebral palsy or the number of admissions to the neonatal intensive care unit. Continuous fetal monitoring puts women at increased risk for an instrumental delivery, cesarean section and infection.
— Overall 1 in 3 U.S. women give birth by cesarean surgery. The majority of the operations are repeat procedures with no medical indication.
— When compared to women who have a vaginal birth, cesarean surgeries put women at risk for infections, hemorrhage requiring transfusion, surgical injuries, and complications from anesthesia, chronic pain, adhesions, hysterectomy, pulmonary embolism, placental problems with future pregnancies and death. Babies born by cesarean surgery are more likely to suffer from surgical lacerations, respiratory complications, and to require neonatal intensive care. ”
The problem with anti-homebirth people is that they rebuke any information-MUCH of which is taken from the very same journals and publications that doctors read and use- as hogwash, pseudo science and anecdotal information. If it is simply anecdotal information, then why do nearly 1/3 of wimmin in the US and Canada get cut open? I would rather take the 1% chance of having a c-section after tranfering from a home delivery, than going to the hospital and having a 30% chance.
A comment on the Washington Post article from yesterday. (https://womonandsprout.wordpress.com/2007/07/31/washington-post-today/ -btw, someone want to tell me how to do hotlinking so I don’t have these huge friggen links taking up space?) I found it to be particularly interesting. Now that the name callers are done with the discussion, real discourse seems to be starting on the comment board over there.
“”All truth passes through 3 stages: First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident.”
I personally had my first in a hospital, with a good experience. I eventually learned about UC and progressed through all 3 of these stages of truth myself, starting with “She must be f***ing crazy!” I have had 2 UCs since, and feel very comfortable being ridiculed and laughed at. After all, I have nature on my side, and several millenia of species success. The bottom line is that I trust myself and my baby to know what is going on and decide if I (possibly) need outside ‘help’ than I trust a doctor or midwife to do this very personal job.
My sincerest regards to those fellow sisters of mine who have been tortured by our medical/malpractice industry. This discussion is one step toward changing it so it never again happens to another woman/baby/family.”
I have never found that to be more true than when it comes to something like this, or like vaccinating, or babywearing, etc.
There was an article today in the Washington Post about Freebirthing:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072702164.htmlIt’s nothing new. There are a whole lot of articles out there about freebirthing that usually quote a few freebirthers, but then talk only about the detrimental things that people are so afraid of happening.
There is more about this article on MDC:
http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=721738
There were three things I was particularly dismayed at in the article. One was the stat on the first page,
“To critics it represents a foolhardy repudiation of medical advances that cut infant and maternal mortality in the United States by 90 percent during the 20th century.”
This may very well be, but then why is it we have one of the worst infant mortality rates in the industrialized world? Of 43 countries, we rank 41 as of last year. That stat went up from the mid twenties in just a year! Don’t tell me freebirthing is foolhardy when with all of our medical advances, we still have nearly the worst infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. Take a look at the trends in the countries ahead of us. A great portion of them have the common practice of homebirth. Some of the countries have made it illegal to freebirth, so it is done in secret or as an “oops, the midwife didn’t get here in time,” kind of scenario.
The second thing that bothered me we the quote by Judy Norsigian, Executive Director of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” by the Boston Women’s Health Collective. She said,
“Obviously we don’t think unassisted home birth is a good idea,”
she went on as did the article to say,
“”There are deaths from these births that I personally know of,” Norsigian said, most of which are preventable and resulted from the failure to recognize clear-cut warning signs: decelerations in the fetal heart rate, indicating respiratory distress; a breech position, in which the baby is sideways or feet first; and umbilical cord abnormalities, which can lead to brain damage or stillbirth.”
Firstly, I am upset by this because OBOS is the one book I believe every womon should own starting just before she bleeds for the first time. It is a book that helps wimmin understand their bodies without the condemning gobbeldygook that we tend to get from health care professionals and from societies misalligned ideals regarding the body of a womon. It is dismaying that they don’t seem to deem it as an option for wimmin seeking to take further control back over their own bodies. It’s very disheartening on a feminist front, in my opinion. Secondly, the people that choose freebirth are not uneducated and misinformed. They are very knowledgeable about the human body pregnant and non-pregnant, about the physiology of conception, pregnancy, labor and birth. they have read EXTENSIVELY regarding the warnign signs of complications, and are prepared for such. It often seems as though freebirthers are made out to be crackpots who are balking tradition (which is only about 100 years old, out of how long humanity has been here) for the sake of being black sheep. that is simply not the case. We do these things for a variety of reasons, the first and foremost of which is what is best for our bodies, our babies and our families.
The third thing that struck my nerves on this article (like I said, though, it is really more of the same nonesense regarding how ‘dangerous’ freebirthing is,) was the quote by Mairi Breen Rothman a CNM,
“But a woman having a baby is not in a position to be monitoring herself.”
I seriously could feel my brain itching. How and when the hell did the feminist movement go backwards? How about we phrase it this way: “A womon is not in any position to be choosing her elected officials,” or how about this one, “a womon is not in any position to know how to have an orgasm,” or this, “a womon is in no position to choose who she will be married to,” ad naseum. A womon is a womon is a womon, plain and simple. How dare anyone tell me, or any womon, what she should be doing with her body in any state. Next thing you know, abortions will be illegal again, because what position does a pregnant womon have that she should be able to make the decisions regarding her body and the life it is carrying! Ridiculous.
Go ahead and read the article…and read the millions more like it that further indict wimmin for having malfunctioning bodies incapable of conceiving, bearing and birthing babies without continuous monitoring by the ‘professionals’.
Womon and Sprout 
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