So, let's say you are pregs. You're going to have a baby. YOU are going to have a baby. A baby who will become YOUR child that YOU are going to take care of, feed, clothe, respect, love, cherish, coo over, mistily gaze upon from time to time in story circle at the library because, "omigosh, I can't believe that is my precious peanut clapping and laughing with the other kids. Mine. Thankyousomuchforgivingmethisgift!" - uh, I digress... Where was I? Okay, yeah, you're going to get to the point where said babums is going to exit the womb. Now. Is the HOW your child exits your choice? Or not. Well, I recently stumbled upon, then tweeted the shit out of, this nugget o' outrage, regarding a woman who gave birth to her daughter at home (homebirth!! OMG!), then had her removed from her custody and placed into foster care (and eventually her mother's care) because she refused to have the recommended c-section due to her daughter's breech presentation. (just like me!!! except I rolled over and signed the consent forms in my "I can't believe this is what is happening ativan-infused haze"). So, this family has their daughter taken away from them when they took her into the emergency room a few hours after birth because she seemed particularly fussy. Apparently during the birth, her shoulder's became stuck for a bit causing a mild shoulder distocia and some nerve damage that now seems to have completely healed according to medical tests. So. Okay, I'm not going to go into specifics about breech birth, is it safe to do at home, or vaginally, or not, whatever. I know of some people who have successfully and without issue homebirthed, and hospital birthed breech babies, as well as several who have, like me!, had a scheduled cesarean for breech. I also have a friend of a family member who recently lost her baby trying to deliver breech at home. But I also know of some people who have lost a baby trying to deliver normally, in the hospital, with no idea why things went wrong. Everyone has a story and everyone knows someone (or knows someone who knows someone) to whom the worst imaginable happened. It happens. Is that fair? No. But is that life? Yes. Would I be so blase if it happened to me, or a family member or friend? No. But trust me, I'm not blase about it at all. Being all up on this mother thing, I'm confronted with stories of pregnancy, birth and child loss on a daily basis, and trust me, I cry. I feel it and when I was pregnant, I worried, 'would that be me, too?'... And, like every other mother out there, I worry still... "will I lose them someday in some freak accident? A terrible disease? How can I make sure 100% that they will grow up, live a long life, grow old, be healthy and happy and love and laugh for years and years and years and years long after I'm gone?!" I cannot. Nothing is 100% No birth is 100% "safe".
What am I getting at here? Where am I going with this? Ah, in a nutshell, I think how you give birth should be YOUR choice. And, if you dig even slightly, by dig, I mean, "google", you can find lots of cases where parents have had their child taken from them for refusing a c-section, only to give birth just fine to a healthy baby. What is that? A pissed off power play? Taking away your choices makes a pregnant woman not much more than cattle. What if her daughter had not been breech and she was born at home and suffered a cord accident; would that be her fault as well? What if no one knew the baby was breech? What if ultrasounds become mandatory? What if you choose to give birth to a baby you know has profound physical defects and you refuse to submit the child to "possible life saving surgeries" that carry more risks than benefits? Once you get on this slippery slope of chipping away at how and where a woman can birth, you are really opening the door to a maelstrom of problems. It seems like as women are slowly having their eyes opened to the benefits of a more natural and gentle birth experience, the medical establishment is fighting hard to counter women and beat them down to submit to their mystical and all-knowing ways. Why this struggle? How did we get here to where we are so easily coerced into huge decisions by virtual strangers like baa baa sheep? And of course, this doesn't just apply to childbirth, but to many facets of our lives. I mean, women have been able to vote for less than 100 years in this country. Um, excuse me? We still make less money for equal work than men. We MAKE PEOPLE and yet, we are still considered ill equipped to decide whether or not we want to trust our bodies to bring them forth without a myriad of interventions.
Sure now, I realize there are lots and lots and lots of lifesaving technologies that have saved hundreds of thousands of women and children over the years. It is to the incredible skill of some physicians that a sweet girl I know is alive today, with her triplets, because complete previa and placenta acreta rendered it completely impossible for her to deliver naturally. I'm not raising the flag of "burn down the hospitals! birth all babies at home!" (Um remember, I've got not one but TWO scheduled c-sections under my belt - literally, bwahhahahah) I am suggesting that we women aren't stupid. Proper prenatal care should be a cooperative effort and the birth decision should ultimately be the mother's if she is of sound mind. Vaginal breech birth is not some crazy myth that never happens. It's just a crazy myth here. In the USA. And if you happen to deliver a healthy baby (breech or not!) at home with no problems, then you (are crazy! lolololol) and just got lucky. OMG, you are SO lucky. Like, you totally dodged the inevitable death bullet that was heading your way when you took that on! Whew! Are you like, totally relieved and thinking, "I'd never do THAT again!"?
But, if something DID go wrong, it's all your fault, and you should have your baby taken from you because you clearly don't love them enough to birth "the right way". If you were in the hospital, and something did go wrong (because OH YES IT HAPPENS PEEPS) you would hear nothing but, "Oh my, I'm so sorry, there was nothing that anyone could have done, obviously". "Tragic, so tragic". "I'm sure that they did everything they could". Or, "you'd better SUE THE SHIT OUT OF THEM!"
To summarize with bullet points.
- how a woman births should be decided by she and (if applicable) her partner with guidance by whomever she chooses as a health care provider (midwife, OB, Shamen - kidding)
-Unless pregnant woman is completely mentally unsound to make a decision where it is obvious that the baby is in danger (or mom is in danger) due to complications that are known, then she should be left to decide how to birth her child.
-OB's need to treat their patients like their clients.
-Sad things happen during birth sometime. Even today in the era of the c-section and ultrasound and all the other medical marvels we have. Nothing is 100%.
-The more we hear about women having their children taken away because they refused some kind of medical intervention or another, the more dissonance we are going to have between the medical community and patients who ask questions. This will inevitably lead to laws being passed that completely strip away a woman's rights when it comes to what happens to her body.
-when did we stop trusting ourselves?
Don't Miss next week! Going to Jail for Miscarrying! and Birth Rape!
3 comments:
Could not agree more Cat, those stories like baby Ruth's are so frightening. Mothers should absolutely be encouraged to take more responsibility and be given more respect when it comes to making decisions about birthing their children. A mothers role in birth is incredibly downplayed and disregarded by the medical community and in American culture at large. That's so especially tragic since a mother's willing mind and body are the absolute best tools to birth a healthy baby.
After reading this story, as a mother, I don't know how this woman sleeps at night. I think that placing the child in foster care was extreme, but I do think that choosing to have a home birth, and blowing off the potential dangers, was selfish and irresponsible on the part of the mother.
Now I am an advocate of birth rights, and I believe that women should have a choice when it comes to their birth experience. However, I believe that those choices should be made in the best interest of the health and well-being of the mother and child, and in this case they were not.
I know that children can be born vaginally in the breech position, but I also know that medical training for vaginal breech births has all but disappeared. Without proper training and experience delivering a breech baby (which is difficult under the best of conditions) becomes downright dangerous. I get that the mother wanted to take a stand against the automatic scheduled C-section in the case of breech presentation, but the place to do that is to encourage education and training, not to go rouge in your own home.
I understand being passionate about your birth experience, and having the "right type" of birth experience is becoming more and more important in certain circles and playgroups, but being blase about your baby's heath is selfish. This might not be very PC, but I think all mother's who put their wants over the well being of their babies are selfish. I say that mothers who refuse to breastfeed because they are worried about cosmetic damage to their boobs are selfish, as are mothers who sleep-train newborns, and deny them feeding on demand, so that the mother can sleep uninterrupted are selfish. I think choose the birth that YOU want over what is best for the health of your child is selfish.
The fact is that the child suffered nerve damage, even if it has resolved itself, I couldn't live with myself if I knew that because of choices I had made my baby was hurt. I realize that things could have also gone wrong with a planned C-section, but the chances are much, much lower. I don't think you should go intentionally flirting with danger when children are involved.
Marissa you are right that medical training for delivering breech babies has all but disappeared, which is exactly why choosing to birth a breech baby at home can absolutely be the SAFER choice.
It is infuriating to hear mothers attacked and called 'selfish', and have their babies pitted against them. You could not be more wrong about mothers who choose home birth and why.
I looked at every option available to me when preparing to birth my twins (breech baby B) and was extremely uncomfortable with the medical approach. I felt much safer with a midwife who was trained and experienced with breech, I knew my chances of successfully birthing both sons but especially the breech were much greater out of a hospital setting. My goal was a progressive labor, resulting in the birth of two healthy whole infants.
An early induction, the threat of a dangerous cesearean at worst or an obstetricians' arm up my uterus yanking my baby out seemed like a great way to invite tragedy into my perfectly healthy babies lives.
I am not interested in critisizing other mothers but why is the woman who puts no effort into learning about the birthing process, takes no responsibility for her birth while blindly trusting the word of one doctor and ends up in a situation where an emergency cesearean is ordered to save her baby's life considrered the better and less selfish mother?
Obstertics offers a very narrow of birth with little to no consideration of mothers and babies as individuals. I am so grateful for all three of us that I had options for better care.
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