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Administrator:
 mcm
On Minti Since: October 12th
Members: 24
Visits: 254 |
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| Understanding Birth
For discussion about pregnancy and birth.
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Save birth choices
Do you want to choose how, and where and with whom you birth?
September 7th is the national day for a rally in Canberra. It doesn't only effect women who want to homebirth with a midwife - the Govt is trying to legislate birth and limiting choice. |
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Birth attendants.
Birth is about doctors or midwives?
Women? Now there's a concept.... |
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Ricki Lake & The Business of Being Born has some exciting announcements - a new site to check out & join, mybestbirth.com, for pregnant women, moms, parents & birth professionals, a new book in stores now, "Your Best Birth" and the online rental of "The Business of Being Born" now available at thebusinessofbeingborn.com. If you know someone who is pregnant, they will want to know about this! |
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Reproductive choice "And here’s the other thing. Even if homebirth or freebirth were slightly less safe than hospital birth, which is pretty contentious, this is not a reason to restrict women’s rights to makes choices about their own bodies." |
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A woman is safest giving birth where she feels safest... or so "they" say. But are they right? An increasing number of well informed mothers-to-be don't think so. Why? Because slowly the fact is being exposed that women and their families are routinely misinformed, or not informed at all, of the hazards of popular childbirth practices. Doctors, midwives, media, literature, friends, and family of expectant parents consistently send the same firm message: pregnancy and childbirth require and benefit from expert supervision and assistance.
What a small but growing group of lay women are realizing and beginning to publicize is that "assisting" birth itself -- whether medically or in a more "alternative" fashion - is usually far from beneficial, and hardly ever necessary. The thrust of this emerging movement should not be confused with such so-called "natural" childbirth trends as Lamaze, or the recent call for a reduction in cesarean rates, both of which ignore the root problem of institutionalized birth and rob individuals of choices through forced conformity to artificial standards. Instead, this far more respectful, more empowering movement's primary goal is to help women to liberate themselves to give birth to their children in safety and pleasure. Through the sharing of unrestricted information between peers, more and more families are finding out about, and choosing one simple option that can render all others obsolete: unassisted childbirth.
Unfortunately, because of the widespread fear of childbirth that has become entrenched in our society, it is necessary at this point for me to beg some readers to suppress their initial objections to this uncommon idea for just one moment. The fact is, millions of women across the world are giving birth unassisted already; most of them just don't know it. Until very recently, childbirth was always an involuntary process that the healthy female body performed automatically. Even today, there is no way to truly facilitate the process of birth itself without the overt use of instruments and drugs. Surgeons can cut babies out of wombs, and midwives can even rob women of the glory of catching their own babies themselves, but just as the miraculous force that forms an infant within the womb does its job perfectly without help, so does that same force faithfully push the baby out at just the right time when it is allowed to do so.
Before you begin to compose a fiery editorial to rescue me from my apparent naivete', allow me to share with you, one simple but profound revelation that two glorious unassisted births brought to me: childbirth is not dangerous. Life itself is dangerous it's true, and sometimes unfortunate things happen to perfectly good people. But just as healthy people would not take up residence in a hospital for fear of dying, it is insane to approach childbirth - a normal, healthy function of the female anatomy - with the focus on pre-empting disaster.
Our normal bodily functions are absolutely not made safer by monitoring and interference. Even the mere observation, or subtlest alterations, of childbirth processes have the potential to adversely affect the intricate organic symphony that plays out best in privacy and security. But childbirth itself - when it is naturally free from obstruction -- is as trustworthy as breathing. Eventually we all must come to terms with our human frailty, but the fact that tragedies exist must not be accepted as an excuse for the blind application of unnecessary "safety measures" that actually cause harm. Giving birth unassisted is a responsible, safe thing to do for all but the microscopic percentage of women that have such serious medical conditions as to make even everyday activities a challenge.
How safe would it be to breathe -- one of our most basic bodily functions -- with fingers or tubes and wires stuck down our throats? Emergency "medicine" has proven that it is possible to do this clearly undesirable thing. Likewise, childbirth is so reliable that it often proceeds very well despite serious insults and hindrances. But who in their right mind would freely choose artificial breathing over the real thing? If one were falsely convinced that "assisted breathing" were the most reliable way to ensure survival, one might be afraid to live without breathing tubes and monitoring wires, just as many women are afraid to give birth in the comfort and sanctity of their own homes today. But being convinced of a lie does not mean that breathing that way would actually be safer for healthy people. Attended childbirth is not safer for the majority of families either.
So what is wrong with attended birth "just to be safe?" If you've participated in any discussion of different childbirth practices recently you have probably heard or spouted some version of the slogan many times, "What matters in childbirth is the outcome of a healthy mom and baby." The implication being that any route to that outcome is acceptable or even good. This idea that "healthy" physical bodies is rightly of primary concern to birth attendants and their clients is almost universally accepted in mainstream circles. Surprisingly, the same assumption even goes largely unchallenged in the so-called "alternative" world of midwife attended homebirth.
What fails to be addressed often enough by anyone -- if ever -- is the inseparable connection between the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, sensual, sexual, and social components of childbirth. The solitary element of truth in that popular mantra "a woman is safest giving birth where she feels safest" is being ignored: If a woman is not comfortable, her birth is not safe, and no sane person is comfortable having an intimate and profoundly life-altering bodily function occur with spectators and interference.
Most people honestly seem to think that providing the appearance of respect for women's choices -- however hazardous -- is more important than the impact of the actual choices themselves. No sane person would agree that all that matters in sex is that a penis enters a vagina, for instance. Giving birth is a fundamental element of a woman's sexuality too. So, it is clear that such goal-oriented attitudes are just as inappropriate when applied to the complexity of the human spirit, emotions, mind, and body that are all deeply affected by childbirth. But our collective histories of more than 20 years of mothers subjugating their birth instincts to medical rape has made it very difficult for many women to question status quo.
For anyone to really understand the potential harm in modern childbirth practices and make positive changes, we each have to move beyond knee-jerk defensive feelings brought up by such an appropriately emotional topic. To effectively encourage the necessary change, birth attendants, educators, and peers must neither be coddling nor condescending to childbearing women. We "mere mothers" are smart. Not only that, but by sheer virtue of our anatomies, women are the preeminent experts of our own bodily functions. Having previously been discouraged from taking up that role does not change the facts: women are created able to give birth without any assistance at all. We mustn't be afraid to shout this truth from the mountain tops. If women can be trusted to care for their bodies during pregnancy and then to nurture their offspring until maturity, women can surely be trusted to make the right choices in childbirth, even if that means choosing to give birth unsupervised.
It's simply logical that when pregnant women and the people they choose to have support them through childbirth are not fully informed, many women will feel safe where they are not actually safe. So, as it turns out, the over-used euphemism in question here is worse than false, it is out-right dangerous. Thousands of women, babies, and their families are literally robbed of safe, pleasurable childbirth experiences every day by modern pregnancy and childbirth practices -- both medical and alternative in nature. And more than that, thousands of women are placing their own lives, and the lives of their infants, into something far more risky than their own loving hands: they are resting their futures in the hands of well meaning professionals who know no more about childbirth as nature created it than a rock.
Probably these words are highly offensive to both professional birth attendants and almost anyone that has ever hired one, and that's fine by me. In my opinion, outrage is a healthy and necessary reaction to a problem that has harmed too many women, babies, and their families for far too long. Birth attendants and childbearing women alike would do well to take a critical look at what I, and many similarly empowered and inspired mothers have to say.
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Articles and stories about freebirth one one site.
Freebirthing
"This site was not created in the hope of convincing others to birth without medical assitance, but simply to help answer any questions and curiosity of those who have heard of freebirth and want to know more."
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