Sometimes when I am reading the various posts over at Dr. Amy’s Homebirth Debate Blog, I get the feeling when she is dissing those of us who promote homebirth that she thinks we are some organized group of women who all think alike, believe alike, and get together daily to hash out what it means to be an advocate of this type of birth.
I barely have time to talk on the phone to fellow activists, much less spend hours and hours in a smoky back room plotting and planning how to share the good news of home birth with other women.
By lumping us all together as the most naive, undereducated, simple minded people on the planet when the topic of birth comes up, she implys that a conspiracy of sorts is out on the web, manipulating innocent young couples into the dark dungeons of unscientific and indefensible home birth.
Home Birth activism is sort of like Home Schooling…
Hat Tip to Laura Shanley for sharing this image with me. Whoever came up with this visual made the point perfectly!
If it was YOU, contact me so I can give proper credit! Jenny Hatch
Last night I celebrated my 40th birthday with seven friends.
I was able to procure a copy of The Business of Being Born for the party and we watched it together. It was a joyful experience to celebrate my birthday with these friends as we shared the beauty and empowerment of that movie.
I received wonderful gifts of flowers, books, and candles from my friends, but mostly the party was blessed with the spirit of the Lord as we talked of true things and how to heal mothers and babes and the family overall from the overmedicalization of birth.
After everyone left the party Laura and I watched some of the extra footage from the DVD. I pulled out my camera and had my daughter take a couple pictures. I had forgotten to take pictures of the actual party, but this little montage shares our reaction to the movie. I have now watched it four times and I still believe it is the biggest leap forward for birth activism of the past thirty years.
I would highly encourage anyone reading this to purchase the movie when it comes out on DVD and have a party to share it with all of your friends. Jenny Hatch
I was just over at the Home Birth Conclusion….I mean, Debate Blog and read this post by Dr. Amy about Evolutionary biology.
For me, this is the crux of the debate and it is why I will never come to a meeting of the minds with people who believe what she believes.
She Said:
“A basic principle of homebirth advocacy is that women are “designed to give birth”. A variety of further claims flow from this: birth shoulded be “trusted” because it is designed to work; the incidence of death in childbirth must be low or “we wouldn’t be here”; complications are caused by intervening with the natural process instead of respecting it. These claims are spectacularly wrong because the basic principle is spectacularly wrong.
Women are not “designed”. Their bodies are the result of evolution. Evolution does not create perfection. It produces a wide variation in many traits and then selects for those that improve survival in the existing environment. The scientific discipline of evolutionary biology seeks to apply our knowledge of evolution to understanding the basis of human health and health problems. It has important implications for our understanding of childbirth and it reveals why claims that women are “designed” to give birth vaginally are both unscientific and foolish.”
Why would I as a Christian Woman who believes that my husband and I are divinely created in the very image of our Heavenly Parents ever in a million years go to someone like her for help with our births?
It’s one thing to use a doctor who has a foundation of Judeo/Christian or Muslim faith who believes in God and that he is our Heavenly Father. It is quite another to go to a doctor who has believed every scientific lie taught to him in medical school about evolutionary biology.
If that evolutionary doctor was delivering my child, his basic premises and beliefs, you know, that I evolved from slime and my genetic and biological mutations have made my pelvis WAY too small to deliver a large child, or any child without his help, would most certainly impact his attitudes and beliefs about childbirth, my childs birth. Why would I as a faithful woman pay him thousands of dollars to practice on my divinely created body?
See, I don’t just believe that I am created in the image of my Heavenly Parents, I KNOW IT. It is one of the foundations of my life.
Ironically the evolutionary doctor who would take issue with me birthing without his help would have me transfer all of my Faith in God to Faith in Him and his drugs and surgical interventions to birth my child.
Not going to happen.
I KNOW who my Daddy is. And I know that he designed birth perfectly, I know that the various ebbs and flows of hormonal connectedness and interactions were designed by a loving Heavenly Parent who is only a prayer away while I am in labor.
I KNOW that my body has the ability to birth alone, safely, happily and perfectly at home.
The scriptures have counseled me to put all of my Faith in God. Not in the fleshy realm where doctors live, breath, and function. I love the quote that says “what if something went wrong during my birth and all I had to trust in was GOD?”
Carol Balizet
In Proverbs 3:5 it says
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”
“O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm.”
I don’t particularly Trust Birth, I trust the Lord, whose daughter I am, who is sending these little children down to our home to live and be taught and loved and cherished. I have found that by trusting the Lord to help me while I birth, I have developed a greater Love and Faith in Him. And I defy the Godless Professional who would step in between my relationship with my Father in Heaven and start dictating to me what I should or should not do as a mother.
