Growing ‘freebirth’ trend alarms doctors

“Dr. David Stronge, a retired physician from Lantzville, said he can think of multiple reasons why freebirth is a bad idea.

“You will have no method of dealing with an obstructed labour,” he said. “I’ve delivered babies at home. It’s pretty gruesome.”

Stronge said if a woman starts to hemorrhage, the situation becomes very serious.

“You just bleed out. You can’t deal with a ruptured uterus,” he said.

“It is inappropriate in a modern society to deliver at home.”

Angela Flegel works as a doula, still a relatively unknown profession, in Nanaimo.

“I’m a professional support person,” said Flegel.

Flegel also helps fathers provide support to the mother and works in conjunction with a doctor or midwife.

“I can offer suggestions that will help with comfort,” she said.

“But I don’t attend the births alone, that’s a big no-no. Doulas are strictly for emotional support.”

This line was the kicker for me:
“It is inappropriate in a modern society to deliver at home”
I really believe these doctors are suffering from a complete failure of imagination about our society. They have spent two hundred years convincing mothers that birth is dangerous and only a professional can attend a birth, yet they believe our society is just going to continue as is with no major infrastructure disruptions to make it impossible to birth with a professional.
I believe those disruptions are just around the corner and it is going to be interesting to watch our civilization contort and twist to adjust to the realities that may smack and hit the innocent most painfully. The last time we had a pandemic, most babies in america were being born at home. The vast migration from home to hospital did not happen until the 40’s and 50’s.
When hospitals are overun with disease, mommas are going to want to stay home. Bringing hospital birth to home is what is deadly and dangerous. And the first problem crops up with the positioning of the mother. My own religion, which is so focused on Provident Living, must have had a doctor write a primer on Emergency Childbirth contained in the churchs preparedness manual. Because it tells the support person to help the mother lie down on her back to “assist” her with the delivery. This immediately puts the baby into distress and makes the contractions more painful for the mother.
Teaching parents practical information about natural childbirth, which the doctors themselves don’t know and are in no position to teach, is the best step our society could take to help mitigate the deadly childbirth situations that will immediately present once a virus starts raging around the planet.
But no, the medicos have nothing but scorn for those of us who are seeking to learn for ourselves the facts of birth.
Doctor Stronge, what is inappropriate is for you to live in your la la land of “modern” unreality and believe that everything is going to stay as is for the duration of my birthing life.
Jenny Hatch

Jenny Hatch

Mommy of many red heads:

“My story: ‘I shed the placenta and had a bath with my son’

I always planned to have children but I could never imagine giving birth in a hospital, or with any kind of official in attendance. The only way I had ever been able to picture myself giving birth was alone, or with an old crone in silent attendance. At night in the woods by a stream was my preference, but my own front room and bath was, when my time came, the best available option.

As the day approached and pressure from the NHS to “plug-in” mounted, my partner became increasingly fearful and I increasingly resolute. Talk of stillbirth – designed to drive me to hospital – only heightened my distrust of those who saw fit to try and worry me at such a vulnerable time. I had, by this time, had my fill of the local midwives, all but one of whom had treated me with a complete lack of empathy, and the idea of inviting a random team of two of these frankly cold women into my small home seemed laughable.

The evening before I went into labour I had my spirits boosted by the book Spiritual Midwifery, not because I felt in any way connected to the free-loving, be-necklaced and hairy-partnered women pictured within, but because the pages and pages of homebirth statistics in the back made for optimistic reading. I read the book in the bath before going to bed and went to sleep thoroughly optimistic, When I got up in the night I found a trace of blood, which convinced me my labour had begun. I got up and while I was running a bath, I spread all the lovely white sheets the midwives had provided over the floor in the front room. My contractions were minutes apart within the hour and as the pain quickly intensified I woke my partner, who went straight back to bed on the basis that it would be a “busy day tomorrow”. I was soon oscillating between agony and ecstasy, with only time to stagger the five yards between bath and white sheets, at which time I started to panic that I didn’t know where my much-read-about cervix was.

I woke my partner, who went out looking for a newly qualified midwife who happened to be staying with a neighbour, and he returned with a drunk woman who reeked of cigarettes, which put me right off my contractions. I sent her away after agreeing with the general consensus that I was unlikely to give birth until the following day. As soon as she left I felt the baby’s head emerging, and after much screaming but less than four hours of labour I gave birth to a very skinny boy on some very bloody sheets. I painfully shed the placenta and had a bath with my son before going back to bed. He is now four, and fine, and very wonderful, by the way.

In my second pregnancy I avoided all contact with the NHS and had no antenatal care whatsoever. After 10 hours of extremely painful labour at home, alone throughout, I gave up and called an ambulance. Less than an hour later, on my back in hospital, I gave birth, vaginally, to premature twins. In terms of the amount of medical intervention I had to have, it was the opposite of my hopes and dreams, but I had never imagined having twins – and what a lovely surprise that was. Besides, dialling 999 was always my back-up plan, being only 10 minutes from the nearest hospital. The twins are now big and bonny.”

Name withheld
I appreciate a blogger like this who just shares the information without calling for our heads on a plate.
Jenny Hatch

Freebirth?

“I’d never heard of it, but it doesn’t surprise me that a freebirth movement is underway. Basically, it’s giving birth at home without the assistance of doctors, midwives, or drugs. Just the mom and maybe the dad. They claim that the biggest problem with childbirth is fear.

Truthfully, I think these “freebirthers” have some salient points. This quote probably sums up what I feel about childbirth in general:

“We’ve been giving birth for thousands of years and we’re still in this world. If it was that dangerous we wouldn’t be here.”

Of course, medical professionals aren’t too keen on the whole concept. And I can understand that, too — if complications develop during pregnancy, it would be nice to have some doctors around to deal with it before it kills or harms the baby and/or you.

Yet, having given birth three times without drugs, and, honestly, not feeling the medical professionals were particularly helpful, I can understand why freebirthing is growing in popularity.”

I can understand too!
Jenny Hatch

I LOVED the comments at this blog. LOL.
Kevin MD Freebirth Controversy

“Happyman, you are woefully ill-informed. Technology and medicine have NOT been improving outcomes over the “100 years.”

As Dr. Gawande in The New Yorker admits, in 1933 the New York Academy of Medicine published a shocking study of 2,041 maternal deaths in childbirth. At least two-thirds, the investigators found, were preventable. There had been no improvement in death rates for mothers in the preceding two decades; newborn deaths from birth injuries had actually increased. Hospital care brought no advantages; mothers were better off delivering at home.”

And, if you bother to look at the stats, midwife birth for normal pregnancy is SAFER for the mom and just as good for the baby. The most recent, prospective study:

Oh, but Mike doesn’t believe in stats because they’re cliches.

Ignorant jerks, doctors, who are raping American women–and must be stopped!!!

# posted by Anonymous : 7:05 AM”
Applause, Applause, give that person a standing ovation!!!
Jenny Hatch