I'm bitter, I admit it. - Infertility

[MamaJunebug]

My children continue to be baby-less due to inexplicable infertility. Meanwhile, a friend of a friend conceives yet another baby with yet another man, and then there are the daughter and son of James and Stacy "Everything's a Trial" McDonald. Said daughter and son are generally pretty likeable, only fundie-lite, he does far-out things [irony] like be photographed in women's hats, or wears a top hat and tails to formal occasions ... but after six weeks' bedrest for the expecting mother, this happened, and I am simply glad not to be friends with the pair, becuase we wouldn't be at this point.

Emphasis added since it could be tl:dr for lots of folks.

The father writes,

We had always planned on a home birth, but this time the Lord had other ideas. After a Sunday afternoon was transformed into chaos by Tiff's water breaking, we called the midwife, doula, masseuse, family, everyone, because this was it! All that we had waited for, prepared for, longed for was about to happen! The midwife arrived, agreed that Tiffany's water had broken, and then we waited, and waited, and waited. One would think that the monumental act of her water breaking would send this woman, who was on bed-rest for six weeks due to pre-term labor, careening over the edge into a raging abyss of contractions on a vast scale! The result was.....nothing. A few contractions, one or two, with her husband faithfully recording the timing, length and intensity, then they would skip away like a seven year old enjoying a flowery meadow, only to return awhile later, with some new discovery, before skipping off again. Exercise was to no avail, oils only made a bit of progress, massages, pressure points, walks, the exercise ball, all was tried, with very little change.

This pushme-pullyou game of labor went on for twenty-four hours, before we ran into the rules regarding potential infection. At that point, the hard decision had to be made, and our home birth was put on the back burner, and the health of mother and baby, on the admittedly small chance of infection made us fall back on our "backup plan". There is one hospital in our area that is VERY friendly to midwives, and home-birthers in general, so a few calls were made, and we trundled off to the hospital.

To condense the next twelve hours into a few sentences, with only the intervention of a minimal amount of pitocin, no pain meds, and an excellent nursing staff and doctor, who let our able midwife take center stage until it was time to push, we welcomed a massive young man into the world. Neither Tiff nor I understand why the Lord had us scrap the plan for a home birth, but sometimes trusting means not knowing, and being willing to say, "that is how it played out, we did our best". As long as you know, deep down inside that you did your best, that is all that matters. Baby is home, mother is safe, and we are now home, enjoying the new normal, and praising God for the "End of the World".

Oh for God's sakes, and I save my blasphemy for really, really special occasions.

What is the g.d. magic about a home birth? Shit, my kids would be thrilled to have A Birth, home, hospital, ambulance or otherwise. Is this some kind of dominionist 11th commandment? Is the father writing between hand-wringing because he wants all the overlords to know: We tried to squirt him out at home! Really, we did, don't be mad at us!!!!!

Is there a homebirth sweepstakes going on that they've kept under wraps? Only families with an uninterrupted series of homebirths qualify to enter the drawing for the Escalade!!! (Special consideration will be given to sons and daughters of Dominionist VIPs who tell their story with enough excuses to persuade the awards committee to consider them!)

At least the blogpost ends with an acknowledgment that - home-birthed or not - baby and mother survived and are thriving.

The rest of it? I just flat-out do not get and never will. Dominionists = big bunch of crybabies who *must* have it their way, or it's obvious God don't luv 'em. *scoff!*

[Emme]

Hugs. That's really all I can say. I feel this way about my aunt and uncle too. They've been trying for so long. I don't care WHERE that damn baby is born, just that they get to become parents!

[AVENues]

That is ridiculous. I am the most fertile person in the world... And I don't want any. I would give my reproductive organs to people who long for children and have their organs.Why have the most important things given out so unfairly?! The world is not fair. I'm sorry. : (

[PennySycamore]

MamaJunebug, a big hug to you and your children as they deal with infertility.

To the quoted person: Just STFU, please. Some people have worse to deal with than a "failed" home birth. You could have given that Tiffany experienced pre-term labor. Just be glad you've got a healthy baby. Oh, and I'm pretty sure the Lord doesn't give a shit as to how you birth.

edited to add that bit about premature labor

[Eternalbluepearl]

I totally understand the bitterness. *Hugs* some people just have a superiority complex and home birth seems to be one of their pet accomplishments. *eye roll*

[jenny_islander]

Actually, without the God-talk, this sounds like a family who wanted to give birth at home in order to avoid the potential side effects of Pitocin, pain medications, and other interventions that well-meaning hospital staff tend to bug people in labor about. But when the safe period for having an open amniotic sac without a birth came to an end, they did the prudent thing and went to the hospital, which is the place to be in such situations. But they're disappointed, because they really wanted to stay home. But they're also happy that everyone is OK.

A hardcore Dominionist would be freaking out about leaving the house at all. Zion birth, anyone?

ETA: "skip away like a seven year old enjoying a flowery meadow" :lol:

[acheronbeach]

Beyond the sheer stupidity of "ZOMG why couldn't we have a homebirth?", his writing sounds like it's taken from a Victorian-era dime-store potboiler. Did Daddy McDonald also get his book larnin' from the SOTDRT?

[treemom]

I know I am in the minority, but the whole idea of a birth experience is such a middle-upper class first world problem.

When I was in Tanzania this year I toured a clinic and halfway house for women recovering from surgery to repair obstetric fistula. These women would have traded their home birth experience for a live baby and you know not leaking feces and urine. Some women had lived with it for a decade.

It was profound and humbling.

-Kelly.

[Emme]

I know I am in the minority, but the whole idea of a birth experience is such a middle-upper class first world problem.

When I was in Tanzania this year I toured a clinic and halfway house for women recovering from surgery to repair obstetric fistula. These women would have traded their home birth experience for a live baby and you know not leaking feces and urine. Some women had lived with it for a decade.

It was profound and humbling.

-Kelly.

Perspective. It's a beautiful thing. Why don't fundies have more of that?

[Jana814]

I don't know why fundies have perspective I agree with you and wish that they did. It would probably be easier on them then certain other things.

[treemom]

I don't know why fundies have perspective I agree with you and wish that they did. It would probably be easier on them then certain other things.

It would involve them realizing that they are not the most important things in the world.

[2xx1xy1JD]

I get the bitterness.

Intellectually, you know that there isn't some finite number of potential babies, and that someone else having a baby doesn't reduce the odds for someone else. Your guts, however, don't always talk to your brain and these reaction are quite inevitable.

The worship of "natural birth" isn't just a fundie thing. I live far, far away from fundietown, and I still encountered it.

A few WTF? samples:

http://www.kveller.com/mayim-bialik/its ... mad-about/

I love lots of things about Mayim Bialik, but her line about Attachment Parenting being about trusting your body's ability to naturally and safely birth your baby REALLY rubbed me the wrong way.

Even worse:

http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/

and in particular:

http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/una ... s-uc-safe/

and the lines that I found particularly rage-inducing:

The same loving consciousness that knew how to grow her baby inside her perfectly, knows how to get her baby out safely and easily, if only she will let it.

and

No one, however, regardless of their “expertise,†can guarantee that a baby will be born safely. Some babies die. It’s simply nature’s way.

Now, I am pro-choice, which means that I support the rights of women to have make choices and be free of government coercion during every point of the reproductive process. If you want a home birth, have a home birth, and if the medical evidence shows that it can be can safely under specific conditions then I believe that qualified midwife-assisted homebirths should be funded. I'm all for women learning about the birth process, educating themselves on risks and benefits, and doing things that make them feel better instead of worse.

What I reject is this tyranny of the "natural", which honestly can morph into a fundamentalist belief (even among those that aren't religious) instead of just being about evaluating a means to an end.

As I've mentioned before, I've had 3 miscarriages, along with 3 healthy babies. 2 of those miscarriages were "missed" miscarriages, in which my body continued to act as if it was pregnant after the fetus died. So no, I did not believe that my body was smart enough to perfectly grow a baby. I thought it had fucked up, and reading shit like this just made me feel even more defective. I wasn't trusting my body to do anything, and thought that my lack of trust also deserved some respect.

As for the "some babies die" comment, it's unbelievably cold and callous. Fuck her. So, if a baby can't be born without medical intervention, nature intended it to die?

My 3 healthy babies were all breech, and all born by planned c-section. After going through a hellish grief-induced depression after my first miscarriage, I didn't have any emotional energy to waste on hoping for a perfect natural birth. I was sick of crying every day and being depressed and feeling like a failure, and had no more room in my life for that shit. The birth of my first child was a moment of pure joy, period. It happened to come via a c-section, just like some other women have their moment of pure joy after the pain of a vaginal birth. I felt great and my daughter was perfectly healthy. There is no "failure" in that. I'm also offended by the notion that method of birth has anything to do with attachment. There is genuine research into parent-child attachment that has been done (see the work of Dr. Paul Steinhauer). It's critically important for children, but it has little to do with Dr. Sears and even less to do with birth method.

With the added perspective of time, I'm a bit more tolerant of this stuff. I can understand that everyone is coming from a different place, and that what I experienced as a joyous miracle could feel very different for someone else.

[Black Aliss]

I know I am in the minority, but the whole idea of a birth experience is such a middle-upper class first world problem.

When I was in Tanzania this year I toured a clinic and halfway house for women recovering from surgery to repair obstetric fistula. These women would have traded their home birth experience for a live baby and you know not leaking feces and urine. Some women had lived with it for a decade.

It was profound and humbling.

-Kelly.

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

This. I get that for some women a home birth is an empowering experience (some of us simply don't don't feel like going out when we're in a hard and fast labour) and dog knows, some of these women have to take their empowerment where they can get it but FFS, I thought it was supposed to be All About The Baby!

[AuntCloud]

Perspective. It's a beautiful thing. Why don't fundies have more of that?

I was hanging around AP/homeschooling/natural everything sites in my day and finally got disgusted by the eternal whining whenever a birth wasn't "empowering" enough (i.e. having to resort to means not available in the bush). I'll take a run-of-the-mill, standard hospital birth at term any day over an emergency c-section at 26w or, for that matter, a natural hemorrhage that leads to a very natural death. There is a dangerous dynamic of the cheerleaders ("oh, how empowering!" "you're so awesome!") to the point where it looks like some women on natural-birth websites seem to be playing it for the audience.

It's pretty amazing how fundie-sounding some of the crunchier websites are. Reward for trusting your body and not resorting to the big bad system. Punishment for not being prepared or trusting enough when you did go to the hospital.

My site is in Hebrew (www.beofen-tv.co.il) and has the usual cultural bias of non North-American sites, but the gist of things is there.

MJB - hugs, infertility sucks to all around. Hoping for good news for you in 2013.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Hugs. I'm voluntarily childless so cannot pretend to truly understand the frustration other than academically via reading around. However, as others posted too, the "home birth is BEST birth" thing is definitely a trend right now - you are not imagining it! You can find it in various political circles but among the right-wing religious it is really big among the "crunchy cons," just another piece of the perfect "natural" lifestyle that is sold to the congregation, along with the homeschooling, nature journals, 1900s House clothing, and making all foods from scratch all the time. Having a homebirth or not, how it turned out, is so often used to judge the mothers, just as not being able to have kids is also used to judge them when that happens.

We have lots of conversations about Vision Forum and the like, how so much of their "thing" isn't technically religion but it's sold as part of this pretty package, I think the homebirth pressure is just another piece of that, and yeah, it does turn into a competition.

Also to touch on what treemom mentions - like so many other parts of this gauzy perfect life image, it's based on people conveniently forgetting the statistics of how things actually were "back in the day" or "without any technology" or "truly isolated rural."

[PennySycamore]

I heard a talk by Lois Estner, one of the co-authors of Silent Knife, about 27 years ago. (Silent Knife was one of the first books about VBAC.) Anyway, Lois said that some of the stuff she and Nancy Cohen has written was just utter bullshit. I think she was referring, in particular, to the fact that women who had difficult births used to end up in the cemetery and that fact was not acknowledged in the book.

[BoomerLynn]

The same loving consciousness that knew how to grow her baby inside her perfectly, knows how to get her baby out safely and easily, if only she will let it

This is such a dangerous thing to believe. Childbirth is not all sunshine and rainbows for every woman. I had to have c-sections with every birth due to a very narrow pelvis. After 2 hours of pushing with my first, he was in danger of getting stuck, and the dr. decided to do a c-section. His head was also turned upward instead of down. When the dr. tried to turn him manually, she discovered that there was no way he would fit, nor would any baby over 2 to 3 pounds. Had I believed the statement quoted above, there is a good chance that both my son and I would have died in childbirth. I'll happily take the c-section and other interventions over death. I truly worry for the women who hold on so tightly to these beliefs. For all some of these people talk of the good old days, they seem to forget just how many women died in childbirth back then.

[treemom]

I heard a talk by Lois Estner, one of the co-authors of Silent Knife, about 27 years ago. (Silent Knife was one of the first books about VBAC.) Anyway, Lois said that some of the stuff she and Nancy Cohen has written was just utter bullshit. I think she was referring, in particular, to the fact that women who had difficult births used to end up in the cemetery and that fact was not acknowledged in the book.

A cemetery or leaking shit and piss for the rest of their lives and having a dead baby to boot.

I have a friend who recently went post dates and had a stillbirth. She is actively trying to get people to understand that the woo-woo shit poses a risk too. And she struggles with the blame she places on herself for the loss of her baby.

And even though she spent a ton of time researching birth.....she told me she thinks i know more now. And that knowledge I have? that she didn't? what birth is like in places where home birth and no interventions is all that is available for most women.

She was shocked when i shared with her the rates of perinatal death (a better measurement of obstetric safety than neonatal death)

I am pro choice, but I think that abortion providers should be regulated and licensed. I think the same thing for midwives. I think direct entry midwives are dangerous and are liars.

And again.....visiting with brave, amazing women in Tanzania reminded me again how obnoxious Americans can be.

[AuntCloud]

This attaching of moral aspects to bodily functions is very disturbing. Many people believe that your brain is the ultimate master of your body, and if you just *thought* and *did* everything right, you will live happily ever after.

I have high blood pressure. Had it since I was a healthy-weight, non-smoker, semi-fit 23 year old. I have friends who are convinced that if I only relaxed/ate right/lost weight/exercised more/did a different kind of exercise/changed my diet, my bp would go back to normal. Some people have a very hard time accepting the fact that sometimes our bodies do weird and unpleasant things and no amount of morality or willpower can change that. I guess blaming others for their ailments is a nice way for people to mystically believe $hit will not happen to *them*, because their situation is, obviously, completely different and sick people somehow brought this upon themselves.

[Turtle]

This. This. This.

I fail to see how a natural biological process can be empowering. Some women's bodies are capable or conceiving, carrying a child to term and giving birth without assistance. If so, they are biologically very lucky. You don't get a fucking merit badge for it.

I'm sure it doesn't apply to everyone, but most people I know that claim to have "researched birth" don't understand that google =\= research.

Anyway, hugs to all those who struggle with infertility. I hope your family gets some answers. Fertility and reproduction seems like one if the most random, unfair things in the world.

[Turtle]

I meant to quote treemom above. Not sure why that didn't happen....

[Mommy22alyns]

The same loving consciousness that knew how to grow her baby inside her perfectly, knows how to get her baby out safely and easily, if only she will let it

**RAGE** I can't with this shit. So my body didn't plant the placenta in the right place and my youngest and I should have just died because of that?

[Sinister Rouge]

I fail to see how a natural biological process can be empowering. Some women's bodies are capable or conceiving, carrying a child to term and giving birth without assistance. If so, they are biologically very lucky. You don't get a fucking merit badge for it.

I'm sure it doesn't apply to everyone, but most people I know that claim to have "researched birth" don't understand that google =\= research.

So, so true.

Full disclosure: my kids were both born at home, but midwifery is regulated in my area and the option of going to the hospital was always there (complete with an ambulance on-call), and had there been any question of safety, for either baby or I, we could have been there in 15 minutes or less, accompanied by trained midwives with full hospital privileges.

That said, this experience showed me first-hand this significant false dichotomy among the home birth crowd: home birth is safe, empowering and natural and that hospital birth is dangerous, harmful, and dehumanizing. It's very much like fundiedom in that everything is black/white, either/or, success/failure, and that is just such complete bullshit. It's divisive and it's dangerous because it creates this unnecessary and pointless conflict and women are drawn more and more into opposition and competition over who's the more successful spawn-er. And, as Turtle pointed out, far too many women base their decisions not on discussions with their health care providers and actual, peer reviewed studies, but on some inspirational, counter-culture crap they read on some hippy-dippy website *Ahem*Mothering.commune... :roll: So, lay midwifery is a booming business, and moms and babies are paying the price. It's ridiculous.

[PennySycamore]

**RAGE** I can't with this shit. So my body didn't plant the placenta in the right place and my youngest and I should have just died because of that?

Why, yes, Mommy22alyns. You and your baby should both be dead. I remember once when I was in the hospital after the birth of one of my babies (my middle, I think) that an episode of Wagon Train came on TV one afternoon. It was about a mom whose baby was stuck and they were preparing to use an embryotome to save the mother. A new doctor suggested that they do a c-section. A c-section was the only way they had a chance of saving both. For those who don't know, embrytomes were instruments used to cut the fetus into pieces that could be delivered in cases of obstructed labor. The fetus was assumed to have already died.

I now remember what made Lois Estner so mad. In Silent Knife, she and Nancy Cohen had written that in the old days that women with difficult labors either birthed or croaked and they preferred birthing. Lois said that an old cemetery would be filled with women who would have preferred birthing, but had indeed croaked.

[2xx1xy1JD]

So, so true.

Full disclosure: my kids were both born at home, but midwifery is regulated in my area and the option of going to the hospital was always there (complete with an ambulance on-call), and had there been any question of safety, for either baby or I, we could have been there in 15 minutes or less, accompanied by trained midwives with full hospital privileges.

That said, this experience showed me first-hand this significant false dichotomy among the home birth crowd: home birth is safe, empowering and natural and that hospital birth is dangerous, harmful, and dehumanizing. It's very much like fundiedom in that everything is black/white, either/or, success/failure, and that is just such complete bullshit. It's divisive and it's dangerous because it creates this unnecessary and pointless conflict and women are drawn more and more into opposition and competition over who's the more successful spawn-er. And, as Turtle pointed out, far too many women base their decisions not on discussions with their health care providers and actual, peer reviewed studies, but on some inspirational, counter-culture crap they read on some hippy-dippy website *Ahem*Mothering.commune... :roll: So, lay midwifery is a booming business, and moms and babies are paying the price. It's ridiculous.

Agreed.

I am not against regulated midwives or homebirth. I just think that there is a world of difference between a woman making informed decisions - which could very well include the option of birthing at home with a midwife if she is low-risk and qualifies for it - and a blanket belief that all women are capable of birthing babies without assistance if only they eat right and believe in this concept with all their hearts.