C Jane - unassisted homebirth - thoughts?

[treemom]

Ok - let me get this straight -

She had almost NO prenatal care (1 prenatal appointment total)

By her "guess" she was 3+ weeks overdue

Delivered at home with only her husband in attendance (no midwife)

This is almost criminal to me.

That is my problem with this. It was a setup for a dead baby. She is lucky everything was good.

[Sola]

What the hell is the photo about? Does she think she is the virgin Mary or something!

[mirele]

I guess I've read me too much Skeptical OB (skepticalob.blogspot.com) and the idea of an unassisted childbirth freaks me out. Or maybe it's because my mother had eclampsia while delivering me (in the hospital) and nearly died. I think Amy Tuteur (the Skeptical OB) is right on two things: before hospitals and the modern era, women died a LOT in childbirth (myself, I've looked at too many family charts where the birth/death date of the last child and the death date of the mother were the same) AND when you're giving birth, it's not about YOUR experience, it's about having a healthy baby.

[ChiTownJess]

I'm a big fan of better living through pharmaceuticals and hospitals. As my mom says, if theres a pill/shot/powder/whatever available I'll take it.... as I go scurry off to pack a bag for surgery...

Ditto that. I'm sure my neighbors would have thought I was being murdered if I had done an unassisted home birth. I also had quite a bit of bleeding afterwards, and I don't think that would have went well at home.

That picture CJane has up is just.......wow. I can't even.

[Cran]

All due respect to the importance of OBs, hospitals and modern medicine, I think Amy Tuteur is unfair on homebirth and trained midwives and engages in fearmongering about pregnancy and birth.

[eohiken]

Yep, that Amy Tuteur is infamous for ignoring, lying about and twisting proper peer reviewed studies about the safety of attended homebirth. She has nothing more than a vendetta against homebirth.

[Beeks]

All due respect to the importance of OBs, hospitals and modern medicine, I think Amy Tuteur is unfair on homebirth and trained midwives and engages in fearmongering about pregnancy and birth.

Seconded. She's a nut on the other side.

[Katiebug]

Yeah, Amy Tuteur has her own axe to grind - she's very anti-homebirth. It's fine to be against homebirth with lay midwives and no OB backup; very few sensible people would disagree with that. She is against homebirth period, even with a certified nurse midwife (CNM). Part of her arguments are well-reasoned and then she goes off the deep end, and she has a definite superiority complex even though she herself hasn't practiced medicine in some time. Recently she even suggested that doing elective C-sections on all mothers at 38 weeks would reduce the stillbirth rate, which statistically is accurate, but she completely ignored the additional risks to both mom and baby that are inherent to a C-section. I just can't take her seriously.

My OBGYN's practice has three APRNs who do well woman and prenatal care for low risk patients (there are 8 OBs among three offices and one nurse practitioner at each location). My OB likes to have all of his patients see the nurse practitioner in his office at least once for a prenatal visit because she's a lactation consultant, and she can cover for the doctors if there's an emergency at the hospital or when they're on vacation. The doctors do all of the deliveries because the APRNs are not CNMs, but there are patients who choose to see the nurse practitioner for all of their prenatal care and then the on-call OB from the practice handles the delivery. I saw the nurse practitioner twice and really liked her.

Some women go into prenatal care feeling adversarial or like they'll have to fight their OB on the issue of intervention - to me that's a sign that they picked the wrong care provider. There are plenty of CNMs in hospital practice who are just as interventive as OBs are, just as there are plenty of OBs who are more than willing to have only as much intervention as is necessary and who are focusing on evidence-based medicine.

One thing that I agree with Amy Tuteur on is that no "birth experience" is worth a dead baby. These crazy unassisted pregnancy/unassisted childbirth wingnuts place their experience over their child's safety (and potentially their own safety, too). I could never condone it.

[maybeizfundie]

Mothering.com has come up a few times in other threads. This is by *far* not a LDS or fundy only thing. Kelly from Generation Ceder is just fine with hospital birthing and epidurals, while the family I know who does unassisted birth does it entirely for reasons seperate from their faith.

I can understand the desire to do unassisted birth. Our options are limited--either hospital or unassisted. I'm going the hospital route. But I understand why some would view the hospital as a far more dangerous place to be for a healthy mother delivering a healthy baby.

The biggest thing for me is that people who make that choice need to *really* and truly own it. And that includes accepting the possibility of being held responsible if something goes wrong. Most likely nothing will go wrong. If it does, though, it has the potential to go really, *really* wrong because an emergency response isn't a 30 second ride on a crash cart to the OR, but an ambulance ride away.

[maybeizfundie]

Also, dh is from a rural area of a developing nation--and yes, some women still do give birth in the fields or on the way to market. One woman from his village did that, took her new baby to market with her, did her business, and walked home. And she was a local celebrity. She did it because she really had no other option. Whenever possible, women give birth at home and spend about 6 weeks recovering, in their home, mostly in bed, being cared for and fed by friends and relatives.

[Caxpax]

Amy Teteur is a raging lunatic- if all OBs practiced medicine the way she seems to think they should, there may be fewer dead babies but there would be a lot more dead mothers. 38 week elective c-sections? Fuck her- she's no better than the fetus-worshippers like Dougie.

I'm not a fan of unassisted birth, although it reaches new levels of stupid if she never received prenatal care. That just defies all explanation.

Homebirth with a trained midwife, for low-risk multiparas, is just as safe for mom and baby as a hospital birth, and with fewer interventions. Sounds good to me.

[desertvixen]

Another ran and worked out vigorously until the day she delivered, because she wanted to get her figure back as quickly as possible. Some people are just insane, and that's all there is to it.

There's nothing wrong with working out and being active while pregnant if you've been an active person. I was a big wimp and quit running at three months because the chest bounciness was actively painful, but there have been plenty of other military women running into their seventh and eighth months.

[Austin]

One thing that I agree with Amy Tuteur on is that no "birth experience" is worth a dead baby. These crazy unassisted pregnancy/unassisted childbirth wingnuts place their experience over their child's safety (and potentially their own safety, too). I could never condone it.

This (bolded). I get that women want to have a certain experience, and there's nothing wrong with responsibly pursuing that experience. But that's all it is: an experience. It's not the be-all, end-all of having a child - just a means to an end. Clearly some women confuse their desire to have their "experience" with the overall well-being of both themselves and the baby. With some of these women, the baby almost seems like an afterthought.

I also agree that this is not a fundie thing. Of the women that I know that have seem quite obsessed with the "right" way to do birth, they have not been religious or their religion has played only a peripheral role. It's like how they have a baby somehow becomes their whole identity, and I just can't relate with that.

I agree with the poster who commented that to support choice means to support women's choices in all things having to do with their bodies including birth. That doesn't mean I have to like their choice, but I wouldn't want it to be illegal. With that said, when a baby dies due to willfull ignorance, stubborness, and the pursuit of a certain experience, I have no problem with women being held accountable.

[emmiedahl]

I also agree that this is not a fundie thing. Of the women that I know that have seem quite obsessed with the "right" way to do birth, they have not been religious or their religion has played only a peripheral role. It's like how they have a baby somehow becomes their whole identity, and I just can't relate with that.

Yes, my friend who is an unassisted homebirther and extreme attachment parent bases a lot of her self-image on that. She is not religious at all unless you count atheism as a religion. Now that she is done having babies and her youngest is too old to co-sleep or be worn, she is having an identity crisis. I never really connected the two, but I think that her losing a key part of her identity might be contributing to the self-esteem/identity issues.

She is well-known in the unassisted home birth and AP community and has spoken at conferences. I mean, she is really into this, has been for almost 20 years, and now that phase of her life is over.

[Black Aliss]

Crazy as all hell, and irresponsible. I say that as someone who would have loved a midwife assisted homebirth, but who ended up with an emergency c-section.

A trained midwife has the tools to stop postpartum bleeding and knows how to deliver a baby who is in trouble. Your husband doesn't.

CNMs aren't permitted to attend home births in Utah (unless the law has changed recently). The lay midwives are, in some cases, no better than having an unattended birth.

[Jessica]

CNMs aren't permitted to attend home births in Utah (unless the law has changed recently). The lay midwives are, in some cases, no better than having an unattended birth.

My midwife is able to, as well as Rebecca Williams. I think they are the only 2 in Utah who can.

[Beeks]

There's nothing wrong with working out and being active while pregnant if you've been an active person. I was a big wimp and quit running at three months because the chest bounciness was actively painful, but there have been plenty of other military women running into their seventh and eighth months.

Yeah, both my midwives and my OB said that I could continue to do whatever I'd been doing before, as long as I felt fine. With my first I swam (quite vigorously) right up until 8.5 months or so.

[Kitten]

I cannot be pro-choice when it comes to terminating a pregnancy without being pro-choice about the culmination of one.

Well, actually, you can, because I find it hard to believe you would advocate for the choice to have an "unassisted" abortion, or one that was performed by an unlicensed, unregulated individual. There is a difference between unregulated "choice" and common sense, particularly when it involves two lives. Home birth - fine, if you want to take on the risk, but requiring a licensed midwife (at least) to be in attendance doesn't strike me as a terrible inpingement on freedom of choice.

Obviously, there is no way to enforce a woman's choice to have NO attendant at a home birth, but it seems that if she has made the choice to have assistance of some kind, then it should at least be someone who has the minimum of knowledge and training needed to recognize and handle an emergency situation, should it arise.

My opinion, of course...YMMV.

[Lily]

I have no problem with it and I don't rule out UC if I decide to have another naturally. Good for her! Sounds like a good birth.

[Beeks]

I have no problem with it and I don't rule out UC if I decide to have another naturally. Good for her! Sounds like a good birth.

Really? Are you also opposed to pre-natal care?

[Austin]

Really? Are you also opposed to pre-natal care?

What exactly constitutes a "good birth"?

[Lily]

Hmm. Once again I see the ugly, equally narrow-minded side of FJ.

It's horrible for the fundies to be closed minded and bash others' choices, when it's something you do or support, but when it comes to something you personally disagree with, it's fine to call names, bash, and make wildly inaccurate and hurtful assumptions?

[Beeks]

Hmm. Once again I see the ugly, equally narrow-minded side of FJ.

It's horrible for the fundies to be closed minded and bash others' choices, when it's something you do or support, but when it comes to something you personally disagree with, it's fine to call names, bash, and make wildly inaccurate and hurtful assumptions?

Two people asked you very polite questions.....I'm confused. :?:

[Austin]

Hmm. Once again I see the ugly, equally narrow-minded side of FJ.

It's horrible for the fundies to be closed minded and bash others' choices, when it's something you do or support, but when it comes to something you personally disagree with, it's fine to call names, bash, and make wildly inaccurate and hurtful assumptions?

Good lawd. Forget I asked.

[Lily]

Really? Are you also opposed to pre-natal care?

No. I'm not opposed to anything, except forcing and pressuring anyone to do things against their will. If you want constant monitoring and intervention and machines and surgeries and drugs, fine by me. If you want to do things on your own, fine by me too.

My first was a necessary emergency c-section. I was extremely ill and went into preterm labour, and I'm thankful every day that medical technology was there when I needed it, otherwise she might not be here. My second pregnancy, I chose to have a c-section because of a twin pregnancy and though it was a bad experience, I don't regret it, since I know the extra risk of a twin pregnancy is compounded by it being closely spaced with my first. I'm by no means against any of this. I'm just not against birth in a natural setting either.