unassisted pregnancy / birth

Yes - I'll admit this goes back to my mothering.com stalking / obsession -- but I just stumbled onto this stuff a couple of days ago and can't get it out of my head.

Several of these women proudly practice "unassisted pregnancy and birth". Where I come from an "unassisted pregnancy" is one where the person can't afford / doesn't know to get prenatal care, and an "unassisted birth" is one where you couldn't get to the doctor on time (or the midwife didn't make it on time).

Now - while home births and the like are not for me, I can respect a person's choice - as long as they are responsible about still having medical care. But to just plan to have your baby on your bed or in your bath tub w/o so much as a midwife present? I think it's simply irresponsible, and I'm surprised it's not illegal.

I mean, in a case where a baby is injured or dies b/c of something that could have routinely been handled had a trained midwife been present -- wouldn't that be illegal?

I'm just having a REALLY hard time wrapping my head around this.

[Stella]

If someone had run that by me, I would have put money on that being illegal. WTF.

[rainbabies]

you should post that question on mothering.com :>

WTH? Why would you want to risk your child's health?

[Lo]

it should be illegal, but maybe their stand point on it is if the baby couldn't come naturally into this world 100% then maybe it wasn't supposed to be here at all...i mean IDK

I don't agree with it at all but just trying to consider what those people could possibly be thinking

[Vishenka69]

I don't even like the idea of home birth (all that yuck in your own bed and no drugs) let alone unassisted. Even in the backward Middle Ages, women used midwives. Crazy people. I think there should be mental assessment test before people are allowed to reproduce. We have enough wackos already.

[PrincessFiona]

There are people out there that believe that a birth that is medically supported is just giving in to the patriarchy that is modern medicine. I have to admit that many moons ago when I was pg with #1 (has it really been 12 years ) that I was obsessed with the idea of having a natural birth with as little intervention as possible. The problem as I saw it was that doctors were trained to *intervene*...I didn't want to have unnecesary procedures done and I saw seeing a physician as the green light for that.

I did see a doc, of course, during my pg, but I chose a mid-wife-driven hospital for my delivery. I had a long labor list about what I wanted/didn't and showed up with a cassette player/tape of my favorite songs, candles, pillow

It was an eye-opener. My labor and delivery proved to be not what we thought at all...and I ended up with everything that I didn't want.....including pain meds/epidural/and an emergency c-section at the very end. No candle was ever lit and the music was banished by me because I didn't want to f'in hear it.

It taught me a real lesson. Had I been at home birthing in a tub, Andrew likely would not have survived or he would have had brain damage etc.

I think my biggest fear was of not being in control....but guess what...during labor...you really are not in control of many things.

Thank God for doctors, for hospitals and for medicine. Unexpected things do happen, and they can happen very quickly!

Two years ago, a baby died in our area btw in a home birth...and mom almost didn't make it too. It was mid-wife assisted and things seemed to go well until the end...then the ambulance couldn't get there quickly enough....

kris

[Bittersweet]

Wow, I had no idea! I made the mistake of googling "unassisted childbirth" and have now seen more pictures of naked women squatting then I ever care to see again. I really can’t understand the logic, if any, behind unassisted childbirth. Yep, I get it is natural, blah, blah, other animals do it this way, blah, blah. But until I am giving birth to a litter of kittens (which would be freaky) you had better believe that there will be at least one medical type person present. Plus, having to clean up the mess…no thank you. It just seems irresponsible for a mother to risk the health of her baby so that she can have the type of birth she deems ideal.

[DCJenn]

You know, if you look at the death rates of moms and babies in third world countries where there IS no medical intervention...why would you intentionally visit that upon yourself?

Jenn

[MrsC]

I saw this on the same website. There are people on there who don't "believe" in medical care in any circumatances. It should be illegal. Some of those stories are horrific.

There was one story I read that was particularly disturbing. She said that she never wanted any test or scans b/c she just *knew* there was something wrong with the baby and didn't want anyone to tell her. Somehow she ends up at the hospital anyway around 31 weeks, in labor but breech. The doc insisted on a c-section (according to her), the baby died b/c of some sort of heart / lung birth defect. SO many of those kinds of things can be helped now - either during pregnancy or after birth, and if they'd had warning they might have either been able to help keep her pregnant longer, or known what they were dealing with. Maybe not - but wouldn't you have wanted to try?

She kept referring to her c-section as "what the horrible doctor had taken from her". And she got pregnant 8 weeks after that delivery, had another 'unassisted pregnancy' and 'unassisted birth' at HOME (VBAC!). Fortunately the baby is fine - but that could have ended SO horribly!

I realize we're mostly biased b/c we're married into medicine -- but it just seems so wrong! As someone else said earlier - midwives have been around for eons - it's just known that childbirth can be a dangerous thing. There are less "cold & sterile" ways of going about it that can still be safe.

[spotty_dog]

Staying pregnant longer wouldn't have helped Jericho. His Potter's syndrome was not survivable. Most babies with his condition are born early regardless, and all medical care changes is to have the option of abortion, which Heather would not have chosen. She and her husband were using birth control when Xan was conceived, you make it sound like she jumped into being knocked up.

I would not make the choice of UP/UC, not in a million years, but she's a 100 lb woman with pituitary dwarfism and scoliosis who went on to have a supremely easy labor with her 9 lb son -- maybe there's something to the notion that birth works best when it's unhindered? What other species seeks out bright lights, bustle, and observers when they go into labor?

Obviously I respect the medical profession, but to some degree I respect these women as well, who have chosen to take every scrap of responsibility for a negative or a positive outcome onto themselves.

Here's a recent dialogue from the site regarding what leads people to make this choice...

http://mothering.com/discussions/showth ... p?t=515569

What I'd read didn't have an actual diagnosis of the birth defects, or a physical description of the mother. Obviously you're more familiar with the various members of the board than I am.

Her situation may not have improved w/prenatal care (obviously wouldn't if the baby had Potter's Syndrome) -- and I acknowledged that in my earlier post.

I still don't think it is a safe choice. Society at large is so quick to hold a doctor responsible for things that may even be out of their control, but if a woman chooses to give birth at home - alone - and something that COULD have been addressed at the hospital causes permanent damage or death - should that just be okay?

OK, I wouldn't do it personally BUT I have so much resentment against medicine, that I have definitely thought about it, multiple times. Longingly. But, I couldn't live with the risk of something going wrong.

I think the ideal situation is to be in a fully equipped birthing center or hospital so all of the trained individuals are there if something does go wrong; the equipment is there etc.

However, I think the majority of births should be under the supervision of a midwife; with a doctor available for more complicated deliveries or if something goes wrong. I do think childbirth has been "overmedicalized" in the sense of unnecessary C-sections; episotomy (sp?) I have long been convinced is our version of the female genital mutiliation we decry in Africa - -and I believe a major study recently backed me up on the fact that it does more harm than good, etc. Also, the idea that a doctor must personally attend each and every delivery has increased the costs of prenatal care/deliveries such that many women go without decent care.

I would much rather have a non-surgical minded midwife, with an OB/GYN on call in case of difficulty, both from the perspective of my personal preference and from the perspective of total societal costs and stretching health care dollars.

[mommax3]

The notion of this makes DH go white as a sheet, and he is pretty laid back. We had a close friend (who was a midwife) at our last location who was hell-bent during her third pregnancy on having a home birth with a midwife, which she ended up doing successfully. DH had taken care of her during a previous miscarriage, and she trusted him, but really wanted to have a home birth.......it was her "dream". Since she was a military dependent, and no military docs could back up her midwife, (and the midwife was located 2.5 hours away) she discontinued prenatal care after having a positive test and an early ultrasound, and approached the delivery without a real back-up plan, other than having to call an ambulance if things went south. DH, as one of the military OBs, was literally unable to relax the month her baby was due, knowing that he was the one she would call if something horrible happened, regardless of who was on call. Of course, it wasn't all about DH and his feelings (except from my perspective!) but it was really weird to us that a woman who normally was all about having a plan B for every eventuality, and was very cautious and safety conscious about her children decided to approach her birth this way. It was really all about control for her, and I really feel like that can be a very selfish choice, i.e. "My sense of comfort about being in control is more important than the absolute safest route to take when my child is born." This same person (we are still in touch) recently had an ectopic pregnancy and would not take Methotrexate to dissolve the pregnancy before her tube ruptured, based on her "internet research." She ended up losing her tube AND a whole lot of blood, and really could have died had her tube ruptured when her husband was at work. She is a dear friend, but very unwilling to trust physicians in matters of womens' health.

The whole issue that DH has with this is that when things go wrong during labor/delivery, they go wrong VERY QUICKLY, and if you are at home w/out the option of a stat section, your story will have an unhappy ending. There are really no guarantees, no matter how uneventful your pregnancy is or how well you have educated yourself about childbirth. He saw it many, many times during residency with some of the more crunchy military personnel, and it was always unbelievably sad.

Sally