There has been a bit of controversy about unassisted childbirth after Janet Fraser, the birth activist who coined the term “birth rape”, gave birth to a baby girl who died. Afterward, the was a lot of finger-pointing, some support and sorrow.
In my traversing this natural parenting bloggy world, I’ve been lucky enough to encounter a handful of amazing, brave women who have had incredible unassisted birth experiences.
I thought I’d share one with you. Introducing Sheryl, who writes at A Much Better Way, the bloggy site for her store. After enduring a bad, bad experience with a “medwife“, she chose an unassisted birth for her second daughter. She was kind enough to enlighten me (and you, too, I hope!).
How did you learn about unassisted childbirth?
I often wondered about unassisted childbirth during my first pregnancy. If high school girls could deliver babies in bathroom stalls and women could deliver in their cars on the way to the hospital, why can’t we all? I secretly wanted to just “have her” in my bedroom all alone because I was terrified of what would happen at the hospital. I did not consider a homebirth however, because of sanitary concerns and the “what if something goes wrong” argument. Like most other women, I believed I was doing the right thing for my child.
After my first daughter’s birth, I started nosing around on the internet because I was so unhappy with the entire birthing experience and I had a gut feeling that the birth could have been very different. I found Laura Shanley’s website, and I cried out loud. I just sobbed. I read every page of it. In my head I was screaming, “I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!”
You and I both use the term, “medical midwife”. Tell me about your first pregnancy and birth.
I was living in Spain with an abusive husband when I got pregnant with Brielle. I had a very dramatic middle of the night escape with whatever I could carry and I managed to flee the country and return to the states. My ex tracked me down and so I was forced to move across the country again when I was six months pregnant. It was an incredibly stressful pregnancy. While I did not expect special treatment by my caregivers, I never thought I would become a victim of a violent hospital birth because they all feigned sympathy for my situation during my pregnancy.
I chose a midwife because I wanted a natural birth and I thought all midwives believed in women, birthing and keeping it natural. I discovered that CNMs or Certified Nurse Midwives are simply another cog in the hospital birthing industry’s wheel and while they may have started out with good intentions, they are just as quick as any other birthing attendant to use dangerous interventions in the name of convenience and profit.
At 38 weeks, my labor was induced for what was either a pinhole leak of amniotic fluid or no leak at all . In reviewing my hospital records, the midwife was never able to conclusively identify amniotic fluid because there was so little of it. She had a free evening so using scare tactics that she could not substantiate, she began the induction. It was torture times 100. They kept cranking the Pitocin and I was begging them to stop increasing it. I didn’t even ask them to turn it down or off, just stop increasing it so regularly.
At one point I told the nurse that I thought I was going to die and I really believed it. I begged for an epidural but they did not want to wait for the anesthesiologist. They just kept cranking it. The midwife stopped addressing me directly and had me get on all fours to “facilitate dilation” and began doing such rough pelvic exams that she practically knocked me off the bed. I wondered through it all “Why are they doing this to me?” “Why does she hate me?”. When my daughter’s heart rate dropped to 50 BPM from the oversized Pitocin contractions, she finally cut an episiotomy that I only agreed to because the midwife said my daughter’s life depended on it.
She also laid me out on my back in the stranded beetle position with a spotlight, did purple pushing and cut the cord within seconds of delivery. All of these things were against my wishes which I had conveyed to the midwife verbally on more than one occasion and were laid out in my birthing plan (which was totally ignored).
I found out later that many doctors will not induce for PROM, particularly pinhole leaks which often self repair, that they will reduce or stop the Pitocin if the contractions are too much and that all of the other horrible things she did to me were 100% unnecessary. I also learned that birth plans are routinely ignored.
I suffered flashbacks and revenge fantasies for years. I have no doubt whatsoever that I suffered birthrape, birth trauma and post traumatic stress disorder as a result.
So your second pregnancy was both an “unassisted pregnancy” and “unassisted childbirth” or “freebirth”. What did you do during the pregnancy to ensure that your second baby was healthy?
A lot of women in the natural childbirth community believe in simply trusting pregnancy and birth. I don’ t believe that. Without a midwife to rely on, I spent an incredible amount of time learning about techniques and positions for common complications and most importantly, when to transfer. That is what people pay a midwife for and I had to be prepared to act as my own midwife. It is a tremendous responsibility and one I took very seriously.
I also read a lot. I read Henci Goer, Ina May Gaskin, Jennifer Block, Marci Macari, Thomas Strong and watched The Business of Being Born.
My pregnancy was not entirely unassisted. I take a middle of the road position on unassisted pregnancy. I believe that certain potentially dangerous conditions, such as placenta previa can be ruled out with prenatal testing so I chose to undergo an ultrasound to confirm a healthy pregnancy. I also wanted to have an OB on the books in the unlikely event that I needed to transfer to the hospital. I stopped seeing her after the 18 week ultrasound. I did not have risk factors or symptoms of other common pregnancy conditions like gestational diabetes so I decided to skip testing . I checked my blood pressure regularly and remained aware of other symptoms that could indicate a potential problem.
Most importantly, I ate a meticulous diet. I eliminated sugar and processed foods entirely. I sought out organic, grass fed raw milk and made homemade yogurt. I ate anything with probiotics. I drank superfood smoothies with Vitamineral green, took whole food supplements, Omega 3, Vitamin C Ester, Alfalfa, Lecithin/Choline and other supplements. I practiced yoga daily. I kept my stress level low and enjoyed every second that I had alone with my first daughter. It was a wonderful pregnancy.
Tell me about Bianca’s Birth day.
The day started out like any other. I was 41 weeks and 4 days so others were starting to get very agitated thinking I should “do something” to start labor but I knew Bianca would arrive when she was good and ready. I had absolutely no indication I was going into labor until about 2 in the afternoon when I had some bloody show. Within an hour or so the contractions were so hard that I was on the floor. My 3 yr old daughter Brielle and my parent’s dog were climbing all over me during contractions which was irritating at the time but I have to laugh at now.
I was kneeling on the floor for the last few hours of the labor. The contractions were incredibly powerful so I ended up intentionally pushing during contractions because it felt so much better. I could feel her moving down through my pelvis with each push. It was amazing. Bianca was born in the caul so rather than feeling her crowning, I felt the amniotic sac instead of her head and then suddenly she was born all at once when the sac broke. I was still wearing clothes because I did not want to labor in the nude with my mother in the room so there was a mad rush to extricate her from my clothes. She was born about 5 hours after the first indication that labor was starting.
While those are some of the specific incidents that took place, what I really remember about that day is that when Bianca was ready to be born, my body took over and did exactly what it needed to do. I was participant, observer, caretaker, vessel and more. It is very difficult to put the experience into words.
Tell me what surprised you most about your Unassisted Birth.
Many women who birth outside of a medically managed setting report having pain free and orgasmic birthing experiences. They claim that fear is the source of tension and pain during childbirth. I can honestly say that I had no fear going into the birth. I had educated myself to the point that I knew I had nothing to fear. I was very much expecting a pain free if not ecstatic birth. Despite my lack of fear and my positive outlook, the contractions were still very painful. I was knocked on the floor and could do nothing but vocalize. The pain really took me by surprise. It was still a very different pain than the Pitocin induced contractions. It was manageable and the second she was born I was fine. The Pitocin contractions still haunt me.
The other thing that surprised me about the whole experience was how transformational it was. Marcie Macari likes to compare childbirth to fire walking or other life changing experiences. I think my mind was still on the “clinical” side of birth when I read that. I did not understand what she meant. Now that I have experienced it, I can say that I am a different person. My anger at the first birth is gone. I feel content, peaceful and euphoric. I am no longer a victim of birth trauma, I am a survivor.
This is the spiritual side of birth that most women are robbed of. I may have experienced some of that with a midwife assisted homebirth and none at all in a hospital setting. I have always compared homebirth to making love and medically managed birth to a continuum ranging from arranged marriage sex to porn to rape. I was not aware of how spot on that analogy was until I experienced the embodiment of love first hand.
Would you do it again?
In a minute. It was the most incredible experience of my life. If I have the opportunity to give birth again I will probably choose a magnificent nature setting like a mountaintop, jungle or the ocean.
As a side note, what did you do with the placenta?
While I was pregnant, I had many ideas of what I wanted to do with the placenta. I considered placenta prints, encapsulation, placenta essence, burial or eating. In the end I examined it carefully, took a few pictures, weighed it and then blended it with frozen berries, juice, superfood powder and a few other ingredients and poured it into thirty Dixie Cups and and froze it. I had a placenta smoothie every day for a month.
Wonderful! Thank you so much much for sharing your empowered experience!
I am truly sorry that you experienced so much trauma with your first, but glad you responded in a way to empower you to create a healthy and powerful experience second time around.
I had a horrible Medwife experience for my 2nd with the pitocin issue, and my first was a horrific Cytotec induction experience. My last two were home birth/waterbirths with midwife and doula. My last was unintentionally unassisted (my husband and children were present) and they were the BEST experiences of my life!!! I get “you’re crazy!” comments all the time. But I know in my heart that they just haven’t done the research. Kudos to you!
both of my births were terrible. one was a c section i did not want or need and the second was with a medwife… i love that term. i have never heard it before. she ignored my wishes as well – from the beginning. I would love to have done this at home but today they instill the fear and lay it on thick.
Wow, I could have written this out word for word, except my hospital birth experiences weren’t too bad. I had my baby last July, in a completely uneventful UC. The link to my birth story is on my blog.
Thanks for everyone being so supportive here. I, too, am impressed with Sheryl’s story. Yours too, Emily. You were the other prolific blogger I thought about interviewing for this 😉
Even for women who don’t have horrific birth experiences, others they know do, and that can be enough to encourage a woman to allow the various interventions…and we all know how that ends up, when 1/3 of American babies come out of the belly, not the womb.
As important as it is to make birth “natural” again, we also have to stop the legacy of bad birth stories that some people feel compelled to dump on pregnant women.
Birth *is* natural. We can do it. It is not a medical condition.
That is the mantra I was raised with. It wasn’t until I became pregnant with my first son that I realized (because of hearing so many awful stories) that my upbringing was rare in the sea of women passing on the legacy of fear of their own bodies.
Something has to change!
That is an incredibly interesting story. How very special it was to be able to read your story. I am very interested in natural childbirth. I had my first child in a hospital naturally with a very supportive hospital staff, so I was really lucky.
I think this statement you wrote, “my body took over and did exactly what it needed to do” is very powerful. Women just need to believe that their bodies are made to birth. You just have to let nature run its course.
Thanks again for sharing and I’m so happy to know your babies are healthy.
Thanks so much for posting this, Cate! It’s nice to know there are women out there who truly do “get it.” Those of us who choose this route often have to endure criticism from those who simply don’t understand. My unassisted births changed my life, and I’m glad to know I’m not alone!
While many (if not most) unassisted childbirths have a happy ending, not all do. I personally believe it’s very irresponsible for the ECP blog to promote delivering without a trained attendant present. Doesn’t have to be a nurse midwife, just somebody who has training and experience in assisting deliveries and knows what to do if something were to go wrong.
We modern moms tend to forget that as recently as the turn of the last century 1 out of every 10 women in the U.S. died because of complications from childbirth. So the blithe reassurances that childbirth is natural overlooks the fact that throughout virtually all of human history *DYING* in childbirth was very, very common.
Crimson Wife,
I just wanted to defend Eco Child’s Play. Writers like me are given a fair amount of leeway on our topics, so ECP isn’t advocating that women do this.
I chose to delve into this topic because there had been criticism of the practice overall, without looking at how incredibly well-educated these women are. I would even argue that many of them are practically certified as doulas, because they know much, much more about birth than the average pregnant woman.
I also sympathize with them. By the end of my second pregnancy, I was “ready to give birth in a closet like a cat” because of my medwife.
I thought it might be useful to see how empowered and wonderful these experiences are for these women. Also, any woman would call for medical help if need be. I assure you of that! (Sheryl had met with an OB for just this purpose.)
I don’t have any problems with non-medical attendants. If Sheryl educated herself enough about deliveries and has apprenticed with an experienced birth attendant, I’d be fine with her assisting *SOMEONE ELSE*.
It’s just the going it alone part that’s dangerous. If she experiences complications, she very well may not be in a position where she is able to help herself. Even someone who is a professional midwife or OB might not be able to safely deliver her own baby by herself, let alone somebody who’s just self-taught. There’s a limit to multitasking unless you’ve figured out a way to somehow be in 2 places at once…
Crimson Wife – I’ll just C&P what I commented on someone else’s blog just the other day, to almost exactly the same reply:
Women died in childbirth not from lack of technology, but from poor nutrition, lack of access to emergency services, unclean living condition, and no antibiotics, among other things. Granted, some of them could have been saved by medical intervention, but the majority of common pregnancy complications, such as hemorrhage and infection, were not treatable then, but are perfectly treatable now.
In fact, when birth first moved into the hospitals, the maternal mortality rate ROSE until the US was the worst in the world for which statistics were know. The mortality rate only started to decline when antibiotics were invented, and aseptic routine implemented. (People knew that germs could be transmitted by contact by that point, but up to that point, doctors continued to refuse to wash their hands, insisting that they could not possible be the ones making patients sick.) At that time the #1 cause of death to pp women was puerperal fever, which was given to them BY THE DOCTORS. Hospital-acquired infections currently account for 2 million+ infections in the US every year, and 26,000+ deaths.
It’s not like we live on the frontier. I live 5 minutes from the biggest, baddest hospital in the valley. If I were to experience a complication, it would be literally 10 minutes to get there, during which time they would have the OR set up for me. Even in the hospital it would take a minimum of 5-10 minutes to get the anesthesia and people set up to perform an emergency c-section. There are VERY few complications that will kill a mother or baby in less time than it takes to get to the hospital, and those types of complications will probably kill you no matter where you are, before anyone even knows something is wrong.
In any case, there are no studies done on the relative safety of UC, so it cannot be unequivocally stated that UC is more dangerous than midwife-assisted home birth. The only numbers out there on UC include ALL unattended births, such as precipitous births, dumpster babies, and any birth that occurred outside the hospital and in the absence of a professional birth attendant.
Rather than crow about how dangerous it is that women take on the responsibility for their outcomes, you all should take the time and do some research. Find out what are the real dangers, and whether or not a mother has the right to assume the risks herself. Then you can come back and defend your position.
I am a CNM who has attended about 2000 births all in hospitals. I have two comments about unassisted home births. First, what about complications with the BABY at the time of delivery? Are these folks learning CPR in case the baby needs help breathing? On a few occasions, I have attended births in which there were no medical interventions, but the baby needed help with breathing. I also had an experience where the mother was hemorrhaging with the boggiest uterus I had ever felt and the baby needed resuscitation. This was a first time mom with no risk factors and no medical interventions in her very normal labor and delivery. If a woman can handle such a situation without assistance after just having given birth, then she should be heartily congratulated.
There was a very interesting article in Scientific American a few years back about the evolution of assisted childbirth written by two female cultural anthropologists. There may be some good reasons why humans have sought assistance with birth from the beginning having to do with changes in the pelvis and position of the baby’s head from walking upright. We are not “cats in the closet” and no amount of wishing will make it so.
Just as the fashion and cosmetic industries have convinced women that they’re inadequate and need their products and services in order to be happy, beautiful and healthy, the medical community has convinced women that their bodies are defective, birth is dangerous and only “trained professionals” (often along with drugs and surgery) can make it safe.
The truth is that childbirth in and of itself isn’t dangerous. Poverty and cultural beliefs and practices have made it so. Physician Michel Odent writes in his new book “The Functions of the Orgasms” that childbirth has been culturally controlled for thousands of years. This is why we cannot get a good picture of what TRUE unassisted childbirth looks like by looking at birth in third world coutries or birth a hundred years ago.
If 1 in 10 women did in fact die in childbirth it was most likely because they lived in poverty or were subjected to unsafe tribal practices. Babies were generally taken away from their mothers right after birth and given whale blubber and bread which their digestive systems couldn’t handle. This is because there has been a nearly universal belief that colostrum is evil. Even today it’s rare for a woman in a third world country to nurse her baby within an hour (or even a day) of birth. Preventing a baby from nursing also is dangerous for mothers. The World Health Organization says that we could reduce infant mortality by 22% simply by making sure that mothers breastfeed within an hour of birth. Taking a baby away from its mother is only one of the many unsafe practices that have caused high rates of maternal and infant mortality.
Odent claims that childbirth is still culturally controlled, and while he is supportive of non-interventive midwives, he says that “Everywhere in the world there has been a tendency to dramatically alter the original role of the birth attendant, to deny the birthing woman’s need for privacy and to socialize childbirth. More often than not, the midwife has become an agent of the cultural milieu, transmitting its specific beliefs and rituals.”
It would be wonderful if midwives or doctors simply stood by and only intervened when necessary, but in most cases they are required by law to “monitor,” “assist,” and essentially control the act of birth. It’s too hard to despel all the myths surrounding childbirth in a single comment, but there are valid reasons for choosing to give birth unassisted, and I encourage those who are truly interested to explore the books and web sites devoted to the subject.
Eva – I understand what you (and Crimson Wife) are saying about needing an extra set of hands. In most cases, the complications that occur in the hospital are caused by some aspect of the hospital routine or interventions, and are therefore unlikely to occur at home. However, yes sometimes bad things happen. Unassisted childbirth does not mean solo birth (although there are women who prefer to do that.) At my own UC I had my husband and two friends who had had their own home births previously with me, for support, and in case I was incapacitated in any way.
I did study neonatal resuscitation and newborn exams. I studied up on potential complications and how to treat them. I studied up on hemorrhaging and what it would look and feel like. I studied up on when to call for help. I spent my entire pregnancy learning how to be responsible for my own birth and my baby, and I would say the majority of UCers do the same.
Even so, some women may prefer to birth solo. Some women may prefer not to bother with learning all the medical stuff. Some women prefer to leave the outcome in the hands of intuition/God/fate/nature/whatever. That is their right! If a woman chooses that path, and accepts that something bad may happen, and believes that whatever happens was meant to be in any setting, who are we to say she is wrong for having that belief system?
It rather reminds me of the “right to die” debate, and the legal issues surrounding Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Everyone does have the right to deliver their baby as they will, however I think the article and comments dismiss the years of experience and training some midwives have. Their certifications/degrees may vary, but in my province (Ontario, Canada), they have to be quite educated, over the course of years, and have quite a bit of experience as an apprentice before they get to handle a birth. Even then, two midwives help with the labour and delivery. I was very happy with my home birthing experience. It is unfortunate that some women feel they have to take it all upon themselves, unless they really want to. They may have studied for months, but that doesn’t compare to what a good midwife has to offer, imo. ..not to mention they don’t have the medical equipment a midwife has which can sometimes mean the difference between a newborn dying or living. I suppose I am just cautious and will do everything in my power, at all times, to ensure the best possible care.
I think Sheryl’s logic and the research she undertook before setting off on her journey of unassisted childbirth took just about all of the risk out of her decision.
Reading her blog, she had contingencies in place and monitored her delivery to take steps to mitigate any untoward developments.
The result speaks for itself, a very happy, healthy baby girl who was not exposed to the mangling, drugs and forceps of “modern medicine”.
It is wonderful to see someone walking the talk and living the dream. Sheryl’s unassisted childbirth speaks of belief,love, conviction and the courage to see it through.
Perhaps an article on the use of a doula would be an idea? I gave birth in a hospital with my OBGYN. I also had a doula. It made A WORLD of difference! I completely agree with Crimson Mom. I did my reading too- books upon books of it. This reminds me of the time I read books on skiing and thought that meant I could do it. Needless to say I took the trip down the hill on my arse. Reading a book does not give a person a medical background nor does it grant them 6 sets of arms and good health. That 5 mile drive to the hospital could be 5 minutes too long. I love reading the articles here. It’s just hard to stomach sometimes. It seems that rather than presenting both sides in an equal light, one gets knocked around and casually discarded. In this case I would love to hear about some GOOD hospital/doctor birth experiences every now and again.
While I believe giving birth should be a natural experience (because of the number of unnecessary inductions for convenience, Pitocin augmentation that led to early epidural that ended with a C-S for failure to progress) I would have to say that the thought of an unassisted birth at home is the scariest thing I have heard lately. It’s too big a chance to take with a new life — either to end it or to leave a neonate an orphan. (That actually happened in our town not long ago.) I have seen too many times when a woman was laboring away peacefully and suddenly she abrupted and only the quick action of an emergency C-S, with me kneeling at the side (as pediatrician) to resuscitate the baby in my arms while the OB milked cord blood into the baby. I have been in the on call room (for another patient) just around the corner from the delivery rooms and had to run to an otherwise uneventful delivery suddenly going sour. Babies have so many creative ways of trying to die at the most inconvenient times that I just don’t trust them to come out nicely if no one is watching. Sure, some moms and babies do just fine — but by the time you call 911, it could be all over for one or both of you. It’s like the person who survives a crash without a seatbelt and thinks that makes it preferred — or even okay. I know you think this is just a scare tactic to try to make you do what I want. But, I am also a mom and I know a hospital birth can be just as satisfying and a lot safer for everyone. In my case, I began to develop toxemia (without symptoms — found incidentally at a routine prenatal visit) and wound up needing for my daughter’s birth to be induced. The doctor broke my water and several hours later I began contractions. No one messed with me or gave me IV’s or anything except the occasional small pain shot. My doctor said he would rather have me uncomfortable for a while and have the baby come out pink and robust. I agreed heartily. Four hours later I was ready to deliver. The second push after I got to the delivery room (this was 40 years ago — today it would be the same room) my daughter emerged like a little football thrown to the quarterback. Today, some hospitals even have big bathtubs where women can float while they labor and get out ready to deliver.
I’m sorry for everyone’s bad experiences (and some sound pretty horrific.) That is NOT how it is meant to be — just like they aren’t supposed to let you fall out of bed or perform the wrong surgery on you. Bad treatment is the biggest No-No for those who are sworn “to cure if possible and to comfort always.”
I hope you will think of searching out one of the good birth places — safe, homelike, noninvasive but instantly responsive in case of emergency. God bless you and I wish you well.
I want to respond to Nada’s comment that Sheryl’s study and preparation “took the risk out of her decision.” No amount of study can prevent a child (especially a postmature baby) from aspirating meconium — and Mom would never had known it was there since the water didn’t break till the birth.
Meconium aspiration (breathing in feces released before birth) can lead to a variety of unpleasant consequences, the least of which is a nasty pneumonia but I have sat all night with many a baby trying to get it stable enough for transport to the level III hospital (from our level II nursery.)
In the small hospital where I first practiced, we had 400+ deliveries a year and I had babies born with unanticipated Down Syndrome and A-V canal heart defect (where there is a big hole in the middle of the heart where the walls of the atria and ventricles should have been to keep red and blue apart and send each to the right place); a baby with Potter syndrome (lack of kidney or lung development); a baby with congenital diaphragmatic hernia — bowel where lungs should be on one side; numerous babies born sick from Group B strep (a common germ that lives in most women’s vaginas); babies born with CMV or herpes infections – to women who didn’t know they had even been exposed; and more – but you get the idea.
Probably no more than 15-20 “bad babies” a year but the ones I mentioned would all have died without appropriate medical intervention. In the case of meconium, it requires suctioning the head on the perineum and as soon as the body emerges immediately intubating the baby to suck the poop out from the lungs. In the case of the Down syndrome baby, we had to urgently diagnose the condition (by examining the baby clinically, with EKG and ultrasound)to give lifesaving medicine until the baby could get to the medical college hospital for surgery. The baby would have survived a ten-minute ambulance ride just fine but would the home-delivered baby be taken to the hospital for the urgent care the baby needed when it still looked just fine? By the time a new baby looks bad, it is usually too late or almost too late.
The baby with Potter’s died but in a supportive setting with me taking care of the baby to be sure there was nothing else to help (and because Mom didn’t feel comfortable at first holding her baby when she knew it would die soon so she sat in a rocker at the baby’s bedside while I worked) and then the nurses and I facilitated having the family hold the baby until she died. The baby with the congenital hernia was immediately intubated (before one minute of age — it would have been before the first breath if we had known the baby had the condition)and flown to the big hospital two hours away. On the trip he extubated himself, suffered a cardiac arrest and sustained brain damage — but he would have died at home.
You name it — the baby with the rare blood condition that presented like septic shock and required the same resuscitation with major IV’s and all the rest. The one whose nose-to-stomach check (for patentcy using a small plastic tube) showed an abnormality of the stomach in a well-appearing baby — whose gut spontaneously ruptured in the arms of an experienced nurse caring for him; she had two good IV’s by the time I got there from a meeting downstairs and with excellent management the baby got to the operating table (thirty minutes north by helicopter) within two hours of the event. The baby had an excellent outcome and I followed him for years with no subsequent effects of his rough start.
Such a little time can make such a huge difference for a baby; they have maybe three or four minutes without oxygen but you don’t always know when the countdown started if it was in utero. No amount of prenatal study can substitute for experienced judgment and years of advanced training in treating newborns who present with sudden life-threatening events. We don’t let interns (new doctors) go it alone with these cases; I wouldn’t want a new post-partum mom thinking she could just call 911 and have a well (or even live) baby on the other end of the trip.
In any setting, childbirth is still a risky business for mother and child — because MOST will be fine – BUT just as we are lulled into a false sense of security, disaster occurs out of the blue. That’s when you DON’T want the body doing what it wants to do – because it’s trying to die. How many limp, blue babies have I worked on and prayed over – and nearly not breathed myself – until they did? And those were the kids I got straight from the OB – with a full staff, pretested equipment, oxygen mask adjusted and all the rest of the resources nearby.
The most helpless feeling of my medical student days was a bed birth because of a precipitous delivery while interns and residents were delivering all the others in the delivery rooms — and the baby was blue and I had nothing to work with, not even a suction bulb to clear the airway. All I could do was dry the baby and encourage it to breathe – and shout for the nursery nurse to bring me a resuscitation “kit” STAT. She did and it did — fortunately.
A very scarey day in my internship was the day I had successfully caught lots of babies and they were all doing great, so the supervising OB had gone down to the cafeteria for lunch. A women got ready and was pushing and I was trying to deliver a baby whose head barely made it through but whose body was stuck and I couldn’t get it out. It was too late in the delivery to push it back in and do a C-S. It was now or never. Fortunately that sixth sense had sent the senior doctor back to the floor and when I called for help, he was just coming up the hall.He performed a special maneuver that saved the baby. (That’s why he was the senior doc and I was the intern.)
Maybe I’m an old fraidy cat after all that scarey stuff. I can certainly understand a pregnant woman being frightened after a traumatic experience! Regardless, I agree that it is each person’s right to decide. My burden is that it be a truly INFORMED DECISION. If the person really understands the situation then they have to do what they think is best for them and their child. Once someone has the information, the choice is a value judgment. My dad was in his right mind when he chose no further treatment for his condition and he died well – in my arms. I myself could never have an abortion but if a woman believes it is in her and her baby’s best interest to do so, I would not forcibly prevent it. Try to talk her out of it, of course. Dictate her decision, never. To me it’s pretty much the same issue at either end of life. People get to and have to make their own decisions the best they can.
I believe nutrition plays a huge part in how safe any pregnancy will be regardless of whether it is unassisted or not. Babies have been born for thousands of years without medical assistance and would continue so if more mothers were well educated on the importance of proper nutrition both prior and during their pregnancies.
Great story to read, and thank you for sharing. My only question is after the birth, did you get a birth certificate? Did the baby have to get “registered”. What about social sercurity cards and stuff like that ect??…Just wondering because like you I am interested in “freebirths”
My brith wa troublesome, I had a c section that I should never have had as I didn’t really need it. I would have loved to have gone through the birth process in my home like some people. Fingers crossed for the next one!