Why Erin & Billy have chosen a midwife for their natural birth and pre / post natal care?
The number of women who die as result of pregnancy and birth (especially after hospital care) is almost four times higher than it should be.Why is no one talking about it? - Ina May Gaskin, CPM
Studies have routinely shown that for a woman having had a healthy pregnancy the safest place for her to birth is at home. Obstetric and hospital care are for non normal pregnancies and births. Almost 100% of the time if complications are to occur in birth they are known before the birth process even begins. For a healthy woman with a normal pregnancy to enter a hospital to give birth increases her chances of complications simply by entering through the entrance. OB’s and hospital staff are trained to intervene in the natural and safe process of birth, they are trained to manage a woman’s birth process, deciding how long it should last, what she should wear, eat or drink, and in what position she should manage her birth process, etc. The minuet she enters the door of a hospital her control is taken away and she puts her birth process and the care of her baby in the hands of others. In fact, the hospital legally owns the baby until the hospital decides to release the baby to its parents. They can withhold your baby until you comply with their wishes. Babies have been held until their parents give them formula even if the mother has expressed her desire to exclusively breastfeed. A woman signs papers giving the whole of the hospital staff permission to do what they will to her and her baby even without her permission, because “the hospital is supposed to know what’s best.” The hospital environment strips a woman of most of that which is comfortable and familiar to her. Routine mandatory policies such as hospital gowns, not being able to eat or drink, iv lines, routine monitoring, and routine vaginal exams are all absolutely unnecessary invasive procedures that interfere with the natural process of birth and cause a normal birth process to become complicated and medical.
Prenatal Care:
Much routine prenatal testing is unnecessary and the results are quite often faulty.
Ultrasounds have never been shown to be safe for use in pregnancy there is a possibility that they could mutate cells in the developing fetus as well as in the mother.
Vaccinations are routinely offered to pregnant women if they are over due for them. If many professionals and parents are questioning the safety of vaccines and the additives within them for their infants, Why then does vaccinating a woman growing a vulnerable fetus make sense?
Triple Screen Testing for Abnormalities- This test is supposed to be an elective test but many women are made to feel guilty if they do not consent to testing because the test is now recommended by the American College of OBGYN’s for ALL WOMEN. The test is inconclusive and open to interpretation since the test only shows the presence of chemical levels that “could” indicate an abnormality in the baby. Certain high levels of chemicals could indicate either an abnormality or the presence of multiple babies for example. Low levels of certain chemicals for example could indicate an abnormality or a mistake in previously assessing the fetal age, which is very common.
Triple Screen results can lead to both amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling which should also be elective tests. Depending on the accuracy of the triple screen the following tests may not tell you anything and you have put yourself and your baby at risk for nothing. At this point in my career having studied what I’ve studied and witnessed the beauty of natural pregnancies and births these tests sound like something out of Dr. Frankenstein’s lab to me.
Amniocentesis amniotic fluid is extracted by a hollow needle inserted into the mother’s uterus through her abdomen. Amniotic fluid contains the baby’s own cells which are used to test for many diseases or conditions in the baby. The culture grown for the test fails in 2 percent of samples requiring another sample to be taken, which increases your risk of the following to 6%. The test can only be done in the fourth month when amniotic fluid levels are high enough to take a sample, the test then can take at least 3 weeks for a result, Beyond your fifth month would you really want to abort your baby? Miscarriage risks from the test procedure are 1-3%, 3 times the normal miscarriage rate in non tested women. A five percent increase in low birth weight babies and respiratory distress syndrome has been associated with having the procedure done for the test. Cramping, bleeding and leaking amniotic fluid can occur after the test. Is the distress and worry to you and your baby worth the knowledge?
Chorionic Villus Sampling CVS
Birth Care:
Hospital gowns are not sterile a woman should birth in whatever is most comfortable for her.
The birth process takes a lot of energy from mom and baby, women need to eat and drink during this process. Drinking healthy amounts of fluid can help the fluid around the baby replenish itself especially after the water bag has broken. The replenishment of fluid allows amniotic fluid to continuously leak and remove bacteria from the vagina, preventing it from moving up toward the cervical opening.
IV fluids are unnecessary if a woman is allowed to eat and drink real healthy food. IV’s and routine monitoring prevent a woman from comfortably moving around during the birth process. Gravity utilizing positions during the birth process have shown to be the most effective in helping the baby’s head engage into the pelvis and move into the birth canal to stretch and widen it to be born. These positions have also shown to aid in moms comfort during the process. Lying in bed on your back or side is the least effective position for the birth process and usually leads to interventions such as labor inducing drugs, the need for pain relief, forceps or vacuum delivery and or c sections.
Routine monitoring externally is uncomfortable for mom to wear continuously during the birth process, remember this dopler device is sending the same potentially cell mutating waves through your belly and baby to pick up its readings. Internal monitoring requires that your water bag be broken which increases your chance of infection, may unnaturally increase contractions that you and your baby were not ready for, and a wire is literally screwed into your baby’s scalp to monitor oxygen saturation ( this increases risk of infection and scalp abscesses for baby) while a catheter is placed in your vagina to monitor contractions, this doesn’t sound comfortable to me and it seems highly unlikely you’d be able to move at all without causing the monitor to register a problem. It sounds like a recipe for disaster; studies show this is exactly what these interventions cause, a rise in c section rates for women monitored with EFM Electronic Fetal Monitoring. EFM has routinely shown to prolong the birth process simply because it restricts a woman’s necessary movement in the birth process. These interventions cause medical staff to become unnecessarily concerned & to use more interventions which then can truly cause mom and baby to not be able to tolerate birth because those interventions were applied such as augmentation of labor with drugs or medical staff choose to give mom a c-section for their own convenience, or traumatic measures like vacuums and forceps are used because mom wasn’t allowed to birth in an effective way. Routine monitoring often leads to staff’s concern over baby’s changes in heart rate. What medical professionals fail to recognize is that baby’s born vaginally having had normal healthy births, regularly have considerable fluctuations in heart rates that quickly return to normal between contractions. This is the baby’s natural response to contractions. Babies can even fall asleep during the birth process causing extreme fluctuations in the baby’s heart rate but of course this is not accounted for by the monitoring machine.
Routine vaginal exams tell us how far a woman is dilated. But what does dilation really tell us? Not much more than how open her cervix is. Dilation does not tell us how soon the baby will be born or if its time for mom to push, in fact when medical professionals use dilation as an indication that pushing should begin complications often arise such as swelling of the cervix if there is an unthinned lip or vaginal and cervical tears. (As opposed to when a woman is left to push when she feels the uncontrollable urge to push and then she pushes at her own rate or is coached to slowly push her baby out to avoid tearing.) Vaginal checks are unnecessary and can introduce bacteria and infection into the birth canal and to mom and baby especially after the bag of waters has broken. As trained midwives we can tell how far the baby is engaged into the birth canal by assessing the top of mom’s uterus or fundus by palpating her belly, some women also display a purplish red line from their anus up to the sacrum as the pelvis opens for the baby’s head to engage and begin its passage into the birth canal, depending on the height of this line we can asses how low the baby is engaged. Also if you watch a womans sacral pelvic structure you can see it gradually open up and change as the baby moves down. Mom can also most definitely check her own dilation for her own information washing her hands first of course is recommended. When medical staff use dilation checks they often begin to become impatient if a woman hasn’t dilated to a certain centimeter in a certain amount of time and then they begin interventions which lead to more interventions. In reality every woman dilates at her own rate and upright, gravity utilizing positions help the baby move down and open up mom’s pelvis more effectively.
Besides theses routine things that occur when a woman seeks care from a medically trained “professional” many other interventions are likely to be pushed upon her or suggested simply because of the training their care provider received or because they must abide by certain hospital policies.
Postpartum Care:
Resources
Having a Baby Naturally by Peggy O'Mara
Obstetric Myths vs Research Realities by Henci Goer
Spiritual Midwifery and Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin
Holistic Midwifery Volume 1 Care During Pregnancy by Anne Frye
A Guide to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth 3rd Ed. Oxford University Press
Women's Bodies Women's Wisdom by Christiane Northrup, M.D.
A Book for Midwives by Klein, Miller and Thomson
Birthsong Midwifery Workbook 5th Ed. by Daphne Singingtree, CPM
An Easier Childbirth by Gayle Peterson, Ph.D.
Active Birth by Janet Balaskas Forwarded by Sheila Kitzinger Intro by Michel Odent
The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin
Birthing from Within by Pam England, CNM, MA
