Seriously I technically had an elective C section BUT my Dr told me there was a about 20% chance of the umbilical cord preceding the baby into the birth canal and cutting off her oxygen. If she shifted that would have gone down which she didn’t. A 20% of brain damage or death was way too high for me and I had an easy…

The midwife thing needs more regulation. I see midwives at my ob/gyn practice I saw them for most of my pregnancy until things got complicated. They are all Certified Nurse Midwives meaning they are RN’s with additional training and have a working relationship with the OBs at the practice. At my 38 week appointment…

People/culture do stupid stuff that doesn’t benefit them all the time, so that’s no standard. Which was really my point. There is some evidence of unassisted births being a thing in certain cultures, but that doesn’t make it a better system. The fairly object standard of child mortality rates makes that pretty clear.

Birthing centers (in Canada, medical centers that are dressed up like hotels) are a *fantastic* alternative, I loved my birthing center experience - middle of winter with a fireplace going, a huge walk in shower, a bathtub the size of an 8 person jacuzzi, a queen sized hospital bed, TV and stereo system, etc etc. It…

Ikr? I try to come at these things with an open enough mind to try to figure out why someone would make this decision, but when they start spouting bullshit like that, I’m done. Also, with childbirth this is especially hard because I cannot understand why anyone would forgo pain meds during. Labor freaks me out. 

I’m amazed no one mentioned to her— outside of the group— that going over 41 weeks can become dangerous. There is no benefit in staying pregnant that long, and proof that the body doesn’t always know what to do. This situation is sad all around and maddening, as it could’ve been prevented.

“Every pregnant woman must contend with the possibility of death, which exists for each of us.”

Yeah. I had an awful, traumatic birth with my daughter. For about a year afterward I would get the shakes just thinking about it. And I still have nerve damage. But you know what would have been a much deeper and more lasting “wound”? If she had DIED.

When I had my daughter, there were no midwives in the area where I lived. It just wasn’t a thing. I had a hospital birth that turned out to be very traumatic, and I think if I’d had a midwife or doula, less drug intervention, and better birthing positions (this was in the days where the lithotomy position was never…

It’s the level of science denial that greatly disturbs me. Being educated about pregnancy and not allowing doctors to short-circuit a natural birth in the interest of preserving their golf schedule is all good. Walking away from even the most rudimentary assistance is pure insanity. Even a midwife with only the most…

My body didn’t know shit when it came time to have my son. He was content to stay in there forever apparently, and my body would have let him. Because of modern medicine, my doctors knew that there was a potential problem because his heart rate was dropping dramatically with each contraction and we decided to go ahead…

And I’ll bet you a biscuit that said banning is EXACTLY what attracted the majority of the paying members. It made them feel special and superior. And I’m sure most of them happily told that woman that clearly she had done something wrong and didn’t listen to her body enough or some such horseshit.

The thing is? Bodies don’t really know shit. We die from literally countless things and in the main it’s because the body cannot recover from whatever it was that damaged it. 

Yeah I would think so too. Given that midwifery has been around FOREVER because women have always preferred to have other women helping them give birth. Because doing it yourself is RIDICULOUS.

Even giving birth COMPLETELY alone has got to be a historical anomaly for women who just happened to live exceptionally isolated lives (I’m thinking pioneer women of the American west who maybe have been homesteading some remote patch of land, for example). Even before births were attended by trained and licensed…

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

This is heartbreaking. Nature doesn’t care if we live or die, and childbirth was frequently fatal for both mothers and infants before advancements in modern medicine made it safer. I understand distrusting the medical-industrial complex, but eschewing any support from even a home birthing professional is…

Just like the anti-vax nutjobs, this is even more infuriating because the victims are the most innocent and without choice. Fuck every single one of these Free Birth idiots. And fuck this whole “natural” movement that’s taking us backwards. Yeah, women used to sometimes give birth alone. But a fucking lot of them…

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