Posted on 06/06/2007 11:39:42 AM PDT by gobucks
LONDON (Reuters) - They insist they're no superwomen, they have no special powers, and are certainly not pain or adrenaline junkies.
But 'freebirthers' choose to go through what some call the most painful and potentially frightening experience of a woman's life with no drugs, no midwife and no medical help.
Delivering their own babies at home, often alone, they dismiss what they say is "fearmongering" by doctors and midwives and confidently catch their offspring as they leave the womb.
"Birthing uses the same hormones as lovemaking -- so why would you want anyone poking and prodding you, observing you and putting you under a spotlight?," said Veronika Robinson, an Australian based in Britain who sees growing interest in freebirth among readers of international magazine, "The Mother".
Her comment is echoed by many in online discussion groups about freebirth, where women insist having a baby is as intimate an experience as having sex.
"We were the only people there when she was conceived, and it felt absolutely 100 percent right that we were the only people there when she was born," writes Laura Fields from the United States.
Robinson says medical establishments in Britain and across other westernized nations have for years been "taking something that's natural and making it into a disease", and now, with freebirthing, "women are taking their power back".
Free- or unassisted birth means having a baby with no medical or professional help. In Britain, as in North America, where its popularity is growing, it is legal as long as delivery is not "assisted" by an unqualified partner, friend or husband.
To some, like new mum Janet Sears, the idea of giving birth alone, with no-one around to help if things go wrong, is little short of madness: "It's my idea of hell," she told Reuters.
INTERVENTION AND FEAR
But one of its most prominent supporters, Laura Shanley, an author on childbirth, is now mother to four children -- all of whom were born at home without the help of doctors or midwives.
Shanley, who lives in Colorado in the United States, says that in essence birth is only problematic because of three main factors -- poverty, intervention and fear.
As long as clean water and reasonable living standards are available -- as they are to many women in the west -- then the task is to eliminate the other two factors and a natural birth will be as safe as it can be.
"As I began to understand how fear affects the body, and that birth is not inherently dangerous provided we don't trigger the fight-flight response and shut down labor, then to me it was natural to want to just trust myself," she told Reuters.
"It didn't make sense to me that something that ensures the continuation of the race would be a dangerous and scary event."
Diana Drescher, a Dutch freebirthing enthusiast who lives in Britain and wants a fourth baby with her German partner, agrees.
"We've been giving birth for thousands of years and we're still in this world. If it was that dangerous we wouldn't be here," she told Reuters. Coming from the Netherlands, where there is a more relaxed attitude to birth, Diana finds British medical authorities far too quick to intervene and is determined to have her next baby here with no professional presence.
She says she will also avoid being in her partner's native Germany where she says freebirth is virtually impossible without fear of the authorities finding out and intervening.
"I do know some people who have had unassisted births in Germany, but they will not talk about it. It's a very close community that does it and they have to be very careful."
"THE MOST DANGEROUS THING"
Britain's Department of Health frowns on the practice of freebirthing and says every woman should have a midwife.
"The safety of mothers and their babies is our top priority," a spokesman told Reuters. "Midwives are the experts in normal pregnancy and birth and have the skills to refer to and coordinate between specialist services. Every woman needs the care of a midwife in labor and birth and those women with more complex pregnancies may need a doctor too."
And some doctors, as well as some friends and relatives of those who chose to go it alone when they go into labor, are fiercely critical of what they see as a selfish, reckless, even irresponsible approach to childbirth.
"Dr Crippen", a British National Health Service doctor who writes an award-winning blog on the Internet, has reacted angrily to growing interest in freebirth, saying babies born this way should have a right to legal recourse later in life.
He says "giving birth is the most dangerous thing that most woman will do during their life", and argues:
"Does a mother not owe a duty of care to her baby? Should a mother not take reasonable care to protect the baby when she gives birth? And if she does not take reasonable care -- and the standard should be objective not subjective -- why should a baby who has sustained avoidable brain damage due to the mother's negligence not take action against his mother?"
If a baby were to die during a freebirth, Dr Crippen argues the mother should be prosecuted for manslaughter.
Mary Siever, a mother of three who lives in Alberta, Canada, said she has experienced the wrath of those around her when they learned she had a baby on her own.
"There are people who are horrified when they find out that an unassisted birth has taken place," she told Reuters.
"I can't claim to know why they feel this way, but my belief is that the majority of them -- doctors and health authorities -- truly do not think women are intellectually capable of making their own decisions when it comes to birth."
Anyone who wants to go drug- and doctor-free, God bless them, but I ain't into that kind of machisma. I've had two, and there's a third on the way, and I know myself well enough to know that I want doctors, nurses and pain relief.
Yea, once the doctors decided to wash their hands before the delivery.
“But, as soon as you go into labor, they want to pump you full of drugs. Drugs that typically *extend* labor.”
Uh... You just contradicted yourself. So which is it? The so-called birthing industry wants to shorten labor or extend it down?
I suppose. If that’s what’s important to you.
I am the biggest pain coward on the planet. Just ask my family. Yet, I gave birth (but in a hospital) with no meds at all. The doctor allowed me to sit up Indian style and something about that position made the birth easy.
But....who would we sue when the child “isn’t right”?
They’ve tended to have ASSISTANTS for all those millenia.
“gee, what did women ever do for the last 6000 years of recorded history?”
Alot of dead mothers and dead babies.
Modern medicine has made childbirth much safer for mothers and babies.
Do you have a link?
“That said, doctors forced my mother to have ceasarian sections, perforated her uterus, and missed the severity of her placenta previa, so it’s not like I think they’re gods but when I give birth I want access to emergency surgeries or life-saving measures.”
A placenta previa blocks the cervix, so there is no way out for the baby except by c-section and that means incising the uterus. What was the alternative? Losing the baby and bleeding out?
They and their babies died in prodigious numbers during child birth and due to complications resulting from it. To know how bad it was, you ought to read a biography of Phillip II of Spain, the Armada king. Although a compulsive adulterer, he was generally decent toward his wives, not a murdering sociopath, like Henry VIII, and he genuinely loved several of them. He also had some of the best sixteenth century medical care available. In spite, or, possibly, because of that care he lost almost all of his wives either in child birth or due to related complications. There's a good reason for modern medicine and modern maternity hospitals. This idea of freebirthing ranks right up there with not using toilet paper and flush toilets, something else a lot of moon bats are into.
“They are too eager to induce labor before the mother’s body is ready, and ALL too eager to jump right to a Caesarian just to speed along the process.”
Guess who you can blame for that?
Communist liberal lawyers.
Specifically, we can even blame John Edwards (the politico, not the psychic).
I had my first child with no meds. There wasn’t time - I almost had her in the parking lot.
That’s about the best motive I can think of not to medicate! But then, you avoided all that pushing!
Listening to doctors can have its downside. My first one was induced and it was a big mistake. 2nd one was a much easier delivery because he started to come naturally and my body was ready.
Thank goodness I wasn’t trying to go it alone for the third one though. She twisted sideways in the last couple of weeks and with all that moving around she had the umbilical cord around her neck.
Thank God for doctors and C-sections. You have to be smart about your doctor care and take some of what they tell you and dismiss/decline it, but I don’t believe it’s wise to go it totally alone.
Or the baby is lying on top of the cord and slowly suffocating with every contraction, as was happening with my first baby. I was a week overdue and when they checked his heartrate it was very low. They semnt me to the hospital immediately and induced labor, but quickly concluded a caesarean was necessary for him to survive. If I had not gone to doctors and waited until labor began naturally and then went through labor unassisted, with no heart monitor on the baby, he would almost certainly have died.
“Gravity”.
I really wish that would be more common.
I mean, we have nice adjustable CHAIRS for dentists and even gyoncologists! But no, apparently we’re still stuck in the lying position on a simple guerney, making the “birth canal” perpendicular to gravity.
That is 1 thing I totally disagree with “modern doctors” on.
To you, and others, of course I’m not saying Doctors are bad - obviously, they have their place. The problem is that they have a cobra like effect on ALMOST ALL WOMEN now, and the idea of having a baby without a doctor is like, well, a sin.
Somehow, I think lawyers everywhere are smiling and like it that way, not to mention the doctors.
Would breathing exercises do the trick, freebirthers?
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