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."
If my experience was any indication, this is certainly the way to go. I go berserk when I get a shot, yet I was able to have my child without upsetting the entire maternity ward.
That's exactly right. My doctor basically told me I would be getting certain tests because of my age or he wouldn't be able to be my OB. He was about to retire from the OB part of it, and he didn't take any chances. With my last one, not that I would have chose it anyway, but he wasn't birthin' no breech babies.
When you’re a graveyard nut as I, you find out up close & personal just how often child and mother deaths happened.
.....and/or into genealogy.
Tell me about it. All I hear is how gynocologists are dropping the obstetrics part. Apparently being any doctor is bad enough, but being and obstetrician must be way beyond “the pale”. (My mom’s obstetrician - birthing me - dropped the ob part very early but continued on as gyn until his death some 25 years later.) I’m sure it’s because all the lib lawyers are “doing it for **the chiilllldrren**”.
Baby#1--I did the natural childbirth that was all the rage. Phooey!
Baby#2--I told the doc....slap the needle in. "Oh, are you sure? You are almost 7 cm dilated?".
Pfft..I rememebered how with #1, the docs at Tripler AMC had to use the vacuum thingy, and then the forceps (my son had a large cranium). With that in mind, I repeated to the docs at NMC San Diego....I want the epidural. Good thing, too. Daughter also had a large cranium, and they had to do the vacuum...and then the forceps. I was glad to have the epidural, and neither of us suffered because of it.
Like I read in an article—with every pregnancy they have two potential lawsuits.
People will sue over anything. I read on a pregnancy forum a couple of years back one woman question whether she should sue or not because the baby was much bigger than she was told it would be. Because of that, she tore. She was considering going after the doctor.
I had no drugs, but there were plenty of doctors and nurses right there to make sure nothing happened to my baby. I couldn’t take a chance with his life.
Ping to you my sweet!
And after. Definitely after.
The placenta previa case would have been a c-section anyway; however, they failed to note that it was a full placenta previa rather than a partial and she nearly lost my brother a week before they had originally scheduled the c-section.
The uterus perforation was during the clean-up for a miscarriage and was from the inside, with all the resulting complications, and she nearly died.
But I’m not attacking doctors, I want them around when I give birth! I’m just saying that I can sympathize a little bit with these home birth people. Not that much, but a little.
I didn't hesitate with my son, and same deal. Needle in, slept an hour, and four pushes later he arrived.
I would have said they want as little hassle as possible. Some doctors routinely induce labor so as to schedule events. Drugs are pushed because a pain-free, comfortable patient requires much less in bedside care. Who cares if the labor takes 5-6 hours? But if that labor lasts 6 hours and 30 seconds, off you go for a c-section.
I think women need to be free to make their own decisions here. My doctor was so interventionist with my first, telling me that if he wasn't born within 24 hours, that I would have a c-section, that I was completely uptight! That certainly didn't help my labor to progress and then, I wasn't even rushed off for a section anyway!
A friend of mine went the homebirth route because she wanted a VBAC and she couldn't find a doctor would agree. Now, I couldn't possibly have taken that risk but she felt confident that they could get to help if it were needed and was ready to accept any problems that may have occurred. The labor held no complications and the baby was perfectly healthy.
While I do agree that childbirth is not a disease, it is a not quite as simple, natural bodily function, such as deification or urination.
Women have managed childbirth alone, successfully.
But why any woman would intentionally plan to do so, will ever remain a mystery to me.
But I don’t understand why anyone sane would intentionally jump out of a perfectly good aircraft, either...
I would prefer to deliver my babies at home. Hospitals are for sick people.
Childbirth stories ping!
My first one was in some weird position, mostly sideways, so while labor progressed, he wasn’t going anywhere. C-section. How else was I supposed to deliver 9.5 lbs of sideways?
Second one, I immediately realized the difference between normal labor and the painless labor of my first one. I was having some very uncomfortable back labor and was offered (and accepted) a minimum of demerol midway through labor, supposedly just enough to ease things up a bit. Instead, all it did was make me sleepy. If I’d have known that I would have stayed med free, which would have been good bragging rights considering she weighed 9 lbs, lol.
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