What a remarkably sad story in every respect. The internet is such an empowering tool, but unfortunately the thing it can often empower is ignorance, thanks to confirmation bias and the echo...
What a remarkably sad story in every respect. The internet is such an empowering tool, but unfortunately the thing it can often empower is ignorance, thanks to confirmation bias and the echo chamber effect. And speaking of the internet, one part of the article that really stuck out to me was:
Judith asked that NBC News not use her full name, fearing a backlash from the trolls, paid-per-click bloggers and well-meaning health advocates who congregate in online spaces to debate birth choices. Judith is terrified they’ll say the things she already tells herself in the darkest moments.
I don't blame her. IMO it's important to remember that there is a real person with real feelings on the receiving end, before making a comment on their actions (directly or even indirectly), but sadly it feels like a significant amount of people on the internet forget that. However with that said, it's one thing to be misled and mislead yourself, which is at least forgivable (though less so when another life was put at risk by it)... but it's another to be so blindingly confident in that ignorance that you actually become an advocate/purveyor of it, and even go so far as to attempt to profit off it, which is not forgivable in the slightest, IMO. So I have absolutely no reservations in calling out the person who led this poor woman down this path (and clearly neither did the journalist):
The daily drive was an hour outside of town, time she filled by listening to podcasts. When she got pregnant, she devoured episodes of “The Birth Hour” and “Indie Birth,” popular programs on which women shared their childbirth stories, which ranged from hospital to home births. But it was the “Free Birth Podcast” that really spoke to Judith.
Billed as “a supportive space for people who are learning, exploring and celebrating their autonomous choices in childbirth,” the podcast features Emilee Saldaya, 35, a Los Angeles freebirth advocate and founder of the Free Birth Society.
And the thing that pisses me off the most about these "free birth" advocates is that with most of the crap they are peddling it's remarkably easy to see how dangerous it actually is. E.g. Just hit the play button. It's an animation that only takes 20 seconds, but still manages to say it all, really. Chilbirth is not the "miracle" we should be celebrating, it's modern medicine and those who practice it. And anyone advocating for rolling back the clock on how we treat pregnancy and other medical conditions is willfully ignorant and incredibly dangerous IMO.
When I read the article, I was mad at Judith. Mad because I blamed her for the fact that her child was dead. But the truth is, it's never as simple as that, is it? She had bad experiences with...
When I read the article, I was mad at Judith. Mad because I blamed her for the fact that her child was dead. But the truth is, it's never as simple as that, is it? She had bad experiences with doctors and no family support from other mothers so she sought out the internet for like-minded people and soon stumbled into extremist echo-chambers the way that people playing games all day sometimes ended up in Gamergate.
And the truth is, even though she made the pregnancy about her and her badass story that she wanted to tell on podcasts one day and not what was best for the kid, her miscalculation made her pay the ultimate price, because no mother, no father wants to bury their child, and they never should. I cannot put anymore blame on her, because I feel like Judith has been handed one of the most cruel punishments our world can give. She had to bury her baby, and even worse, she'll probably ask herself for the rest of her life what if I had done something differently?
I'm glad she sought out support groups. Perhaps her story will serve as a warning to others, but considering the FB groups she was part of heavily discourage or outright forbid telling others to seek medical advice from professionals, we'll see about that. Maybe search engines will offer more comprehensive results that might put off potential free-birthers when they see this article on the first page of their results.
That's a great way of putting it. I was wondering why one of the women from the podcasts chose to have birth by candlelight in a yurt. At first, I assumed these people thought there was some sort...
she made the pregnancy about her and her badass story that she wanted to tell on podcasts one day
That's a great way of putting it. I was wondering why one of the women from the podcasts chose to have birth by candlelight in a yurt. At first, I assumed these people thought there was some sort of spiritual energy or purpose for these stylish free births. Like the candlelit yurt wold somehow influence the baby's life or connection to its mother. But at the end of the day, it's probably more about the story the mother can tell than anything else.
Of course it is. Maybe not conciously, but they do talk themselves into it, justifying these actions with some sort of it's more natural (=better) phrase, but ultimately it's about the cool story...
Of course it is. Maybe not conciously, but they do talk themselves into it, justifying these actions with some sort of it's more natural (=better) phrase, but ultimately it's about the cool story and defying society and showing that our ancient ways are better than our modern ones.
No one knows other people's "true" motivations. Conjecture reveals more about the person making the conjecture than anything else. The medical system has a long and well documented history of...
No one knows other people's "true" motivations. Conjecture reveals more about the person making the conjecture than anything else.
The medical system has a long and well documented history of failing women. It might still be better than giving birth in a tent, but that doesn't mean it's good. From the article:
one-third of U.S. women give birth by C-section, a rate experts have called alarming for a procedure that can save lives but also comes with increased health risks to mothers and babies.
And 1 in 6 women reported mistreatment — verbal abuse, threats, ignored pleas for help, violations of physical privacy and physical abuse — by health care providers during pregnancy and childbirth, according to a survey published last year in the journal Reproductive Health. Women who gave birth in hospitals were more than five times more likely to report mistreatment than those who gave birth at home.
I didn't get the impression that Judith just wanted a cool story. I got the impression that she was trying to take control of her own body and pregnancy back from an institution she disliked an distrusted.
Considering I can't look into people's heads, I can only discuss their actions. And the whole it's more natural and therefore better is definitely an ongoing theme in many current antiscience...
No one knows other people's "true" motivations. Conjecture reveals more about the person making the conjecture than anything else.
Considering I can't look into people's heads, I can only discuss their actions. And the whole it's more natural and therefore better is definitely an ongoing theme in many current antiscience movements, like the antivaxx morons, so I'd go out on a limb and say that's their reasoning. Of course we need to ask why they fell into this line of thinking and what we can do so that in the future it doesn't happen.
I got the impression that she was trying to take control of her own body and pregnancy back from an institution she disliked.
The medical system isn't an institution though. It's many different instutitions employ many different people, some of them shitty people that are good at their job, some of them shitty people that are shit at their job, and some of them good people that are good at their job. It's not ideal, and we need to work on that, but medicine isn't some big behemoth, it's many people working hard to ultimately try and help you.
I didn't get the impression that Judith just wanted a cool story.
Definitely not at the start, she probably had a fear of medical settings and thus she looked for alternate remedies, but by the end when she was in neck-deep, she definitely was:
“I became obsessed,” Judith said. “I would just wonder, ‘What's my story going to be like?’ and think, ‘I want my story to be as badass as their stories.’”
It definitely became more about her and not about her child, which was most likely fueled by all the weird shit people say on those podcasts.
For someone so derisive towards anti-science attitudes, you sure are confident in your conclusions based on very little evidence. The author of the article chose to include a few quotes about a...
It definitely became more about her and not about her child
For someone so derisive towards anti-science attitudes, you sure are confident in your conclusions based on very little evidence.
The author of the article chose to include a few quotes about a mother fantasising about giving birth and sharing the news with her community. That makes her relatable and human, it doesn't mean she "definitely cared more about herself than her child".
The medical system isn't an institution though. It's many different instutitions employ many different people, some of them shitty people that are good at their job, some of them shitty people that are shit at their job, and some of them good people that are good at their job. It's not ideal, and we need to work on that, but medicine isn't some big behemoth, it's many people working hard to ultimately try and help you.
The medical system has systematic issues with women. Like everyone else, I know people who work in medicine - I have family in medicine, I don't need to be told that there are good people working in medicine. But there are well documented, proven, systematic issues with how the medical system deals with women. 1 in 6 women reporting mistreatment is an absurdly high statistic.
Women receive less pain medication, they wait longer for treatment, we literally know less about female bodies because most medical research is done on men, and drugs get recalled after adversely affecting women because clinical trails are done predominantly on men. There is a long history of 'hysteria' as a medical condition, and endometriosis affects one in ten women, and yet it is under-researched and until very recently a lot of doctors didn't even know what it was. Feminists literally had to launch a publicity campaign to increase awareness for an extremely common disease, because the entire medical profession just didn't give a fuck and doctors were constantly misdiagnosing women and dismissing their chronic pain.
Women have good reasons to distrust the medical system.
The science around safe birthing is actually quite complicated. For a healthy woman with a low risk pregnancy it is safer to have a midwife-led birth in MW-led unit, with doctors available....
The science around safe birthing is actually quite complicated. For a healthy woman with a low risk pregnancy it is safer to have a midwife-led birth in MW-led unit, with doctors available. There's almost no difference if the birth is doctor-led. There is a small increase in risk if the birth is at home. It's difficult to know who is having a low risk pregnancy.
Online groups get this badly wrong and give dangerous advice that causes huge amounts of harm. But it's a mistake to think that health care professionals always get this right.
There have been several scandals in the UK around this. The most well known is Morecambe Bay, where a campaigning group of midwives developed a toxic culture and pushed "normal" birth to the exclusion of safer birthing, refusing to escalate concerns and refusing to talk to doctors. Babies and mothers died. This isn't isolated to Furness General Hospital, it's happened elsewhere in England too. (Shrewsbury and Telford is another example, where dozens of woman and children died as a direct result of this kind of dysfunctional culture).
When women reject hospital care are they anti-science? Or are they reacting to heavily publicised stories where great harm was done to women and babies by health care professionals? Health literacy is something that we get wrong. People do not understand percentages (1 in 4 people do not know what 0.1% means). Risk assessment is hard. This means that some women are not anti-science, they've just made a bad decision because we've created fear and not explained the risks.
I'll toss my hat into the ring for this one. We went to a birth center for our child. My wife was generally low risk, but with a few medium-high risk factors. The midwives did a medical evaluation...
I'll toss my hat into the ring for this one.
We went to a birth center for our child. My wife was generally low risk, but with a few medium-high risk factors. The midwives did a medical evaluation and brought us on.
The midwives explained everything carefully. We attended many classes explaining almost everything about childbirth and the first several weeks of caring for a newborn. Including breastfeeding lessons, importance of skin to skin contact, and safety videos.
They are very pro-science, and have a partnership with the hospital close by.
Natural childbirth is much safer than most think. Yes, the mother and child should be monitored, with doctors nearby if needed. However, a lot of the current state of childbirth in the USA is driven by profit motives and fear of malpractice lawsuits.
Many actions are taken to prepare for very rare worst case scenarios, which disrupt natural hormone responses to childbirth, breaking a positive feedback loop and replacing it with a negative one. I won't go into all the details at this hour....but considering that a typical hospital birth in the USA has much higher odds of both infant and maternal fatality than any other deveopled nation, I'm glad we went the path we did.
We went to the birth center after my wife's water broke. They monitored her and our child, and due to a relatively weak heartbeat from our child, we went to the hospital. The midwife stayed with us the whole time and acted as the medical equvalent of a lawyer and mentor. My wife labored for about 10 hours total until she was 8 cm dilated with no drugs, very close to pushing. However our child's heart rate kept dipping, and an ultrasound revealed that the umbilical cord was around their neck. It was only then that my wife was prepped for a C section, and thankfully everything went smoothly. I was terrified while I was all alone while she was prepped.
Although, due to the drugs, my wife could only remember the words to 'I wanna be sedated' by the Ramones and a few songs from Rocky Horror Picture Show. So those were the first words sung to our child as we took turns holding them on our bare chests. I'm a proud father. Does suck that we weren't able to follow through with our birth plans, we had a whole thing planned out including DragonForce and Steven Lynch songs. I was wearing my 'Let me stop everything and work on your problem' T-shirt. We had it planned perfectly, and my suicidal baby ruined it. 😉
That being said....we definitely met our share of the crazies at the birth center. I won't go into specifs, but we're talking 'go 50 or more miles into the wilderness' or ' vaccines cause autism" types.
The midwives hard discouraged all that nonsense, but so many people mistake midwivery for anti-science it is disgusting.
To reinforce your message with some personal experience: both our children were born in a birthing center setting with low medical intervention. Mom was healthy and well informed, and the process...
To reinforce your message with some personal experience: both our children were born in a birthing center setting with low medical intervention. Mom was healthy and well informed, and the process was indeed miraculous.
That said, we were keen to have medical intervention readily available.
I am a woman who has had the classic "dismissed symptoms" bad medical experience - I was not taken seriously until my issue got bad enough to require an emergency surgery. I would say that I...
I am a woman who has had the classic "dismissed symptoms" bad medical experience - I was not taken seriously until my issue got bad enough to require an emergency surgery. I would say that I overall "trust" western medicine, but getting that little peek behind the veil... I mean, it didn't inspire confidence. I realize I have to be emotionally prepared to stand up for myself and push back against professionals if I feel it is necessary: it could literally be a matter of life and death.
My mother is a licensed practical nurse. She is highly educated, incredibly smart, and has worked in medicine for thirty years. She has caught mistakes and advocated very strongly for her family whenever any of us have had subpar treatment from hospitals and doctors. I am almost certain my grandfather lived as long as he did due to her advocacy. I dread the day she can no longer do so.
Although I am not likely to ever get pregnant, I can imagine as well wanting to feel some measure of control over your own body. Pregnant women are often treated like vessels for humans instead of humans in and of themselves. I can see the free-birth movement as a manifestation of that desire for autonomy and recognition as a thinking, feeling person in the face of an industry that they do not have full confidence in.
So, here's the deal: Midwifery is not inherently anti-science. I see many people taking that stance, and this is drastic mis-information that hurts the practice and science as a whole. As I don't...
Exemplary
So, here's the deal: Midwifery is not inherently anti-science. I see many people taking that stance, and this is drastic mis-information that hurts the practice and science as a whole. As I don't have unlimited time, I'm going to provide a reasonably quick breakdown and some starting points for further research.
First, cases like in the article certainly do happen, but it's not inherently because midwifery is anti-science. The issue is threefold:
Many people seeking to avoid hospitals tend to be anti-science, and mistrust of the medical community is a huge problem. There are many reasons for this, and some are legitimate.
Internet forums easily foster anti-science and groupthink. We are all susceptible to this.
A lack of good regulations surrounding midwifery are the cause of a lot of these problems. Regulations would be far better if people didn't instantly dismiss it as quack science.
As I detailed somewhat in a more personal story, our birth center was incredibly pro-science. If you are within 50ish miles of the Philadelphia metro area and a pregnancy is in your future, go there. Full stop. Even if you choose a hospital birth, get a midwife to work with you there.
Here are some of our experiences:
Midwives in our state are required to also be registered nurses.
Every single appointment (aside from the ultrasounds at the hospital) was a minimum of 45 minutes, they were careful and would actively participate in conversations to insure we understood everything that did and would happen, and answered every question in excruciating detail, no matter how trivial.
One of the very first things they said to us: 'Stay off the internet, and especially internet forums. Here is a list of curated sources where we have vetted the information for accuracy.' I don't remember all of them, but here's two:
They repeatedly and consistently stressed the importance of vaccines, especially in group classes. In private, they didn't ask us twice since we said right off the bat 'Yes please, and also can you force them on the others?' They said something to the effect of 'we can't legally force people to take them yet, but we really wish we could.'
We had substantial homework. We were expected to be active participants, and not just patients.
They dismantled so many myths about childbirth I can't even remember them all. Here are the big ones I can:
The commonly understood timelines of labor and birth are very, very wrong, and are influenced by hospital's profit motives and desire to have quick turnover. A 0 complication natural labor and childbirth can done in well under a day at a birth center, from leaving home to arriving home. It can also last days with 0 risk unless the water breaks. They advocate for Medicare for All to remove this profit motive and encourage science to take front row to profits.
Eating and moving is totally fine for childbirth. In hospitals you can't because they are afraid of very, very rare edge cases because of fear of malpractice.
Painkillers can drastically hurt the process of natural childbirth
Recovery from a C-section is often far more painful than a natural childbirth, even with 0 painkillers for natural and tons of opioids for C-section.
Water birth is not nearly as risky as many fear, and offers substantial benefits (our state doesn't currently allow them, but they explained why they are trying to change the legislation)
They partner with nearby hospitals so that when medical intervention is neccessary, admission and care is swift and seamless.
Finally, I'm doing this big callout to everyone who replied to this topic (no matter which stance you took) to help stop the spread of mis-information. Odds of my wife or child dying during childbirth would have been much higher without the midwives help. @mrbig, @Eylrid, @DanBC,@NoblePath, @GRzmot, @ibis, @AnthonyB, and @cfabbro
Offtopic: I don't appreciate being part of a shotgun tagging. I understand that you are passionate about what you have to say and want everyone to hear it, but that's not a great way to do it. If...
Offtopic: I don't appreciate being part of a shotgun tagging. I understand that you are passionate about what you have to say and want everyone to hear it, but that's not a great way to do it. If you have something to say to me specifically or take issue with something I've said, say it. Otherwise make your comment and let it stand on its merits like the rest of us.
Since I'm tagged in this: I do not have a single problem with midwives, as at least in my country they are specialized nurses. As far as I know, I also didn't attack midwives in any of my replies...
Since I'm tagged in this: I do not have a single problem with midwives, as at least in my country they are specialized nurses. As far as I know, I also didn't attack midwives in any of my replies in this thread and if someone thinks that, I apologize for being unclear about it. I count midwives among the array of professions I like to summarize as medical professionals. Midwives are vital to any birth in my country.
Another point:
A 0 complication natural labor and childbirth can done in well under a day at a birth center, from leaving home to arriving home. It can also last days with 0 risk unless the water breaks. They advocate for Medicare for All to remove this profit motive and encourage science to take front row to profits.
Correct. Additionally, subsequent births by the same woman often get faster. The birth of my older brother took 10 hours, I was out in 2. Anecdotal knowledge, yes I know.
This discussion seems to be being framed as "medical services good, home births bad". It's really not that clear. For a woman with a low risk pregnancy the outcomes are better in a midwife led...
This discussion seems to be being framed as "medical services good, home births bad". It's really not that clear. For a woman with a low risk pregnancy the outcomes are better in a midwife led unit, (but only in some MW led units.). There's a small increase in risk in a doctor led unit (but that might be a large increase in some units). And there's an small increase in risk in home births.
The variation in risk is small enough that other things become important. Those other things are the culture of safety on the units. Some places have dysfunctional cultures, and so it doesn't matter that they're a midwife led unit: they're not safe.
In England "midwife" is a protected title. People need a qualification and a professional registration in order to call themselves midwives.
Despite this, we've had a number of scandals where women and babies were harmed because midwives did not understand the science and pushed "normal" birth at any cost.
1.4 Third, midwifery care in the unit became strongly influenced by a small number of dominant individuals whose over-zealous pursuit of the natural childbirth approach led at times to inappropriate and unsafe care. One interviewee told us that “there were a group of midwives who thought that normal childbirth was the... be all and end all... at any cost... yeah, it does sound awful, but I think it’s true – you have a normal delivery at any cost”.2 Another interviewee “... was aware that there were certain midwives that would push past boundaries”.3 A third told us that there were “... a couple of senior people who believed that in all sincerity they were processing the agenda as dictated at the time... to uphold normality... there’ve been one or two influential figures who’ve perpetrated that... sort of approach and... there’s nobody challenging...”.4 Whilst natural childbirth is a beneficial and worthwhile objective in women at low risk of obstetric complications, we heard that midwives took over the risk assessment process without in many cases discussing intended care with obstetricians, and we found repeated instances of women inappropriately classified as being at low risk and managed incorrectly. We also heard distressing accounts of middle-grade obstetricians being strongly discouraged from intervening (or even assessing patients) when it was clear that problems had developed in labour that required obstetric care. We heard that some midwives would “keep other people away, ‘well, we don’t need to tell the doctors, we don’t need to tell our colleagues, we don’t need to tell anybody else that this woman is in the unit, because she’s normal’”.5 Over time, we believe that these incorrect and damaging practices spread to other midwives in the unit, probably quite widely. Obstetricians working in the unit were well-placed to observe these lapses from proper standards, and it is clear that they did, but seemingly lacked the determination to challenge these practices. This in turn represents a failure to maintain professional standards on their part.
Shrewsbury and Telford: the report isn't finished yet, but they're looking at over 900 examples of unacceptably poor maternity care, with at least three dead mothers and dozens of dead babies. Worryingly, there are many themes shared between SATH and Morecambe. Shropshire were proud of their very low rate of C-Section, driven by midwives pushing normal at any cost. They hadn't spotted that this low rate was achieved by causing death and harm. http://www.donnaockenden.com/the-ockenden-review-sath/
I understand that, like any science, medicine is flawed. But why people keep thinking their uninformed online research can replace teams of professionals that trained 10+ years to do just that,...
I understand that, like any science, medicine is flawed. But why people keep thinking their uninformed online research can replace teams of professionals that trained 10+ years to do just that, and practice their knowledge every fucking day? OF COURSE, it is possible to have children with reduced medical assistance, even without doctors, and have a positive outcome. All the resources available in a hospital are not there for the majority of the cases where everything goes right — they are there for when nature "fucks up". Because one thing you should know about nature is that a lot more babies and mothers die during childbirth.
Are you willing to have pre-modern-medicine odds of things going bad just to prove a fucking point, or to have a beautiful fucking story to tell about how free, strong and offbeat you are?
There's a lot of distrust of mainstream medicine in the US because of how out of control medical bills are. It's not a big leap for people to look at the outrageous charges and conclude that the...
There's a lot of distrust of mainstream medicine in the US because of how out of control medical bills are. It's not a big leap for people to look at the outrageous charges and conclude that the healthcare industry only cares about the money. It's part of a broader distrust of big anything and the idea that big corporations have way too much power and no regard for humanity. Combine those fears with the fallacy that natural is healthy and we end up with this disaster.
What a remarkably sad story in every respect. The internet is such an empowering tool, but unfortunately the thing it can often empower is ignorance, thanks to confirmation bias and the echo chamber effect. And speaking of the internet, one part of the article that really stuck out to me was:
I don't blame her. IMO it's important to remember that there is a real person with real feelings on the receiving end, before making a comment on their actions (directly or even indirectly), but sadly it feels like a significant amount of people on the internet forget that. However with that said, it's one thing to be misled and mislead yourself, which is at least forgivable (though less so when another life was put at risk by it)... but it's another to be so blindingly confident in that ignorance that you actually become an advocate/purveyor of it, and even go so far as to attempt to profit off it, which is not forgivable in the slightest, IMO. So I have absolutely no reservations in calling out the person who led this poor woman down this path (and clearly neither did the journalist):
And the thing that pisses me off the most about these "free birth" advocates is that with most of the crap they are peddling it's remarkably easy to see how dangerous it actually is. E.g. Just hit the play button. It's an animation that only takes 20 seconds, but still manages to say it all, really. Chilbirth is not the "miracle" we should be celebrating, it's modern medicine and those who practice it. And anyone advocating for rolling back the clock on how we treat pregnancy and other medical conditions is willfully ignorant and incredibly dangerous IMO.
When I read the article, I was mad at Judith. Mad because I blamed her for the fact that her child was dead. But the truth is, it's never as simple as that, is it? She had bad experiences with doctors and no family support from other mothers so she sought out the internet for like-minded people and soon stumbled into extremist echo-chambers the way that people playing games all day sometimes ended up in Gamergate.
And the truth is, even though she made the pregnancy about her and her badass story that she wanted to tell on podcasts one day and not what was best for the kid, her miscalculation made her pay the ultimate price, because no mother, no father wants to bury their child, and they never should. I cannot put anymore blame on her, because I feel like Judith has been handed one of the most cruel punishments our world can give. She had to bury her baby, and even worse, she'll probably ask herself for the rest of her life what if I had done something differently?
I'm glad she sought out support groups. Perhaps her story will serve as a warning to others, but considering the FB groups she was part of heavily discourage or outright forbid telling others to seek medical advice from professionals, we'll see about that. Maybe search engines will offer more comprehensive results that might put off potential free-birthers when they see this article on the first page of their results.
That's a great way of putting it. I was wondering why one of the women from the podcasts chose to have birth by candlelight in a yurt. At first, I assumed these people thought there was some sort of spiritual energy or purpose for these stylish free births. Like the candlelit yurt wold somehow influence the baby's life or connection to its mother. But at the end of the day, it's probably more about the story the mother can tell than anything else.
Of course it is. Maybe not conciously, but they do talk themselves into it, justifying these actions with some sort of it's more natural (=better) phrase, but ultimately it's about the cool story and defying society and showing that our ancient ways are better than our modern ones.
No one knows other people's "true" motivations. Conjecture reveals more about the person making the conjecture than anything else.
The medical system has a long and well documented history of failing women. It might still be better than giving birth in a tent, but that doesn't mean it's good. From the article:
I didn't get the impression that Judith just wanted a cool story. I got the impression that she was trying to take control of her own body and pregnancy back from an institution she disliked an distrusted.
Considering I can't look into people's heads, I can only discuss their actions. And the whole it's more natural and therefore better is definitely an ongoing theme in many current antiscience movements, like the antivaxx morons, so I'd go out on a limb and say that's their reasoning. Of course we need to ask why they fell into this line of thinking and what we can do so that in the future it doesn't happen.
The medical system isn't an institution though. It's many different instutitions employ many different people, some of them shitty people that are good at their job, some of them shitty people that are shit at their job, and some of them good people that are good at their job. It's not ideal, and we need to work on that, but medicine isn't some big behemoth, it's many people working hard to ultimately try and help you.
Definitely not at the start, she probably had a fear of medical settings and thus she looked for alternate remedies, but by the end when she was in neck-deep, she definitely was:
It definitely became more about her and not about her child, which was most likely fueled by all the weird shit people say on those podcasts.
For someone so derisive towards anti-science attitudes, you sure are confident in your conclusions based on very little evidence.
The author of the article chose to include a few quotes about a mother fantasising about giving birth and sharing the news with her community. That makes her relatable and human, it doesn't mean she "definitely cared more about herself than her child".
The medical system has systematic issues with women. Like everyone else, I know people who work in medicine - I have family in medicine, I don't need to be told that there are good people working in medicine. But there are well documented, proven, systematic issues with how the medical system deals with women. 1 in 6 women reporting mistreatment is an absurdly high statistic.
Women receive less pain medication, they wait longer for treatment, we literally know less about female bodies because most medical research is done on men, and drugs get recalled after adversely affecting women because clinical trails are done predominantly on men. There is a long history of 'hysteria' as a medical condition, and endometriosis affects one in ten women, and yet it is under-researched and until very recently a lot of doctors didn't even know what it was. Feminists literally had to launch a publicity campaign to increase awareness for an extremely common disease, because the entire medical profession just didn't give a fuck and doctors were constantly misdiagnosing women and dismissing their chronic pain.
Women have good reasons to distrust the medical system.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/books/review-doing-harm-maya-dusenbery-ask-me-about-my-uterus-abby-norman-invisible-michele-lent-hirsch.html
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/02/why-dont-doctors-trust-women-because-they-dont-know-much-about-us
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-dusenbery-medical-sexism-research_n_5a9e01c4e4b0a0ba4ad72a3c
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/emergency-room-wait-times-sexism/410515/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-there-a-gender-bias-against-female-pain-patients_b_589b6b3ee4b061551b3e06ab
The science around safe birthing is actually quite complicated. For a healthy woman with a low risk pregnancy it is safer to have a midwife-led birth in MW-led unit, with doctors available. There's almost no difference if the birth is doctor-led. There is a small increase in risk if the birth is at home. It's difficult to know who is having a low risk pregnancy.
Online groups get this badly wrong and give dangerous advice that causes huge amounts of harm. But it's a mistake to think that health care professionals always get this right.
There have been several scandals in the UK around this. The most well known is Morecambe Bay, where a campaigning group of midwives developed a toxic culture and pushed "normal" birth to the exclusion of safer birthing, refusing to escalate concerns and refusing to talk to doctors. Babies and mothers died. This isn't isolated to Furness General Hospital, it's happened elsewhere in England too. (Shrewsbury and Telford is another example, where dozens of woman and children died as a direct result of this kind of dysfunctional culture).
When women reject hospital care are they anti-science? Or are they reacting to heavily publicised stories where great harm was done to women and babies by health care professionals? Health literacy is something that we get wrong. People do not understand percentages (1 in 4 people do not know what 0.1% means). Risk assessment is hard. This means that some women are not anti-science, they've just made a bad decision because we've created fear and not explained the risks.
Here's the definition of "normal birth": https://web.archive.org/web/20170629084534/http://betterbirths.rcm.org.uk/resources/technical-definition-of-normal-birth/ (I'm having to link to archive.org because this document was so harmful it got removed and replaced).
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/03/morecambe-bay-report-lethal-mix-problems-baby-deaths-cumbria
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/morecombe-bay-scandal-nhs-baby-shrewsbury-telford-death-a9211346.html
I'll toss my hat into the ring for this one.
We went to a birth center for our child. My wife was generally low risk, but with a few medium-high risk factors. The midwives did a medical evaluation and brought us on.
The midwives explained everything carefully. We attended many classes explaining almost everything about childbirth and the first several weeks of caring for a newborn. Including breastfeeding lessons, importance of skin to skin contact, and safety videos.
They are very pro-science, and have a partnership with the hospital close by.
Natural childbirth is much safer than most think. Yes, the mother and child should be monitored, with doctors nearby if needed. However, a lot of the current state of childbirth in the USA is driven by profit motives and fear of malpractice lawsuits.
Many actions are taken to prepare for very rare worst case scenarios, which disrupt natural hormone responses to childbirth, breaking a positive feedback loop and replacing it with a negative one. I won't go into all the details at this hour....but considering that a typical hospital birth in the USA has much higher odds of both infant and maternal fatality than any other deveopled nation, I'm glad we went the path we did.
We went to the birth center after my wife's water broke. They monitored her and our child, and due to a relatively weak heartbeat from our child, we went to the hospital. The midwife stayed with us the whole time and acted as the medical equvalent of a lawyer and mentor. My wife labored for about 10 hours total until she was 8 cm dilated with no drugs, very close to pushing. However our child's heart rate kept dipping, and an ultrasound revealed that the umbilical cord was around their neck. It was only then that my wife was prepped for a C section, and thankfully everything went smoothly. I was terrified while I was all alone while she was prepped.
Although, due to the drugs, my wife could only remember the words to 'I wanna be sedated' by the Ramones and a few songs from Rocky Horror Picture Show. So those were the first words sung to our child as we took turns holding them on our bare chests. I'm a proud father. Does suck that we weren't able to follow through with our birth plans, we had a whole thing planned out including DragonForce and Steven Lynch songs. I was wearing my 'Let me stop everything and work on your problem' T-shirt. We had it planned perfectly, and my suicidal baby ruined it. 😉
That being said....we definitely met our share of the crazies at the birth center. I won't go into specifs, but we're talking 'go 50 or more miles into the wilderness' or ' vaccines cause autism" types.
The midwives hard discouraged all that nonsense, but so many people mistake midwivery for anti-science it is disgusting.
Thanks for telling your story, very interesting, good that it turned out all right! Singing DragonForce to a newborn baby is awesome haha.
To reinforce your message with some personal experience: both our children were born in a birthing center setting with low medical intervention. Mom was healthy and well informed, and the process was indeed miraculous.
That said, we were keen to have medical intervention readily available.
I am a woman who has had the classic "dismissed symptoms" bad medical experience - I was not taken seriously until my issue got bad enough to require an emergency surgery. I would say that I overall "trust" western medicine, but getting that little peek behind the veil... I mean, it didn't inspire confidence. I realize I have to be emotionally prepared to stand up for myself and push back against professionals if I feel it is necessary: it could literally be a matter of life and death.
My mother is a licensed practical nurse. She is highly educated, incredibly smart, and has worked in medicine for thirty years. She has caught mistakes and advocated very strongly for her family whenever any of us have had subpar treatment from hospitals and doctors. I am almost certain my grandfather lived as long as he did due to her advocacy. I dread the day she can no longer do so.
Although I am not likely to ever get pregnant, I can imagine as well wanting to feel some measure of control over your own body. Pregnant women are often treated like vessels for humans instead of humans in and of themselves. I can see the free-birth movement as a manifestation of that desire for autonomy and recognition as a thinking, feeling person in the face of an industry that they do not have full confidence in.
So, here's the deal: Midwifery is not inherently anti-science. I see many people taking that stance, and this is drastic mis-information that hurts the practice and science as a whole. As I don't have unlimited time, I'm going to provide a reasonably quick breakdown and some starting points for further research.
First, cases like in the article certainly do happen, but it's not inherently because midwifery is anti-science. The issue is threefold:
As I detailed somewhat in a more personal story, our birth center was incredibly pro-science. If you are within 50ish miles of the Philadelphia metro area and a pregnancy is in your future, go there. Full stop. Even if you choose a hospital birth, get a midwife to work with you there.
Here are some of our experiences:
Finally, I'm doing this big callout to everyone who replied to this topic (no matter which stance you took) to help stop the spread of mis-information. Odds of my wife or child dying during childbirth would have been much higher without the midwives help. @mrbig, @Eylrid, @DanBC,@NoblePath, @GRzmot, @ibis, @AnthonyB, and @cfabbro
Offtopic: I don't appreciate being part of a shotgun tagging. I understand that you are passionate about what you have to say and want everyone to hear it, but that's not a great way to do it. If you have something to say to me specifically or take issue with something I've said, say it. Otherwise make your comment and let it stand on its merits like the rest of us.
Since I'm tagged in this: I do not have a single problem with midwives, as at least in my country they are specialized nurses. As far as I know, I also didn't attack midwives in any of my replies in this thread and if someone thinks that, I apologize for being unclear about it. I count midwives among the array of professions I like to summarize as medical professionals. Midwives are vital to any birth in my country.
Another point:
Correct. Additionally, subsequent births by the same woman often get faster. The birth of my older brother took 10 hours, I was out in 2. Anecdotal knowledge, yes I know.
This discussion seems to be being framed as "medical services good, home births bad". It's really not that clear. For a woman with a low risk pregnancy the outcomes are better in a midwife led unit, (but only in some MW led units.). There's a small increase in risk in a doctor led unit (but that might be a large increase in some units). And there's an small increase in risk in home births.
The variation in risk is small enough that other things become important. Those other things are the culture of safety on the units. Some places have dysfunctional cultures, and so it doesn't matter that they're a midwife led unit: they're not safe.
In England "midwife" is a protected title. People need a qualification and a professional registration in order to call themselves midwives.
Despite this, we've had a number of scandals where women and babies were harmed because midwives did not understand the science and pushed "normal" birth at any cost.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/morecambe-bay-investigation-report
Shrewsbury and Telford: the report isn't finished yet, but they're looking at over 900 examples of unacceptably poor maternity care, with at least three dead mothers and dozens of dead babies. Worryingly, there are many themes shared between SATH and Morecambe. Shropshire were proud of their very low rate of C-Section, driven by midwives pushing normal at any cost. They hadn't spotted that this low rate was achieved by causing death and harm. http://www.donnaockenden.com/the-ockenden-review-sath/
There's yet another scandal in Kent: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/east-kent-maternity-baby-deaths-nhs-consultants-harry-richford-a9298266.html
A great article detailing another aspect of this growing anti-science attitude in large parts of the population. It's a sad story.
I understand that, like any science, medicine is flawed. But why people keep thinking their uninformed online research can replace teams of professionals that trained 10+ years to do just that, and practice their knowledge every fucking day? OF COURSE, it is possible to have children with reduced medical assistance, even without doctors, and have a positive outcome. All the resources available in a hospital are not there for the majority of the cases where everything goes right — they are there for when nature "fucks up". Because one thing you should know about nature is that a lot more babies and mothers die during childbirth.
Are you willing to have pre-modern-medicine odds of things going bad just to prove a fucking point, or to have a beautiful fucking story to tell about how free, strong and offbeat you are?
Sorry for the rant, but this gets on my nerves.
There's a lot of distrust of mainstream medicine in the US because of how out of control medical bills are. It's not a big leap for people to look at the outrageous charges and conclude that the healthcare industry only cares about the money. It's part of a broader distrust of big anything and the idea that big corporations have way too much power and no regard for humanity. Combine those fears with the fallacy that natural is healthy and we end up with this disaster.