But do they then go back to chopping cane/working in the paddy-fields?

[oursin]

An article in today's Guardian Women's Page which made me (being a historian of medicine, rather than anyone who's ever given birth) go WTF???!!! about 'freebirth', which is, apparently, about giving birth in one's own home, without any kind of birth attendance, except maybe a husband in the next room.

Okay, I found spooky reports I read of some fundamentalist sect arguing that midwives fossicking about in ladies' nethers was somehow teh lezzie gay and only husbands should be there in the birthing chamber. But this strikes me as seriously into the realms of the higher woo-woo.

As someone is quoted in the article, historically speaking women haven't crawled off into the undergrowth to give birth as a solitary spiritual experience - they've at least had other women around them. Giving birth alone was usually associated with trauma or problems of some kind or other (e.g. out of wedlock pregnant servants in total silence in shared garrets).

"Women have been giving birth since the beginning of time and birth is very rarely complicated" shows a startling lack of interest in engaging with the very solid historiography on maternal and infant mortality rates, which were extremely high, even in much of the developed western world, well into the 1930s: I adduce in evidence the fact that when Grantly Dick Read published his first book promoting natural childbirth in 1933 it got very little attention, because people were more interested in having a live mother and baby as the desirable outcome; only when it was reprinted in the 1940s when survival was assumed and quality of experience could become an issue of concern did it take off as a best-seller.

Also: the woman who eschewed all antenatal care and ended up being rushed to hospital in labour with twins? Suggests a whole possibility of scenarios where issues that would have been taken into consideration and managed for best outcome turn into major urgent crises.

Nature is not kind and not cosy. And this is not 'natural':

The only way I had ever been able to picture myself giving birth was alone, or with an old crone in silent attendance. At night in the woods by a stream was my preference.

It bears no relationship to women's historical experiences of giving birth: it sounds like something out of a fantasy novel.

Comments

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

The only way I had ever been able to picture myself giving birth was alone, or with an old crone in silent attendance. At night in the woods by a stream was my preference.

But at the end of the article she admits:

Besides, dialling 999 was always my back-up plan, being only 10 minutes from the nearest hospital

Very conveniently located woods & stream, I must say.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

All alone with aged silent crone and mobile phone?

[unblinkered.livejournal.com]

OT, but the line about "Pizza boys deliver. Women birth." hit a chord - and reminded me of a conversation I've had with my mother on several occasions; namely that the English language treats childbirth in an almost utilitarian way: labour and delivery are very technical terms, unlike Wehen and Geburt or gebären in German, which are specific to childbirth and have a much more organic quality to them. It's something that strikes me about the English language regularly, most recently at a performance of Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ where f'rex I thirst has none of the gravitas or poetry of Mich dürstet. /random linguistic tangent

[papersky.livejournal.com]

"Labour" strikes me as a usefully specific descriptive word. I'd never have guessed how much hard work it was.

[hartleyhare.livejournal.com]

Am thinking 'WTF?' at the fact that she didn't know where her cervix was.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

One would think this sort of thing went along with the 'how to observe your cervix' thing, but maybe the fact that involves that evil tool of patriarchy, the speculum, means not.

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Good grief.

And one wonders how the father feels about being excluded.

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

"Women have been giving birth since the beginning of time and birth is very rarely complicated"

Right. Because a maternal mortality rate of greater than 1 in 10 with premodern tech/no antibiotics or asepsis means complications are just vanishingly rare.

Honestly I would say they were entitled to the fruits of their own ignorance, except that we all know they're not going to be left to bleed to death or succumb to eclampsia or for that matter puerperal fever in their own living rooms, they're going to be trotted off to hospital at extraordinary expense.

[ann1962]

I wonder how they will raise their children if their egos are so large that they think that giving birth alone is a good idea? Poor kids.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Well, no vaccinations for starters, perhaps. No glasses if they're shortsighted or astigmatic.

Are they going to shear the sheep, spin the wool, and knit all the infant's clothes as well?

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Very, very scary. The sheer fluffyness of things, the 'oh, everything will be fine', the 'well, I almost died, and so did my kids, and I didn't even notice' attitude of the case study - now that is frightening.

As is the husband who greets with 'my labour has started with' 'well, I'm going back to bed, I'm tired'.

The other snippet that worried me was "in 13 states there are legal issues for midwives attending home births." That sort of legislation forces women to choose between two undesirable choices - to go into a hospital (which, in the land of no public healthcare, some of them might not be able to afford in all its glory) or to attempt to have the baby at home without trained supervision and I can even - to some degree - understand why women would choose to opt for the unattended homebirth.

Hoever, there really is no excuse not to have antenatal care. It appears to me as if a very high percentage of cases that are not suitable for home birth will be picked up by doing one's homework, and not making an informed choice is, well, see lilliburlero's icon.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

As is the husband who greets with 'my labour has started with' 'well, I'm going back to bed, I'm tired'.

Perhaps he is tired of her ranting. If she won't let him witness The Mystery, or help lick the baby clean afterward, what can he do? Sleep or go out.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Not a good fantasy novel.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Oh no: a really bad fantasy novel with a lovely loving caring fluffy-bunny matriarchal religion.

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

It does seem to indicate something is wrong with the way women are treated during childbirth when they go into hospital, but the women here have been extraordinarily lucky. Breech births, child with umbilical cord wrapped around neck, twins...any one of those could have ended badly, and I suspect it's more luck than anything else (apart from that 999 call) that made for a happy outcome.

[rosinarowantree.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's more that if the child was born dead as a result of 'going it alone' the mother wouldn't be boasting of what a wonderful choice she'd made. And if the mother had died, she wouldn't be around to contribute to the discussion.

On the other hand, teaching women how to cope with giving birth without medical assistance seems fine to me, and an excellent precaution in case of emergency.

[redbird]

A fantasy novel, or an attitude that nobody else really cares about her or can be trusted, but the baby will love her and be what she needs, that is more often attributed to lonely teenagers who, having conceived, choose both to carry the fetus to term and to raise the child themselves. That "old crone in silent attendance" is, I think, key more for the silence than for her age or sex.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

The "old crone in silent attendance" is the archetypical fairy godmother, the kind from stories that are so fluffy you know she can be relied on to help when needed, without taking control. One reason childbirth is scary is the loss of control. For some women, that's scarier than the pain or the risk of dying. (I don't know if research bears this out, but it looks to me, anecdotally, like women with abuse histories are more likely to be terrified of the loss of control.)

Giving birth in a conventional American obstetrics ward can be *terrifying*. (Some hospitals are trying to work with nurse-midwives and move away from those conventions. But not all.) I don't mean there can be medical emergencies, and urgent responses to them. I mean that the laboring woman is caught up in hospital procedures and made helpless, even if nothing goes wrong. C worked with nurse-midwives for prenatal care, 7 years ago, and the CNMs were great...but K and I spent most of our time in the hospital trying to defend C from the regular hospital staff. She said she did not want an epidural, go away. Yes, it hurts. She's in labor, but she said she did not want an epidural, GO AWAY. No, she is probably not going to give birth before the end of your shift. She is not trying to walk to the OR to have a C-section, she is just trying to pace because it makes her more comfortable. No, she does not WANT to go to the OR to have a C-section.

It's very easy for me to understand the desire for a healthy-but-frightened woman to move away from that model of childbirth. It troubles me that there is so little room in the US model for other kinds of birth assistance. A friend had a baby 7 months later than the above example, and used the same midwifery practice...but that hospital had closed and the midwives were connected with a different one, where the doctors and nurses were much, much, pushier. The laboring mother called us for help because she was having such a hard time fending off unwanted and unnecessary interventions.

Another comment mentioned cost. Conventional ob practice is covered by almost all health insurance, including that provided by states for the poor. Certified nurse midwives to help with a low-intervention hospital birth where the hospital facilities are easily available in an emergency? Trained midwives to help with prenatal care and low-risk home birth? Those usually need to be paid for privately. So women of limited means may be most able to afford the full hospital treatment.

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

'Growing trend' = 1 person. Ok, 2.

This is just ridiculous, dangerous bollocks. There is now steam coming out of my ears.

It's 'vanity birth', IMHO.

Yes, maybe birth can be overmedicalised but it is also much, much safer these days. Your child's birth is not a fucking lifestyle experience. I've had 2 natural labours, with the benefit of kind, fierce midwives, scared husbands and a few machines that go bleep. Other people encounter massive complications. What happens in childbirth really isn't something that you can always control, and the desire for 'natural' is colliding with other trends, of older mothers who have fewer babies and more complications. My first nephew died, in a cottage hospital, partly because people didn't have the experience or the equipment to help him be born safely. 10 minutes away from a big hospital? Don't give me your 'natural' crap.

Technology is not the enemy.

OK, time for my lie-down..

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Practicalities aside, I don't even understand why giving birth alone is *emotionally* appealing to people. I quite enjoyed having a team of people cheering me on and supporting me, plus it's very handy having other people to do the fetching and carrying and washing up. (All those bloody sheets? Not my problem!)

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Mother Nature doesn't want you to be healthy. Mother Nature is a stone bitch, and don't forget it.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Mother Nature, like God (according to JBS Haldane), is probably inordinately fond of beetles.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

I can see how, in situations where a midwife-attended homebirth either isn't legal or isn't available for other reasons, some might choose to give birth on their own, rather than in a hospital. Any women I'm aware of who've done this or considered doing it, however, have been exceedingly well educated about the birth process - not like Miss I-don't-know-where-my-cervix-is.

But what I think all of this really says is that Western people have become so divorced from the process of birth, that they have a completely unrealistic vision of what it can involve. I think everyone would do well to be present at a birth, preferably several, before having children of their own (and it would probably be a useful learning experience even for those who don't intend to have children).

(Off-topic, it's a similar situation with vaccinations - a complete lack of familiarity with the diseases beibg vaccinated against leads to the perception that they are not serious threats. But I digress...)

I do think that birth is over-medicalized, and that midwife-attended homebirths for uncomplicated pregnancies should be strongly encouraged. But people should have a reasonable level of awareness of what birth can involve, including what can go wrong. Besides, as someone else said, I was very grateful for my midwives, especially for their work cleaning up afterwards! And I can't imagine kicking forthright out of the room...

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

"- a complete lack of familiarity with the diseases being vaccinated against leads to the perception that they are not serious threats."

So right. "Whooping cough" sounds rather silly and amusing, doesn't it? My organic farmer back in Charlotte didn't vaccinate and had a child sick for two months.

If people read @#$@#$ memoirs, they'd know better. Even period fiction -- Beth dies of heart damage caused by scarlet fever.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Gawd 'elp us. Not only has it never been normal, or sensible, it has under some circumstances been illegal - see the proceedings of the Old Bailey site (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/html_units/1680s/t16810831-2.html). "Elizabeth Powel of St. Martins in the Fields, was Tried For Murdering her Bastard Male-Infant, and hiding it in her Desk , the which she refused to confess, till search was made, and then declared where she had bestowed it, desiring the people to be good to her, for that it was Still-born, but she not calling any to her Labor, to testify the same, according to the Statute of King James, which there was read, she was brought in Guilty of Murder." That was the 1624 statute which dictated that if the death of the baby was concealed, the mother was presumed guilty of infanticide unless she could prove that the baby was born dead. You wouldn't omit having your witnesses handy back then, if you had any sense...

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Concealment of pregnancy remained a crime throughout the C19th (not sure when if ever this ceased to be the case): a lot of cases of suspected infanticide were prosecuted as this, since it was a) hard to prove infanticide in most cases and b) judges and juries were often sympathetic to young women in desperate straits and went for this lesser offence (as it was by then - 2 years in prison, I think).

[amaliedageek.livejournal.com]

Sarah had read everything she could on the subject, and says she "would have known instinctively if anything was wrong."

Oh my fucking God, give me that fish. That ignorant bint and her friends are half the reason it took us fourteen years of lobbying to get direct-entry midwifery legalized in Utah. I'd never wish complications on any woman, but she's making me think with relish of a transverse breech.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

Now, admittedly, I knew when the girl was in distress (and I did the appropriate thing: I went and got a c-section), but I had no idea the cord was around the boy's neck.

Maybe her Amazing Psychic Powers are much better than mine.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

*GRIN* You're reminding me of a recent correspondence with my cousin, whose son was even bigger than mine. I'd sent her an article on green burial in which I was interviewed, and she wrote back and said how funny she thought it was that one of the other interviewees likened green burial to natural childbirth.

"There are a lot of things you could say about my son's birth," she told me, "but it was nothing like going peacefully into the ground in a pine box."

And, yeah: there are some aspects of medicalized childbirth that need some serious revision (the contrast between my first and second birth experiences certainly dramatized the difference between liability-avoidance-prioritizing and woman-and-family-prioritizing childbirth), I'm also quite sure that were it not for medical intervention, we'd all have been dead dead dead.

Technology has its uses

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Back in my 20s, I had a friend who was in labor for 37 hours before they did a C-section. She did get childbed fever but she (and the baby) survived. Neither would have made it, probably, a hundred years ago.

Hell, I would never have lived to hit puberty -- a bee sting I got when I was 8 would have killed me if nothing else had.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Worst thing, to me, was "During her five pregnancies, Shanley shunned all monitoring, including scans." Mrs Ostrich, or what? Where's the harm in knowing what is going on?

Some woman is eventually going to get sued or prosecuted when something goes wrong, and a good thing too.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

I'm a very nice person, but when I read things like this all I can think is what fucking clueless idiots such people are. There, I feel better now.



as for solo birth - man, the first time, I needed someone (aka spouse) to swear at while having contractions. The second time was preemie twins. Which I am sure would have gone much better in the quiet forest down by a gently flowing stream with a silent crone in attendance instead of the 10 medical professionals ready to leap into action. Argh.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

'Nature never did betray The heart that loved her'? Not sure I would trust Wordsworth as the ultimate authority!

[littleowl.livejournal.com]

Having given birth twice in a hospital without any drugs,and under 7 hours both times, my personal experience is that giving birth alone with someone silently sitting by to provide assistance as needed would be /absolutely lovely/.

If I ever have a third baby, I'd like to have a waterbirth because hands down, warm water is the most effective natural pain reliever I've found for myself. I'd also limit the attendees to a quiet midwife and my husband. This is all personal experience though and doesn't speak to overall historical record.

However, I just thought I'd put that out there that some women really don't want to be surrounded by a gaggle of attendants. Some of us really would prefer to be left alone, uninterrupted by constant checking and prodding to get our business over, but with help right nearby should anything start to go wrong.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

That's reasonable, but not having skilled assistance at least within call is probably asking for trouble.

(I think James Barry, who performed the first recorded caesarian in South Africa, deserves an outing somewhere in the course of this discussion!)

[carandol.livejournal.com]

At night in the woods by a stream? Is that in the pouring rain and a howling gale, with the old crone desperately trying to light a fire so there's some sterile water and tripping over things, and neither able to tell whether the baby's OK because it's too dark, and their fingers are numb with cold? Or does the weather always smile on natural childbirth?

I think this woman needs to do some serious camping before she gets pregnant!

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

Nature is not kind and not cosy.

It is in Disney movies. I know Pagans and Wiccans who refer to this attitude as "nature pink in tooth and claw."


The only way I had ever been able to picture myself giving birth was alone,

Yeesh, does she think she's whelping? And even bitches sometimes need help.


At night in the woods by a stream was my preference.

Well, *she* has never been camping. It's a glorious experience, but I personally would not want to spend my time in labor fighting off a cloud of mosquitos, much less a coyote or bear attracted by the smell of blood.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

At least in the UK coyote or bear would be unlikely, unless she did this in a wildlife park somewhere; however, wild boars are returning and there is continuing talk of reintroducing the wolf... plus, all those big cats (http://www.scs.abelgratis.co.uk/bigcats2/) alleged to be roaming around rural and even suburban parts. I think the rain and the midges would be the most likely dampeners, however.

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

Here via <Lj user="ann1962". This kind of thing baffles me. I understand the romantic lure of giving birth in a "natural" way, the hope that things will be perfect and the baby will pop right out, no worries. However: I have been a nurse for a long time, and I've seen the consequences of poor ante natal care, and the complications of child-birth, enough to know that anyone who doesn't want a knowledgeable person around in case something goes wrong is just nuts. In the last year alone, we have treated 4 or 5 women in our ICU for complications of labour and delivery. In one case the woman died, inspite of all we did. *shakes head* :friends you, BTW:

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Welcome!

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to see everyone shaking their heads at this article. Reading stuff like that makes me want to give three cheers for the Enlightenment and the medical establishment (not a frame of mind I'm normally in).

What is up with Guardian 2 this week? There was another story about reading people's histories off the soles of their feet that struck me as complete claptrap, not worthy of a major newspaper:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2074302,00.html