homebirthissafe

I'am taking back my Pussy!

2009-07-20T11:59:00.001-07:00

'I'm Taking Back My Pussy!': A Transgression of Privatized Gynecological Boundaries

by Claire T. Porter
University of Memphis, Center for Research on Women

In this essay, I weave together my personal experiences "in the stirrups" with empirical evidence and theory on the medical maltreatment of women. I do not write this account with claims of authority or objectivity. Just as Lisa M. Tillman-Healy (1996,78) takes readers into the secret world of bulimic young women by describing her own experiences with bulimia, I mean to take readers through "normal" gynecological procedures by describing my own experiences as a gynecological patient. I identify my embodied self as a locus of abuses done to women in the practice of modern medicine, rather than contriving a distance between my body and my thought process in privatized medical experiences. In writing this essay, I am informed by data that rest in my body-memory of being poked, prodded, scraped and ogled.

My analysis of the events described herein has evolved over time, from viewing my doctors' behavior as acceptable to viewing it as abusive. Rethinking and reliving these events, I attend to what is often dismissed in social science writing: the way the body remembers. The tension I feel grow up through my thighs, buttocks, and pelvic floor, the tightening of my lower back (which compels me to jump up from my chair every few minutes and do the yogic "cat" stretch), the numbness that creeps into my crotch as I re-live memories of strangers' eyes taking me in, and the eventual clench that freezes my jaw when I try to fathom why my doctors would not explain to me what would be happening to me under anesthetic are all omnipresent memory-sensations as I write. Thus, as I relive these events I rely on a methodological framework based on a process of privileging bodily knowledge in the process of creating an intellectual analysis.

Lying on the maroon vinyl examining table, with my behind hanging off the end and my feet elevated, stirrups apart, I feel a spinning sensation in my head. This scene is surreal. I want to hold onto something tightly. I want to shut my legs and never open them again. I want to giggle hysterically, flush red with embarrassment, and clamp my thighs shut. A strange man is looking at the most private and sensuous part of my body. The doctor is a thirty-something man with a degree from the University of Alabama. I can see his degree on the wall from where I lie. His eyes, which cut from side to side, make me nervous, add to the dizzy feeling in my head. As he attempts to stick the speculum in me, I unintentionally clench against the cold metal shoe horn. He repeats, "Stop tensing, Stop tensing." His command only makes me tense harder. It is as if there is no opening "down there" at all, that he has to carve one out with that thing I am sure he keeps in the refrigerator. But he finally gets it in.

As he opens the speculum and my vagina, he says casually, "I saw you in that play y'all did over there at the college." He puts something else in me that causes a disconcerting scraping sensation. I interject, "You mean "The Scarlett Pimpernell'?" "Yes. The one where you had to wear that old fashioned-dress." My teeth are clenched in reaction to dull scraping. It is hard for me to have this conversation. "I mean, you looked gorgeous." I can feel his breath in warm puffs on my thighs as he speaks. I think about how I had to tape up my breasts and then apply makeup to my cleavage so that they appeared to bulge out of the costume. He is going to be sadly disappointed when he does my breast exam. As he yanks the speculum out of me, leaving me feeling stretched and gooey with lubricant jelly, he tells me I have a cyst. I will have to have this cyst surgically removed, he says. The doctor explains, the same casual tone in his voice, that the surgeon will slice my abdomen open from pelvic bone to pelvic bone, get the thing out, and then do "exploratory" surgery in my uterus and ovaries. My head is spinning.

The exam is over, but I cannot shake the feeling of being exposed and vulnerable. I have used half a box of tissues to wipe away all the jelly from my genital area. Then I pull on my clothes fast. The doctor returns and invites me to sit on a chair beside a small desk. He launches into a list of appointments he has made for me at labs to get tests, something about a vaginal laproscopic exam, which I had never heard of. I interrupt his monologue to ask him what a vaginal laproscopy entails. He smirks, "A tube with a little camera in it will be inserted in your vagina... kind of like a penis." At the word penis he blurts out a laugh. "Oh," I say. I laugh to match his.

He has to be my friend. My face feels oily under the vibrating fluorescent lights of his office, and I am unable to focus on any one object in the room ... but I know I should be able to handle this. He just wants to make me feel comfortable, to have a sense of humor about this whole ordeal. He did not mean to make me feel embarrassed by the penis remark. I am just overly sensitive. It is not his fault that I am misinterpreting his comments. As I continue to watch his mouth move in a monologue about barium enemas, my face flushes darker until I feel like a vein in my right cheek may explode. I look at him. He has a reddish-brown tufted mustache and blotchy skin that makes me think first of rednecks. Then an image of Hitler comes to mind. Hatred erupts. The last thing I want is for him to know he has made me feel gross and even more exposed. This is my memory of my first gynecological exam.

The lived experiences that I have had in the gynecologic industry are far from rare. If one were to quantify experiences of medical abuse, to attempt to place on a scale from "bad" to "atrocious" my medical treatment, I do not believe that mine would score much beyond bad. The purpose of describing my own experiences "in the stirrups," and subsequently in surgery, is not to present myself as a woman who has been mistreated in an unusual way. I suspect that thousands of women have been treated far worse. Such a scale would be contrary to the purpose of revealing such intimate and humiliating experiences. As with all types of abuse, competitions among individuals or groups to determine who has been abused the most and the worst derail the discussion and diminish more nuanced understandings about the nature of the abuse. Rather than attempting to quantify experiences of medical abuse, my purpose is to explore the methodological use of bodily experience as sociological inquiry.

Waves of humiliation surge up as I go through the process of writing, re-reading, re-writing, and so on, the above account of my first gynecological exam. I realize that I have involuntarily crossed my legs. As I write, read, re-think, and re-write how my doctor had to force the speculum into me, I involuntarily clench my pelvic muscles all over again. Who do I do this to myself? Further, why do I publicize this vulnerability and coerce readers to participate in my memory, to relive it, too? And finally, why deny readers distance by writing in a present, active tense, pulling them into the immediacy of the examination? I detail these experiences using the theoretical framework of emotional sociology (Ellis and Bochner 1996, 99). My goal, by writing and reliving these experiences, is to create an atmosphere where the voice of the body is privileged and central rather than dismissed from the discourse. If the voice of the body becomes central to informing analytical, theoretical stances, then practices that are experienced as violations of the body are recognizable as problematic and unjust, and hence in need of repair.

In publicizing the personal in this essay I also follow the Black feminist theoretical principle discussed by bell hooks and Tanya McKinnon (1996, 36), who state that it is a necessary act of transgression of institutionalized power to talk in the open about private, taboo, and "unspeakable" experiences, even if doing so requires a sacrifice of privacy. hooks and McKinnon assert that activist-oriented theoretical frameworks develop when privatized abuses are publicized. They state, "The ways in which privacy is constructed and the meaning of public and private legitimize and uphold structures of domination, particularly sexism" (822). Thus, writing about what happened to me in the private space of an OB/GYN office can transgress the institutional protection that this space is afforded in society. The exploitation of women has been commonplace in the gynecological and obstetrics industries for several hundred years (Raymond, 1993, 37). In that sense, the speculum can be viewed as an instrument meant to colonize the female reproductive tract.

It still drives me nuts that I did not kick that gynecologist in the face for objectifying me when his hands were all over my pubic area. It would have been unacceptable in our androcentric, heterosexist culture for a male or female doctor, in the midst of examining a man's penis, to comment on how "gorgeous" he looked during a sporting event. I feel a wave of guilt as I think of my own harsh reaction to my mother when she described to me a gynecologist who, she explained, "tried to turn me on with his hand" during an exam. I had turned on her, asking, "Why didn't you do anything?" She had responded, "I told him 'that's enough'." I had frowned at her, believing her to be weak, even flaky, to let herself be taken advantage of that way. But after my own experience, I can understand perfectly why just that verbal rebuke was difficult for her to muster, and actually showed her bravery. I am suddenly overcome with depression at the way mom and I and most other women are made to feel, like control of our own bodies is impossible in the presence of authoritative doctors, who supposedly know us better than we know ourselves.

It is the morning of my operation. A white gown replaces my clothes. Mom helps me get it on, ties the strings in the back. I am disoriented by having had to take out my contacts and by all the people walking around me while my behind is exposed. I ask several nurses why I have to take off my bra if the surgery is all the way "down there." They all say the same things: "You just have to. It's standard policy." Then, without warning the nurse sticks me in the behind with a needle. I yip and then turn red. She says "sorry" in a flat voice and fades away into the blur of people and voices. I call after her to ask what the shot is for. She says it's the anaesthetic for the surgery. Mom tells me what a piece of cake this will be, that I'll be out in no time. People and voices are getting swirled into a syrupy mess. The shot must be putting me under. Then an African-American man in white smiles close to my face and says jauntily, "She's ready to Go!" He is pulling me along. I hear the click of mom's heels and the man humming and the rush of the wind over my face as the cart rolls along. All in slow motion. Then, I am in another room with two women in white, who lift me onto a table. Oh my God, they're about to operate but the shot did not work! I am not under yet! I hear a buzzing whir sound. It sounds like a circular saw. I struggle but my body has turned into inert pudding. I manage to move my mouth, strange sounds coming out.

I repeat to the two women, "Wait! I'm not under yet! I'm not under yet!" They are both laughing in big snorts and cackles, lifting up my gown. I struggle to get away from the buzzing whir and their laughing. Everything is swirling and twirling together, and I fall away.

Muffled voices are calling my name. I am at the bottom of the lake in Pocono, and my mom's side of the family, decked out in absurdly bright cocktail attire, are calling me from the water's edge. That must be why they sound blurred and sluggish. It is so nice and warm down here, but they must want me to swim in to shore. That bright light up there is getting brighter and brighter ... I burst through to the light, and moan. I want to vomit. I feel a slicing, throbbing pain in my stomach. A large picture window streams in morning light, white washing the bed I am lying in. So many people, I cannot focus on any one. Is it morning? Where's Roger? I want to hold his hand and sob, it hurts so bad. Women in white are talking to me: "Claire, you can push this button whenever it hurts, and pain killers will go through the tube into your arm." Somehow, my hand has traveled to the little red button with the speed of light and my index finger clicks it over and over again. Pain is mixed with confusion and the frustration of not being able to control my body. I fall back into the warm water.

This time, I fight the swim up to the light. Up there is pain. But a current is sucking me upwards. Exhausted, I let it whisk me up. My mom and a nurse are talking to me as I try to make it three feet to the toilet. Every time I lift my leg off the floor, a searing pain strikes my abdomen. The nurse is lecturing me, "...and how well you heal now will determine how well you do with your pregnancies." I manage a grin here. She assumes I will be having babies. It is a given. I have a womb, therefore I will have babies. Their serious faces both seem silly, verging on absurd. I let out a too-loud giggle and then snort-laugh at their perturbed faces.

A week has gone by since my operation. My mother takes me to the surgeon's examining table in Atlanta. The nurse comes in to "prep" me, and drapes a white sheet over my bare below-the-waist region. When the doctor comes through the door, a young man in a similar white lab coat is at his side. He whips off the sheet as a magician pulls the tablecloth from beneath the plates, while saying only "hello" to me, with no eye contact. The young resident does not make eye contact with me, but I see his eyes wandering over my whole body. I know that look. I feed off that look. He wants me. I feel a rush of adrenaline. He thinks I am pretty, maybe even beautiful. I could seduce him, make him beg... This is sick. He knows nothing about me. He does not know me, but he wants me? How dare he just peruse my naked body, appraising me like a luxury car he wants to test drive. Do I even matter? Do I even exist except as a body?!

"Closely connected with the absence of self is the dispensing of existence experienced by women... Women undergoing these procedures report a sense of nonbeing" (Raymond 1993, xv). I cannot help feeling that my body, especially the most private areas of it, has been taken away from me. This surgeon and the horny resident both assess my pubic area. Now the vision of my genitals is held in their brains. I feel I possess my sex less and less and feel them both smug in the fact that they own it. What a power trip for them. Bastards.

A hilariously out of place image pops into my mind as I lie there being examined: I am in a Wonder Woman costume standing beside me as I lie on the table. I throw my golden lasso over my stolen pelvis, announcing valiantly, "I'm taking back my pussy!" I try to hold onto the power of this fantasy, that I am not only the prone me on the table but also a "Wonder Me" who can save myself, but it seems to escape me almost as soon as I imagine it. I have that achy feeling circling the rims of my eyes that means my body wants me to cry. But I am too disconnected. To cry, I have to feel truly righteous in the knowledge that I am wronged. How can I feel that I am wronged by the renowned surgeon and his assistant who have saved my womb? They are doctors, and doctors do not harm; they heal. That is the whole point. So none of my body's aches or my sense of bodily dispossession is even worth entertaining. These are unjustifiable feelings. So I shut them down and float with the sense of nothingness.

Tracing my scar, which grins along the border of my now growing-back-in pubic hair, with his ungloved index finger, my surgeon says to the resident at his side, "Would you look at that? It's healing perfectly. Practically imperceptible." He smiles up at me then. "You'll be able to look just as good in bikinis."

"Doctors add to the exposure, often by making comments that promote the sexual objectification of the experience for the woman" (Raymond 1993, 37).

My surgeon then turns to the intern without covering me back up. They speak about the importance of certain procedures. The nurse stands by frowning at them and then at me. After what seems like forever, she covers me with the sheet, snapping it out over me so that it billows. As she does this, she glowers at the two doctors. They remain oblivious, still talking about procedures. The nurse's obvious disgust for the doctors' disregard for my privacy gives me a jolt of indignation. I want to scream, "I don't wear bikinis, asshole. Why don't you try to swim in that shit!" But I feel so exposed and powerless, that if I open my mouth, my voice will be sucked away in that antiseptic white void.

Making women sexually attractive to men and willing and able to bear children are the two pinnacles of a "spermatic economy," according to G.J. Barker-Benfield (1976, 13). In the logic of the "spermatic economy," women exist for sex: as sex objects and/or breeders (cited in Raymond 1993, 34). Thus, what was relevant to my doctors was that they had "healed" me well so that I could still make babies and would still be attractive to men (e.g., I could still wear bikinis without my scar showing).

Four years after my first exam and subsequent surgery, I have just finished a pelvic exam with a woman gynecologist. By virtue of her gender, I am told she will transform the exam into an empowering experience. It does not seem that different, though. I am still on my back while procedures are performed on my body as though I am an object. Afterwards, she invites me to sit down and talk. Perhaps this is where the empowerment will come. She wants to engage in a dialogue with me.

She starts the dialogue by asserting that she wants very much to put me on "the pill." She is already scribbling out a prescription. I tell her she need not bother, that birth control pills affect every organ of the body, and that they have not been around long enough for anyone to know what the long term side effects are. She frowns and says, "But he must be sick and tired of using condoms". "Well, I'm not," I respond curtly. Why is it always so much easier to be curt to a woman in authority than a man?

She backs off, still frowning, and begins to look through my medical history, lying in a yellow folder. "Oh. You had an ectopic pregnancy when you were eighteen?" She sounds mildly surprised. "No, but I had a cyst removed then." "An ectopic pregnancy is a kind of cyst. Didn't they tell you?" she asks, with what sounds like a lilt of pity in her voice. I bristle, "I must have just forgotten it was that kind of cyst." I reply. The light-headed, vulnerable feeling has returned, as I am transported back to my first pelvic exam. I cannot really hear anything she says to me after this. I just keep thinking about the two words: "ectopic" and "pregnancy." I hate her all of a sudden, this bitch who wants to show up my ignorance. Who pretends that she is different just because she is a woman. And I hate myself for ever having believed that it would be different, for daring to hope that it could be, for putting myself in such a vulnerable position.

It is weeks before I can comprehend that, at the time of my surgery, the doctors must have chosen not to tell me that I had an ectopic pregnancy. Were they trying to protect me from being embarrassed, since to have an ectopic pregnancy was proof that I was sexually active? My embarrassment never seemed to have been a concern of theirs at other humiliating medical moments. Or, did they just figure that I did not need to know the technical details of why I was being sliced open? Maybe they arrogantly assumed it would be way over my head. Even worse, had my parents also known, but complied with the doctors in not explaining to me? Then comes rushing in the strange knowledge that I had been pregnant, that a fetus had lived inside me, if only for a few days, and that it had somehow made a mistake in navigation. I felt sad for that ball of energy that had some fleeting existence in me, and was then cut out and incinerated.

I am not a distanced sociologist discussing the pervasive maltreatment of women in the medical industry. Rather, I am a woman who is sometimes still humiliated by this dehumanizing treatment. I wonder if medical reform is possible. What I do believe is that transgressing the boundaries of the public with the protected privacy of the medical establishment, as advocated by hooks with McKinnon (1996), holds promise as a route to eroding the protected power of the medical establishment.

References

Barker-Benfield, G,J. 1976. The Horrors of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Harper & Row.

Ellis, Carolyn and Arthur P. Bochner. 1992. "Telling and performing personal stories: the constraints of choice in abortion." Pp 79-101 in Investigating Subjectivity; Research on Lived Experience, edited by Carolyn Ellis and Michael Flaherty. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

hooks, bell with Tanya McKinnon. 1996. "Sisterhood: beyond public and private." Signs 21(4): 814-829.

Raymond, Janice G. 1993. Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and the Battle Over Women's Freedom. New York: HarperCollins.

Tillman-Healy, Lisa M. 1996. "A Secret life in a Culture of Thinness: Reflections on Body, Food, and Bulimia." Pp 76-108 in Composing Ethnography: Alternative Forms of Qualitative Writing, edited by Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, a division of Sage Publications.

The reality of cancer screening

2009-07-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.naturalnews.com/026558_cancer_cancer_screening_Prostate.html
After reading this article I would like to say:
It's interesting after doing some math from the results from the CDC only about 8% of women don't get yearly exams and yet supposedly cervical cancer is still a huge killer in women. All the more reason women should chart their own rythms and cycles to know whats normal and not and how to treat things with alternative medicine. Do their own exams. But sometimes I often wonder if exams lead to cancer. Since cancer can be from shock and the shock of things going in there that shoud'nt could be a issue, all the more reasons to support CSA Blood tests and other alternative testing that would restore dignity to women's bodies.Just avoid all doctors completely, and run to your nearst and best homebirth midiwfe if you feel absolutely necessary.

A response to a midiwfe I was emailing

2009-06-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

I said this because I was e-mailing a midiwfe, and was hoping to find midwives that improve women's healthcare, which I even hate saying becasue womenhood is not a disease, not just during pregnancy, but during her life if a women absolutely feels the need for it. I wish that midwives empowered women to do their own exams, and use alternative ways to accuratley test for things that returns dignity and respect toward women's bodies. I didn't succed with this one

well would you believe in advocating for ultrasounds which is way more accurate, and CSA blood tests which are way more accurate at testing cervical cancer than a exam. I don't believe in going for yearly exams becuase womenhood is NOT a disease. If the OB/GYN industry had women's wellbeing at heart they would get rid of these barbaric, humilating, violating,mutilating, disrespectful practices, and start using modern tech. to test for things that would restore dignity,trust, and respect to women's bodies. The OB/GYN industry is a sick industry that believes that women's bodies are poorly designed and do not deserve respectful treatment. It needs to stop NOW!Also they advocate self breast exams why can't thy advocate self pelvic exams it dosen't take a college degree to find out things in your body. BTW I have never gone for one and never will. I'am just saying if midiwves really cared about women's rights they stop these barbaric practices as well.

Look What they Gone Done to Birth By Earth Lande

2009-06-06T20:36:00.000-07:00

Look what they've gone done to birth

Trying to strip it of everything it's worth

Laughing

Scoffing at the power of Mother Earth

It wasn't broke, it didn't need to be fixed

What they've gone done to birth makes me sick

Hiding behind the disguise of just "wanting to help"

That's like loving a child with the sting of a belt

Giving birth?

That's a woman's bewitching hour

Don't you know?

They fear our power

Looking like a clan hidden behind white masks and draped

Putting on latex

Breathing at his patient mounted for rape

See they're hunters

They go after their prey

Never in a circle kneeling into the position to pray

Saying Shut up

Be quiet

All you live for is to reproduce

I wanna go play golf- this one we'll induce

Hurt? Give her drugs

Oh we don't want her to know she's strong

And if anything bad happens at all?

Blame her

Tell her SHE did something wrong

This one?

Heh, we'll just cut her open

WE KNOW IT'S SO MUCH FASTER

So you question why I call them evil old bastads?

All our days they've labeled us birthing slaves

Telling us our sole worth is only to give birth

And now we don't even know how it works!

Treating us like cattle

Turning MY uterus into a Governmental Battle!

Oh we own all this

You can have that little bit

But if anything inside grows- WE want to own

WE want to control it

That wanna own LIFE

The price

OUR BODIES

OUR BABIES

OUR HUMANITY is a sacrifice

Listen

Giving birth is as NATURAL as it gets

All you have to go is go back to the old testament

When Abraham's granddaughters were giving birth in the red tent

Women with women praying to the Queen of Heaven

Never a woman alone among bad gods being gnawed at like a bone

I know you're afraid

Because the days of the red tent hath fade

And they've convinced you to be sure

That pregnancy is a disease and they are the cure

Their power is fear

Their objective to teach us or to TRAIN us to HATE IT down here

GIVING BIRTH IS NOT A RACE

There is no first or second place!

It is an emergence to be embraced

It is when your soul and your spirit come face to face

We are perfect every way and in every form

It is in the heart and the womb that a child is born

AND IT IS NOT OKAY EVERY DAY

TO CUT A WOMAN OPEN

TAKE HER BABY OUT

KEEP FROM HER

SAY TO HER

OH DON'T WORRY HONEY

THAT'S WHAT NORMAL BIRTH IS ALL ABOUT

Women from Brazil

To the Nation's Capital Hill have been lied to

Have been tricked

VAGINAL BIRTH IS BROKEN!

They say

The C-Section! It's the fix!

Sisters who run marathons and have climbed the highest

mountain peak

Have been brainwashed into believing they are fragile, they

are weak

Oh we can't do it without drugs! They cry

To do so may cause pain, so why even try?

IT IS UP TO YOU

IT IS UP TO ME

TO SET THE TRUTH OF CHILDBIRTH FREE

It can no longer be held captive or quiet

It is time to insight a Birth Rights Riot.

By Earth C. Lande
you can view the poem on youtube as well

A Visualization of a beautiful birth

2009-06-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

This was posted on one of my homebirth e-mail groups written by women who visualized this while meditating. I thought it was beautiful , so I'am going to share it

mmmm... I feel the rushes and settle my focus into my body. I emerge from my chamber and see the hottub waiting for me... glistening luke-warm water, beautiful clear... comforting and welcoming. I touch the water with my hand, and move around the tub, thanking and blessing the water, asking for her to share her wisdom with me... bonding with the life essence in the pool and within myself. I connect to my baby through our shared waters, and I am overcome with love and bliss. I step into the hottub, and the water swallows me and makes me weightless. With each rush the water cools, soothes, comforts and calms us. We are all One. I begin to massage my beautiful round body.... lightly on my belly, breasts and nipples, then I softly stroke my vulva, who is already alive and tingling with anticipation of my touch. I rub and massage myself, getting more and more tuned into the bliss pulsing through my body, and in sync with my rushes, making them so pleasurable and desired. I can feel the baby moving down through my root chakra, enticing my vulva to bloom so sensually around her... ecstacy has us. My body trembles with the erotic pleasure of it all, I feel my body move with the orgasms and I am flowing... I am love. I wear my floating pillow so I can just gently allow the water to suspend me as I continue to relax and focus on my bliss and breathing. My hands are free to pleasure my body as I await my womb to gently express her youngling into my waiting hands. While softly massaging my vulva I feel my baby's head start to crown. I feel her hair and cute little head emerge more and more with each gentle rush. The whole time I softly quiver with ecstatic waves of pleasure. A few more rushes and here she is, my angel, soft and wet, her eyes are bright and we look deeply into each other's soul. She doesn't cry, she just breathes and beholds her mother, as I behold her with wonder and excitement. We recognize each other and are already deeply in love. I lay her on my chest and we enjoy the water together. After a bit more rest and loving words, touch and kisses, she begins to make the sucky lips, and tells me she would love to nurse. I take her to my breast and she latches on with ease... she nurses hungerly and slowly falls asleep... then I feel my womb tighten in small steady rushes and know that my beloved placenta is gently beginning to make it's way out. I look around in the water and notice that it is still mostly clear, with a soft tinge of blood. I smile, as my husband brings me some Stinging Nettle, Red Raspberry Leaf Tea, and I sip as baby is still attached to my breast. A short time passes and with a big gush my placenta emerges and I help my husband put it into a bowl, we wait for the cord to go thin and white and we cut it. Then I look at the placenta and I take a little bite. I feel so primal, so alive... so tuned in and in love.

Sign this homebirth petition

2009-05-11T17:20:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition that I recently signed:

"Keep Home Birth Legal"
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/birthathome?e

I really think this is an important cause, and I'd like to encourage you to add your signature, too. It's free and takes less than a minute of your time.

Thanks!

Please pass this on

Rixa had her baby

2009-05-01T07:48:00.001-07:00

After reading her birth story I wanted to hug her and say congratulations you did it!! I'am so happy for her, so I thought I would post her birth story link.

http://rixarixa.blogspot.com/2009/04/dios-birth-story.html

Birth as We Know It Film

2009-04-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

I recently got this film, and LOVED IT, so I hope to encourage everyone to check it out.

The Truth about Gardisal

2009-04-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

A very good slide show about Gardial Vaccine

http://thinktwice.com/hpv_show.htm

Homebirth Mattress Commercial

2009-04-25T08:07:00.000-07:00

I love this commercial, and wish it was shown in US. Sorry it's in Spanish though.

A self pap demonstration

2009-04-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

This be a encouraged and enviable choice for women!!

Girls Rite of Passage

2009-04-11T15:45:00.000-07:00

At least in some cultures. They perform ceremonies that honor and empower women. In our sick culture we send girls to doctors that do nothing, but violate, and humiliate them. Which does nothing other than encourag young women that there are a poorly designed dangerous disease which obviously does not encourage trust, respect, and love.

CDC Says Annual Pap Smears May Do More Harm Than Good

2009-04-11T15:43:00.002-07:00

CDC Says Annual Pap Smears May Do More Harm Than Good

Women who get annual pap smears may receive no benefit over women who are tested less frequently and it may in fact be causing harm since frequently tested women may also be at increased risk of unnecessary treatment and anxiety, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are warning.
Researchers analyzed 1991-1998 data from a national study of nearly 130,000 women who had a first Pap test reported as normal, and at least one subsequent Pap test performed within the following 9 to 36 months.
"Many times, especially for low-grade abnormalities, there's a lot of false positives (results which appear positive, but are in fact negative), and women may be biopsied and receive other treatment because of the Pap test result," Dr. Mona Saraiya from the CDC told Reuters Health. "These symptoms might have gone away if we'd left (the women) alone," she added. ""There needs to be more research to show what actual harmful morbidity is associated with an abnormal Pap."
"Women who were screened annually rather than less frequently might have worse health outcomes if low-grade results of undetermined clinical importance lead to further testing and unnecessary patient morbidity and anxiety," the researchers conclude.
Current guidelines from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists suggest that most women should have annual Pap tests. The American Cancer Society guidelines suggest that screening less frequently than every year might be adequate for women who have had three negative annual tests.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 2000;49:1001-1003

..

Dr. Mercola's Comments:
..

Well folks, here you have it, straight from the weekly report of the CDC. The MMWR tells us that the annual pap smear is unnecessary.

If cervical cancer is detected there are other options that can be tried under the care of a competent physician. One involves high doses of oral folic acid (10-20 mg daily) and also vitamin A injected into the cervix. It is likely that higher doses of oral folic acid will also help prevent cervical cancer. Of course, having one sexual partner is also a great idea, since cervical cancer appears to be a partially dependent upon a sexually transmitted virus (Human Papilloma Virus - HPV).

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/12/03/pap-smears.aspx
5:23 PM 0 Comments(Add Comment) |0 KudosTranslatePowered by

My most recent letter to the editor

2009-04-11T15:43:00.001-07:00

Women take back your bodies!
Pelvic exams are sick sexist ways of reinforcing the idea that womanhood is a disease which does nothing to encourage trust, love, and respect for women’s bodies. This obviously leads young women to have sex too young before their immune systems are ready thus leading to HPV. Women need to be encouraged to educate themselves about their bodies, chart their own rhythms, and cycles for health, and natural birth control, and how to treat common aliments without doctors. If a women truly feels that that a exam is needed every women should have the right to order a do-it-yourself exam kit, and send it to a lab. http://www.fournierhealth.com/index.html is one such website that offers it. Also a Cervical Specific Antigen Blood test is 98% more effective than an exam. Why is this not being offered to women? Money perhaps? After 70 million years of Homo sapiens species evolution women are amazedly designed to ovulate, bleed, grow, and birth a child without doctors. When OB/GYN’s came on the scene that’s when things got dangerous. It was poverty that killed women, not because womanhood is dangerous. Women do not deserve to be submitted, violated, mutilated, and drugged, women’s bodies are better than that. Obviously if what happens to men that what happens to women in OB/GYN’s offices and maternity wards it would be illegal. So women of the world take back your bodies.

Cassandra Fisher

Durango, CO.

Interview with Jennifer block

2009-03-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

I highly suggest every women read this book. It's very well written

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2007/06/21/interview-with-jennifer-block

Interview with Jennifer Block, Author of "Pushed"
Amie Newman, RH Reality Check on June 21, 2007 - 8:50am
Published under: Maternal Health | Women's Rights | Politics of Childbirth

Jennifer Block, a former editor at Ms. Magazine as well as an editor of the revised Our Bodies, Ourselves, has clearly devoted herself to uncovering the obstacles to ensuring women's health and health care access in this country. Block's first book, "Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care," takes you on a sincere truth-seeking expedition to discover why childbirth has become "medicalized" around the United States. As you wind your way through hospital halls and birth centers, listening in on interviews with midwives, OB/GYNs and childbirth advocates, Block uses meticulous research to paint a picture of a world where women are encouraged to disconnect themselves from their own bodies, rely on "modern" medical intervention for labor and delivery, and where hospital personnel are pushed to advocate for speed and profit over maternal and baby health.

AN: Why did you write this book?

JB: I get that question a lot—you've never given birth, why a book about childbirth? I've always been interested in women's health, in how we experience our bodies, the healthcare system, and in how politics so often affects our health and our healthcare. Childbirth never struck me as a political issue, but it turns out that it very much is. And I think it's important to know just how it affects the kind of care women receive, and what birth options they have or don't have. So I wrote the book to shed light on the reality of the U.S. maternity care system, which is not serving women and babies as best it could.

AN: What do you see are some of the root causes for, according to you, "overusing medical technology at the expense of maternal and infant health"? Have we (women) become less comfortable with and confident about our own bodies and our ability to birth naturally?

JB: I would agree that there has been a collective loss of confidence in the female body's ability to give birth, and a quiet acceptance of surgical birth as the solution. Having said that, however, I think we still have to ask how much of this system women are choosing, and how much is beyond their control. The women I've talked to overwhelmingly just want what's best for themselves and their babies.

When women agree to, say, induce labor because they're "overdue," or to schedule a cesarean because they're told the baby has grown too big (both are common reasons) those might be considered "patient choice" procedures, but we need to ask what kind of information they were given about the risks and benefits. The fear of a lawsuit and the financial pressures exerted by malpractice premiums drive physicians to intervene more. Many doctors told me that they are moving to cesareans more quickly because "you don't get sued for doing a cesarean."

At the same time, women are just bombarded by messages that our bodies don't work, that physiological childbirth isn't important. And the cesarean trend feeds this doubt, because women begin to think that if one-third of their sisters can't do it, then maybe they can't either. The fact is, we know from studies of healthy women who labor and give birth in supportive environments, with care providers who are trained to support the physiological process, 95% can birth vaginally. And that's optimal, for both mother and baby. The cesarean trend does not represent necessary cesareans.

AN: You address the issue of women seeking a vaginal birth after a cesarean (VBAC) in your book. Can you tell us a little bit about why VBACs are controversial? And why you believe this to be a reproductive "choice" issue?

JB: VBACs are controversial because they put doctors at risk of a lawsuit they can't defend, and because the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has set a standard of care that is nearly impossible for physicians to meet. I explain more in the book, but the result has been that hundreds of hospitals have banned VBACs, and many doctors are refusing to attend them altogether.

The best data we have say that 1 in 2000 VBACs will result in the death or severe brain damage of the baby. That's an outcome that nobody wants, of course. But the reality is that the chance of a baby not making it through a first-time vaginal birth is about the same. One prominent OB/ethicist calls the VBAC hype a "distortion of risk."

So the decision of whether to plan a vaginal birth or a repeat cesarean is one that women need to make with full, unbiased information. But for many women, there is no choice. A recent survey found that more than half of women seeking a VBAC were denied it by their provider or hospital. Many, many women are being told they must have surgery - a clear violation of their constitutional rights.

AN: You tell the story of a man in Seattle who handcuffed himself to his wife's maternity bed so that he could be with her during the birth of their child. Washington State has been on the forefront of licensed midwifery. However, in Seattle, where I live, our second longest-running independent midwifery practice is only seven years old. Many have been forced to close—or have chosen to close—because of rising malpractice rates or are being "pushed" out by the mainstream medical movement. Can you elaborate on the "midwifery strain" and the discrepancy you uncovered in the ways in which midwifery is treated in this country from state to state?

JB: Midwives are a vital part of maternity care around the world. The World Health Organization has called them the most appropriate care providers for women experiencing normal pregnancies and births. They provide the bulk of care throughout Europe, and yet here in the U.S., Certified Nurse-Midwives are constantly fighting for coverage from Medicaid and private insurance while battling sky-high malpractice rates. At the same time, Certified Professional Midwives, who attend births out of the hospital—in birthing centers or in women's homes—find that in about ten states their job is illegal. For consumers it is a terribly confusing system. In New Mexico, for instance, you can choose a home birth with a midwife and Medicaid will cover it; in Illinois, you have to go "underground" and find an illegal provider. Midwifery care both in and out of hospital has been studied extensively and shown not only to be safe, but more likely to result in a healthy, vaginal birth. And yet in the U.S., we are driving midwives out of practice and underground.

AN: Did you research or uncover distinctions between upper-and middle-class women and their childbirth experiences and lower-income women's childbirth choices and experiences?

JB: The media often present obstetric trends as consumer trends, but the research (not mine, but large studies by CDC epidemiologists and public health researchers) actually shows that the rising cesarean and induction rates have little to do with women's bodies or choices, and more to do with changes in the way OBs practice. For a while there was a perception that high cesarean rates were specific to a white/wealthy demographic (one theory was that women with private insurance were more likely to be sectioned) but this isn't true today. Black women are generally more likely to give birth via cesarean. A recent survey actually found that almost half of first-time black mothers had given birth surgically.

One major difference between low-income women and high-income women, however, is that low-income women generally have fewer options to raise their standard of care. Doulas, who provide birth support and patient advocacy, cost between $500 and $2000 out of pocket. A home birth with a certified midwife can be anywhere from $1500 to $5000 [Editor's Note: in some states, as referenced above, midwifery care is covered by Medicaid for those who qualify]. So women who would otherwise choose a midwife often go with the care covered by their insurance because they can't afford otherwise.

AN: I know you spent a lot of time doing field research, watched many babies being born, and spent time with many laboring mothers. Was there one story or situation that particularly moved you?

JB: I did see a number of births, and I found them all moving in various ways. I like to tell the story of the very first birth I saw, because it was such a surprise. I was expecting to see what most of us think of as "normal" birth—woman lying flat on her back, people yelling "Push!", woman screaming, then baby screaming. I got quite a re-education. First of all, the woman gave birth standing up—I barely saw the baby coming out! The whole event was so much more peaceful than I'd imagined. The baby hardly cried, the mother was certainly experiencing pain, but the contractions looked more like hard work than anything else. There was hardly any medical intervention. Afterward, her family brought in a roast chicken and they had a party. Six hours later she went home. This is about as optimal as it gets, but this was in an independent birth center run by certified professional midwives. It's unfortunately not the norm.

AN: You say that this issue needs to be addressed as a significant women's rights issue. How can the women's movement/feminism address this issue more thoroughly? What do we need to do?

JB: Childbirth was an issue that feminists took up in the 70s and 80s, and some change happened. Even in the mid 1990s, a coalition of groups published a position paper calling for an overhaul of the maternity care system. But the issue has largely been dropped, and the focus is on preserving a woman's right to prevent pregnancy or terminate pregnancy, rather than on what happens when women choose to carry a pregnancy to term. In January, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women held a tremendous conference and challenged the pro-choice movement to advocate for pregnant women's rights, not just abortion rights. I strongly agree. I think the VBAC ban is the most salient issue, and women's health groups need to stand up and hold physicians, insurers, and hospitals accountable for effectively forcing women into unwanted surgery. But there's a much larger issue of women's access to optimal maternity care that feminists need to address. Some women are going to great lengths to access support for physiological birth, meanwhile most women are getting care that is not evidence-based and more likely to cause themselves or their babies harm. This should be of major concern to feminists. Women deserve better.

Beautiful Homebirth

2009-03-16T07:24:00.001-07:00

This is the most beautiful birth I have seen

Naitre_enchantee
Uploaded by magalidieux

The Unassisted Birth of Jesus

2009-03-10T07:20:00.000-07:00

The Unassisted Birth of Jesus

**********************************************************

Around 2000 years ago the baby Jesus was born in a manger in Bethlehem. This blessed event would have been looked upon quite differently if seen from a medical perspective. Let us examine some so-called "modern" thinking about this event.

What a big risk our Heavenly Father took when He sent His Son to us in the way He did. First of all, the Virgin Mary was much too young to bear such an important child. Plus, no tests were performed to see if she was even capable of carrying the child full term. Also, Mary was not adequately prepared. She attended no birthing classes, did not practice her breathing, nor did she read up on the birth process.

It should also be noted that some safety procedures were ignored during this pregnancy. I mean, no blood tests were done, no obstetric examinations, no ultra sound, or even the listening and monitoring of the child's heart beat. And surely, for such an important baby, an amniocentesis should have been done! Not even the proper regime of vitamins were given to the mother for her nutrition. When you think about it, we're taking a major risk here.

And just think of the terrible conditions for the birth itself. Certainly that stable was not sterile. And with all those animals in the same room it's a wonder there wasn't a major infection. Not even simple clean sheets, or a surgical masks for the three Wise Men were used. And I'm quite sure that Mary was not on the proper delivery table with her feet in the stirrups.

If that's not bad enough, common medical practice was ignored from this point on. Certainly an important woman like Mary should have been given some pain relievers or a spinal block to help ease her discomfort. Of course an episiotomy should have been called for to help out. I'll bet that a set of clamps wasn't even available in case of need. Not to mention the lack of fetal monitoring equipment in case an emergency cesarean was required. I mean this whole procedure sounds like a nightmare.

From this point it still got worse. No surgical instruments to cut the cord, no silver nitrate for the baby's eyes, no fetal intensive care unit, no alcohol rubs, no temperature control cubicles, no suction of the child's nose or throat, none of the modern safety precautions that should have been used.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced this entire procedure was a menace to the mother and child. Someone should be liable for mal-practice in a case like this. With the state of things as they were, I'll bet the child Jesus never even got His required vaccinations!

I don't know,... but if it were up to modern medicine, this should have been done much differently.

God sure took a big chance.....

... or just maybe we need to rethink the things we think are necessary, and stop interfering with normal God-given miracles.

Something to think about .................................................................

Yeah mothers rights

2008-06-22T20:39:00.001-07:00

Sunday, May 13, 2007
Medical: Dangers Of Hospital Births

Happy Mother's Day!!!

This article is also posted on Calla's blog.

As most of my friends know, I birthed my daughter naturally for 33 hours and 33 minutes. By naturally, I mean without an epidural or drugs. I was just as afraid as every other new mom about the pain of labor, but I made a purposeful decision. Despite what anyone may tell you, it isn't a time to let others induce you, let others drug you, let others cut you, unless of course that is your educated choice. But, most women want whatever is best for their child and that, for 90% of us, is labor without interventions.

For the child, inducing labor is dangerous. For the child, it is best to allow labor to happen on it's own course (except where the child is 2 weeks overdue or the water has already broken). Inductions increase c-section rates, increase risk for the baby including oxygen definiciency, increase infection, and increase the mortality rate for the mom and the child.

For the child, epidurals are dangerous. For the child, it is best to have a drug-free labor (except where fatigue has set in and the mother needs to rest), since epidurals can lead to complications for the mother and child (infection, overdose, allergies, fever), longer labor, and an increased c-section rate and use of forseps. Epidurals are the number one cause of fevers during labor unrelated to infections. Fevers lead to increased complications (often c-sections), infant death, and low Apgar scores. Maternal fever is now also linked to newborn seizure.

For the child, c-sections are dangerous. For the child, it is best to have a natural delivery (except where the child is breach, the mom has a fever, or either one's heart rate has gone too low or high). C-sections are a serious surgery and are physically damaging. The risk of the need for a hysterectomy, maternal & infant death (3-4 times compared to natural birth), organ damage, respiratory problems, and many other complications all increase after a c-section. After a c-section, moms are more likely to be re-admitted to a hospital and are more likely to become infertile. Future babies are more at risk for preterm birth and have an increased risk of stillbirth. The consequences of elective c-sections are indisputable.

With doctors in the United States encouraging use of all these interventions, how can you protect yourself and your baby? Low risk pregnancies in this country still have over a 30% chance of a c-section; most of those c-sections are unnecessary, unwanted, and unsafe. But physicians earn an extra $3000 or more per c-section as compared to a natural birth, and with approximately 150 deliveries per year on average, doctors are doing 50 c-sections a year making an extra $150,000 per year. The number one reason for an unplanned c-section: "failure to progress". Or is that "failure to wait"? First-time moms normally have long labors, with the average labor lasting 19 hours. Failure to progress is defined as 2 hours of active labor without progress. First, doctors should not be putting plastic gloves, instruments, or anything else unsterilized in the canal every two hours, because that leads to infection. Moms should only be checked very rarely or when they feel an urge to push (to make certain they are fully dialated). Second, your body knows what to do, and sometimes it may take longer than others but with most c-sections given for "failure to progress," please consider whether your doctor has a "failure to be patient".

I did research on the web and found a Midwife-run birth center nearby, called Birth Care. There, the c-section rate is less than 4% (national average is 33%), the episitomy rate is less than 6% (national average is 25%), and the average Apgar score 5-minutes after birth is a 9 (out of 10). At Birth Care, the baby is brought to the mom's belly or breast right after birth, when she is still attached to the umbilical cord. The mom gets a chance to bond and breastfeed her child immediately. All these photos are from the Birth Care Center in Alexandria and show you the comfort of a Midwife-led birth.

These statistics and supporting studies clearer show that it is safer to birth your child outside the hospital for a normal birth despite what the medical model or some well-meaning old lady may tell you. In developed countries, the Netherlands has one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world (approximately 3rd) and one of the highest rates of homebirth (two-thirds of all births with less than 3% c-sections). The U.S. has the one of the highest infant mortality rates (24th in the world) and one of the highest rates of hospital births (about 96% with 33% c-sections).

If you have a high-risk pregnancy and need to birth at a hospital, make sure to have a doula or birth assistant by your side, working for you and with you. Your doula can help you make educated choices when you are in labor and unable to rebuff the pressure from well-meaning nurses and doctors to have a c-section or induce labor. Your doula can be as an advocate for you when you are busy birthing your child and your husband is busy comforting you. Your doula can also act as a second pair of much needed hands, running to get you ice and giving your husband a chance to take a break after the first 24 hours. Not surprising, births with doulas are shorter, easier, and have less interventions (including less c-sections!).

So for all those moms out there who feel lost in getting the birth you want, don't give up.

A hospital is no place to be sick. -- Samuel Goldwyn

http://mothersrights.blogspot.com/2007/05/dangers-with-hospital-births.html

Another great article

2008-06-22T20:32:00.000-07:00

ICPA Family Wellness First - 025
Dangers with Elective C-Sections
A recent study titled: Infant and Neonatal Mortality for Primary Cesarean and Vaginal Births to Women with "No Indicated Risk," found that the risk of death to newborns delivered by voluntary Caesarean section is much higher than previously believed.

In this study of almost six million infants, researchers found the neonatal mortality rate for Caesarean delivery among low-risk women is 1.77 deaths per 1,000 live births, while the rate for vaginal delivery is 0.62 deaths per 1,000.

Their findings were published in this month’s issue of Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1523-536X.2006.00102.x

The study included 5,762,037 live births and 11,897 infant deaths in the United States from 1998 through 2001, a statistically significant sample even though neonatal death is a rare event. There were 311,927 Caesarean deliveries among low-risk women in the analysis.

“Neonatal deaths are rare for low-risk women — on the order of about one death per 1,000 live births — but even after we adjusted for socioeconomic and medical risk factors, the difference persisted,” said Marian F. MacDorman, a statistician with the CDC and the lead author of the study. “This is nothing to get people really alarmed, but it is of concern given that we’re seeing a rapid increase in Caesarean births to women with no risks,” Dr. MacDorman said.

The researchers noted that vaginal birth is beneficial to the baby. During this process, hormones are released promoting healthy lung function. The physical compression of the baby moving through the vaginal canal also helps remove fluid from the lungs and helps infants in breathing. Other risks of c-section mentioned by the researchers, like cuts to the baby during the operation or delayed onset of breast-feeding, were also considered as reasons for the increased death rate.

Although there was no mention of the importance of cranial molding that happens in a vaginal delivery and not in a c-section, we do know that vaginal births allow for this process necessary for central nerve system function.

Dr. Michael H. Malloy, a co-author of the article and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, said “Despite attempts to control for a number of factors that might have accounted for a greater risk in mortality associated with C-sections, we continued to observe enough risk to prompt concern.” He remarked that doctors might want to consider these findings in advising their patients giving them the option of informed choice.

I think some women have been seriously misled into believing that c-sections are better and safer than normal, natural deliveries. What is not emphasized when they are being given the option for elective c-sections is that a c-section is a majory abdominal surgery! Just because the c-section rate is increasing, it does not make it safer for either the mother or baby.

In a previous FWF E-Newsletter: http://www.icpa4kids.org/wellness/0019.htm We discussed a study that sited the many risks of c-section to both the mother and baby. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/512946_4

Also, our web site has many studies listed on the dangers of c-sections: http://www.icpa4kids.org/research/pregnancy/csections.htm and the importance of natural birthing: http://www.icpa4kids.org/research/pregnancy/natural.htm

One interesting study on our site discusses whether OBs should even be seeing women with normal pregnancies, let alone offering elective c-section to low risk mothers! http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/312/7030/554

Our advice remains -- for all of your family decisions -- make sure you are informed before you choose what seems to be safe and accepted practices.

http://www.icpa4kids.org/wellness/0025.htm

Dangers of Elective C-sections

2008-06-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

Cesarean Birth in a Culture of Fear By Wendy Ponte
Issue 144, September/October 2007

When I tell someone I am working on a story about the escalating rate of cesarean sections in the US, it often leads to a conversation that goes something like this:

"C-section rates are up to 50 percent or higher in some hospitals," I say. "Doctors often feel they must do a C-section to protect themselves from a malpractice suit. And many of them seem to feel that a C-section is actually better than vaginal birth. A lot of women are being given unnecessary surgery."

"I had a C-section," my acquaintance will say. "But in my case, it was necessary."

"Tell me about it."

"Well, the baby's heart rate started to drop on the fetal monitor, and the doctor was worried that she wasn't handling labor very well. So he said a C-section was the safe thing to do."

It's an awkward conversation, to say the least. I would never want to make any woman feel bad about the birth of her child. Women need to be honored for their birth stories, no matter how those stories go. And having been told by both a doctor and a reliable-looking and expensive piece of machinery that her baby could be in trouble, my acquaintance probably made the best decision she could make in that moment. By the time she reached the point when that decision was made, it could, in fact—after hours of beeping noises on the fetal monitor, the suspense of the hospital atmosphere, and loads of chemicals pumping into her body—have been the only choice available.

And yet I also know what hundreds of other birth activists know. Some percentage of women who think their C-sections were necessary—because of fluctuating heart rates, large babies, failure to progress, previous C-sections, difficult birth positions, and on and on—have actually had unnecessary C-sections.

I know this because the World Health Organization (WHO) says that any time a country's cesarean-section rate rises above 15 percent, the dangers of C-section surgery outweigh the lifesaving benefits it is supposed to provide. 1In the US, the overall C-section rate has now reached 30.2 percent.2

That conversation, which I have had all too many times with various women, boils down to this: There are too many C-sections being done—unless it is your C-section. Then, it just isn't so clear. That conversation parallels the one that seems to be happening on a national scale. Although the arguments against the use of C-sections, except when there is no other choice, are clear, and although these arguments are supported by plenty of evidence and statistics, doctors and patients do not seem to be using that information to change birth practices. It doesn't seem to matter that, in the US:

A woman is five to seven times more likely to die from a cesarean delivery than from a vaginal delivery.
A woman having a repeat C-section is twice as likely to die during delivery.
Twice as many women require rehospitalization after a C-section than after a vaginal birth.
Having a C-section means higher rates of infertility, ectopic pregnancy, and potentially severe placental problems in future pregnancies.
Babies born after an elective cesarean delivery (i.e., when labor has not yet begun) are four times more likely to develop persistent pulmonary hypertension, a potentially life-threatening condition.
Between one and two babies of every hundred delivered by C-section will be accidentally cut during the surgery.3
The US is tied for second-to-last place with Hungary, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia for neonatal mortality in the industrialized world.4
Babies born via C-section are at high risk for not receiving the benefits of breastfeeding.5
The risk of death to a newborn delivered by C-section to a low-risk woman is 1.77 deaths to 1,000 live births. The risk of death to a newborn delivered vaginally to a low-risk woman is only 0.62 per 1,000 live births.6

Despite these statistics—which are just drops in the bucket of information available about the dangers of cesarean surgery—the procedure keeps being done. Women are not well enough informed, say birth activists. Medical schools are not teaching doctors how to create optimal scenarios in which successful vaginal birth can happen. Doctors are making decisions based on fear of malpractice suits rather than medical necessity. But even though we know all of this, and even though the statistics are compelling, high-tech birth practices continue, and the C-section rate keeps climbing, with every indication that it will climb higher. Why? "In another century, these birth plans will be perfect time capsules of postmodern maternity," says Tina Cassidy in her recently published book, Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born, "for if there is one thing that writing this book has taught me, it is that birth always reflects the culture in which it happens."7 Which made me wonder: In examining the way we give birth today, what would an anthropologist a hundred years from now learn about our culture?

The Mantra of Fear
If an imaginary future anthropologist took a look at our current birth practices, she or he might conclude that we were a very frightened people indeed. In her book, Cassidy reports that many women have a deep feeling that birth is inherently dangerous. "Deliveries at home and in birth centers have been statistically proven to be as safe as those in hospitals, where, not incidentally, one's chances of having a cesarean soar just because you walk through the door. . . . There are, and always have been, trade-offs in decisions about where a child should be born. . . . Weighing those options, women still want to give birth where they feel most safe. And for all but a fraction of those pregnant today, that place is on a bed that can—if necessary—be wheeled into the operating room, surrounded by machines, and attached to electrodes and a catheter that drips anesthetic directly to the spine."8

Just look at the statistics in the 2006 survey "Listening to Mothers II." Only one in four women surveyed had attended a class in childbirth education—however, 68 percent of these women had watched one or more television "reality" shows that depict childbirth.9 With few exceptions, these shows portray births that follow a strictly medical model, usually problem pregnancies in which women and their babies are rescued by heroic medical procedures. Machines beep wildly in the background, and the atmosphere is fraught with tension.

Maureen P. Corry, executive director of Childbirth Connection, which sponsored the "Listening to Mothers" surveys, feels that such shows make women believe that this type of birth is completely normal for all women.10 In the 2006 survey, 72 percent of first-time mothers felt that watching these shows "helped me understand what it would be like to give birth." In other words, being rescued from a dangerous situation by medical technology now seems to them to be a normal part of the birth experience. Even more striking is that 32 percent of first-time mothers felt, on the other hand, that the shows "caused me to worry about my upcoming birth."

Neither position seems likely to prepare a woman for the idea of birth as a normal life process that might actually go well on its own, with little or no intervention—a process that is, in fact, biologically more likely to go well. "Our culture has an 'accident waiting to happen' mentality," says Corry of the survey's findings. "It makes birth go from a normal physiological process to something that resembles intensive care. I think it is indicative of the larger culture in general."

Indeed, we seem to be a people who are just waiting for something to go wrong. You have only to turn on the evening news to get a good dose of what there is to be fearful about. On any given day, you can hear that the supplement you were told last month would add years to your life has now been proven to be toxic. Your chances of developing such-and-such disease have been increased by your living in the town or neighborhood you moved to last year. If you don't send your children to get extra tutoring right now, they will never succeed in their chosen careers.

Certainly, the events of September 11, 2001, and fears of terrorism have increased this tendency—or perhaps it is our fear-filled response to these threats that has caused our lives to become even more anxiety-ridden. For many, it has become impossible to sort out the difference between sensationalism and valuable information. And this very uncertainty itself provokes more anxiety, adding yet another layer of fear.

Our fear-based culture shows up in another birth-related way: the overriding fear of most doctors—even many midwives—of being sued for malpractice. This fear is based on grim reality. Being sued for malpractice can be life-changing and devastating: Doctors can lose their practices, their homes, their life savings. And so, as the normal ebb and flow of labor unfolds, physicians all too quickly resort to responding as if to a worst-case scenario. If a woman is not progressing quickly enough, or if the fetal monitor she is attached to indicates a change in the baby's heart rate, the physician feels the safest route is to use every medical tool available, to show that all the bases have been covered. To protect themselves from the expense of a major, career-destroying lawsuit, doctors pay for malpractice insurance at increasingly outrageous rates—some as much as $200,000 per year.

But why is it that the very things that cause birth-related morbidity rates to rise are seen as the "safe" way to go? Why aren't women and their doctors terrified of the chemicals that are dripped into their spines and veins—the same substances that have been shown to lead to more C-sections? Why aren't they worried about the harm those drugs might be doing to the future health of their children, as some studies are indicating might be the case?11 Why aren't they afraid of picking up drug-resistant Staphylococcus infections in the hospital? And why, of all things, aren't women terrified of being cut open? Again, the response seems totally irrational.

Our future anthropologist might soon conclude that the answer lies in our culture's biggest fear of all—of letting go and allowing natural processes to carry on—and our fascination with and blind faith in science and technology as the ultimate antidotes.

Read the rest of the Article Here:
http://www.mothering.com/articles/pregnancy_birth/cesarean_vbac/cesarean-birth-in-a-culture-of-fear.html

Updates to my about me settings

2008-05-28T08:13:00.001-07:00

Since I have not figured out how to change my about me section I will list some updates.
1. I lost one dog this winter Babe, so now I only have one dog left Sandy.
2. I will major in American History, and Minor in Art History
3. I will be a sophmore in the Fall of 2008.
4. After college I would like to work as a colonial interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg in Virgina. I would also like to do something to advocate homebirth, and work with children as a school librarian.
5. Also I'am starting ballet again in my life after doing high school theatre for 4 years.

A Beautiful Homebirth I had to share it

2008-04-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

here's the link
http://www.birthdiaries.com/diary/birth042/

The Business of Being Born

2008-04-26T09:26:00.001-07:00

I saw this movie in March and I thought it was wonderful even though I wish they could have talked about more things like the fight or flight response

Here's the Website
http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/

A Homebirth Handout I have created

2008-04-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

Homebirth Books and Websites
* Available at Durango Public Library
Suggested Reading:Unassisted Childbirth By Laura Shanley
*The American Way of Birth By Jessica MitfordUnassisted Homebirth: An Act of Love By Lynn GriesmerObstetric Myths versus Research Realities By Henci GoerGentle Birth, Gentle Mothering By Sarah J Buckley M.DImmaculate Deception II By Suzanne ArmsSilent Knife, Open Season By Nancy CohenHard Labor By Susan L. Diamond
Birth as an American Rite of Passage By Robbie Davis Floyd
Pleasurable Husband and Wife Childbirth By Marylin A. Moran
A Woman in Residence By Michelle Harrison M.D
Outrageous Practices By Leslie Laurence
The Menopause Industry By Sandra Coney
Male Practice By Robest S. Mendelsohn
The Farmer and the Obstetrician By Michael Odent M.D *The Power of Pleasurable Childbirth By Laurie Morgan
*The Thinking Women's Guide to a Better Birth By Henci Goer
Childbirth without Fear By Dick Grantly Read
101 Reasons not to have your Baby in a Hospital By Jock Doubleday
(You can find it at http://www.spontaneouscreation.org/index.htm)
*Pushed: The Painful Truth about Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care
By Jennifer Block
Primal Mothering in a Modern World By Hygeia Halfmoon Ph. D
*Giving Birth, Challenges and Choices (Video)
www.hospitalbirthdebate.blogspot.com
http://www.birthingnaturally.net/barp/main.html
http://www.freewebs.com/womenhealthybynature/index.htm
www.unassistedchildbirth.com www.unhinderedliving.com/childbirth.htmlwww.empoweredchildbirth.comwww.sarahjbuckley.com
www.gentlebirth.org
http://www.birthpsychology.com/violence/odent1.html
www.compleatmother.com
www.birthecology.com
www.davis-floyd.com
"There is something wrong with a society that insists on making a complicated, expensive medical emergency out of a normal physiological function primitive women have been doing by themselves for centuries"... Cathi Cogle
Millions of Years of Evolution Can’t Be Wrong
“The best place to give birth is the best place to make love” Michael Odent M.D
Birth is safe, Interference is Dangerous!!!
Most Complications happen because of what is done to women in Hospitals.

Local Homebirth Midwives
Advent House Midwifery (970)759-5154
Ahmavine Midwifery (970)749-6318
Mountain Birth (970)708-1298
Juanita Nelson 385-2626
We have a secret in our culture, it's not that birth is painful, but
that women are strong. Laura Stavoe Harm
Birth is as safe as life gets. -Harriette Hartigan
Experiences have clearly shown that an approach which "de-medicalizes" birth, restores dignity and humanity to the process of childbirth, and returns control to the mother is also the safest approach. Michel Odent, MD
The best way to avoid a cesarean is to stay out of the hospital. Brooke Sanders
We need to get the information out there, babies are dying, women are crying and doctors are lying. Penny Groner
If we hope to create a non-violent world where respect and kindness replace fear and hatred, we must begin with how we treat each other at the beginning of life. For that is where our deepest patterns are set. From those roots grow fear and alienation, or love and trust. Suzanne Arms, author of "Immaculate Deception"
Being a Woman, being pregnant and giving birth is NOT A SICKNESS!!
HOSPITALS AND DOCTORS ARE FOR SICK PEOPLE!!
The first Intervention in birth that a healthy woman takes is when she walks out the front door of her home in labor from that first intervention all others will follow. M. Rosenthal
"In The five European countries with the lowest infant mortality rates, midwives preside at more than 70 percent of all births. More than half of all Dutch babies are born at home with midwives in attendance, and Holland's maternal and infant mortality rates are far lower than in the United States..."
"Imagine dancers on a stage. Once, doing a pirouette, a woman sustained a cervical fracture as a result of a fall; she is now paralyzed. We try to make the stage safer, to have the dancers better prepared. But can a dancer wear a collar around her neck, just in case she falls? The presence of the collar will inhibit her free motion. We cannot say to her, 'This will be entirely natural except for the brace on your neck, just in case.' It cannot be "as if" it is not there, because we know that creative movement and creative expression cannot exist with those constraints. The dancer cannot dance with the brace on. In the same way, the birthing woman cannot "dance" with a brace on. The straps around her abdomen, the wires coming from her vagina, change her birth."Michelle Harrison M.D
Over 87% of births planned as homebirths required no medical intervention at all.
Only 3.4% of women who began labor at home had a transfer.
Overall, for all the women planning homebirths, intervention rates were: epidural (4.7%), episiotomy (2.1%), forceps (1.0%), vacuum extraction (0.6%), and caesarean section (3.7%); these rates were substantially lower for low-risk US women planning hospital births.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists still opposes home birth, but has no valid evidence to support this position.
British Medical Journal 2005 Homebirth Study
Rising Cesarean rates, more than 55% in some areas, have resulted in the largest maternal mortality rates the U.S has seen in decades. National Center for Health Stats
A woman’s greatest tool in birth is her instinct when she uses it.
Don’t let your busy mind interfere with the ancient wisdom of your body Ina May Gaskin
Infection, poor hygiene, and poor nutrition was the major cause of death, not because birth is dangerous

My letter to the Durango Telegraph

2008-04-26T09:17:00.000-07:00

Back to basic birthing
Dear Editors,
April is Cesarian section awareness month.
The U.S. c-section rate is 30 percent. That means one in four pregnant women giving birth will receive a c-section. According to the World Health Organization, the c-section rate should be no higher than 5-10 percent. If it’s higher than that, c-sections unnecessarily harm both the mother and baby. Most c-sections are done because of failure to progress, or the mothers inability to push the baby out, which can be caused by drugs such as epidurals and the supine position. Women were designed to birth in a squatting position.
Women require the same need for privacy that all mammals do. When a women enters an unfamiliar environment like a hospital with many people around, her labor slows down because her primitive brain is saying this is not a good place to give birth. She needs to get back to her cave to birth in her own territory and in privacy. Birth is a sexual event, and just like sex, birth requires the need for privacy.
Pitocin and other drugs are often used to speed up labor, but these drugs can cause contractions to become more painful, the cause baby’s blood pressure to drop, and uterine rupture. Lying down in a hospital bed can cause this, too. This creates the need for many other interventions. Epidurals increase the chances of vacuum, forceps and c-section delivery. Interventions are like falling dominos – once one falls, the rest will follow, and it begins the minute the woman leaves her home. Complications are caused by interventions. Most homebirths are safe for the majority of women.
The U.S. has the second-worst maternal and infant mortality rates, and only 1 percent of women give birth at home. The countries with the lowest mortality rates have midwives and the majority of births are done at home. C-sections are major surgeries that carry many more risks than a vaginal delivery. It has more risks for mothers and babies, mothers have a harder time bonding with their babies, and a harder time nursing their children, and have a higher risk of postpartum depression. This is also true if the baby is separated from her mother immediately following vaginal delivery, and if the mother has had drugs given to her. The absence of this bonding time between mother and baby has traumatic results mentally and physically, which can result in depression, anxiety, violent behavior and drug abuse later in life for the child.
Babies need the stimulation of uncut vaginal walls to stimulate their breathing, their nervous system, and their digestive system. Without that, many diseases and poor
health often are the results. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. With drugs and interference both physically and mentally, the whole natural process of labor and birth is stopped. This stops the hormones that began the bonding process, and everything else that Mother Nature intended to happen for the survival and health of the species. Violent birth leads to violent lifestyles, so peace on earth begins with birth. C-sections should only be done for births with placenta previa, which is very rare.
Homebirths are safe, perhaps safer than hospital births, so please, women, educate yourselves and choose to have a homebirth either unassisted or assisted with a midwife that will respect your privacy. If the midwife gives you the feelings of being watched, then the midwife is no benefit. Wouldn’t it be more joyful for couples to catch their own children, and birth their children the way there where created? Like Michael Odent said, “the best place to give birth is the best place to make love.” The only way to avoid an unnecessary c-section is to stay out of the hospital. Poverty, intervention and fear are the major killers in childbirth. It was never doctors and hospitals that made birth safe – only more dangerous. But before I go, let me leave you with these two quotes: “There is something wrong with a society that insists on making a complicated, expensive, medical emergency out of a normal physiological function primitive women have been doing by themselves for centuries.” – Cathi Cogle; “If we hope to create a non-violent world where respect and kindness replace fear and hatred, we must begin with how we treat each other at the beginning of life. For that is where our deepest patterns are set. From those roots grow fear and alienation, or love and trust.”
-Suzanne Arms, author of Immaculate Deception II, and Cassandra Fisher, Durango

Dangers of Induction of Labor

2008-04-26T09:16:00.002-07:00

The dangers of Induction of Labor

These are two great articles I've found on while answering a question on yahoo

http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg15721164.600-let-me-out--its-the-fetus-that-decides-when-its-time-to-be-bornthe-mother-is-just-obeying-orders-from-her-insatiable-unborn-baby-garryhamilton-finds-out-how.html

and this one

http://www.mothering.com/articles/pregnancy_birth/birth_preparation/inducing.html

Do it Yourself Pelvic Exams

2008-04-26T09:16:00.001-07:00

than you can always do a self exam
http://www.selfpap.com/
http://www.markpap.com/products.htm
http://www.fertilitrac.com/contact.htm
http://www.fournierhealth.com/index.html
Enjoy!!

Dectecting Cancer through Urine

2008-04-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

This is another alternative way to detect cancer, and restores dignity and respect to the woman's body
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/40925.php

CSA blood tests will hopefully replace Pelvic exams

2008-04-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

A new blood test is out that tests HPV more acuratley than an exam can. One of the many benefits is that there is no humilaiting exam.
Check out their website:
http://www.onconix.com/

Women Against Stirrups Group

2008-04-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

This is a great group that is anti- yearly exam, and encourage many woman to join it becuase womenhood is not a disease, and should not be rapped for it.

Woman against stirrups yahoo group

Check it out
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/womenagainststirrups/

Its a great group I hope you all check it out.

Homebirth Saftey

2007-04-05T16:54:00.000-07:00

Article taken from Compleat Mother

HOMEBIRTH: AS SAFE AS BIRTH GETS
Each year in America, approximately 1% of the births occur in home settings. In Illinois in 1992, 1,218 families filed birth certificates that reflected a homebirth. Approximately one-third of the births occurred to Black families. Wisconsin had 591 recorded homebirths for the same year of which 22 were to Black families. 1 It is probable that many more Illinois homebirths actually took place but weren't recorded due to a discriminatory birth registration practice that places the responsibility for registering midwife-attended homebirths on the parents and requires a different mechanism than is used for any other occurring births.One measure of the safety of birth place is infant mortality, specifically, neonatal deaths within the first 28 days. According to the Center for Disease Control, there were 19,098 neonatal deaths for 1990 for babies born in a hospital. For those babies born at home, there were 260 newborn deaths. Infant mortality is figured as the number of deaths per 1,000 live births. The death rate for babies born in the hospital was 5.6 and for those born at home was 11.1, which would seem to indicate that a hospital is a better bet for a baby's survival. However, when the homebirth statistics are further broken down into who attended the birth, the picture changes dramatically. Direct Entry Midwives had the best outcomes with a death rate of 1.9 compared to CNM-attended births (2.9) or physicians -- D.O.'s (15.1) or M.D.'s (24.7). 2History Until 1900, homebirth was the place of birth for most every American. In fact, over 90% of those alive on earth today were born at home! Hospital or institutional birth is a relatively new occurance which began to gain in popularity during the 1920's due to physician promotion and the increased use of the automobile. As is the case today, it is a much more economic use of a physician's time to attend patients in a single place. There is also an economic incentive since a physician can attend to more than one patient at a time in the hospital and other, less important helpers can attend to the more mundane tasks of birthing. Part of this shift in birthplace must be attributed to the propaganda denouncing midwives which took place during this same time. With their economic and organized power, physician groups were able to legislatively increase hospital births by eliminating those who still attended homebirths -- by eliminating the midwife. From the 1930's through the 1960's state after state changed their laws to either restrict the practice of midwifery or wipe out the legal practice entirely. Yet no valid study then or to date has proven planned homebirth to be less safe than hospital birth. StudiesMany studies have been done in an attempt to prove that hospitals are the safest place to birth. Some of the earlier ones included all births which took place out of the hospital regardless of the gestational age or planned place of delivery. Those studies included miscarriages which took place at home as well as precipitous births and births that were unattended. To be valid, a study must compare equals and change only one item. Lewis Mehl did this when he matched 2,092 women and compared their birth outcomes. The result was that homebirth with a trained attendant was safer than a hospital birth. What does "safer" mean?Most families do not want to know the statistical odds of having a good outcome, they want to know more concretely exactly how a homebirth will be safer. Many studies address this by listing criteria and comparing the results. For example, Lewis Mehl's study listed the percentage of mothers with various complications:
Complication
Read the rest of the Article Here

http://www.compleatmother.com/homebirth/hb_safety.htm

Estastic Birth By Sarah J. Buckley

2007-03-25T07:54:00.000-07:00

I think this is a great article that shows why birth is such a sexual event.

Ecstatic birth - nature’s hormonal blueprint for labor
© Dr Sarah J Buckley 2005 http://www.sarahjbuckley.com/
This article has been previously published in Mothering Magazine, issue 111, March-April 2002, and in Byron Child, issue 5, March 2003. This version updated March 2005.
This material has been further expanded as“Undisturbed Birth: Mother Nature’s hormonal blueprint for safety, ease and ecstasy” available in Sarah’s upcoming book, Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: The wisdom and science of gentle choices in pregnancy, birth, and parenting.
Giving birth in ecstasy: This is our birthright and our body’s intent. Mother Nature, in her wisdom, prescribes birthing hormones that take us outside (ec) our usual state (stasis), so that we can be transformed on every level as we enter motherhood.
This exquisite hormonal orchestration unfolds optimally when birth is undisturbed, enhancing safety for both mother and baby. Science is also increasingly discovering what we realise as mothers - that our way of birth affects us life-long, both mother and baby, and that an ecstatic birth -- a birth that takes us beyond our self -- is the gift of a life-time.
Four major hormonal systems are active during labor and birth. These involve oxytocin, the hormone of love; endorphins, hormones of pleasure and transcendence; adrenaline and noradrenaline (epinephrine and norepinephrine), hormones of excitement; and prolactin, the mothering hormone. These systems are common to all mammals and originate deep in our mammalian or middle brain.
For birth to proceed optimally, this part of the brain must take precedence over the neocortex, or rational brain. This shift can be helped by an atmosphere of quiet and privacy with, for example, dim lighting and little conversation, and no expectation of rationality from the laboring woman. Under such conditions a woman intuitively will choose the movements, sounds, breathing, and positions that will birth her baby most easily. This is her genetic and hormonal blueprint.
All of these systems are adversely affected by current birth practices. Hospital environments and routines are not generally conducive to the shift in consciousness that giving birth naturally requires. A woman’s hormonal physiology is further disturbed by practices such as induction, the use of pain killers and epidurals, cesarean surgery, and separation of mother and baby after birth.
Hormones in Birth
Oxytocin
Perhaps the best-known birth hormone is oxytocin, the hormone of love, which is secreted during sexual activity, male and female orgasm, birth, and breastfeeding. Oxytocin engenders feelings of love and altruism; as Michel Odent says, “Whatever the facet of love we consider, oxytocin is involved.”1
Oxytocin is made in the hypothalamus, deep in our brains, and stored in the posterior pituitary, the master gland, from where it is released in pulses. It is a crucial hormone in reproduction and mediates what have been called the ejection reflexes: the sperm ejection reflex with male orgasm (and the corresponding sperm introjection reflex with female orgasm); the fetal ejection reflex at birth (a phrase coined by Odent for the powerful contractions at the end of an undisturbed labor, which birth the baby quickly and easily2); and, postpartum, the placental ejection reflex and the milk ejection, or let-down reflex, in breastfeeding.
As well as reaching peak levels in each of these situations, oxytocin is secreted in large amounts in pregnancy, when it acts to enhance nutrient absorption, reduce stress, and conserve energy by making us more sleepy.3 Oxytocin also causes the rhythmic uterine contractions of labor, and levels peak at birth through stimulation of stretch receptors in a woman’s lower vagina as the baby descends.4The high levels continue after birth, culminating with the birth of the placenta, and then gradually subside.5
The baby also has been producing increasing amounts of oxytocin during labor;6 7 so, in the minutes after birth, both mother and baby are bathed in an ecstatic cocktail of hormones. At this time ongoing oxytocin production is enhanced by skin-to-skin and eye-to-eye contact and by the baby’s first attempts at suckling.8 Good levels of oxytocin will also protect against postpartum hemorrhage by ensuring good uterine contractions.
In breastfeeding, oxytocin mediates the let-down reflex and is released in pulses as the baby suckles. During the months and years of lactation, oxytocin continues to act to keep the mother relaxed and well nourished. Oxytocin expert and researcher Professor Kerstin Uvnas Moberg calls it ‘…a very efficient anti-stress system, which prevents a lot of disease later on.’3 In her study, mothers who breastfed for more than seven weeks were calmer,when their babies were six months old, than mothers who did notbreastfeed.
Outside its role in reproduction, oxytocin is secreted in other situations of love and altruism, for example, sharing a meal.9 Researchers have implicated malfunctions of the oxytocin system in conditions such as schizophrenia,10 autism,11 cardiovascular disease,12 and drug dependency,13 and have suggested that oxytocin may mediate the antidepressant effect of drugs such as Prozac.14
Beta-endorphin
As a naturally occurring opiate, beta-endorphin has properties similar to pethidine (meperidine, Demerol), morphine, and heroin, and has been shown to work on the same receptors of the brain. Like oxytocin, beta-endorphin is secreted from the pituitary gland, and high levels are present during sex, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding.
Beta-endorphin is also a stress hormone, released under conditions of duress and pain, when it acts as an analgesic and, like other stress hormones, suppresses the immune system. This effect may be important in preventing a pregnant mother’s immune system from acting against her baby, whose genetic material is foreign to hers.
Like the addictive opiates, beta-endorphin induces feelings of pleasure, euphoria, and dependency or, with a partner, mutual dependency. Beta-endorphin levels are high in pregnancy and increase throughout labor,15 when levels of beta-endorphin and corticotrophin (another stress hormone) reach those found in male endurance athletes during maximal exercise on a treadmill.16 Such high levels help the laboring woman to transmute pain and enter the altered state of consciousness that characterizes an undisturbed birth.
Beta-endorphin has complex and incompletely understood relationships with other hormonal systems.17 In labor, high levels will inhibit oxytocin release. It makes sense that when pain or stress levels are very high, contractions will slow, thus ‘…rationing labor according to both physiological and psychological stress.’18
Beta-endorphin also facilitates the release of prolactin during labor;19 prolactin prepares the mother’s breasts for lactation and is thought to be important in preparing the baby’s lungs and heat-regulating systems for life outside the womb.20 21
Beta-endorphin is also important in breastfeeding. Levels peak in the mother at 20 minutes,22 and beta-endorphin is also present in breast milk,23 inducing a pleasurable mutual dependency for both mother and baby in their ongoing relationship.
Fight-or-Flight Hormones
The hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline (epinephrine and norepinephrine) are also known as the fight-or-flight hormones, or, collectively, as catecholamines (CAs). They are secreted from the adrenal gland above the kidney in response to stresses such as fright, anxiety, hunger or cold, as well as excitement, when they activate the sympathetic nervous system for fight or flight.
In the first stage of labor, high CA levels inhibit oxytocin production, therefore slowing or inhibiting labor. CAs also act to reduce blood flow to the uterus and placenta, and therefore to the baby. This makes sense for mammals birthing in the wild, where the presence of danger would activate this fight or flight response, inhibiting labor and diverting blood to the major muscle groups so that the mother can flee to safety. In humans, high levels of CAs have been associated with longer labor and adverse fetal heart rate patterns (an indication of stress to the baby).24
After an undisturbed labor, however, when the moment of birth is imminent, these hormones act in a different way. There is a sudden increase in CA levels, especially noradrenaline, which activates the fetal ejection reflex. The mother experiences a sudden rush of energy; she will be upright and alert, with a dry mouth and shallow breathing and perhaps the urge to grasp something. She may express fear, anger, or excitement, and the CA rush will cause several very strong contractions, which will birth the baby quickly and easily.25
Some birth attendants have made good use of this reflex when a woman is having difficulties in the second stage of labor. For example, one anthropologist working with an indigenous Canadian tribe recorded that when a woman was having difficulty in birth, the young people of the village would gather together to help. They would suddenly and unexpectedly shout out close to her, with the shock triggering her fetal ejection reflex and a quick birth.2
After the birth, the mother’s CA levels drop steeply. A warm atmosphere is important; a new mother is very sensitive to temperature and if she cools down significantly, the cold stress will keep her CA levels high, inhibiting her natural oxytocin release and therefore increasing her risk of postpartum hemorrhage.26
Noradrenaline, as part of the ecstatic cocktail, is also implicated in instinctive mothering behavior. Mice bred to be deficient in noradrenaline will not care for their young after birth unless noradrenaline is injected back into their system.27
For the baby also, birth is an exciting and stressful event, reflected in high CA levels. These assist the baby during birth by protecting against the effects of hypoxia (lack of oxygen) and subsequent acidosis.28 High CA levels at birth ensure that the baby is wide-eyed and alert at first contact with the mother. The baby’s CA levels also drop rapidly after an undisturbed birth, being soothed by contact with the mother.
Prolactin
Known as the mothering hormone, prolactin is the major hormone of breast milk synthesis and breastfeeding. Levels of prolactin increase in pregnancy, although milk production is inhibited hormonally until the placenta is delivered. Levels decrease during labor but then rise steeply at the end of labor and peak with birth.
Prolactin is a hormone of submission or surrender--in primate troops, the dominant male has the lowest prolactin level--and produces some degree of anxiety. In the breastfeeding relationship these effects activate the mother’s vigilance and help her to put her baby’s needs first.29
Prolactin has been associated with nurturance from fathers as well as mothers, earning the additional label “The hormone of paternity”30. New fathers with higher prolactin levels more responsive to their babies’ cries.31 Animal studies show that prolactin release is also increased by carrying infants32.
The baby also produces prolactin in pregnancy, and high levels are found in amniotic fluid, secreted by the baby’s membranes as well as the mother’s uterine lining.33 Prolactin is also secreted into breastmilk, at least in the rat. 34 According to one researcher,“… there is evidence that prolactin plays an important role in the development and maturation of the neonatal [newborn] neuroendocrine [brain-hormone] system.”35
Undisturbed Birth
Undisturbed birth is exceedingly rare in our culture, which reflects our ignorance of its importance. Two factors that disturb birth in all mammals are firstly being in an unfamiliar place and secondly the presence of an observer. Feelings of safety and privacy thus seem to be fundamental. Yet the entire system of Western obstetrics is devoted to observing pregnant and birthing women, by both people and machines, and when birth isn’t going smoothly, obstetricians respond with yet more intense observation. It is indeed amazing that any woman can give birth under such conditions.
Some writers have observed that, for a laboring woman,having a babyhas a lot of parallels with making a baby: the same hormones, the same parts of the body, the same sounds, and the same needs for feelings of safety and privacy. How would it be to attempt to make love in the conditions under which we expect women to give birth?
When I gave birth to my fourth baby, Maia Rose, I arranged a situation where I felt very private, safe and undisturbed, and had my easiest and most ecstatic labor and birth: one-and-a half hours with an unexpectedly breech baby. I believe that this birth proceeded optimally because of this lack of disturbance, and because of my freedom to follow my own instincts.
Undisturbed birth is possible in a variety of settings, but must always involve a feeling of emotional security for the birthing woman. A familiar and supportive companion, such as a midwife or doula, can play an important role in creating and protecting a private space for the laboring woman, especially in a hospital setting.
Impact of Drugs and Procedures
Induction and Augmentation
In Australia in 2002, approximately 26 percent of women had an induction of labor, and another 19 percent have an augmentation--stimulation or speeding up of labor—through either artificial rupture of membranes or with synthetic oxytocin (Pitocin, Syntocinon).In the US in 2004, 53 percent of women reported that they had Pitocin administered in labor to strengthen or speed up contractions.36
Synthetic oxytocin administered in labor does not act like the body’s own oxytocin. First, Pitocin-induced contractions are different from natural contractions, and these differences can have significant effects on the baby. For example, waves can occur almost on top of each other when too high a dose of Pitocin is given, and it also causes the resting tone of the uterus to increase.37
Such over-stimulation (hyperstimulation) can deprive the baby from the necessary supplies of blood and oxygen, and so produce abnormal FHR patterns, fetal distress (leading to caesarean section), and even uterine rupture.38
Birth activist Doris Haire describes the effects of Pitocin on the baby:
The situation is analogous to holding an infant under the surface of the water, allowing the infant to come to the surface to gasp for air, but not to breathe.39
These effects may be partly due to the high blood levels of oxytocin that are reached when a woman labors with Pitocin. Theobald calculated that, at average levels used for induction or augmentation/acceleration, a woman’s oxytocin levels will be 130 to 570 times higher than she would naturally produce in labor.40 Direct measurements do not concur, but blood oxytocin levels are difficult to measure.41 Other researchers have suggested that continuous administration of this drug by iv infusion, which is very different to its natural pulsatile release, may also account for some of these problems.42
Second, oxytocin, synthetic or not, cannot cross from the body to the brain through the blood-brain barrier. This means that Pitocin, introduced into the body by injection or drip, does not act as the hormone of love. However, it can interfere with oxytocin’s natural effects. For example, we know that women with Pitocin infusions are at higher risk of major bleeding after the birth43 44 and that, in this situation, the uterus actually loses oxytocin receptors and so becomes unresponsive to the postpartum oxytocin peak that prevents bleeding.45 But we do not know the psychological effects of interference with the natural oxytocin that nature prescribes for all mammalian species.
As for the baby, ‘Many experts believe that through participating in this initiation of his own birth, the fetus may be training himself to secrete his own love hormone.’29 Michel Odent speaks passionately about our society’s deficits in our capacity to love self and others, and he traces these problems back to the time around birth, particularly to interference with the oxytocin system.
Read The Rest of the Article Here

http://www.sarahjbuckley.com/articles/ecstatic-birth.htm

Birth as a Sexual Event

2007-03-06T20:12:00.000-08:00

Taken from "The Power of Pleasurable Childbirth" By Laurie Morgan
"Privacy Matters"
John's loving presence was important to my opening up for the baby because by then we were both aware of the sensuality surrounding birth. Creating this child was an intimate act of love between the two of us, and birthing in a loving way simply and naturally completed that act. As a result of healing from past sexual abuse achieved through faith, I was much more able to open up during this labor than I had been during my first. I had become able to make my vagina wet and open by fantasizing about making love to my husband -- something I hadn't been able to do before -- so I found visualizing having sex during labor naturally helpful.
John and I both welcomed the idea of actually having sex during labor, but I happened to be focused elsewhere at the time. We knew that besides relaxing and bonding the couple, the man's semen naturally ripens the cervix in the same way that the "gel" (which a good friend of mine researched and found out is actually made from PIG sperm!) inserted unceremoniously into the vagina by obstetricians does. In any case, I had enjoyed masturbating frequently in the days preceding this one and found even solo orgasm to be a safe, appropriate, and pleasurable way to encourage strong, productive contractions. Laboring in the environment of my own home was absolutely crucial to accepting and expressing these beneficial feelings.
When contractions got really strong, I made myself a little nest of pillows to lean on at the end of our spare bed, and told John that I wanted him to call my friend to come. When she arrived about an hour later, I was still in the living room, concentrating on opening up and relaxing my pelvic muscles. I had an overwhelming feeling that if I relaxed enough, the baby would come out too fast. That feeling was affirmed every time I stood up, when gravity would cause the downward pressure to increase unbearably.
When my friend arrived she set to preparing homemade chicken soup in the kitchen, so I went to my bedroom to spend some time alone. For some reason it felt incredibly appropriate to crawl the whole way to the bedroom on my hands and knees, and so, as ridiculous as it may seem I did. In the meantime, Christiana entertained herself and visited the bedroom off and on, tenderly lavishing hugs and kisses on me. Despite dire warnings that labor would frighten her from people who didn't understand that she was like a soul mate to me, I actually delighted in cuddling and playing with her.
It�s important to clarify here, that inviting a close friend to my birth was just what I needed to do at the time. It was one last vestige of my previous dependency on outsiders for my birthing strength, in a sense. But I have learned a lot the hard way from the experience that I want to pass on. Many people have remarked after reading this birth story in its original form, that having a friend's reassuring presence during labor and birth appears to be a "happy medium" between more interventive midwifery or obstetrical care and the full responsibility of couples birth, but I can't disagree more. Yes, this birth turned out beautifully at the time, but there were a number of significant drawbacks to this one compromise that aren't obvious on the surface. They all surround the fact that birth is a profoundly private, sexual event. Period.
I believe that God made birth and sex amazing and powerful, and usually our bodies overcome the breaches in privacy that are so common today; sometimes gracefully, sometimes not. But just as the physical act of having sex can be done publicly, but truly making love cannot, in order to have a truly uncomplicated, unhindered, pleasurable birth, spectators cannot be involved. Don't get me wrong, at the time my friend was respectful and did her best to blend in with the furniture, but looking back, I can see how even this small intrusion left me feeling like an stranger in my own home.
People today pay a lot of lip service to the idea that women should birth and labor where they are most comfortable. This is good in and of itself, but what most people tend to ignore is the fact that we are never truly comfortable with anyone besides our mates staring at our most private parts and witnessing our bodily functions! All this is to say that I don't plan on ever inviting friends to attend me in labor again in the future, and I highly recommend against it to others. It's pointless to second guess my past now, but next time I will definitely feel free to labor in whatever part of my home I'm truly most comfortable in, and my husband and I will be as intimate as the mood truly strikes us.

A woman is safest giving birth where she feels safest... By Laurie Morgan
A woman is safest giving birth where she feels safest... or so "they" say. But are they right? An increasing number of well informed mothers-to-be don't think so. Why? Because slowly the fact is being exposed that women and their families are routinely misinformed, or not informed at all, of the hazards of popular childbirth practices. Doctors, midwives, media, literature, friends, and family of expectant parents consistently send the same firm message: pregnancy and childbirth require and benefit from expert supervision and assistance.
What a small but growing group of lay women are realizing and beginning to publicize is that "assisting" birth itself -- whether medically or in a more "alternative" fashion - is usually far from beneficial, and hardly ever necessary. The thrust of this emerging movement should not be confused with such so-called "natural" childbirth trends as Lamaze, or the recent call for a reduction in cesarean rates, both of which ignore the root problem of institutionalized birth and rob individuals of choices through forced conformity to artificial standards. Instead, this far more respectful, more empowering movement's primary goal is to help women to liberate themselves to give birth to their children in safety and pleasure. Through the sharing of unrestricted information between peers, more and more families are finding out about, and choosing one simple option that can render all others obsolete: unassisted childbirth.
Unfortunately, because of the widespread fear of childbirth that has become entrenched in our society, it is necessary at this point for me to beg some readers to suppress their initial objections to this uncommon idea for just one moment. The fact is, millions of women across the world are giving birth unassisted already; most of them just don't know it. Until very recently, childbirth was always an involuntary process that the healthy female body performed automatically. Even today, there is no way to truly facilitate the process of birth itself without the overt use of instruments and drugs. Surgeons can cut babies out of wombs, and midwives can even rob women of the glory of catching their own babies themselves, but just as the miraculous force that forms an infant within the womb does its job perfectly without help, so does that same force faithfully push the baby out at just the right time when it is allowed to do so.
Before you begin to compose a fiery editorial to rescue me from my apparent naivete', allow me to share with you, one simple but profound revelation that two glorious unassisted births brought to me: childbirth is not dangerous. Life itself is dangerous it's true, and sometimes unfortunate things happen to perfectly good people. But just as healthy people would not take up residence in a hospital for fear of dying, it is insane to approach childbirth - a normal, healthy function of the female anatomy - with the focus on pre-empting disaster.
Our normal bodily functions are absolutely not made safer by monitoring and interference. Even the mere observation, or subtlest alterations, of childbirth processes have the potential to adversely affect the intricate organic symphony that plays out best in privacy and security. But childbirth itself - when it is naturally free from obstruction -- is as trustworthy as breathing. Eventually we all must come to terms with our human frailty, but the fact that tragedies exist must not be accepted as an excuse for the blind application of unnecessary "safety measures" that actually cause harm. Giving birth unassisted is a responsible, safe thing to do for all but the microscopic percentage of women that have such serious medical conditions as to make even everyday activities a challenge.
How safe would it be to breathe -- one of our most basic bodily functions -- with fingers or tubes and wires stuck down our throats? Emergency "medicine" has proven that it is possible to do this clearly undesirable thing. Likewise, childbirth is so reliable that it often proceeds very well despite serious insults and hindrances. But who in their right mind would freely choose artificial breathing over the real thing? If one were falsely convinced that "assisted breathing" were the most reliable way to ensure survival, one might be afraid to live without breathing tubes and monitoring wires, just as many women are afraid to give birth in the comfort and sanctity of their own homes today. But being convinced of a lie does not mean that breathing that way would actually be safer for healthy people. Attended childbirth is not safer for the majority of families either.
So what is wrong with attended birth "just to be safe?" If you've participated in any discussion of different childbirth practices recently you have probably heard or spouted some version of the slogan many times, "What matters in childbirth is the outcome of a healthy mom and baby." The implication being that any route to that outcome is acceptable or even good. This idea that "healthy" physical bodies is rightly of primary concern to birth attendants and their clients is almost universally accepted in mainstream circles. Surprisingly, the same assumption even goes largely unchallenged in the so-called "alternative" world of midwife attended homebirth.
What fails to be addressed often enough by anyone -- if ever -- is the inseparable connection between the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, sensual, sexual, and social components of childbirth. The solitary element of truth in that popular mantra "a woman is safest giving birth where she feels safest" is being ignored: If a woman is not comfortable, her birth is not safe, and no sane person is comfortable having an intimate and profoundly life-altering bodily function occur with spectators and interference.
Most people honestly seem to think that providing the appearance of respect for women's choices -- however hazardous -- is more important than the impact of the actual choices themselves. No sane person would agree that all that matters in sex is that a penis enters a vagina, for instance. Giving birth is a fundamental element of a woman's sexuality too. So, it is clear that such goal-oriented attitudes are just as inappropriate when applied to the complexity of the human spirit, emotions, mind, and body that are all deeply affected by childbirth. But our collective histories of more than 20 years of mothers subjugating their birth instincts to medical rape has made it very difficult for many women to question status quo.
For anyone to really understand the potential harm in modern childbirth practices and make positive changes, we each have to move beyond knee-jerk defensive feelings brought up by such an appropriately emotional topic. To effectively encourage the necessary change, birth attendants, educators, and peers must neither be coddling nor condescending to childbearing women. We "mere mothers" are smart. Not only that, but by sheer virtue of our anatomies, women are the preeminent experts of our own bodily functions. Having previously been discouraged from taking up that role does not change the facts: women are created able to give birth without any assistance at all. We mustn't be afraid to shout this truth from the mountain tops. If women can be trusted to care for their bodies during pregnancy and then to nurture their offspring until maturity, women can surely be trusted to make the right choices in childbirth, even if that means choosing to give birth unsupervised.
It's simply logical that when pregnant women and the people they choose to have support them through childbirth are not fully informed, many women will feel safe where they are not actually safe. So, as it turns out, the over-used euphemism in question here is worse than false, it is out-right dangerous. Thousands of women, babies, and their families are literally robbed of safe, pleasurable childbirth experiences every day by modern pregnancy and childbirth practices -- both medical and alternative in nature. And more than that, thousands of women are placing their own lives, and the lives of their infants, into something far more risky than their own loving hands: they are resting their futures in the hands of well meaning professionals who know no more about childbirth as nature created it than a rock.
Probably these words are highly offensive to both professional birth attendants and almost anyone that has ever hired one, and that's fine by me. In my opinion, outrage is a healthy and necessary reaction to a problem that has harmed too many women, babies, and their families for far too long. Birth attendants and childbearing women alike would do well to take a critical look at what I, and many similarly empowered and inspired mothers have to say.

Taken from "The Power of Pleasurable Childbirth'' By Laurie Morgan
Sex and Birth, Pain and Complications
The inherent sexual nature of birth quite clearly makes birthing with attendants undesirable. Imagine how a woman feels when she is really turned on and open to being sexually "penetrated". That same feeling of total relaxation and lubrication of the vaginal walls experienced in healthy sex is the absolute most conducive environment to allowing any baby to slide gently and easily into the world. It is quite possible that no woman who actually desires an attended birth can fully fathom the truth of my example, however. I believe this is due, at least in large part, to the widespread sexual abuse endured, especially here in America. Women who have been sexually trespassed once, usually find themselves also raped of the ability to experience total relaxation and pleasure in any sexual act. Consequently, I believe that the sensuality and sexuality of birth has been robbed from almost all women who have not yet healed emotionally from past sexual abuse.
This serves as an explanation for the over-acceptance of medical management of birth as well. Many American women are simply continuing a long cycle of abuse, as is common of many victims. The widely recognized psychological pattern of the abused daughter who grows up and marries a wife beater is a clear example. Many of us do something comparably bizarre by inviting people to violate us in the birth process: the birth attendant. Once a woman is victimized it takes a great revelation or move of God for a woman to take back her own power and not place herself in the victim role again. An interesting example of this phenomena is the fact, as reported in the book Silent Knife by Nancy Wainer Cohen, that twenty-five percent of women who undergo cesarean section will be sterilized within two months of the birth. This is a shocking statistic, especially when you consider that it neglects to include all the vasectomies that are also performed after a surgical birth.
The trouble is, I don't think I've met a woman yet who hasn't been molested in some way, somehow by the time she reaches her twenties. The fact that we are taught to believe that much of it is all normal and necessary victimizes us even more. When I mention sexual molestation, most people imagine the kind that occurs in many children's homes, but in truth, many of us allow perfect strangers to violate us and our children under the guise of modern medicine every day.
The pattern begins at birth. Americans as a society regularly accept genital mutilation of baby boys in the form of circumcision, or at least forceful retraction of the foreskins of those who remain intact. Both of the sexes are also subjected to anal penetration with thermometers as a routine, and many milder forms of non-consensual manipulation of the infant�s body. For many women, molestation moves again into the professional realm around puberty when we are instructed by our own parents to submit to doctors and gynecologists under the guise of "check ups". They scrape around inside our private parts for pap smears, poke around our vaginas and anuses and touch girls' bare chests, all for various �preventative� reasons.
Later in life we surrender dutifully to fittings for birth control devices, and big machines squashing and irradiating our breasts to monitor their health, because so many of us have been discouraged to protect our own breasts and our daughters� through ecological breastfeeding. When viewed with a keen eye, it's all very obviously perverted. There is simply a natural progression from the acceptance of these procedures to the medicalization of the ultimate expression of our sexual selves; conception, pregnancy, labor, and birth.
Regardless of whether a woman experiences her labor as sexual, it is simply inherently so. Nature necessitates that we create children through sex, and babies are birthed through our sex organs. Disassociating one's spirit from the sex act itself, while possible, is not healthy. In fact, denial of the sexual side of birth can very easily cause some women to experience the intense sensations of birth as pain, all by itself. Before the birth of my first daughter, I had rarely been able to experience painless intercourse. My vaginal muscles were just too tight. I was able to orgasm alone, but not with a partner. I knew that my inability to relax was "all in my head" as they say, but was at a loss as to how to change. This was another reason my first birth was so terrifyingly painful and my perineum tore.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010616182434/members.home.net/lmommy/articles.html

2007-02-25T20:44:00.001-08:00

Why Choose a Homebirth?
Wow, I can think of sooooooo many reasons! Most people automatically think that the hospital is the best place to have a baby. Give some thought to the reasons listed below before you automatically assign yourself to a hospital birth.
No chance of bringing home someone else's baby.
No chance of having someone steal your baby while in the hospital.
No chance of having someone else nurse your baby.
No chance of having your baby being given formula when you want only breast milk.
No chance of being separated from your newborn.
No chance of exposing your newborn to a hospital born virus, or unknown bacterial infection.
No chance of exposing yourself to a hospital born virus, or unknown bacterial infection.
No chance of you receiving an episiotomy.
No chance of getting an infection in the episiotomy stitches.
No chance of ripping out the episiotomy stitches when having your first BM.
No chance of being confined to a bed during your labor.
No chance of being left alone during your labor, unless you want to be.
No chance of having your children excluded during this important time in your life.
No chance of getting an IV in your arm.
No chance of the nurse blowing the vain as she puts in the IV.
No chance of getting the wrong drug in your IV.
No chance of getting experimental/off label drugs during your labor.
No chance of getting a unknown/nasty care provider at the time of labor.
No chance of medical students or residents doing unnecessary procedures because they need the training.
No chance of getting an unwanted circumcision for your son.
No chance of getting an unwanted vaccination for your newborn.
No chance of getting an uncomfortable continuous fetal monitoring.
No chance of getting unwanted drugs during your labor.
No chance of laying in an uncomfortable bed.
No chance of laying flat on your back during the birth.
No chance of having your legs strapped down into stirrups.
No chance of having unbearable cramps in your legs because you cannot move them.
No chance of having the umbilical cord to your baby cut early.
No chance of enduring the noise of a typical hospital after the birth.
No chance of enduring unpopular or against your diet hospital food.
No chance of being cohered into a Cesarean.
No chance of having an anesthesia reaction, and the dangers that goes with it.
No chance of having your doctor cut your baby during a Cesarean.
No chance of having your doctor cut your intestines during a Cesarean.
No chance of having your doctor cut your bladder during a Cesarean.
No chance of getting an infection in the Cesarean incision.
No chance of having your doctor leaving something inside after a Cesarean.
No chance of having to endure Cesarean incision pain after the birth.
No chance of having your care provider or hospital refusing to do a VBAC.
No chance of having to get up in the middle of the night to go to the hospital.
No chance of having to endure a bumpy/uncomfortable ride in the car.
No chance of not making it to the hospital.
No chance of enduring a painful pelvic exam to determine "pelvic size".
No chance of hearing "I think that your baby is too big, pelvis too small, etc".
Your Doctor views birth as a potential disaster.
Your Doctor will do whatever he has to to maintain his licence/insurance-You are secondary.
Your Doctor will put limits on the length of your pregnancy.
Your Doctor will want to induce you, if you pass those dates.
Most inductions are failures if you are not close to your baby's REAL date.
Your Doctor is "banking" that your induction will be a failure.
Your Doctor has financial incentives to do MORE procedures.
Your Doctor likes to maintain DAYTIME obstetrics.
Your Doctor can make double the money for doing a Cesarean, and he can be done in 1 hour.
Your Doctor does not like late night births, he has office visits tomorrow.
Your Midwife views birth as a normal function of a women's body.
Your Midwife only attends normal births, that is her specialty.
Your Midwife will always do your prenatal care.
Your Midwife will listen to your needs and fears.
Your Midwife is available 24/7 to answer your questions.
Your Midwife will honor your birth plan.
Your Midwife doesn't do quicky office visits.
Your Midwife has no financial incentives to do extra procedures.
At home, you can labor in the position of your choice.
At home, you can labor and birth in your choice of clothes.
At home, you will not have an IV in your arm.
At home, you can go to the bathroom without asking someone.
At home, you can lay down or stand up without asking someone.
At home, you can eat or drink if you choose to.
At home, your young children can be with you, if you chose.
At home, you can make and control your own labor and birthing environment.
At home, your labor coach is the same familiar person that gave you prenatal care.
At home, the baby catcher can be anyone that you want.
At home, you can birth your baby in the position of your choice.
At home, you can birth your baby in a dark room if you choose to.
At home, you can have the people that YOU want at your birth.
At home, the baby's cord will not be cut until it stops pulsing.
At home, your baby will be left by your side after the birth.
At home, you can nurse your baby right after the birth.
At home, you will not be given "pit" to hasten the delivery of the placenta.
At home, your postpartum caregiver will be the same as before, your Midwife.
Can you think of any other reasons?
It has never been scientifically proven that the hospital is a safer place than home for a woman who has had an uncomplicated pregnancy to have her baby. Studies of planned home births in developed countries with women who have had uncomplicated pregnancies have shown sickness and death rates for mother and baby equal to or better than hospital birth statistics for women with uncomplicated pregnancies.
Come back to the long standing tradition of giving birth in YOUR home, with your family by your side. You will be very proud of yourself if you do.

Taken from www.homebirth-only.com

Good Homebirth books and websites

2007-02-25T20:20:00.002-08:00

* Available at Durango Public Library
Suggested Reading:*Unassisted Childbirth By Laura ShanleyUnassisted Homebirth: An Act of Love By Lynn GriesmerObstetric Myths versus Research Realities By Henci GoerGentle Birth, Gentle Mothering By Sarah J Buckley*Immaculate Deception II By Suzanne ArmsSilent Knife, Open Season By Nancy CohenHard Labor By Susan L. Diamond
Birth as an American Rite of Passage By Robbie Davis Floyd
Pleasurable Husband and Wife Childbirth By Marylin A. Moran
A Woman in Residence By Michelle Harrison M.D
Silent Knife and Open Season By Nancy Cohen
Outrageous Practices By Leslie Laurence
The Menopause Industry By Sandra Coney
Male Practice By Robest S. Mendelsohn
Heart Failure By Michael Greger
The Farmer and the Obstetrician By Michael Odent M.D *The Power of Pleasurable Childbirth By Laurie Morgan
*The Thinking Women's Guide to a Better Birth By Henci Goer
Childbirth without Fear By Dick Grantly Read
101 Reasons not to have your Baby in a Hospital By Jock Doubleday
(You can find it at http://www.spontaneouscreation.org/index.htm)
Great Articles and Websites
Induced and Seduced: The Dangers of Cytotec By Ina May Gaskin
The Hidden Risks of Epidurals By Sarah J. Buckley M.D
Ultrasounds: A Cause for Concern By Sarah J. Buckley M.D
Homebirth: As Safe as Birth Gets on compleatmother.com
http://www.birthingnaturally.net/barp/main.html
unassistedchildbirth.com
empoweredchildbirth.com/
sarahjbuckley.com
unhinderedliving.com/childbirth.html
http://www.angelfire.com/wrestling3/johnmwhite/What_I_Believe_About_Birthhtm.htm
(A great article about fear and it's relation to pain)
http://www.midwifemama.com/
http://www.gentlebirth.org/
http://www.birthpsychology.com/violence/odent1.html
(Paper by Michael Odent)
www.compleatmother.com
www.birthcottage.com
http://www.birthecology.com/
http://www.hospitalbirthdebate.blogspot.com/
"There is something wrong with a society that insists on making a complicated, expensive medical emergency out of a normal physiological function primitive women have been doing by themselves for centuries"... Cathi Cogle
Millions of Years of Evolution Can’t Be Wrong

My Husband Calls Me “The Stephen King of Birth…”

2007-02-25T20:20:00.001-08:00

My Husband Calls Me “The Stephen King of Birth…”
By Jill McDanal
Because I scare the living hell out of people. I have had an unassisted homebirth, and plan on doing it again! Scary? I don’t think so. Sit back, take a deep breath, and ask yourself, “Do I really want to read this?” I will warn you, this is not for the ‘mainstreamers’ who have stumbled upon this site out of curiosity. This is very much bashing the medical establishment (doctors, nurses, and medwives) in general for stealing birth away from the women it belongs to. This was written for ME and for the thousands of women out there like me, but who are too afraid of the repercussions of what they say, in the form of snubs from doctors, nurses, friends, and family. I have been told by many in the mainstream that I am opinionated (really?), uneducated (got a bachelor’s degree, am a medical researcher, certified childbirth educator, professional labor assistant, wife, mom of three ages 2, 3, and 5 unassisted birther and I am published author - pretty impressive, huh?) I have been told I should censor my cussy mouth (from the South, remember?) and I can’t appreciate others opinions (which is true ONLY if you are into bashing mine.) So with that said, if any of this bothers you, better hit your back button NOW!
Okay, you stayed – very brave of you indeed. You are probably wondering “What started her down this path?” Well my friend, my fist birth was a nightmarish experience, and I got mad. I am sick and tired of seeing women suffer because somebody (usually a MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL) knows better than they do. I don’t write to appease the gods of the medical establishment and I don’t try to “reason “ with them, no reasoning with that bunch – just give them a study with contrived “scientific facts”, forget common sense, and see what they come up with. Bullshit mostly. Take a look at their recommendations for VBAC. They want those mothers to be in hospitals, babe with INTERNAL monitor, they need to palpate the scar, and moms need epidurals, just in case. Not to mention they want to blow these babes out untimely with drugs like CYTOTEC – good Lord, don’t get me started on Cytotec – it is a derivation from pig semen (or so I hear tell) and it is CONTRAINDICATED in pregnant women. Searle, the manufacturer of it has a boxed WARNING at the beginning of the listing in the PDR telling ob’s NOT to use it in pregnant women – it CAUSES uterine rupture. (Good reason to stay safe at home, they can’t get you there!) I am so damn sick and tired of a doctor thinking he knows better than God!!!! Babies know when they are supposed to be born. It is not like they have this little calendar when they are conceived and the sperm and egg get together and say – “40 weeks, that will be on Thursday, January 10 at 10:02 pm, well, that is when we will get born” Give me a break!
I am sick and tired of listening to women who have been butchered time and time again sitting around giving everyone the “poor me…, my doctor says…, the nurses say…, my husband says…, my friends say…” with all due respect – BULLSHIT – If, for some reason, you feel violated, raped, abused, or cut up like a Thanksgiving Day turkey, and you find yourself heading down that path again, the answer is EASY, Leave. Run!!! Don’t walk! Don’t pass Go! Don’t collect $200! Do NOT do it again. Once is too much for anyone to feel that they have been cast on the “mercy” of the gods of modern medicine. Ladies, take responsibility for your body and your babe and your birth!!!!!! It matters not what others think of your choices, you are the one who will ultimately have to live with the outcome (and just maybe, the consequences) of your decision.
Read the rest of the article here
taken from http://www.compleatmother.com/articles2/stephenking.htm

Births as a BM

2007-02-25T20:19:00.001-08:00

BIRTH AS A BOWEL MOVEMENT

Imagine if you will that about a hundred years ago, people began having great difficulties having bowel movements (BM for short). It all came about because of some very unhealthy lifestyles. People weren’t eating correctly because they were desperately trying to be thin and beautiful. They had malnutrition and took a lot of pills and other drugs to help them become and stay thin. People were so concerned with looking good that they put their health aside to get there.

As a result of this lifestyle, many people had a terrible time having BMs. Some people even died. Something had to be done to save these folks. So instead of changing their lifestyles, people flocked to the doctors to have their problem fixed. The problem became so prevalent that people became fearful of having BMs. Everyone dreaded going to the bathroom because of all the horror stories of pain and death. This normal, natural bodily function was labeled dangerous and hazardous and needed to be monitored and controlled to save lives.

Over time, it became the “norm” to go the hospital whenever someone had to have a BM so that doctors could monitor the process and intervene if they needed to. This continued through the years and is still practiced today. An onslaught of new life-saving technology and machinery was invented for us in aiding people to have a BM. It has become such a common practice to go to the hospital to have a BM that people have become uninformed. They don’t trust their own bodies to have a BM on their own. People are scared to have a BM that having one anywhere besides a hospital is considered irresponsible, dangerous and risky. Even though the old, unhealthy lifestyles, which caused the problem in the first place, are no longer practiced, having BMs is no longer considered a normal event. Even the healthiest of people go to the hospital to have BMs out of fear that something might happen. They go “just in case”.

So, you have to have a BM and even though you are a healthy man and having a BM is a normal, natural physiological function that your body was designed to do, we go to the hospital. We grab the hospital bag and head out the door in a hurry. During the car ride you get very tense because the cramps are coming on strong and you can’t get comfortable. You try breathing through them but this only helps a little with all the stop and go traffic and bumps in the road. Not to mention that you just wish you could be at home and have privacy. Upon arrival at the hospital, you are wheeled up to a room and instructed to put on a gown with nothing else on (it has a large opening in the back which will show you rear end if you get up and walk anywhere). You are told to lie down so that a nurse can examine you. Then a strange female nurse comes in and explains that she is going to have to insert 2 fingers into your rectum to check the progress of your feces. You obviously feel humiliated because someone you don’t know has just touched a very private and personal part of you.

Then the nurse straps a monitor to your belly to measure the severity of your cramps and stick an iv in your arm. This is very distracting and makes the pain of the cramps even worse. Soon, your cramps become stronger and you are getting very uncomfortable. At this point, the nurses change shifts and new nurse comes in. She says she needs to check you again since it’s been awhile and you don’t seem to be making any progress. She inserts 2 fingers again and shakes her head from side-to-side and gives you a very disapproving look. You have not made any progress. You want to try so badly to relax so you can make progress but with the IV, the strangers, the fingers in your rectum and the negative attitudes of the staff, there are just too many distractions and you can’t. By now your cramps are very painful and it takes all you’ve got to just stay on top of them.

The hospital team decides to insert a wire up your anus to determine if, indeed, your cramps are as bad as you say they are. They again insert 2 fingers to check the dilation and fecal decent. They tell you that if you don’t make any progress in the next 30 minutes, they may have to cut the feces out. This causes you to be even more tense and you have a hard time trying to relax just knowing what may happen if you can’t push it out yourself. After another hour of laying in bed, the female doctor comes in and does yet another exam with 2 fingers because he says he wants to be sure the nurses were doing it right. He feels it is time for you to begin to push. So you are in bed, flat on your back with your feet up in stirrups trying to have a BM and pushing with all your might while the strange nurse and a doctor intently watch your anus. The feces is not coming down fast enough so the doctor decides that your anus must not be big enough for the feces to pass through so they make a large cut in your anus to make it bigger. They also need to use a vacuum extractor to help pull the feces out.

You finally manage (with the help of a large cut and vacuum) to push the feces out. You are in a lot of pain, you’re bleeding, exhausted, spent and humiliated. You feel like something in your body is broken and didn’t work correctly. This must be true since you needed all this help for a normally natural bodily function right? The nurse then pushes on your abdomen to make sure all of the feces have been expelled. This is VERY painful but thank God you were in a hospital or else something bad might have happened. Someone stitches you up and are given instructions on how to aid your healing.

So, you made it through. You’re alive and that’s what really matters right? Is it though? What about your pain? What about the humiliation? What about the violation of privacy? What about the anger you feel towards the whole damn thing because your experience could have been completely normal and uncomplicated at home?

Now, this scenario is absolutely and utterly ridiculous right? It seems absurd to go to the hospital for something that could have easily, and much less painlessly, been done at home. The same is true of birth. This scenario is exactly what happens in today’s hospitals to birth (the “unhealthy” habits were obviously a bit different) and many women are suffering, needlessly, as a result. I can attest to the fact that this scenario is VERY common in hospitals today—I have even experienced it with my own hospital birth.

People have been raised to fear birth and to think that it needs the medical community to make it happen. Birth interventions have become so common that people accept them, and every side effect that comes with them, as necessary for a good outcome. And most don’t believe it when someone tells them that it can be so much better if those things weren’t done routinely.

A healthy, informed woman who is knowledgeable in birth had just as slim a chance of dying in birth as someone does while having a BM. All you need to have a safe birth is to be informed and to listen to your instincts (something that is very difficult to do with people watching you—just like it is difficult to have a BM with people watching you!). Birth is safe and simple. Just like having a BM is safe and simple. I need as much assistance while birthing our children as you do while having a bowel movement! Having a baby is a beautiful miracle having a homebirth is choosing to treat it that way.

Homebirth website I created

2007-02-25T20:18:00.001-08:00

www.freewebs.com/empoweredhomebirth/

The Rape of the Twentieth Century(20th) By Leilah McCraken

2007-02-25T20:15:00.000-08:00

Rape of the Twentieth Century
-by Jasmine Smythe. Written in March of 1998; revised April 2000.

I have had seven children move through my body, and I have much to tell you. Mothers who have given birth to many children have become a rarity; we are no longer the ones who teach the mysteries of birth- the voices of wisdom and reason instructing attendants in the proper care and assistance of parturient women. Modern obstetric knowledge is based on false hospital outcomes: doctors know how patients give birth, but they don't know how women give birth. We, as a society, have largely forgotten that birth is trustworthy- it doesn't need a lot of meddling. Birth is beautiful; it is passionate, wild, and hormonal. And it is wounded. Incomprehensibly intrusive, painful and humiliating hospital procedures have injured birth; it is bleeding, and weeping. The twentieth century has witnessed the institutionalized rape of childbirth.

I had the privilege- and misfortune- of conceiving my first baby at nineteen. Privilege because my body was young and resilient; misfortune because I was woefully ignorant of birth. The usual route was my path- I found a doctor, read lots of books about pregnancy written by doctors, and went to prenatal classes that told me to always obey my doctor.

In the last weeks of my pregnancy, I had increasingly strong contractions- I always thought I was going into labor, but never did. This was to be the seed of my massive self-doubt in giving birth- that my body couldn't perform; didn't know what to do when it was supposed to do it. I learned many years later that this is prodromal labor (I wish we could get rid of the word "labor")- one of Nature's many different ways of perfectly easing a woman's body into birth.

My water broke at 42 weeks, and as instructed by my books and prenatal instructor, I rushed to the hospital. I was introduced to hospital birthing by a giddy young doctor who had me strip down, lie flat on my back, and put both feet together on a bed pan. I was made to drop my knees open. He inserted a speculum in my vagina, and came in really, really close and had a good long look. There were two nurses in the room, drolly looking on. I said, "this is the most humiliating thing that's ever happened to me." No one else said anything.

I was hooked up to endless hours of fetal monitoring. My contractions were cramped, irregular and spasmodic- which happens very often with women attempting to give birth in hospitals, inherently stressful places to be in.

The next twenty-four hours were a maze of interventions: a large number of pelvic exams by many different people; being moved from room to room; blood work; an enema; obsessive fetal monitoring; tubes; needles; signing strange forms. I was not allowed to eat or drink, and became very weak.

My doctor (via telephone) put me on Pitocin drip. The contractions almost immediately became unmanageably intense. I had an epidural, but it didn't work (most local anesthetics don't work on me). Four hours later, my baby was born. I was starving, exhausted, traumatized, and thrilled at the birth of my baby daughter. My husband wept with joy.

It is the custom in North America to induce a woman's labor twenty-four hours after her water has broken; in many other countries, this is extended to over a week. The key factor in both philosophies is that induction must happen only if birth is not imminent within twenty-four hours of the first pelvic exam. But if no fingers are introducing possible contaminants, the risk of infection is minimal. So contrary to most popular birthing belief, after the natural rupture of her amniotic sac the worst place a woman can go is to the hospital: there, she is guaranteed of a contaminating pelvic exam upon admittance.

My second child came sixteen months later. My water broke: again I rushed to the hospital. I had irregular contractions and lots of pelvic exams. I was missing my baby at home so badly; I caught my reflection in a mirror. "I look so tragic!", I said through my tears.

Nothing was happening; my husband went out for a burger. An obstetrician with a team of students came in; he pushed my hospital gown up and stuck two fingers in my vagina. "Hmmm." He had a student do the same; "vertex (head down) and two centimeters dilated", she said. The obstetrician disagreed; he gave my cervix a REAL good feel and roughly twisted my uterus around. "You have a breech here." I wept! I had strangers casually touching my most secret parts; my husband was gone; I was hungry. The student asked if she could check me again, in the "interest of science". I annoyed everyone in the room with more weeping. The doctor told me the baby was in a transverse lie (lying sideways).

My husband was back now: I felt battered; spent; hopeless. We were told my labor and birth would be agonizing, dangerous and slow; but with a cesarean section the baby would be in my arms in forty minutes. What would you say?

I was wheeled to the operating room. I shakily climbed on top of the table. My arms were strapped away from my body; my feet were immobilized. My body was shaved. Needles and tubes were inserted. I said I felt like I was being crucified. A nurse tried to reassure me- "but with this kind of incision, you'll still be able to wear a bikini!"

Through the thick maze of moonsuited strangers I saw my doctor- I noticed for the first time how much eye makeup she wore. I heard a tableful of pagers beeping. After four attempts at an epidural, and lots of morphine, I was given spinal anesthetic. The baby was delivered- I felt an overwhelmingly bizarre extracting tug from my abdomen; I said, "oomph!" The staff looked up in alarm. The anesthetist smiled and said, "I always like to leave a little sensation for the mothers at birth." It's a boy! Relief and ecstasy flooded my body.

He was taken away to be examined. I heard his cries; I pestered the staff to hurry up so I could hold him. The obstetrician blandly explained that my bladder was sitting on my belly and had to be reinserted. I would also have to have all my layers of muscles and fat stitched together, and then my belly would have to be stapled shut. Oh. I was told to be a good girl.

Finally, it was done. In the recovery room I breastfed my baby, to the astonishment of the hospital personnel. At least I claimed that for myself... I learned much later that my baby wasn't a transverse lie at all, but a Frank breech, bottom presenting first- the easiest kind to deliver vaginally. I wasn't told the truth; I had a cesarean section for nothing.

Frank breech babies are best born vaginally, according to a study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. It was found elsewhere that overweight women are more likely to be cut: when I looked at my hospital records years later, the obstetrician repeatedly mentioned my "obesity": curvy women are not more likely to have difficult births, but they are more likely to be discriminated against.

I'm grateful, thought, that the surgical staff didn't put me under general anesthetic- it can be lethal to the bonding and breastfeeding of brand-new babies, and make a mother feel even more powerless.

After a sad miscarriage eight months later, I was pregnant again. At six months pregnant I injured my hand in a cooking mishap. I was whisked to the hospital, and waited two days for microsurgery; all the while fasting and on IV drip. While in the OR my family practitioner phoned (I was aware of this because I refused general anesthetic- and yes, it took several attempts to find the right kind of local anesthetic); my one-hour glucose tolerance test was a bit high. I said to tell her I would get tested for gestational diabetes right away.

I was hungry when I got home the next day: I ate a birthday cake and several large orders of french fries with Coke. Early the next morning I had the three-hour glucose tolerance test. Two of the blood glucose levels of the three that matter most were high- a positive test result for gestational diabetes. What a week I was having! In learned retrospect, the diagnosis was a sham: I have to wonder why no one asked me about what I had eaten the previous day, and why wouldn't it matter about the fasting, the surgery, and stress I had been under?

So the next few months were spent largely with doctors- in the hand clinic for occupational therapy; in the diabetes clinic at the hospital; seeing my own family practitioner; seeing the cursed obstetrician who gave me the c-section and also the go-ahead for a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean).

In the last weeks of the pregnancy I had been having my usual strong contractions. And since I was worried about my "gestational diabetes" having a harmful effect on my baby, I went to the hospital- I thought I should be induced; my body didn't work for birth anyway. I was sent home.

Then at forty-two weeks, my contractions were picking up, and I was having show (pink mucous or light blood from the vagina). I went to the hospital- I was two and a half centimeters dilated, and a bit effaced. But I was distraught at the thought of being sent home again! I implored the nurses to do something to help me give birth. I was positive I was defective, certain I would have died with my previous births if I hadn't been in the hospital. So my membranes were ruptured.

This birth, compared to the others, came quickly and easily. My husband was stunned- he said- "is that it?"

My fourth baby came twenty-six months later (no "gestational diabetes" this time). I was fanatically fit and extremely uncomfortable in this pregnancy- fit and uncomfortable because I exercised like mad, even at the end, out of fear of developing diabetes.

At forty weeks I had light contractions and a touch of show; I phoned the hospital. On a nurse's advice we rushed in, and my body stopped working. I hated my body, called it stupid and useless. They broke my water at one-half centimeter dilation. (Segue- isn't it funny how women who have hospital births say "they" when referring to those who attend and badger them in labor and delivery? Women who have homebirths say "me", and "I".)

Still nothing much happened; just a lot of niggly, irritating spasm-like contractions. I remember trying to find a quiet place to "nest". I had two obstetric nurses and a doctor (a stand-in for my doctor, who was on a ski trip) literally sitting and waiting for my every sensation. A student, too: she had short fingers, and was having difficulty finding my cervix in pelvic exams. I placed my fists under my hips so her fingers could reach inside my vagina more efficiently. What a good helper! No wonder I wanted to retreat, to get away!

Every now and then I would cry. The staff were concerned; I said not to worry, because it seemed to be a hormonal thing- it happened at every birth.

My uterus was palpated, and I was assessed to have a baby in posterior presentation- "facing pubes" (babies are normally born facing the mother's spine). The pain soon became ferociously intense: hysterically agonizing contractions as I kneeled on the shower floor with a man-midwife (male obstetric nurse) hosing my lower back with a tepid shower nozzle. My husband held my hand. I screamed that the baby was coming. I made it to the bed and flopped onto my back and shrieked him out. I vowed never to have another child.

I recently learned that my baby most likely went into that position because my membranes were ruptured prematurely. The most agonizing of all my births did not have to be that way at all.

I relocated during the pregnancy of my fifth child, a year later. I got a new doctor. Again, no gestational diabetes. I passed the forty week "best before date" and was advised of a new policy that women must be induced at ten days past their expected delivery date. I questioned the validity of this; my doctor told me of worries of placental insufficiency, of placental calcification- worries that my baby would be deprived of oxygen and nutrients. This sounded reasonable to me. (Though not reasonable to a study published years later that found that routine inductions at 41 weeks will increase labor complications and operative deliveries, but will not improve infant outcomes.)

Nine days went past my due date without any excessive uterine activity. I went to the hospital, was monitored for an hour then had Prostin (prostaglandin gel) smeared on my cervix. I was monitored for an hour more. I was released, but told to come back either in six hours or in actual labor. So my husband and I walked around, trying to get my labor going. I started feeling strange, shooting pains in my cervix and down the backs of my legs. I suggested we find a place to have illicit sex, because the sensations I felt from the gel, it occurred to me, were identical to those I feel after having sex in late pregnancy.

I learned much later that the idea for the gel itself- which is reported to have a base of pig semen- actually came from human sperm, which is rich in the cervix-dilating, prostaglandin hormone. Human sperm, though, is a better way of inducing labor, because it can be compounded with natural oxytocin. Loving and orgasmic sensations- hopefully intrinsic in the lovemaking process- are known to stimulate the secretion of oxytocin in a woman's brain (and interestingly, in a man's), and oxytocin is an integral hormone for birth. Nipple stimulation releases it in abundance as well.

My husband passed on the quickie; it seemed that he felt my vagina had somehow become the hospital's property, now that it had been meddled with. We went back to the hospital. Thinking of my fourth child's birth, I was terrified of what was to come.

I was confined to a fetal monitor. A strange, haggard looking man (the staff obstetrician) examined me, and found that my afternoon's progress amounted to two centimeters dilation. Oh. I commented on how tired he looked- he told me that he had been working for the past three days. Did he sleep?- I asked. Yes, sometimes, he said; there's a cot in the doctor's lounge. We must speed things along, he said, to "get this nasty business over with".

He ruptured my membranes, and instructed me to semi-sit for an hour, so the umbilical cord wouldn't prolapse. Cord prolapse, often fatal for the baby, happens when the cord drops below the baby's head and comes out first. Artificially rupturing the membranes is known to be a cause of this! My babies had always been at risk, and no one even told me how. Where was my "informed consent"?

I played some cribbage with my husband. I felt myself drifting into a strange land I had never been in; my terror was replaced with a wonderful calm. I felt peaceful and introspective; sleepy and restful with every birth sensation. The nurse-midwife attending me was amazed. But my progress was slow for a fifth child- it took twelve hours from my first prostaglandin smearing until I was moved at six centimeters dilation to the delivery room.

The table- not even a bed anymore- was my birthing enemy. My lovely contracting became cramped and sore. I instinctively pushed the nurse-midwife's hands to my breasts, to stimulate the release of oxytocin; she rigidly pulled her hands away. After a while, my baby was born. The doctor tugged painfully, inexplicably, on the umbilical cord.

A new nurse took over within a few minutes of the birth. This was her last day of work, ever, as an obstetric nurse: thirty-eight years of this place, of countless episiotomies and shavings, of love and death and birth and the whole damned thing. She wanted to tell me about herself and her husband and how the times are a'changing, as I tried to breastfeed my brand-new baby. I listened politely. My husband went out for a smoke and some phone calls. The nurse reluctantly left when I shooed her out of the room.

Then I was finally alone with my baby. There we were, alone and entranced, hospital-tagged and naked, when I heard the screams of the woman giving birth in the room beside me. I said aloud, "get me out of this chamber of horrors".

We went upstairs, and got settled into a semiprivate room. I tried to breastfeed and sleep, but the woman next to me had difficulty in caring for her baby- they were both crying. I heard phones ringing. I was hungry; I had to get my own toast from a kitchenette on the other side of the ward.

I took my baby everywhere; I wouldn't let "them" touch him to bathe him or weigh him or pester him. I insisted on doing everything myself. There were people everywhere, in my room, in the halls, in the nursery; everyone saw my leaking breasts hanging out, my matted hair, my tears. I crept to the day lounge with my baby swaddled in hospital towels. I sat with him and mourned, how I cried over all that was lost! I wept and shook. A nurse came in. "You should be in your room!" I said, "I need privacy! I have to come here to cry!" I pulled my baby under my chin.

A year and a half later, when I summoned my hospital records through the Freedom of Information Act (please, everyone, do this!), I saw that this nurse wrote that I was handling my baby roughly. (I was holding him tightly to me as I wept and shook.) I would never hurt my babies! I was being watched, scrutinized. Another nurse accused me of bruising my baby when she saw a birthmark on his leg. These cold, semi-sterile strangers believed me to be a child abuser! Even the most kindly-faced nurse was watching every move, every whimper, like a malevolent hawk. I left shortly thereafter.

A few days later, at home, this thought went through my head- a swirling black flicker of sentience that translated into the following sentence- hospital birth is the rape of the twentieth century.

Women are systematically, routinely, and willingly assaulted every day by individuals and institutions who claim to have their best interests at heart, and most women have no concept of what is lost. Yes, it is rape: just as a man forcing sexual intercourse on a woman strips her of her powers, and wounds her in sacred places, so does birth rape. Women are left shaking, enraged and filled with sorrow after both rapes, because the rape is the same. And just as it would matter if our children were conceived through rape, it matters if they are born through rape. And in both rapes we bleed.

~~~~

Women are made to bleed, often uncontrollably, in hospital births. They bleed because of the standard shot of oxytocin in the leg after birth: a woman's natural oxytocin-making mechanisms (which contract the uterus to its previous size) shut down when a huge dose of the synthetic hormone is in her bloodstream. And when the artificial stuff wears off, a woman will suddenly feel faint and collapse in a pool of her own blood. (The uterus has stopped contracting, and the placental site is nearly as large and raw as it was after birth. Artificial hormones used to induce labor cause excessive bleeding, too.) Hemorrhage also happens when "fundus fiddling" is involved: impatient birth attendants will externally manipulate a woman's uterus to expel the placenta, and will even tug on the cord. This is agonizing, as well as bloody.

A bigger cause of bleeding is episiotomy. Most blood loss in a typical birth will actually come from an episiotomy wound; so much so that a woman can even become anemic. Episiotomy is a foul, malevolent invention- created out of the incredible logic of trying to prevent a perineal injury by inflicting one. When vaginas are cut open, women suffer: episiotomies can rip through a woman's perineal tissues, causing extensive tearing; they hurt intensely- doctors will often not even wait for the local anesthetic to kick in before cutting (or even bother administering one); women will cry when they pee for a month. Scar tissue can make sex painful or difficult, often for a woman's lifetime; and sexual sensation can be diminished because episiotomy permanently severs the nerves that flow far into the perineum from the clitoris.

The wound often becomes painfully infected- in which case the sutures need to be removed to drain the wound, and the perineum needs to be painfully restitched. Deathly gangrenous infections- necrotizing fasciitis and clostridial myonecrosis- are caused by episiotomy. Cancer, endometriosis, and brain abscesses are known to be seeded from the episiotomy site, too.

Episiotomies permanently weaken the pelvic floor muscles and can cause hidden injuries to the anal sphincter. This is the reason that 6% of women have anal and fecal incontinence after childbirth. And sometimes after severe tearing, a rectovaginal fistula (a gap in the wall between the rectum and the vagina) will develop- and women will pass feces through their vaginas. These women are left feeling abused, mutilated, dirty- and are often told to consult a psychiatrist. They will need more surgery to repair the initial injury, and future babies will have to be delivered by cesarean section.

Babies can get cut in episiotomies too. There have been reports of eyelid lacerations, and even castration in breech-borne babies. Episiotomies cause the need for hazardous and painful suctioning: when a woman's vagina has been cut open, it cannot tightly squeeze the baby's shoulders as they pass through the birth canal. Nature has her own way of "suctioning"- the pressure of the walls of an uncut vagina squeezes the baby's shoulders and chest, making fluids burp out of the baby's nose and mouth, easily and naturally.

Natural tears are easier on the body- they heal far more quickly, and are less painful than razor-sharp, deep scissor cuts. Despite this- and the fact that there is no scientific support, whatsoever, in favor of routine episiotomy- over 60% of hospital-birthing women will still get one. Many doctors (and even nurse-midwives) are loathe to give up the old ways, and resist eradicating this most unfair cut.

Forceps, created through the unbelievable reasoning that babies' heads will be protected from birth by clamping metal tongs, are often used in conjunction with episiotomy. Forceps (and to a lesser degree vacuum extractors) cause rectal injuries, and anal difficulties- such as chronic, painful hemorrhoids: the veins inside pregnant women's rectums are naturally very thin. And when artificial extraction equipment is used- especially in association with coerced, forced "purple pushing" births- these delicate veins become engorged, distended, weakened and bruised. Any existing hemorrhoids become fiercely painful, and often manifest themselves into lifetimes of drugstore analgesics and sitting on rubber rings at movie theaters.

Use of forceps can permanently disfigure women's genitals, and cause bladder injuries- sometimes women's bladders are so badly bruised that lifelong urinary stress incontinence problems result. For babies, forceps use can cause cerebral and Bell's palsies, cephalhematomas (pools of blood forming under the scalp), skull fractures, and great pain- and painful birth brings an increased risk of violent suicide later in life.

In 1920, the article "The Prophylactic Forceps Operation" by Joseph B. DeLee became the touchstone for physician-managed vaginal deliveries. It detailed DeLee's ideal birth: first cutting a large episiotomy on an etherized, unconscious, bound woman, then pulling her baby out with forceps. Then manually removing the placenta, and giving large doses of ergot to curtail postpartum hemorrhage. Then pulling the cervix down with forceps to examine it, and stitch up any tears. Then carefully reconstructing the vagina to restore "virginal conditions". Scopolamine and morphine are given in the birth, and then for the lengthy post-delivery work to "prolong narcosis for many hours postpartum and to abolish the memory of labor." This one man's torturous birth ideal became the standard for women's births for the bulk of the twentieth century. Incredibly, there is a prestigious award given in his name… the "DeLee Humanitarian Award". It is awarded to doctors who have made outstanding contributions to the health of women and infants.

Epidural anesthetic has replaced scopolamine as the birth drug of "choice"- in some centers over 90% of birthing women will have an epidural- and it can lead to terrible consequences (none of which women are routinely told about when they ask- "is it safe?"). 70% of women will experience side effects- such as low blood pressure, fecal and urinary incontinence, paralysis of the lower extremities, allergic reactions, respiratory depression, headache, vomiting, and seizures. 20% will develop fever for which the baby will need to be treated too. 15-35% will have to be catheterized because they can't pee. 30-40% will have severe backache for hours or days after birth, and 20% will have severe backache one year later.

Epidurals cause one in ten babies to be born "blue" (severe fetal hypoxia- lack of oxygen; induction drugs cause it too). The Caine-derivative anesthetics used in epidurals rapidly cross the placenta and can harm both a baby's central nervous system and cardiac function. Epidural drugs- especially when given with a cocktail of other drugs- cause jaundice, as newborns try to metabolize the powerful drugs with their immature livers. Epidurals lead to a decrease in muscle tone and strength in the newborn, affecting the baby's ability to breastfeed properly. And since dose is calibrated to maternal weight, babies can easily get an overdose (a baby is about one-twentieth the size of the mother). Babies receiving epidural drugs, as well as any other kind of painkilling drug in their births, are more likely to be addicted to drugs later in life- and have learning disabilities and violent behavior. Epidurals make women four times more likely to have forceps or vacuum extractor deliveries, and twice as likely to get cesarean sections.

Cesarean sections are done for many reasons, mostly relating to impatience in the hospital staff. "Failure to progress" being the most common and infuriating reason: this is when a woman's cervix is not dilating according to the hospital's preset idea of how a labor should unfold, and she is literally stood over and told to dilate. She is threatened with surgery if she doesn't. Of course her body won't open for birth in such a dangerous and stressful scenario; and if the baby can't be blasted out by artificial oxytocin or dragged out by forceps, it will be cut out by an obstetrician.

A c-section may also performed due to the observance of normal fluctuations of a baby's heart rate (as noted on a fetal monitor, often the first intervention in the classic cascade of interventions); these fluctuations may sometimes lead medical personnel to erroneously believe that the baby is in "distress", and needs to be removed immediately. Activities like thumb-sucking, sleeping and even maternal thirst will cause dramatic differences in fetal heart rates. (Though sometimes the baby will be put in genuine distress through drugs or hormones given to the mother.)

Cephalopelvic disproportion is another common excuse for a cesarean section: it is often claimed that many women's pelvic outlets are too small for babies to pass through. This is nonsense! If so many women had such useless pelvises for birthing, their ancestors would not have survived- and the only women alive today would have enormously wide pelvises! Modern women's bodies aren't broken- they know how to give birth, if only left alone; women who are said to be incapable of birthing without modern obstetrics are very likely to be supremely able to give birth without intervention- as long as they are nowhere near the institution that is so quick to intervene.

In most hospitals, one in five women will have a cesarean section; in some centers the number is as high as one in three. This statistic should not be any higher than three in one hundred! And the cruelty of cesarean section must not be diminished because of its frequency: women should be focusing on babies, love and breastfeeding in the first weeks after birth; not staples, catheters and weeping incisions!

After my section (as in cross-section; vivisection) I understood misery: trying to care for my new baby while recovering from major abdominal surgery on a hard hospital bed was the most heartbreaking thing in my life. Every move was agony; gas pains ripped sickly through my savaged abdomen; my catheter hurt me when it was inside my urethra, and left sharp pains when it was out. I could barely move to change my baby's diaper, and the hospital staff were too busy to help me care for my baby. The tape that held the IV tube in my arm constantly had to be repositioned, and each time it ripped at my skin and hair.

I wasn't allowed to eat: first the liquids on Day One after surgery, then the gruel on Day Two, then the mash on Day Three was not the sustenance I needed to fuel my breasts for milk-making, nor to feed my healing, ravaged body. I was a patient, a sickly invalid, a twenty-one year-old woman who had to pee in a bag, and hold her belly together before rolling over in bed. I was helpless to care for my new baby, and I will always remember his first days of life as grotesquely uncomfortable, and full of sorrow. I couldn't even get up to brush my teeth.

And why are the significant risks of cesarean section not discussed? I didn't even know of the danger I was in. Women are up to sixteen times more likely to die after a cesarean delivery than a vaginal birth. Cesareans cause hemorrhage; women during cesareans are ten times more likely to lose their uteruses because of unstoppable bleeding, and hemorrhage is actually the leading cause of all maternal deaths. Cesarean sections cause ileus (intestinal paralysis associated with abdominal injury), intestinal obstructions and adhesions, pulmonary embolism, and Mendelson's syndrome (acid pulmonary aspiration). There is a 20% chance of a dangerous infection developing after the birth- a big problem with the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant hospital microbes.

After a cesarean, women suffer more from postpartum depression. And birth trauma, a much misunderstood condition that most doctors haven't even heard of, which stems directly from feelings of powerlessness and worthlessness that come from violent hospital births.

Women can develop lifelong urinary stress incontinence when the bladder is peeled away from the uterus, and bladder and uterus injuries happen, as well accidental injuries to other organs, tissues and vessels. Cesareans cause respiratory distress syndrome in newborns- a leading killer of babies, and between 2-6% of babies will be accidentally cut by the scalpel.

After cesareans, women are more likely to develop ectopic pregnancies (if they even manage to get pregnant at all); and future babies are at risk of poor outcomes. Women are also more likely to grow placentas that either block their vaginal outlets (placenta previa), or detach themselves while a woman is still in her pregnancy (abruptio placentae)- and both conditions can kill the mother and baby.

Future births will be considered high risk because of the slight chance of the cesarean scar rupturing, and a ruptured uterus can cause death for the baby and a lost uterus for the mother. VBAC women being administered induction drugs are at particular risk of uterine rupture, especially with the drugs Prostin (I was blissfully unaware of the danger I was in during the birth of my fifth), and Cytotec- an ulcer drug not even approved for obstetrical use by the FDA or its manufacturer: it makes women up to 28 times more likely to have their uteruses rupture in childbirth (despite this, its use has spread like wildfire in the medical and nurse-midwifery communities). The pain of cesareans just goes on and on.

In a cesarean section, a private, secret, and sensual event becomes a sterile crucifixion in a room full of slicing, staring strangers. And the ultimate rape is that we are told we need to be cut. The sanctity and power of birth becomes a meek "yes, doctor" and we become spectators to our own violation; we even thank the doctors as they scurry on their way out of the operating room.

In the hospital, an overwhelming, poisonous complacency overtakes us as we are stripped of our privacy, our dignity, and even our clothing. We hold our doctors in a position of utmost trust; we believe in their good intentions, and their upholding of the Hippocratic Oath (do no harm). But they do do harm- they do harm every day. And they are given societal sanction to do as they please with us.

This reminds me of children being abused by trusted people in positions of power: the abuse, committed selfishly and without regard for the children's future, is insidious and generational, and the children always believe they deserve what happens to them. The abuse of women's bodies in birth is committed for the selfish convenience of medicine, with little regard for women's immediate and future health. Generations of women have been told their abuse is necessary, that bloody birth is universal, and unavoidable- due to the frail malfunctioning of their own bodies. Women and children are told to put up, and shut up. This is no longer tolerable. Just as abusive authority figures are being increasingly held accountable for the suffering of children, exploitive medical practitioners must be held accountable for every stitch, every stab, every scalpel slice that is inflicted on women's bodies- even decades after the cut.

The underlying motive for every hospital birth is the safety of the baby (as if the hospital environment is salve to new life). A woman is told that her healthy baby is all that matters, that the end justifies the means- if she's sliced and diced in birth, then so be it; that the baby in her arms at the end is all that matters.

But a woman matters. Her vagina matters, her belly matters, her intact veins and perineum matters, feces emerging from her vagina matters, her self-esteem matters, her love of birth matters, she matters! Not allowing a woman a powerful birth is like never letting her achieve orgasm; sort of like saying "orgasms don't matter, dear, as long as you conceive!"

I call the whole ritual of sacrificing the integrity, power, and sexuality of birth "puerperal infibulation". Just as women in some cultures have their clitorises clipped and their vulvas shaved of flesh and sewn shut (infibulation), women in our culture quite often have their vaginas, perinea, and bellies cut open by doctors, then have their bodies sutured or stapled shut after it all. In both cases, women are either held tightly or strapped down to restrain them when the knives or scissors come out- and have little say regarding the outcome of the knife.

Interestingly, the underlying purposes are the same: to rigidly control female sexuality (yes, childbirth is an inherently sexual event), and to protect children as they are being born. Many cultures practicing routine female genital mutilation (FGM) are insistent in their belief that in birth, if an infant touches its mother's sexual tissues, it may well die (hence the removal of external genitalia). On average, one out of four North American women are told that unless their babies are delivered by cesarean section, their babies may well die (and of course, babies don't even come close to their mothers' vaginal tissues). Or unless our vaginas are cut open, our babies may be injured in the tight passage of birth. ("Crushed against a tight pelvic floor", as Joseph B. DeLee said.) Vaginas are very threatening things to some people!

Westerners hearing of FGM are adamant in believing in the sinister backwardness of practicing cultures. But how can we call the former culture barbaric when our own actions are so monstrous? Whether a woman has her vagina cut open in an isolated hut or in a world class teaching hospital is irrelevant: she's still having her vagina cut open, her suffering is still severe, and will inevitably endure.

Another reason women's vaginas are mutilated is to ensure a tight fit for their male partners. In some societies, models are made of betrothed men's penises- these models are inserted into the vaginas of the brides-to-be; then the women's vaginas are cut and sewn to fit the models' dimensions. In our society, I hear of doctors who tell women before their cesarean sections- "Your husband will thank me"; or asking the fathers, before episiotomy stitch-ups: "Do you want me to put a couple of extra stitches in for you?" Yes, this is happening now- not twenty years ago.

Puerperal infibulation is as deeply rooted in our culture as FGM is in the cultures that practice it. Here, women are myopically coerced into giving their birthing bodies to intervention-eager practitioners; there, women are vehemently encouraged to have themselves made surgically chaste. And we are both made to believe in the purposefulness of such mutilation, compelled to succumb to the sublime wisdom of those who profess to be more learned, more wise, more virtuous in mind and in practice than the simple women we appear to be- we are taught to trust in the righteousness of authority, and to disdain our most basic urges to flee.

And overwhelmingly, resistance is futile- because sadly, in both cultures, our own mothers and grandmothers- the ones who claim to love us most- usher us the most eagerly into the hands of the practitioners waiting to perform the cruelest cuts; mother-cutting is generational, and insidious. The elder generation can rarely see the pointlessness of this painful cycle- their own suffering seemingly will not go unfelt by the younger generations.

And birthing bloodshed isn't about to end- Western women are reluctant to give up their beloved doctors, and their worship at the altar of Modern Medicine. Exasperatingly, I have found that most women don't even come close to believing me when I tell them they don't need to go to the hospital to give birth; they especially refuse to believe that childbirth is trustworthy, and doesn't need gloved fingers, neurotic monitoring nor surgical scissors to perform its inevitable, evolutionary task.

There is a fantasy bond that develops between those involved in the high drama of Western medical birth deliverance. The anxiety created in the birth process is relieved by the emergence of a live baby and the ultimate survival of the mother. The stressed family believes that they were saved, and they love their violators- returning time and again to the scene of violence unless they wake up, and begin to question the whole structure.

Puerperally infibulated women strive to find reason in their pain, a utilitarian purpose for every poke, every cut, and every scalpel slice. We need to believe in the righteousness of what's done to us- the sadness and horror of it all would be too much too bear, otherwise. Perhaps some women's worship of doctors is stemmed in a history of dysfunctional "enabling" relationships- it seems that the women who are the most abused at their doctors' hands are the ones who are the most unlikely to move away from their doctors' control (I know I was- I was always desperate to be a good girl, to please my doctors; I was always effusive in my forgiving of their errors). Disabling birth responses are based in our collective cultural birth hysteria, and women's fear and distrust of birth are so ingrained that someone who speaks of birth as an intimate, sensual event is likely to be feared and reviled.

But telling a puerperally infibulated woman about the beauty of birth must be like telling a woman with her clitoris snipped off that sex can be erotic and orgasmic. They will both think you don't know what you are talking about. But I have had my clitoris reattached, so to speak, and I must tell the world about what is lost.

It is only logical that childbirth should take place where a women feels most secure and comfortable- in her own home. Homebirth is safe: the countries with the highest incidence of midwife-attended homebirths have the lowest infant mortality rates, and women have much better overall outcomes. In a homebirth, interventions are taken very seriously, and are considered and reconsidered before resorting to (at hospitals, the very ease with which interventions occur lead to their phenomenal commonplaceness). Homebirth would only be dangerous if the common obstetric interventions were brought from hospital to home.

Home waterbirth in particular encourages excellent outcomes. Immersion in a birthing pool soothes away fear and discomfort; mothers need no artificial pain relief; labors are quicker and easier; big babies come more easily, and, due to how relaxed and supple perineal tissues remain, women rarely tear. Women can easily move their bodies for the smooth passage of their babies, and find optimal birthing positions without the cumbersome effects of gravity, as "on land". Women with knee or back problem can find comfortable birthing positions more comfortably.

And after giving birth in their own homes, in water or on a firm surface, women have joyful memories of their births and recover quickly. So why don't more women have homebirths, when the cost and trauma involved are so minimal? Whose interests are served by the women's enforced ignorance, and the ritualized invasion of childbirth? Not any mother's, nor any baby's.

If women and children are to thrive, they must be left alone in the genuinely trustworthy passage of birth. And choosing to stay home, far away from the equipment and practitioners that so easily and routinely foul birth, is the best way to ensure a healthy outcome.

So why are we mostly told to give birth in hospitals? There is a deep cultural fear of natural processes, especially of women's sexuality; and our medical establishment is a reflection of our society. It is "safer" to medicalize birth than it is to understand the true power of women, and the trustworthy functioning of female bodies.

As long as we think rape only involves sexual intercourse, sensual can only mean erotic, and bottlefeeding is a healthy alternative to breastfeeding, we are not realizing the magnificence of our own existence: orgasmic lovemaking, being pregnant, giving birth, breastfeeding, and feeling goofy baby love all come from the same hormones; are all the same sensual swoon. And all must be left alone: we need privacy and dignity to explore our most secret and loving places.

Of course, there are exceptions to homebirth. Certain women have health conditions that may need advanced obstetrical care, and these women should never be condemned for not being able to give birth without intervention. Each obstetrical intervention benefits a small number of women. But when interventions are applied to women as a rule, the risk/benefit ratio reverses, and more harm is caused than good.

~~~~

Thirteen months after my fifth child was born, I was pregnant again. I did not want another hospital birth.

I began searching for a better way to give birth. I read the helpful and powerful "Homebirth", by Sheila Kitzinger. I contacted various midwives registered with the College of Midwives of British Columbia, but understood that they would medicalize my pregnancy too much; would give me too many tests and interfere unnecessarily with my birth.

I heard of midwife Gloria Lemay through friends. I spoke to her of my experiences on the phone. I asked her how many babies she delivered- "Oh, I don't deliver babies, the Moms do that! I've attended over six hundred births, though." I asked her if she would touch my breasts for me if I needed that done in my birthing time. "I'd stand on my head naked in Mundy Park if it would help you get your baby out." We talked for hours. My husband and I went to meet her; she would attend my birth.

I got enormous amounts of hostility and concern from my extended family regarding my choice, and after hearing their experiences with forceps, rectal exams and stirrups, I understood their paralyzing fears. I summoned all of my medical records, and found the many inconsistencies, half-truths and outright lies that had occurred in my colorful obstetric history.

Forty weeks came quickly. My due date! Four liters of Labor Aide waited for me in the fridge, my mattress was covered in a painter's drop sheet- I was ready. But nothing was happening! The old dread came back. My body's busted! I can't give birth without intervention!

As the days crawled by uneventfully, I would call Gloria, crying. "I'm not like other women! I can't give birth by myself!" And she would say, "Of course you can, and of course you will. Your body will give birth whether you believe it or not. Your body knew how to conceive your babies, it knew how to breastfeed your babies, and it knows how to give birth to your babies." "You trust my body?" "Yes, I trust your body. Your birth will be beautiful." For a little while, I would believe her. She would give me these pep talks as I would need them.

At forty-two weeks my mother became very concerned; I myself was born almost a month late: my mother attributed my eye troubles as a child to her lengthy pregnancy with me. I called Gloria. "My baby will be born half-dead and blind!" "No! You're baby's fine!"

He was very active, and had a consistently strong heartbeat. I was healthy- my blood pressure was fantastic, and my diet was great. She said, "I can't think of any environment healthier for your baby than inside your uterus." Yet I knew that I would have been induced with almost any other midwife, and certainly with any doctor. Sometimes I had deep doubts about what I was doing- I knew that almost no one would agree with our waiting it out.

But I learned that forty weeks is just an average length of gestation- different women will give birth at different lengths of pregnancy, in the same way that every birth and every person is unique. We are born, learn to crawl, walk and talk at our own special pace; we can only learn and grow according to our own unique developmental schedule. No one has the right to intrude with preset notions of how a birth or life should unfold.

I grew afraid of my impending birth. I was afraid of the pain. I read a book written by another woman whose sixth child's pregnancy also went beyond forty weeks (Chris Griscom's "Ocean Born- Birth as Initiation"). She said, "Don't be afraid! Birth is yours to give! Claim it for yourself!" I would repeat this to myself in times of fear.

Forty-three weeks of pregnancy went by; I started a debate about midwifery in a local newspaper. It kept my mind occupied. I learned how to check my own cervix; I was more than three centimeters dilated already, really soft and beautifully open- thanks to my lovely, ongoing prodromal labor. I passed my mucus plug; Gloria said she had never seen a woman lose it and go more than four days without giving birth.

One week later: stumbling sad in the snow, feeling as though my pregnancy was a straightjacket I couldn't get out of. Why hadn't I given birth yet? There was no confusion about my dates; I had done a home pregnancy test two days after I expected my last period. This was a time of intense fear for me; I was terrified by all the medical documentation that said my baby would be unhealthy, that my placenta was dying. How could I trust in this one woman when so many others would have had me induced almost three weeks ago?

Then one night, at forty-four weeks pregnant, I woke up to pee. As I sat down, I felt a little pop!- my water had broken! I called Gloria. We quietly chatted, and she was on her way. My children were nearby; I touched their hair as they slept. I prepared a warm bath for myself. I caught my reflection in the mirror- I was radiant, joyful, beautiful.

My birthing sensations felt like squeezing hugs across my belly. Jacob helped me out of the tub, then put some African music on. We kissed and danced. For the first time ever, I was joyful in birth, and left alone- no needles, knives, fingers, hooks, scissors, staples, drugs, tubes, synthetic hormones, medical students, nonsense.

And no crying! The tears I had always had in labors before were not hormonal, but environmental...

My body worked beautifully: each birth sensation was elegant, and forceful. After three hours, the time had come. I kneeled on our couch, and panted, sighed and screamed my baby out. He was ten and a half pounds and adorable! My husband caught him in his big, warm hands, and I laid back to receive him onto my body. I have never felt such bliss.

Every woman deserves such bliss! Interfering with this bliss must be recognized as the criminal act that it is! Blissful birth is the birthright of every woman; a gift from her body to her soul!

My placenta was perfect. An induction would have been brutally unnecessary. I buried my placenta on day four. I never knew how much my placentas mattered to me; some cultures say they are the bodies of children's guardian angels. I still cry for all that has been lost.

We are living in strange and savage times. This century will be remembered as one of war and genocide; and violent, coercive childbirth. Birth is weeping, and bleeding. We are made to believe we must give birth in sometimes hostile and mostly indifferent hospitals, where interference with a woman's natural birthing rhythms is the norm. Our vaginas can be stared at and cut by strangers, and abnormal emotional and physical behaviors- such as excessive fear, crying, and stress-induced stoppage of labor- have become normal and expected. Babies are routinely harmed; and the perpetrators are exalted as life savers, instead of reviled as child abusers. A birth without unnecessary intervention is now unusual, even though we all have the potential to birth beautifully- if only left alone.

One hundred years ago, hospital birth was considered to be the radical and dangerous alternative to a midwife-assisted homebirth. Women avoided doctors and hospitals for many reasons: they didn't want to be experimented on (and many still are- especially poor, minority, very young, and/or non English-speaking women); highly contagious puerperal fever was a deadly reality; disease ran rampant (and still does); the of idea having men (almost all doctors were male) in the "lying-in chamber" seemed dangerously immodest. Hospitals and doctors were expensive. But quite quickly, doctors became the accepted providers of maternity care; and after a century long, worldwide smear campaign by the medical establishment, midwives and their wisdom have almost become extinct.

But women are becoming unwilling to be pawns that are moved, positioned and sacrificed by the medical "profession". We are increasingly, and passionately, healing birth for ourselves; and women who have borne many children can be instrumental in helping other women understand the mysteries and myriad variances of pregnancy and childbirth.

Hospital birth must once again be considered the radical alternative to a planned homebirth. If women still insist on having hospital births, they must consider having experienced labor support people, such as strong doulas, with them at all times- to vociferously and passionately "guard the normal". Homebirth is the obvious way to avoid unnecessary interventions altogether. Midwives have the potential to be our greatest allies in this; but they, too, must resist the temptation to try to "hurry things along", or interfere unnecessarily.

Most importantly, women must remember that childbirth is sacred- it is the most primal and hormonal event of our lives. And it is the most beautiful- it is when we meet our babyloves for the first time.

But we cannot expect others to respect and love our births and our bodies when we do not ourselves believe them to be sacred. I find it most heartbreaking that women still need to be convinced that being cut and stabbed at in birth is an inherently bad thing.

Please, women. Claim birth for yourselves. It belongs to you.

For medical resferences for Rape of the Twentieth Century, go here.