'Free birthing' AIBU to think this woman should not be encouraging people to do this

[WilliowGreen]

In this guardian article this woman boasts about her wonderful birth experience by rejecting all care including scans because "it was not empowering".
Before I had my baby (she is 2 weeks old) I would probably have thought her lack of self awareness was funny. Now it quite irrationally fills me with rage.
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/28/experience-i-had-a-free-birth.

The NHS would have stepped in if needed and done everything possible to help. Without any background from scans and blood tests, it could have cost loads more

why would it cost loads more? If a child is born with a condition, then the blood tests don't cost any more to do on the child than they do the parent.

Happy

Living in London, not too far from our Heroine, I'd go for a Tube Map name:

Dollis Hill for a girl, Stepney for a boy

Yoda

I'm a crunchy as they come but there is no way I'd put my baby at risk! We did hypnobirthing and all that stuff and my DDs birth was the most empowering experience I have even had. But further births won't be at the demise of a child's health

Wow - she really is on Planet Woo isn't she? Bloody lucky the baby and her came to no harm. Yes, birth can be over-medicalised - I was induced and under up with emergency c/S which I will never know if was a result of not waiting for labour to start naturally, but at the end of the day we were both fine.

"Home births were the norm until the 1970s Earlier on free birthing was common. Or giving birth with no access to medical care as I prefer to call it."

If by free birthing you understand delivering your baby without the presence of women considered to have special experience/knowledge of childbirth, then I don't think this is something that has been common in any society.

"Also, if someone's prepared to put themselves and their baby at risk of dying during childbirth then surely that's their lookout? In the same way that climbing Everest would be their lookout? "

if the baby is left permanently disabled, e.g. by being deprived of oxygen during labour, then that is also the baby's lookout, maybe for the next 80 years or so

the Mount Everest climb is a actually a pretty good analogy: that too has pretty good potential for putting vulnerable people's lives at risk

and unlike freebirthing also does a lot of environmental damage and generally seems a pretty selfish thing to do

Great I had very hands off births with my last two babies but I had scans. I didn't have the DS screening.
Contrary to popular belief I didn't (and I am sure you didn't) just decide to do things on a whim. I weighed up the pros and cons and made judgements on what I thought was necessary.
e.g. DS screening was unnecessary.
Scans were useful for lots of reasons particularly as I wanted a home birth.

I cannot bear the way women are screeched at if they don't do everything 'on the list' and are heaped together with people like the one in the OP. If you mention homebirth people start banging on as if you were birthing hanging from a tree attended by naked doulas.

Women can be treated very badly during pregnancy and labour and we do no one any favours with the 'suck it up at least your baby isn't dead' attitude.

I think that as a culture we enjoy shouting at women for making choices and this sort of story is great for that sort of behaviour. Look at the mad hippy who doesn't care about her baby as much as we do.

I think she is an idiot but I also object to the way that any woman who doesn't turn into a placid bovine the moment she is pregnant is put in the same catagory as her.

I remember reading on a natural parenting forum about someone saying that we shouldn't have smear tests as they upset the yin-yang of the vagina I replied that cervical cancer would be much more upsetting to my vaginal ying and yang than a speculum.

"I forget who asked about why should birth be an experience.....but why shouldn't it be? why shouldn't it be something you enjoy rather than something horrendous which my first labour was. What's wrong with not wanting to be a cog in a machine?"

Because the NHS is massively overstretched as it is, especially maternity wards. Midwives are stretched to their limits (SIL is one). It is a bit of a production line, I'm afraid. They do not always have the time to create an enriching experience just for you.

Giving birth isn't about defining yourself as an individual FFS. It's about ending up with a healthy live baby and Mum.

I want us to tolerate difference in the UK. Some people will want different things. I wanted more freedom. Others want a C section and people are right to have different views. Thankfully women are allowed to give birth like this if they want to.

Argggh. This Woman is just awful.

No worries Yoda

The NHS would have stepped in if needed and done everything possible to help. Without any background from scans and blood tests, it could have cost loads more. Why would it cost loads more?

Potentially you have an ambulance coming out to get the mother/baby and going to the nearest hospital. That hospital does what it can but everything really needs to be done at a specialised hospital and, depending where in the country you are, that transport could be by air. The medical team has to call in a out of hours consultant and tests has to be prioritied and done immediately, so jumping queues, then surgery has to take place straightaway which could be at night so a team is drafted in etc.

Alternatively, tests and appointments take place during pregnancy when they are not so time constrained. The birth can be planned for a set date and a certain time when the right medical team is available and the mother could have got herself to the particular hospital herself whilst pregnant.

And that is just the start of it.

I agree, MrsDeVere. I'll never forget how ridiculous they became when I told them I would not ever have an amnio before they had even done the nuchal scan! WTAF? I didn't want it because it carries a MC risk, which was unacceptable to me. The end. Finally told them, then don't do the nuchal scan (they'd already taken the bloods) if that's your approach, I'm fine with a regular scan, only doing this because it's standard for the trust. But oh, the way I was spoken to was awful. I did have a flu jab in that pregnancy and I did pay for one whilst pregnant with DD2 as it was not offered and I felt it was worth it because I was in my 3rd trimester during flu season and the mother of a child who was in childcare - I had to see a private GP for it and she was fine with adminstering it. But it was a choice I made.

I'm all for choice. Home births, having Doulas to help, water birth etc. Don't mind. But be informed and don't risk draining health service resources.

If she wants do this hippy dippy shit then good for her. I think she's foolish and selfish.

Scans help monitor baby and medical staff advise based on the risk. That affects your birth options. If she was high risk and something went wrong then an ambulance has to go to her and medical staff have to direct emergency resources to her for an entirely avoidable situation (she would know she high risk and things could be in place). I find her attitude hugely selfish and entitled.
She says ideally she'd pay for a private midwife but can't afford it. So what she's doing is taking her chances and then thinking "fuck it. The NHS can sort it for me".
Add that to her completely arrogant take on the entire thing and sense of superiority and she comes across entirely like some kind of dippy idiot who once read something on a crystal healing forum.

totally agree MrsDV.

The NHS's budgeting issues aren't a reason I (or anyone else) should have an horrendously awful birth experience that probably cost the NHS far more in counselling and after services than a decently managed one would have.
My choice to not want to be a cog in a machine is mine to make, and one which the law allows me to make. I chose to forgo scans in part because I was so totally traumatised by dd1's birth that i couldn't bare to go near a hospital. that's unacceptable in itself. if women felt they were treated as humans, then prehaps less would opt for what this woman has.

On the one hand, this woman is an abject wanker looking to show off; if it hadn't been how she birthed her baby, she'd be instagraming about "clean eating" or circus skills or so such bollards. Some people just live to be ostentatiously "alternative". All of which is fine and dandy, I can look the other way. Her baby Fox will no doubt be mortified by her and insist on being called Frances by the time she's 14.

But... There is a conveyor belt aspect to pregnancy and birth which, for all the importance of the baseline goal of live baby, live mum, can frankly traumatise mothers and babies and fuck things up quite badly for them going forward. As birth is something increasing numbers of women do only once or twice (and babies obviously just the once!), of course it is enormously significant to them how it goes, not just how it ends.

Full disclosure, I am still really struggling with how horrible the last two weeks of my pregnancy, my failed induction, and eventual EMCS were. I adore my baby, but I don't feel at all like I gave birth to her, and I will go to my grave wondering what if I had refused to follow the sausage machine logic of 'post dates = induction', or stopped the train after the pessary failed to get things going - would we have had problems, or would she have just come in her own time? No-one would really discuss the option of waiting and seeing with me as if it was legitimate, and I also had the pressure to 'get the labour going' so I could use the alongside midwife-led birth centre before their deadline of 40+12 - why have that arbitrary deadline, putting women who don't want to medicalise their births - precisely the demographic who want to use a birth centre - under pressure to be induced before they're even officially post dates at 42 weeks?? Obviously the fact my induction dragged on for three days meant I never got to use the birth centre after all, and I will never know if my stress at the induction and surroundings contributed to my failure to progress (and yes, that word 'failure' has stuck with me and always will).

Dismissing these feelings with a 'how can you be so ungrateful to receive such good care, all that matters is that you're both alive, Buck up snowflake' will, rightly or wrongly, only result in more women turning their backs on what is sometimes essential care, as they are so desperate to avoid feeling like a worthless hunk of inconvenient meat from which the all important baby must be prised they are willing to play the odds, however wicked that may make them in your eyes.

extremely well put lelapaletute

GreatFuckability
Not suggesting anyone should be treated appallingly.

I can think that people should be treated well in hospital and think this woman's decisions were selfish and think her attitude is entitled.

It doesn't help that she spouts crap like 'I call it a sensation' and 'I'm practical so know I can sort anything' and 'women around the world don't need x y z'. Great. You're right women manage without. But also maternal deaths are higher. Always find with these extreme yoga, hippy dippy, my experience and vibe type people is they're all so "I'm amazing outside the system" for things that suit them but I'm guessing they rely on modern medicine for many other things.

Having said that, I got fabulous care on the labour ward. Antenatal and postnatal wards are a special kind of hell and I would do literally anything to avoid spending time on them ever again. Do they siphon off all the decent midwives for delivery and just leave the heartless, angry, ignorant old bitches for the before and after services?

" so desperate to avoid feeling like a worthless hunk of inconvenient meat from which the all important baby must be prised

I think it would take far, far more than some brusque midwifery to ever make me just feel like a worthless hunk of meat.

I went into hospital to have my baby delivered. Not have my ego stroked and my chakras polished.

Also Health Visitors. My jaw dropped when someone told me they are actually qualified nurses or midwives who have done EXTRA training to become HVs. I'd assumed they were the nurses so utterly hopeless they'd been farmed out to health visiting so they couldn't actually kill patients directly. The BOLLOCKS some of them talk, especially in re breastfeeding, just leaves me utterly agape sometimes. And they can't count! Told me my daughter had dropped from 91st to 75th centile, and after I had a major freakout put the weights into an app and discovered it was 91st to 87th. FFS.

Still making my way through the thread, to everyone who has had a terrible time.

One thing that strikes me is the luxury element. If something were to go wrong, she had the luxury of b ring able to call an ambulance quickly. I wonder how many poor women in the world have to face childbirth alone, with no medical care, because they have no choice

By all means do what you want, risk your life and your baby, you have the luxury.

" Always find with these extreme yoga, hippy dippy, my experience and vibe type people is they're all so "I'm amazing outside the system" for things that suit them but I'm guessing they rely on modern medicine for many other things."

Quite.

These bleddy women can play at being so glittery and individualistic because they have the luxury of knowing that expert, modern medicine is just a phone call and an ambulance ride away. They know there is a well oiled, practised medical machine that will swing into action to rescue them when their play-acting starts to go sour.

I doubt she'd take the risk of free birthing her baby in the Kalahari desert, thousands of miles from any medical support. Though I'm sure she has been liberally annointing herself with yak milk, probably sourced in the Kalahari, of course...

lelapetute

Wanted to reply as my first birth was like this 40 + 10 days, induction, 12 hour labour including hour and a half pushing, ELCS. Not a good experience. "Failed" to breast feed too and was handled roughly by several midwifes trying to help (looking back, my theory is his little head was so bruised after being stuck for an hour in the cervix that he was in pain).

I regret not going for a debrief with the Head Midwife until I was pg again, two years later. It showed me there was nothing that could have been done. He was never coming out vaginally.

Maybe a debrief would help, if you haven't had one?