'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 thing is that birthing has risks wherever you are. We are really lucky in this country that death from pph is extremely rare wherever you give birth - that is because of the prenatal scans/ checkups/ care.

My point isn't that homebirths are completely foolproof that obviously isn't the case, but that they are far safer and better managed than many people think. So to compare them to a woman who has refused prenatal care letting a midwife pop in twice is factually inaccurate.

I agree she's an idiot. An entitled, western idiot who how no clue how good she has it having access to good quality, modern antenatal care.

I would struggle to be in the same room as this woman, TBH.

Don't feel bad for starting the thread OP.

I have looked at the instagram and she seems like a sweet person and she must be upset by all the criticism even though she doesn't want to listen to negativity.
I'm up for people having choice.
When you run a public Instagram painting yourself to be some kind of free spirit, yoga doing, natural birth, I'm so quirky look at my placenta person and write arrogant pieces for a newspaper about how unique and amazing you are then you are open to people passing comments.

I still stand by my view that these kind of people are all very happy being "oh so individual" because they know there's a safety net that will save them when all the meditation, crystal healing and "I know better than experts" runs out.

She's happy to appear so quirky to equally adorable fans but she wouldn't be doing this in a country without the access to medicine. Just a poser.

Just to clarify. I do NOT count home births in with this woman's kind of hippie dippy I know best behaviour.

I mean this lady took things too far (and probably isn't helping herself with the whole Instagram malarkey) but I think we can all be thankful her and her baby are ok.
I do hope though that people don't begin to conflate this 'free birthing' with regular home birthing. I had a hospital birth with dd and, although everything turned out fine (live mum and live baby) it wasn't great. I went on to have ds1 and ds2 at home and the care I had there from the community midwives was amazing. As opposed to the hospital where I nearly gave birth on the antenatal ward with no pain relief because they didn't believe I was in labour!

I've been umming and ahhing on whether to comment on this but a couple of comments on folks declining scans because it wouldn't make any difference to them have stuck with me. This is quite personal at the moment. I am due my second child soon. I can't say I have had many "empowering" medical appointments. My 20 week scan esp could have been handled better. However I am very grateful for it as it revealed my baby has a serious heart defects. Finding this out postnatally means I will be giving birth with pediatric cardiologists on hand and my child will be getting essential medicine and maybe surgery shortly after birth (if not then they will do later)

No scans and a home birth would mean my child would go into heart failure days after birth. If we were lucky this would be spotted in time and the baby would get to hospital into time to save it's life/prevent brain damage. If we weren't lucky, well ....

The anolomy scan is important even if it would make no difference to your decision to carry on a pregnancy.

Finding out antenatally I mean.

Oh my God Little and Good Luck

Thanks dextran. Prognosis is a little brighter than what we were told initially but still serious. At least we will be in the right place

I think Lacey and DP have a lot of money behind them to fund their nonsense.

Sorry that should have been derxa. Autocorrect and no edit button are not my friend

I have read every post on this thread and what strikes me most is the massive amount of internalised misogyny.

We really do think of childbirth as the curse of Eve, don't we? "She was lucky she didn't die...she deserves everything she gets... imagine if her baby had died, then she'd be sorry, the entitled cow...don't you know other women have it worse...." over and over again.

Birth wasn't medicalised out of sweet touching concern for women. It was about money and power struggles within the medical profession. People spouting about how it used to be might want to read up on the frankly appalling history of obs/gynaecology as a profession.

No woman owes it to other women to make particular birth choices. The fact that "women in Africa" (nice vague phrasing ) or "the past" had limited choices is not a reason that any of us should make specific birth choices.

We should make the choices that are right for us and stop slamming other women. This is just more of the same sahm/ wohm or ff v bf or smear tests v declining etc etc.

You don't need to understand another woman's choices. Only your own.

derxa I was left in 'early labour' on a ward for a day with no one checking, I was bleeding and no one came to check that. turns out it wasn't early labour, so was rushed to the labour ward where they said the baby was in distress so i might need a quick delivery, given an epidural which then stopped my labour all together. they then decided the baby wasn't in distress and left me on the labour ward. a whole other day of labouring. the epidural fell out and only took down one side, and they wouldn't believe i was in pain, so they wouldn't give me anything else. then i tore all over the place. was stitched up and then they threw DH out. left me alone for over 2 hours with the baby in my arms, partially numb, unable to reach the call button. I was so so scared i would drop the baby and kill her because i was so exhausted i coudln't stay awake. the whole experience was horrifying.

Great Truly horrible.

I declined scans because it made no difference to me whether the baby was healthy or not as to whether i would carry on the pregnancy or not

But if the baby had a condition which needed immediate attention when born, would it not be safer to know and be prepared?

That can happen even if you've had a scan.

Or whether baby was growing properly or not? Whether there were 1 or 2? Whether your placenta was in a safe place for vaginal delivery?

1 or 2 can often be determined by palpation, as can telling the size of a baby by an experienced midwife. the placenta thing is fairly unusual, and had there been any bleeding or signs of placental issues, i'd have gone into hospital.

For me, it seemed the best course as my pregnancies were uneventful, I was willing to be flexible had there been any signs of issues. but i didn't want to be in a hospital if i didn't need to be.

littlebelina I understand your POV and i hope your baby is ok. truely. i do understand that for lots of people I seem like a crazy person. but for me, it was the best thing at that time. over a decade down the line, i am not as traumatised as i was then, and might well make different decisions now.

Great, having read your experience I can understand why you might want to minimise medicine intervention. I just wanted to point out that the 20 week scan can make a massive difference to postnatal outcomes in some cases.

Great I agree with you.
lelap if had a similar experience. No I wasn't depressed either. Just disappointed, and unhappy.
It made it worse when people told me "all that matters is that baby is healthy" - it always came across as it doesn't matter if you feel terrible, we don't care about you only the baby.

Johhnymgrath is absolutely right, women should stop slamming other women

With regards to refusing scans although unwound never do that myself I just remembered some things from my second pregnancy.

The 20 week scan resulted in what was some pretty grim news that pretty much sparked everything that happened in the pregnancy from then on. Due to a ScH I'd been scanned repeatedly in a&e. All of which showed a happy healthy baby at the correct measurements for gestation. Because of has so many scabs in a&e my 20 week scan happened to be at 22 weeks.

This is where it all kicked off.

I Was scanned fortnightly from then on as a result of concerns re growth.

If I'd have had the official 20 week scan at 20 weeks then no one would have been any the wiser. Measurements at midwife appointments didn't spark any concern at all. And all the scans after that showed dd continuing to grow.

I really think that they just happened to scan as she was having a "blip"

But as a result of this blip I was scabbed every two weeks told my baby would he premature and not only that her size would mean she would possibly not tolerate labour. All this was what contributed to me being unable to have a home birth again.

Ironically the last scan I had the computer system at the hospital wasn't working. So results had to be manually drawn up.

Now the midwife appointments would have showed up her transverse position.

I would have been able to have an actual discussion about my options as opposed to it all being pre decided as a result of the scans.

I'd have probabky had a bit more time to decide as well as they wouldn't have been so worried and and if not have been told they'd induce at 38 weeks is have been allowed to go longer if I'd have had a chance to decide whether unwanted the ecv or a section

Ironically the results of the last scan came through when I came home from having her. And surprise surprise they measurements were all back up to where they should be meaning I was pushed into things I probabky didn't need pushing into.

Scans are great in so many ways and provide so much vital information however to many cab be counter productive in that they pick up things that would work themselves out and would never have been discovered at all of not for unfortunate timing.

Supermoon- her being a woman doesn't come into my view of her attitude. If a man spend time self-publicising his own radical view and making grand claims about how he wasn't going to seek medical care for an illness because he's "practical", I'd equally think he was some arrogant entitled fool (yes I know birth isn't an illness but there's a reason we have medical advancement).

As soon as somebody starts publicising 'look at me I've put my placenta on instagram' they are opening themselves up to people judging and commenting. I'm sure there's zero issue of her fans saying how "amazing and inspirational" she is. Equally, there's nothing wrong with fundamentally disliking her attitude.

I feel people like her are worryingly similar to clean eating vloggers who have no dietician training who sell a particular lifestyle that can actually be very damaging to people if they follow it.

When people put things like that out there, they should be critiqued.

It's nothing to do with her being a woman , though in this case I guess it's relevant only to women

its not about slamming her for her choices for the sake of it She put another human being in a position of zero choice . The baby could have had life threatening issues that could have been picked up on and dealt with . Luckily all round it didn't .

Clumsy I see what you are saying but the baby doesn't have a.choice anyhow.

DSis4 didn't have a choice when DM decided to have an amnio which could have caused fetal death.

My friend's baby didn't have a choice when friend had a medically unnecesary elcs - could have caused breathing problems for the baby.

I had all the scans the NHS offered but at the end of the day, you either believe in a woman's bodily autonomy or you don't. The fetus is not (in UK law) a separate person with rights.

I've actually just read the article in full, her birth story sounds fine but fundamentally its her business. I honestly don't get the outrage and I don't think many people will follow in her footsteps if that's what everyone is worried about!

*unnecessary ffs