'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.

Without all those nasty intrusive medical professionals, neither of my children would have survived.

Ds1 would have died during labour. Ds2 wouldn't have made it past 36 weeks due to a duff blood supply.

and huge sympathy to everyone who's had a horrible experience, but to echo others - I found having the chance to make decisions based on actual information, and have both my children arrive safely, far more empowering than a fulfilling birth experience. Followed by two funerals.

GreatFuckability I had Grade 4 Placenta Praevia and no bleeding whatsoever until i started having contractions at which point there was a little watery blood. Luckily I was already in hospital because the PP had been diagnosed at my routine ultrasound. Nobody would have had a clue otherwise. It being 'rare' wouldn't have been much consolation to DH had his wife and son died.

Actual information is fine, but if it's the wrong information?

With respect, I think that's a bit whataboutery.

Yes info might give you the wrong picture, but refusing all information on the basis that some might be wrong doesn't seem a logical position to me. Like I say, if I'd refused a scan, my son would be dead. I don't think I'd be much consoled by knowing the decision was mine.

No but wrong information changes everything.

It was the difference between living with the fact your baby is going to be seriously ill in a nicu if you make it to being viable at all and being able to carry on as you were.

It's the difference between being told that you will be induced by a certain time with no other option and having the choice of having the home birth you wanted.

Just because you both end up ok doesn't make the fact that you were made to have all these interventions ok.

Maybe it comes down to how you feel about birth - personally, I thought of it as the process by which the baby arrived and nothing more. So I didn't give a shite about any interventions or anything, as long as the baby and I were safe at the end.

I do know women who felt a failure for having interventions and I think it's a great shame that they're beating themselves up, but it's literally incomprehensible to me. I've never gone into labour and now I never will, but I have two dc so it doesn't matter to me. I think there's got to be a balance between treating a physical process as the first test of motherhood, and turning down things that might help in the name of having a life experience.

But I didn't expect much either.

But to lose all claim to your own body when you walk through the door is not acceptable.

And let's face it the staff get to walk away to the next person.

They aren't try ones with their body's mutilated or the painful sex lives or bruised babies or badly done stitches causing immense pain.

They aren't the ones left abandoned at the most vulnerable time of their lives.

A successful birth is not just one where every one is alive.

It's one where people can go home and carry on about their lives minus the aftermath from procedures forced on them or badly done resulting in a multitude if problems that they then have to try and get gps to sort and wait no the for the corrective procedures

No, absolutely not. And I was lucky in that I got superb care and everything was explained and presented as a choice (I actually went against the consultant's advice to have an induction and insisted on csection, nobody argued).

If all women got such good care, maybe fewer would feel driven to take risks to maintain autonomy.

I think thats the point most people are trying to make. But others have called us entitled for doing so.

Women should not have to deliver their own babies alone just to ensure that they aren't touched when they don't want to be or ignored.

I said in my first post that I didn't understand refusing scans. I would like to take that back now I've thought about it.

I had so many and my stomach was so sore from where they pressed so hard I had to ask them to stop in more than one occasion. I don't think id be able to refuse a scan myself but actuallu i tbink i now understand why people would.

I agree with all your posts MaQueen

Who's got time for all this pontificating, and making everything into 'an experience'?

Experience?

What about the legal right tonconsebt to or decline procedures?

In any other circumstances people are presented with their options and explanations of each one.

That's the oath the Drs took.

Whether you are president of the usa or a prisoner on death row. You are by law entitled to the best treatment that can be provided. And the right to not sign a consent form.

Why are pregnant women declined the same courtesy.

far more empowering than a fulfilling birth experience. Followed by two funerals

This seems to be the issue.
If a birth is empowering or even if a woman dares to want it to be empowering it is assumed it is at the expense of her baby and they will both surely die. If the don't die its pure luck and she is still as selfish bint because 'what if?'

Why do people feel the need to take the piss out of women when they want to feel empowered?
It runs all the way through this thread. Sneering at women who want to enjoy their birth. It might be the only time they do it. Its the most important day of many women's lives. But God forbid you want it to be positive.
That makes you selfish and stupid and a massive fucking hippy.

This is the message we give to women. I am thinking about the women around me, related to me who have their babies young, who are not highly educated, who see birth as something to get though alive. You WILL nearly die (everyone round here 'nearly died'), you WILL be bullied by 'bitches' who are 'snotty' and 'look down on you'.

So what do they do? They ignore health advice, they only sporadically attend antenatal and they don't read anything about pregnancy and birth unless its written on Facebook. So they are terrified that they have killed their baby because they accidently ate Philadelphia cheese at 8 weeks.

Hand on heart I have not met a single woman round here who had a positive experience. We talk a lot about low expectation for working class kids. I reckon it starts at conception and includes how they come into this world.

This is NOT all about hippy, dippy middle class yoga teachers.
Working class women have babies too.
MN forgets that sometimes. Unless they are taking the piss out of babies in head bands and ones called Shainque.

An overlooked aspect of this issue is the impact on other mothers and babies of one woman's 'minimum-intervention-gone-wrong' situation.

A hospital will (quite rightly) prioritise the most serious case in front of them. So that means the baby born with a surprise heart defect after "no point in antenatal scans because we wouldn't terminate whatever", or the woman blue-lighted in moments from death because she chose to free-birth in the face of known risk factors.

Which will push 'down the list' women who established their risks and planned carefully with the HCPs to manage them, or women who ran into genuinely unforeseeable problems.

My consultant arranged an induction because I was in a high-risk group if I went overdue. It got delayed, because more urgent cases took priority. Fair enough, no-one would argue with that. But I'd've been less than impressed if I'd been repeatedly jumped for preventable emergencies.

And why assume thaybthese things would not have happened had they been im.hospital?

Hospital is not some miraculous place where every complication is seen way befire it happens and caught early and dealt with immediately because they were there already.

Many complications happen spur of the moment and are unpredicted and you'd have been bumped regardless.

And to suggest that someone goes against What they feel is best for them in case it pisses off somebody they have never met is ridiculous.

My situation would have been picked up far sooner at home because I would have had a midwife there.

I'd have not been left for hours and assumed to he safe because of a belt.

Being in hospital can delay things more than being home would

Why do people feel the need to take the piss out of women when they want to feel empowered?

I'm not sure they do. I think they feel the need to take the piss out of all the self promotion and self aggrandising that goes with it (at least in this case).

And people are entitled to treatment no matter how the problem came about.

If your hospital can't deal with it then thats their fault not someone else's.

This is NOT all about hippy, dippy middle class yoga teachers.
Working class women have babies too.
MN forgets that sometimes.

This example is about hippy dippy middle class people who want to seem unique safe in the knowledge that if it goes well they can feel smug about their brilliance and if it goes wrong somebody else will sort it.

There's 2 different issues:

1. All women have the right to have a safe birth and be supported through it

1. A woman chooses to shun all medical procedure because she didn't feel empowered when she went to her GP. She didn't have the facts and arrogantly felt that because she practical she could deal with any medical complication... you know. Until she couldn't and then she'd be straight on the phone wanting specialist medical help. She's more than happy to make these 'I'm one with nature' choices knowing that if shit hits the fan an ambulance will be there. Then she writes articles and shares rubbish to social media about her wonderful natural brand.

There are awful examples of births on this thread. It doesn't mean the woman in the article isn't a hippy dippy yoga "I'm amazing" person who made selfish and irresponsible choice.

Look at the whole thread Natalia. Its not all about this woman.
These threads never are. They are a jumping off point for those who want to take the piss and sneer at any woman who dares express a wish for how her birth should go.

Try it. Talk about writing a birth plan. Sit back and watch the replies flood in.
'Hahahahahahahah good luck with THAT'
'Babies can't read, you DO know that don't you?'
'Here we go, another one living in la la land'

Men don't tend to get involved in conversations like this. Its is women who seem to enjoy putting other women down. Its women who seem to enjoy terrifying pregnant women with their tales of 'I NEARLY DIED'.

Some women may well have 'nearly died' but many of them didn't do anything of the sort.
Someone up thread is angry at women causing unnecessary delays due to their self inflicted birth emergencies.
I am pretty annoyed at women who trivialise birth trauma and perhaps contribute to the lack of resources available to genuine sufferers.

Yes Maisy It was all written in hindsight. It all turned out fine therefore this is the right way.
Also (and I'll get my coat now) this idea that all medical professionals are tyrannical oafs who know nothing does annoy me. All that medical training and experience means nothing.
It's like the teacher bashing threads. "I've been to school so I know all about education"
Not to dismiss the poor experiences on here and the fact that some medical professionals are incompetent or negligent or even criminal.

Well either way it's not down to another patient. And to assume it would have made a scrap of difference is just daft.

Emergencies are often not dealt with in hospitals until they become emergencies. People bleed to death in hallways ffs.

People are turned away without examination because their story doesn't fit what they all "know"

A fair few times this happens it's the hospital causing the emergency not the patients choices.

Men don't tend to get involved in conversations like this. Its is women who seem to enjoy putting other women down.

And not just in the context of the NHS. But seeing as this is what we're talking about, I agree with you.