'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.

Its women who seem to enjoy terrifying pregnant women with their tales of 'I NEARLY DIED'. But isn't that someone who doesn't have very much else going on in their lives? They want to gain kudos from their experience. A bit like the Daily Mail sad face.

Why do people who talk talk about empowerment only want to empower women to reject 'interventions'. Or to make the choices they would make.
If you have a very high risk pregnancy you don't really have choices. Unless you count if you don't do this you and your baby will die a choice.

Because Willow there seems to be a little bit of social kudos attached to birth (that I don't unserstand) where if you have a vaginally birth it's more 'natural' than a section, if you have just pain killers it's better than epidural, if you do it just on gas and air that's even better still and if you do it with nothing but hyponobirthing CDs then you're superwoman.
Great if you don't need it, have had an easy ish labour etc. But it's seems like there's some weird prestige attached to having less pain relief.

The woman in this article is just the very extreme e(.g. I didn't need any medical support, women have managed for years, I was tough and resilient enough and it worked out fine and this proves nobody really needs all this medical stuff.)

Nowhere have I said that women in labour shouldn't be treated for emergencies that they have (to a large part) contributed to.

But it's like the earlier discussion re whether a woman should rightly be held responsible by a teenager left disabled by her preg/birth choices: whether it's morally right for her to impose those risks, regardless of her legal rights - or others' duty-to-treat.

It's cloud-cuckoo land to think that hospitals can just magic up resources to deal with this situation effectively - from where? Remember, all the " We could have X, Y, Z if only we resourced the NHS properly" £££ have already been 'spent' on cancer, the elderly, A&E... (cont p.57). Many people are already losing patience with self-inflicted alcohol-related A&E injuries - but these are usually from one night out. Not someone who has disregarded established good medical practice for 9 months...

Oh, and my hosp was a large central london one, which as a baseline has a large maternity section so if anything is better able to cope with a few unexpected emergencies than most. A small regional one, less so.

Lack of resources is not the patients fault though is it?

Expecting people to alter their decisions based on what someone else may or may not need despite not even being aware of their existence is incredibly self absorbed.

Perhaps if things weren't so traumatic for them or their families that they had already witnessed different choices would have been made in the first place.

And lack of resources does not excuse alot of what's been said on this thread.

Lack of resources may be a reason you didn't get your epidural.

It is not the reason someone walked into your room.without even introducing themselves or asking consent and shoved their hand inside you.

All the best care received in hospital came from.agency staff the staff from other hospitals. The attitude and lack of care came without fail from the staff specific to the hospital.

So it's perfectly possible to be underresourced and still have respect for your patients.

We aren't talking about people expecting parades or three course meals. We 're talking about people just wanted to be treated with a bit of dignity and respect and excusing a lack of this because of funding or resources is wrong. It's an attitude and bed side manor thing. Not a resource thing we can't let them off the hook with the way people are treated. If we accept it then bow are things going to improve

I agree with mrs DV
We have to allow choices, even if you wouldn't do that yourself.
It's an unfortunate fact that medical intervention sometimes causes more problems than it solves.
An alive baby and mother are not the only criteria for a successful birth.
My unwarranted section led to a chain of consequences that left my second child suffering dreadfully.

I asked for gas and air repeatedly.i had to try and wave down people and every single one of one if them walked straight past after saying nothing (they heard me they stopped)

Until finally someone had the decency to explain there was no gas and air up here and no beds downstairs so incoyldbt have any.

A pain in the arse sure but I'd rather have just been told the first time I asked rather than having the stress of trying to get people's attention or wondering why I was being ignored.

Point being a lack.of space and resources explained why I couldn't have it. Not ideal but I had to accept it.

It did not explain why everyone was so fucking rude and couldn't spare 2 seconds

What MrsDeVere said.

It pisses me off mightily when women who choose to have even slightly unconventional births are sneered at for making birth an experience . How about, maybe they have different perceptions of risk to you?

derxa I do not think medical professionals are ignorant oafs. I do think they are highly trained and intelligent professionals. I also think they are human and they see some dreadful stuff which necessarily makes most of them risk averse. I think it is fairly well establishes that many gynaes themselves opt for elcs or advise their wives to as they wanr control. Despite the fact that it is major surgery.

You can see that on this thread where an hcp listed all the things she has seen go wrong in birth, some of which were vanishingly rare complications. They were obviously traumatic to witness and have stayed with her, but they just do not form a a significant part of most women's risk profiles.

Also whilst I do not think "most" drs are tyrannical, I do think it is a socially conservative profession still dominated by upper middle class white men. I think often the word of a woman or a brown person or a person called "Chantonnay" who says "I done" is less likely to be taken seriously. I have experienced this myself recently when, following serious post op complications, my concerns were dismissed. The lead consultant later sat by my bed with his face in his hands apologising but by then it was too late and I had a extra 2 ops and 7 mos of problems.

This stuff happens. It really does. And it makes some of us want to critically appraise what hcp tell us because if they are wrong, we will be the ones with destroyed undercarriages, ptsd, a baby with cerebral palsy like my friend's..... our bodies, our choice.

If she hadn't been so patronising in the way she talked about it maybe it wouldn't have come across as though she was minimising all of the silly women who aren't able to empower themselves enough to take risks they don't need to take.

She points to 'spending time connecting to her baby every day' - which of you other mothers did THAT eh?!

'I cried in the street – why would she want to make me question my own body?', well because your body isn't perfect it goes wrong, it puts you at risks that half the time you're not even aware of. My body wants me to eat sugar and laze around all day, but I question it because we've been fortunate enough to have SCIENCE to help us.

Now she charges other supposedly stupid women who clearly can't make the right decision for themselves because they're so brainwashed by the NHS to have coaching with her, despite not having any sort of medical background whatsoever. How will she cope when the first baby is lost because of that advice?

But surely if someone has a crappy hospital experience in terms of pain relief, assistance etc, say rated 3/10, the logical thing would be to push for, say, 8/10 to be the norm - rather than go, "Well, fuck it" and go for the 0/10 of no scans, no meds, no help at all (note, absolutely not talking here about a well-counselled home birth with MW etc).
Lots of us had far-from-great hospital experiences. In a fair few of our cases, we'd still do the same again as giving birth would have been catastrophic outside hospital.

Re the question of taking resources. Part of the issue is that most of the minimum-interventionists don't consciously think they might ever need emergency help. But at some level they know it's there - as a PP observed, they rarely go to free-birth in the middle of nowhere where help is totally unobtainable. No-one with a pulse can imagine they're the only NHS patient, so she doesn't have to have met specific other mothers to foresee that her choices could impinge on them.

I think that women have so few arenas in which we can legitimately compete that we compete against each other and martyrdom is an Olympic event.

I think it's very hard for pregnant women to make choices, because they get mixed messages. There is a "normal birth" movement, led by midwives, and supported by NCT, which argues that birth is a normal physiological experience and women should be helped and supported to give birth without drugs, and with minimal intervention, on the basis that that is what our bodies are designed to do.

Then there's the view taken by many obstetricians, which is that birth is dangerous, and that the most important thing is to get both the mother and the baby out alive. And that if that entails interventions, then so be it.

I don't see how women are supposed to be able to make intelligent decisions given that difference in opinion. They might go in, thinking, "I'll try for a nice positive experience and have a normal birth" only to discover that the midwife never looks at your birth plan, you're left lying on your back for hours unattended, and that if you then decide you need pain relief it just shows what a silly little woman you were for imagining you could cope without.

I just think there has to be a better way. Is it so hard to have a situation where women are properly looked after in labour, by supportive, kind midwives? That if you are capable of, managing without drugs, and that's what you want to do, you'll be supported? But if you want pain relief, you'll be given it straightaway and you won't be laughed at or sneered at? That if an intervention is needed, the people looking after you will explain why it's needed and what your options are, and the risks involved? Why do women have to be made to feel guilty all the time?

I think when you are having a baby, you are often tired and in pain, maybe scared. You don't have as much experience as the health professionals, who have seen how badly wrong things can go, and how quickly. I WANT HCP to act to keep me and the baby safe, even if they are rude, maybe don't explain things adequately. Sometimes the delay cannot be afforded. SOP s are developed based on experience and knowledge and risk analysis; to keep as many women and babies as possible, alive and happy. People cannot expect a totally personalised service based on non-essential WANTS, because there are not enough resources for the volume of service users

My first dd was induced at 2 weeks over due. After 3 days in hospital in labour, I needed an 'emergency' episiotomy and forceps delivery. I was on my back with my legs up in stirrups afterwards, with the consultant stitching me up. My legs went into involuntary spasm and I was kicking wildly in big arcs from the hip. The doctor was really cross and told me to stop, or she wouldn't be able to stitch me up. I had no control though and she had to bring in 2 more staff to hold my legs. So those 2 staff were removed from the care of whichever women in labour they were dealing with, for that period of time. Much much more dramatic and longer things happen. You just can't staff a hospital so that there is someone with every patient all the time

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

precisely. the only one of my children who was in any way compromised during labour, delivery and after was the one i had in hospital.
I appreciate that scans can pick up life threatening conditions, I appreciate there was a risk of me suffering those conditions. but at the time, my mental health was so scarred I couldn't bring myself to go near a hospital. so It was a risk i chose to take, and any complications that arose, well, that was on me.

'lack of resources' isn't a good enough reason for leaving someone completely alone, who hasn't eaten or slept in 2 days, unable to move, unable to use a call button, whilst holding a newborn baby, scared to death of dropping or falling asleep on the baby. whilst they scream for help. for 2 hours. leaving ANYONE post natally with an epidural sited alone for 2 hours isn't acceptable. its flat out dangerous and negligent.
If you think I avoided hospital after that because I wanted to be special or a snowflake or was attention seeking, then fine. but that was the opposite of the truth.

great

You are right it doesn't

And if we are talking about costing people treatment then it's also worth baring in mind that in order to he acted upon they first have to have been noticed.

And when hospitals seem to work on a "computer says no" system where what you are feeling or experiencing means nothing if a print out doesn't exactly concurr then even at home without professionals I'd put money on me or dp noticing something was up befire hospital would.

In fact I did. On more than one occasion.

What aggravates me about the article writer is that not once does she acknowledge that luck had a huge part to play in her free birth. I had a home birth planned for DS2 but things went wrong, I ended up being blue lit to hospital for a crash c section. This wasn't because of anything I had or hadn't done prior to going into labour, it was just bad luck. Thankfully both DS and me are fine. But this woman is making out that her miraculous free birth was all down to her rejection all medical intervention. It could have been so horribly different.

MyGastIsFlabbered
Exactly. She acts like it was all her expertise that made her free birth and total avoidance of medical staff work out OK.
She was lucky.

People who have home births like yourself have had the scans and have everything in place to minimise risk. There's someone up thread who had their own free birth after having had all their scans etc. They just held off calling midwife so it was technically born before arrival. Whilst I don't agree with that decision, I can respect that they've made an informed choice, had the scans, had midwife round to check etc.

The woman in the article wouldn't be selling her brand if it turned out 'avoidance of medical expertise led to baby dying and mam in intensive care'

Secretfreebirther - you said you'd worked on Labour Wards and seen what happens when things go wrong - are you an actual MW yourself, or similar? Because I suppose, if we were being very technical about definitions, and you were a MW at some point, then your birth wasn't quite without MW attendance. Obviously it's better for the MW to have been a separate person, but your knowledge and skill base would have made it less risky for you than someone without those skills and knowledge.

If you're not and never have been a MW then you're still a veteran of a labour ward, and have more knowledge than your average first-time mother.

OF course that wouldn't necessarily have saved you in the event of some catastrophe, but it does mean you have an advantage over those without your background.

As for Blog/Instagram/Article woman - her posts make me want to damage something. She's AWFUL. Regardless of her choices.

I think like it or not luck plays an enormous part in how things go and what the 'experience' is like. The thing is birth is always an 'experience' that can range from good to tragic dependent on how lucky or unfortunate in the extreme you are.

I am always at the yoga types who seem to think that what you do to prepare for the birth and what you do in labour is key to everything. Quite clearly it doesn't always work like that and gives women the impression that they can control stuff that in reality they can't. This in turn leads to women blaming themselves when things don't turn out how they expect and some people feeling that a C-Section is some kind of failure. Quite clearly this isn't the case but the period just after you give birth isn't when you are generally at your most rational.

But women can control stuff.

Yeah to a degree what happens will Happen. But it's not rocket science to realise that stress and comfort levels will affect outcome.

To some that means that being home with their trusted chosen few in their own bed and bath and a phone will be their idea if reducing stress and increasing chances of adequate rest and being able to do without pain relief which if course has risks attached. Everything from the stress of waiting for an anaethatist to it being done wrong to slowing down progress. Or affecting the babies breathing or making mother feel sick etc. It won t prevent everything however it Can and does help.

For others that means being in a hospital surrounded by every possible department staff going and the full range of pain relief just a call button away.

For others it will be something in between.

Neither is right or wrong but there is surely no harm in wanting to maximise your chances of the birth you want. It's just people will risk assess or place priorities on the parts they feel will help maximise that chance the most. Some will prioritise medical assistabve. Others will prioritise infection risks by avoiding unnecessary people and where they feel most comfortable.

I would say that as far as thinking people are naive or stupid or mad for thinking they cab do it on their own.

Others are equally misguided in their assumptions that they will be safer in hospital.

You may sneer at people thinking that a crash course in resuscitation in preparation is adeqate.

But knowing what I know now thinking I would be safe in hospitals and not need to prepare myself by becoming more assertive or shouting my wishes from the roof tops is equally mad and stupid.

I felt safer at home because so knew what I wanted and he was listening to me and I knew he would speak up for me.

I was scared shitless in hospital as I was ignored and I had no one on my side. No one. And infact very nearly gave birth alone if dp hadn't arrived when he did I'd have been on my own unable to reach a call button and unable to see a dsmm thing as my bed was flat.