to think the natural birth at all costs ideology is fucking crackers?

[burnagirl]

We have a scandal on our hands. Shrewsbury Maternity Unit.

I couldn't believe what I was reading, but to be honest, I wasn't all that surprised, having had many a run in with the natural birthers/earth mothers in the past.

There is a toxic and insidious ideology permeating the 'birth culture' in the UK. This culture that tells women that our bodies were 'made' to give birth, that our bodies KNOWWWW what to do, that any intervention means failure on our part. That childbirth pain is something to be endured with happiness and joy - I mean, really? Is it some sort of a more 'noble' pain? Something transcendental and sacred and good?

Nah, fuck off with that. You wouldn't have a root canal with no pain relief, so WHY do we fetishise female suffering in childbirth? To me, there's this mile-wide misogynistic miasma around this narrative, probably rooted in religion.

Then there's this totally daft idea of intervention/c-section being a failure. Such bollocks. We don't seem to realise that, from an evolutionary perspective, it isn't even necessary for MOST mothers to survive childbirth. All we need is ENOUGH mothers and babies to survive, so no, our bodies are not sacred temples that somehow magically Know Best.

Can we please do away with the woo around childbirth and just do what needs to be done to ensure that mothers and babies come out of the (let's face it, fucking painful and dangerous) process alive and well, however the hell it happens?

Jeez , some very judgemental folk here. Neither extreme opinion is right. Insisting that all women do hypnobirthing or else they’ve failed is nor more correct than saying have an elective C -section or else you are batshit .

Fundamentalism on both sides is unhelpful and pretty spoilt .

The reality of the matter is that we are really incredibly lucky in the uk and in our period in history that we have choices, access to information and free accessible healthcare.

YES. this myth is endangering women and babies physical and mental help. Giving birth is dangerous, women and babies used to die routinely.
You might be lucky, you might not be, but giving birth away from medical facilities is playing russian roulette. Making out that being in extreme pain is a great and empowering experience is misguided - have your next root canal without pain relieve as well please if its so great.

I had my third baby 10 weeks ago. I begged for a c section from the second I found out I was pregnant. I was encouraged to have a home birth. In the end I had the baby in hospital and on gas and air. That’s 3 children I’ve had where I have begged for more pain relief and none was given. I coped, my children are here safely and I’m pleased with the care the lovely midwives gave me. But my god it shouldn’t happen and I should of been able to have the pain relief I wanted, not told “your doing fine you don’t need it”

I was fobbed off & told not to go to the hospital as they didn’t think I was far enough along, I was actually 9cm & pushing it was the worst pain I’d ever felt. By the time I got there I had no options but to have G&A on paper my birth was perfect but I had never felt pain like it before! Women speak of a natural birth which such pride Which is okay but I do feel we are pushed into certain things. For me having an epidural would have felt like I had took the easy way out & failed but I shouldn’t feel like that

btw, i rather had a fresh, rested midwife that i don’t know than one that i know that had just been up for 24hours plus.

First things first - call it vaginal birth not natural birth. Natural birth suggests that other births are unnatural which of course they aren't.

I'm a bit torn on this one (no pun intended!) - undoubtedly there are women who do need more pain relief than others due to baby's position or any of the many reasons why childbirth varies from woman to woman - all babies are different. But I had a drug-free home birth (the drug-free part was accidental) and it was far easier and much less painful for me than my first with pethedine and G&A. Again, all babies are different and all women are different and if I got pregnant again, I wouldn't expect to have a birth like that one.

I think better community MW care throughtout pregnancy would help - allow MWs to get to know women and they'll probably have a better idea as to when an individual woman needs more pain relief. I'm going to stick my neck out and say that in some cases, it might not be necessary to go for an epidural, for example, BUT unless you know the mother enough to recognise that, it's not easy to make that decision.

I'd never met the MW who turned up for my home birth. That's partly due to the way the on-call rota is done but also due to the lack of a system in this trust to enable women to get to know the MWs who will be delivering their baby.

Essentially, preventing women from receiving interventions they need is not the way to solve the issues around why women are needing these interventions. It's a short-term solution that makes the numbers look better but doesn't actually help anyone.

The reality of the matter is that we are really incredibly lucky in the uk and in our period in history that we have choices, access to information and free accessible healthcare.

lucky compared to Syria, not so lucky compared to more modern countries where women have a much better treatment!

We shouldn't accept the current UK situation, but strive to improve it - and realistically, other countries manage, so why not us.

It's all well and good talking about women 'making informed decisions' but that would depend on who is informing that decision surely?

I don't see why it is an "either/or" situation.

Why can't woman have a birth with the appropriate help and support that is needed, with good antenatal care that anticipates problems and allows informed decisions

to add: ask any midwife how "lucky" they feel with their workload, lack of resources and being completely overstretched on crowded wards.

Yes, it could be worst, but it also could be a lot better.

If I hadn't personally known two friends with permanent, surgical-intervention-requiring birth injuries after forceps, I wouldn't have had the thought to refuse them flat out for one birth. I had a section when things weren't progressing, seriously not progressing after a very long time (DD was firmly stuck) mainly because I refused to even lie down at the point where forceps were mentioned.

I too had to sign a form stating I understood the risks of a section. At no time would I ever, ever have been asked to sign a form saying that I understood that consenting to the use of forceps might mean I ended up permanently incontinent, like one friend who also had no idea whatsoever of the risks.

I'm fine. She isn't.

YANBU OP

I'm shocked at this thread. I had a pain relief/intervention free water birth at home. I am certainly not "woo" and neither am I waiting for my medal in the post, but the tone of this thread makes me feel like I would be mocked for the route I took to birth my baby. How sad.

There are as many anecdotes S there are births. Personally, I have never heard of anyone being encouraged to have a home birth - I have only heard of women having to fight for one. Maybe sometimes being told that something is an option feels like encouragement.

Incidentally, I would be very wary of quoting other European countries as better than here. For example, in Spain I would not have been “allowed” to have vaginal births for my two big babies- c section would have been to only option. Indeed, a family member suggested that I should sue my local hospital because they didn’t insist.......

This is really confused. It's unfortunate that everything becomes so tribal.

The people who actually write books and studies don't promote a goddess vibe, even Ina May Gaskin says c sections and hospitals are often the right way to go.

It's insulting to think that midwives and doctors who are in the thick of things and see actual deaths and other bad outcomes would be flippant about this stuff.

The problem is with the cultural fluff around it, the yoga courses and manuals and instashite that makes out all you need is a candle and a positive attitude. That's the crap that gets people.

Without the natural birth movement we'd still be routinely shaven, given enemas, whacked in stirrups for an episiotomy. It's about avoiding interventions that are harmful and placing the woman at the centre of things, not treating her as a faulty baby container.

I say all this as someone who has had both long labour leading to CS and a natural birth in a delivery suite, I'm under no illusions about birth.

People making comments about CS as if it was an easy option can sod off. There are pros and cons to both vaginal and CS delivery.

Why should labouring women have to endure being in pain if there is no medical reason for them not to be?

I am so grateful for the amazing care I received. I wasn’t woo about birth, but I did want no interventions, i was open to pain relief but only up to a point (I didn’t want epidural), I wanted MLU rather than doctors etc.

None of that happened. I was ordered into hospital at 36 weeks by my community midwife with pre-eclampsia, once there I started having seizures, I was surrounded by doctors and told I was having a C Section. I resisted, it wasn’t what I wanted. But it was what I needed. Without it we both could have died.

This idea that women know their bodies best simply isn’t always true. I was adamant that I was fine even as I was being taken to a maternity critical care bed. Natural is not necessarily best, nature is brutal and nature can kill.

It doesn’t help that there is this boasting culture, some women tried to outdo each other with stories of no pain relief, whale music, giving birth in the fucking forest, whatever. If that’s what you want AND IT IS DAFE FOR YOU AND YOUR BABY then fine. But don’t hold it up as some sort of ideal. Hugely experienced consultant surgeons at a world class maternity hospital was what was ideal for me and so many other women. And that’s fine.

And I also have no idea how what is being talked about has anything to do with the Shrewsbury scandal.

@NannyPear You put into words exactly how this thread made me feel too.

In France for my births I had lots of lovely drugs. Epidural is fab when it works (first didn't). Pain doesn't make it all better. It just makes it painful.

Every woman should have the option to chose how they have their baby, be that vaginal delivery, natural, pumped full of drugs, c section you name it. It should not be ok for other women to put down and sneer at the choice another woman makes. But you’re just here to push an agenda, rather than actually discuss the real issues.

@BarbourellaTheCoatzilla has solved the whole thread for me

@Grimbles your question implies we should give pain relief to every single woman labouring.

People have different pain thresholds and all pain relief comes with risks and side effects. It's just not that simple.

Eg with epidural you're more likely to end up with forceps or ventouse. How do you weigh up pain during labour versus pain during recovery or long term issues?

The problems at Shrewsbury seem to go way beyond enforcing natural birth, they were completely and appalingly negligent.

“Why should labouring women have to endure being in pain if there is no medical reason for them not to be?“

Because she might to choose to do it that way?

How do you weigh up pain during labour versus pain during recovery or long term issues?

you explain it clearly to the mother in advance and let HER decide by giving her both options, and let her change her mind either way when she is in the middle of labour!

You don't plonk her in a birth centre where epidural is simply not available, because you need a trained anaesthetist but we save cost that way.