To cringe at this article (free natural birth)

[boogiewoogie]

I couldn't help but feel but also sad when I read this article.

For a start, whilst sexual intercourse is often a necessary prerequisite although not always for birth to take place, giving birth itself is not a sexual experience!

She also says that a free birth is an open celebration of love and understanding but surely there are other ways and isn't having a child that has been conceived through love a celebration itself?

At the end she says that she has a fantastic relationship with this child and that it is different from her first therefor implying that her relationship with the first is inferior.

Am I also being naive in thinking that birth plans do not always go as planned? Okay, perhaps some of this is probably sour grapes but I am happy with the natural births that I had as they required little assistance.

The birth of course should be a pleasant experience and whilst it is nice to hear that she has had an amazing experience given her first birth, I just feel that a lot of women already feel stigmatised for having C sections and that articles such as this puts a lot of pressure on mothers to have a certain type of birth amongst other things to be a "model parent" whatever that may be.

SolidGoldBrass says everything that needs to be said. That's exactly the point - you can't predict how a birth will go. So if you have an easy birth with no complications, it's just luck.

I think it's sad that a lot of women who have bad birth experiences (e.g. an emergency c-section) think that it was somehow the hospital's fault, etc. and that it would not have happened if they were having a "natural" birth at home.

monkeyfeathers, it is almost 4 years since my VBAC.. since then i have become a doula and am involved in childbirth education and sit on a committee at the local maternity to unit so the issue of women making informed choices and feeling comfortable with the birth they want and end up with is really important to me.

my comment was certainly not a general anti c.s comment at all

i was illustrating the point that IMO and IME , articles like this don't add to the pressure to have the perfect birth.. imo and ime the opposite is true a lot of the time.

women struggle to talk about good birth experiences due to accusations of smuggery and making women with traumatic birth experiences feel guilty

good birth experiences need to be shared openly to be the flipside to the bad experiences... but the tone of this particular article just backfired a wee bit

Untrue unfortunately Optimistic.

Midwifery guidelines emphasis that interventions can often lead to emergency caesarians.

For instance, repeated internal examinations often slow labour. Slow labour can result in fetal distress which leads to continuous fetal monitoring which must be carried out in the supine position. The supine position can lead to perineal trauma (tears) or failure to progress or dystocia, which in turn leads to c-sections. There are many other examples of these 'cascades of interventions'.

Medical does not always mean 'safer' which is why (for the umpteenth time) the NHS RECOMMENDS home birth for the normal situation.

Are my posts in invisible ink?

".. but the anti-science, covered-in-shit-and-happy-about-it mentality that the original piece is riddled with, always needs addressing."

I didn't see that at all. Not in the slightest. She was reacting to her own experience of a 'normal' medicalised birth and deciding she wanted as far from that the second time round as possible. Whether she was right to do so, or just lucky is besides the point. No-one has to follow her example. She isn't telling anyone to do so. She is giving an account of her own experiences. Why does that annoy people so much?

there is a some luck involved but as blinder has pointed out there is a well known cascade of intervention that can and does cause complications/more interventions and ultimately c.s

there has been so much research that shows for a normal low risk pregnancy, a homebirth is safer or at least as safe as a hospital birth

"When was the last time Eastenders had a homebirth? (well, I don't watch EE but I'm guessing it doesn't happen as often as a hospital birth)"

Hollybunda you generally find on soaps that babies get delivered anywhere but hospitals - on beaches, in cars, in pubs, up trees . . . I could go on. There is never a midwife present unless you count the mother's arch-enemy, or the secret father of the baby (sometimes these are one and the same) who is always present for some reason, acting in that capacity. And the father - or purported father - is always somewhere else with a mobile phone with a flat battery.

Ummm.....this article wasn't about her choice to have a natural birth, but about her choice to have an unassisted birth. Which is, IMO (and I'm not shy to say so) selfish, dangerous and very foolish. Having an unassisted pregnancy as well...loon.

The other thread about epirdurals was full of posters wanting to force the male midwife to suffer all kinds of hideous tortures for daring to suggest that epidirals weren't always essential, or even the best thing. The general consensue was that he should butt out and let the women make their own choices. A woman tells the story of her doing exactly that and apparently she's smug and a stupid hippy

i do think it is important to distinguish between freebirthing, and homebirthing as kat2907 says

freebirthing is not the norm. homebirth is a small percentage of births, in some areas it is 1 % of all births. freebirhting i would think is an even smaller percentage

i can understand why some women would want to free birth and avoid uneccesary medical intervention , but i do think that no ante natal care is foolish

good outcomes are maintained by ante natal care

ante natal care has massively reduced mortality rates

to eschew all ante natal care is a step way too far

Competely agree re cascade of intervention. Many people don't seem to agree that there is such a thing and view a wide range of interventions as inevitable/ crucial, whereas in fact many of them merely bring about other more invasive interventions.

I had a long hospital first birth during which I had to fight against intervention all the way, followed by two ideal homebirths with one of the world's best midwives, who understood completely that what I needed was just to be allowed to get on with it. She spent most of her time in my house during my two labours reading back copies of the Times we'd kept to protect carpets, bless her. She waited until I was in second stage before actually doing anything much beyond listening to the babies' hearts every hour or so. As close to an ideal unassisted birth as I could have got. And it's because she understood what I wanted and didn't assume she knew better than me what I wanted re position, intervention etc just because she was the midwife just a lowly labouring woman.

My general impression from my hospital experience was that I and my baby were hospital property, and that my wishes could all be ignored because I was in their clutches. Because of this, I had to labour in a position that felt wrong, accept a vast range of interventions that I didn't want such as continual monitoring, accept that every midwife who walked in the room would have a better idea than me how "to get this baby out". I ended up with a perfectly healthy baby and relatively undamaged myself, but it was certainly not due to hospital procedures, rather in spite of them. I felt as though I had to fight them all the way.

I can understand why this lady did what she did, but just hope that she had managed to find a wonderful midwife like the one I had at both homebirths. She was an NHS midwife btw, so it is possible even without paying for tailor-made service.

I have lurked for a while without posting, because I wanted time to process what I find annoying about this article, beyond my initial (prejudiced) reaction that the woman is a a bit of a funny who has saddled her DDs with terribly pretentious names.

What it boils down to is this : she gives the entirely (IMO) illusory impression that all the things that went right during this birth were entirely down to everything that she and her partner did, rather than because of her being very lucky.

By extension, the fact that this type of breathing, or this kind of chanting, or having candles, worked, can serve to imply that if you do not do any of these things, and your birth doesn't go to plan (you end up with an emergency CS, for instance), then it was because you didn't do the right things.

IYSWIM

What I find slightly unsual about the article is that this person feels that the whole 'birth process' is more important than the end result... the child. Why else would she have had that sentence about bonding better with one child than the other because of the way they were born?

In my opinion, and in my experience, I would not care what the birth process was like as long as I had a healthy baby at the end of it. Sure I had a long, very medically involved one, but the end result is my girl, and I don't care if I gave birth to her by candlelight or in the full glare of operating theatre lights!

There's nothing in the article to suggest she see's the birth experience as more important than her children!

And like it or not, women's relationships with their children ARE sometimes affected by the manner of their birth.

screamingabdab - the woman in the article isn't 'very lucky'. Most births are straightforward, particularly second births when they happen at home.

sabire - but she had noone there just in case. Janet Freeman, exponent of freebirthing in the US, had a baby who died shortly after birth. It is being investigated so nobody knows whether the presense of an HCP would have saved the baby but why the fuck would you take that risk?

She does see the birth experience as more important than her children - she prefers to labour and give birth with no safety net of a present HCP after a pregnancy in which she has no pre-natal screening whatsoever, thereby (spin it how you like but that's the crux) endangering the life of her child, and her own. She is clearly putting her desire for a certain birth experience over the safety of her child.

Yes I'm sure relationships can be affected by the birth experience but there's no need to tell the entire world including your eldest dd via a national newspaper. Hope she's saving for her dd's future therapy.

I just looked up the case you mentioned, kat2907 (it's Janet Fraser btw). She had no antenatal care either and had a caesarean previously. She said "hospitals are dangerous" and was prepared to labour a long time. It said the baby had a cardiac arrest before birth. Poor baby . And poor her, she must feel wretched.

So SGB, in your post at 14.50 you dedicate the first sentence to slagging off the tone of the article and then the next 3 slagging off the woman (nice) before you launch into your general rant musings on the general topic at hand in your last para.

you are in danger of sounding like a loon.

kat yes, that is what I meant to say. She is lucky that nothing went wrong, because she had non-one to help.

Not a risk I would be prepared to take with my child's life for the sake of an enjoyable birth.

The inquest into the baby of Janet Freeman's that died soon after birth determined even back then that he had a heart condition that was incompatible with life and that he would have died even if he'd been born in hospital at the time. Although possibly not now because he may have a prenatal diagnosis by ultrasound and been born in a facility with neonatal intensive care and cardiac surgery unit.

Nasty sneering, jeering thread IMO. Even snotty comments about the children's names and what the kid is wearing in the photo. How lovely.

Aside from that, freebirthing is not something I personally would do. A home birth would be lovely, mind all being well.

As for a lotus birth - well, each to their own. Who is it harming? It's only until very recently that medical professionals decided it would be a good idea to leave the cord attached until it stops pulsating due to all the extra oxygen enriched blood that makes it way to the baby after birth. Would you all have sneered at that too?

I agree entirely with violethill.
I feel so sorry for poor little 5yr old Aurora-I don't know how a mother can say something like that-much less write it down where Aurora might see it one day. The actual birth shouldn't make any difference to your unconditional love for the child.
The birth is one day out of years of being a mother-it is what happens afterwards that matters.

Hmmm.

'Enjoyable' birth?

Despite being categorised as a high risk pregnancy (gestational diabetes plus other issues), I chose to have my baby at home. I didn't do it to have an 'enjoyable' birth - but because I was scared to go into hospital (because of a previous bad experience) and even with my risk issues felt both my baby and I were safer at home.

Was I irresponsible do you think?

"The actual birth shouldn't make any difference to your unconditional love for the child."

Who says? How do you know? That's a massive assumption to make for every woman who has given birth.

How do you know there aren't legion women out there whose birth experiences have affected them so much that they've been affected in terms of the way they feel for their child?

I know I bonded a lot quicker with my DD (VBAC) than my DS (ECS). Although I wouldn't presume it was only down to their different birth scenarios, I wouldn't completely eliminate it.

There are a lot of women who suffer post traumatic stress after a difficult or mismanaged birth, and go on to develop PND which certainly complicates mother-child bonding long-term.

It's also fairly well documented that failing to bond at birth (see 1950s twilight births) can lead to longer-term bonding problems. Some women report that have a GA for their emergency c section, however necessary, made the whole birth experience seem "unreal" and makes them doubt whether the child is really theirs. There are hormonal factors at play that are still little understood. I think nobody can possibly argue that the birth method cannot affect bonding between mother and baby.

I think people put tooo much emphasis on things that are unimportant.
It is like having the 'perfect wedding'-it is one day and isn't important-the rest of your life together is important.
Having the 'perfect birth' would be nice but it isn't important-the baby doesn't remember it. The 'baby' remembers what sort of mother you are when they are 5, 8, 16, 23 etc. If they are not speaking by the time they are an adult it is no consolation to say 'but it was a wonderful birth, darling'!! I don't actually care what sort of birth my mother had-because by the time I was old enough to know about it she would have recovered. I do mind if she tells me that she can only 'bond' with my sister because she had the birth of her choice.
I liked violethills 'self indulgent claptrap'-which was my immediate response. She was very lucky she didn't have complications.