Problem: Scientific Research Does Not See Labor and Birth as Important

Dr Amy writes on www.homebirthdebate.blogspot:

"It is interesting to me that the natural childbirth community would put so much stock in a study that depended on birth certificate data when the primary objection to the Pang study was that it depended on birth certificate data which might not be reliable."

Safe Baby Partners:

Question: How can we as a society hold medical profession accountable for conducting and providing research that PROVES the safety of a drug or intervention BEFORE using it on it laboring and birthing women and babies? The burden of proof should be theirs, not women, and not natural birth supporters whose real life experiences are the proof for them.

In response to the quote above, gathering birth information from public records, not the mother and baby, is standard protocol in all areas of research of human health and pathology. It surprises me too. In the state in which I live the state director of the bureau of statistics told me there are serious discrepancies in birth certificate data -- so that the epidemiological study I wanted to do was pretty impossible. How convenient. I even found glaring omissions in hospital records of my daughter’s. ( ie., it did not say she was induced with cytotec and I/we had epidural anesthesia.)

I am increasingly more amazed -- or is it dismayed -- at the omission of the experience of labor and birth in literally every area of human study. Not even addictions studies looks at the 90% rate of drug use in labor and birth. The Institute of Educational Services of the US Department of Education has a national study "Early Childhood Longitudinal Study" that follows a birth cohort of over 10,000 children born in 2001. The study relies upon birth certificate data. The mothers of the birth cohort are not even interviewed until their baby is nine months of age and the painfully long questionnaire that delves too deeply into privacy of every topic has NO questions about labor and birth. It relies upon birth certificate data even when the mother is right there!?! The omission of this is mind-boggling.

From the website, “The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) Program provides national data on children's status at birth and at various points thereafter.” But doesn't even gather information about the birth. How is the whole community of "scientific researchers" so oblivious to the primary experience of life? Even when looking at the health of the person from birth?!?!THE moment and process of leaving the symbiotic safety of the mother's womb and re-connecting with her at the moment that every body system "comes online" on it's own. And no one asks the mother? And, if she tells it, her "anecdotal story", her experience is diminished as not scientifically shown to be correct??

There is no research to disprove a mother's sensate and emotional experience of birth, nor is there research to disprove the growing study of the lifelong effects of the experience of birth. No one, ESPECIALLY the medical profession who is involved in birth with their means of extrication to save a life, looks at the consequences. The burden of PROOF should be on obstetrics to PROVE something is safe before doing it routinely on women and babies and then purporting it to be safe so it is finally "accepted" as normal and scientific.

The field of obstetrics is hand-in-hand with fields of psychology, so that such studies as this Early Childhood Study are funded by government money WHILE they fund "the war on drugs" whose message reaches the youngest of children. "Just say no!" Why would they if they were born "under the influence?" Medical and the example study here both focus on prenatal and postnatal but exclude birth. They both look at the role of the woman and the family in creating the problems and needs of the child --- psychology and medicine are notorious for "blaming mothers" for every issue of humankind. And, neither look at labor and birth and lack of rights and power a woman has during the most important day of her child's life. Like in obstetrics, the questionnaire asks such in depth questions as "Who paid for your prenatal care?" and how many times per trimester the mother had prenatal care, how much she smoked, and then begins a long series of questions about NICU.

LABOR and BIRTH, including the history of drugs, inducing, and other interventions as well as the mother's physical and emotional experiences are not included in the questionnaire (http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/pdf/Birth/parent_nine.pdf, page 69) because there is so little regard for the safety and well-being of the human newborn.

Beware, Be aware. Be alarmed. Critical decisions from this amazing national project (as with all of the research in every field of study of human behavior and health) will be made about children's needs within the family and in parenting, and in the school settings. From the site http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/: "From a national perspective, there is little information about young children's development, health, early care and education from birth through kindergarten entry. This research is in response to an increased public awareness of the importance of children's early experiences to their later school success."

How much government money is spent on this study and in EVERY field of medicine, psychology, education, and addictions to research the human condition and needs and BIRTH is excluded!?

"The ECLS program has been designed to include two overlapping cohorts: a Birth Cohort and a Kindergarten Cohort. The birth cohort follows a sample of children from birth through kindergarten entry. The kindergarten cohort follows a sample of children from kindergarten through the eighth grade. children's transitions to nonparental care, early education programs, and school; and children's experiences and growth through the eighth grade. ECLS also provides data to test hypotheses about the contributions of a wide range of family, school, community and individual variables on children's development, early learning, and performance in school."

And the experience of labor and birth is omitted, and data from birth certificates is used to represent the most important, defining event in the human's life.

Time to demand accountibility from researchers of all fields.