Thanks to an old friend, Leilah McCracken and the army of others who have been a part of my healing

I was on Cassandra's new blog, http://www.homebirthissafe.blogspot.com/ and I was interested to see an article, Rape of the Twentieth Century by Leilah McCracken, owner of http://www.birthlove.com/, an extraordinary site. I am reminded of the importance of Leilah's work and communication with me in 2000 in my own healing process and became a little nostalgic about my journey since over the past seven years. I have been writing about the safety of birth and what a baby/soul coming into this world needs and weaving my professional and personal experiences into the tapestry. Of course, it's part of my own healing -- to have a place to have my voice and heart heard is powerful, and to support other women to touch those deep places is a blessing and honor. Because I have received and so valued a few responses about how important my blog has been to women, I thought I'd share a little about my own journey -- with the intent to share more about the field of birth trauma healing and to answer some questions and spark some questions. But mostly, at this time, to give every hurting woman more hope for knowing there is a way to heal whatever has happened to her and her blessed little one.

It is important to me, that you the reader, a pregnant or birthing woman, no matter how old your baby is, that you know that there is amazing technology, understandings, and modalities for healing out there. I firmly believe and I am committed to this -- that we women must touch our deepest woundings we experienced in birthing our babies and in being born IN ORDER to truly address what is happening in birth today. This is absolutely critical for anyone who attends birth and cares for pregnant and birthing women. Doctors, nurses, midwives, and doulas bring their own UNACKNOWLEDGED wounds and traumas to every birth they attend. I have written a lot about Feminine Betrayal by women in maternity care, the misuse of drugs and intervention, and the lack of regard for the SACREDNESS of conceiving and birthing a soul into our lives. Each of us are affected by it and if we attend births OUR STUFF that we are unconscious of - in denial about -- is what we are are, on some level, trying to heal and reorganize. Our stuff will be played out in our actions, decisions, and emotions in the other woman's birthing of her baby.

In the prenatal and birth healing work we call those in the mother's enviornment during pregancy, labor, and birth as the "WOMB SURROUND". We, as energetic beings, now proven so in science (http://www.whatthebleep.com/) are part of the energy field surrounding the mother. Our emotions, thoughts, agendas, and unhealed crap affect her and her baby. Yesterday I posted the welcome by the conference chair of the APPPAH congress -- it shares how important it is for us to care for, support, nuture, protection, and honor a pregnant and birthing woman.

So, with that ... on with my story, part 1. In early 2000 three things happened at the same time -- (and this eventually is related to Leilah)

First, I had left my work in program development and direction and in state systems and grassroots collaborative work (changing the systems to empower women) in utter disgust after yet another experience of system brutality.

Second, after "four months in the (emotional) desert" I was lead back into clinic work and "just help mothers and babies bond to keep them out of the systems in the first place," when I had taken a class to become an infant massage teacher. My trainer, DeAnna Elliott, is an expert in birth imprinting (http://www.foundationofglobalunity.com/). I learned from her about the Association for Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH) and birth trauma. I had my first awareness of the life long consequences of the cord around my neck 2-1/2 times and being born "under the influence" of saddleblock (like epidural) and crushing forceps. BIRTH TRAUMA!?!? Who knew? After years of hearing my parent's stories (perspectives) of my birth and the GOD-doctor who saved me, a life-time of choosing the most challenging route, spouse, and work, and two degrees in psychology and counseling and post-grad work in conflict resolution, I had never heard of this. The baby's brain is recording birth? WOW.

Not quite two years before I had, in a very despairing moment, asked God or whoever was in control of this crazy world for healing. I had said I was "willing to go to my deepest, darkest places to heal whatever keeps me from being the human being I am meant to be and to do what I am meant to do in this life." I was trying my damnedest over and over to have a good marriage -- with a very violent man, to make my mark in the world of helping women in the system -- empowering them when I wasn't even empowered myself.

I wasn't really thinking of that plea as I plunged into reading the works of William Emerson, PhD, grandfather of the birth trauma healing field, David Chamberlain, PhD and Thomas Verney, MD, co-founders of APPPAH. I see now these people were part of the answer. I was introduced to the cellular biologist, Bruce Lipton, PhD, now author of the Biology of Belief. Buy it on Amazon. His work explained the early consciousness that allows us to understand the effects of our first experience, conception, through gestation, birth and beyond. This eventually lead me in 2002-04 to train with Raymond Castellino,an early student of Emerson.

I had beeing studying Emerson's work about violence, c-section, and cord trauma. I read that babies born with cord around their neck go through labor feeling like they're going to die when they progress and their oxygen supply is cut off so they pull back and then they feel failure (and hear it from caregiver's in the surround of their laboring mother -- "failure to progress." Forever imprinted in the baby's brain unless and until we adults differentiate it for the baby. ). Emerson calls the psychological dynamic from cord truma "Completion ambivalence". For me, the cloudy sky opened and the sunshine of understanding poured in. Birds chirped. Flowers grew. I had a joyful moment of hope. In that moment and over time, who I believed I was and could never change (because of my struggles) made sense and only then through the birth trauma healing I was able to transcend much of what had eluded all sorts of traditional medicine and therapy. Hope and understanding does still leave one with the unwinding of the years and decades of LIVING the trauma over and over. Many times over the last few years I have remembered that earlier plea and been grateful for the answering of it.

Emerson developed stages of birth from the baby's perspective and Castellino refined this in his development of his process in collaboration with Wendy McCarty, PhD (http://www.wondrousbeginnings.com/) to create the modality of healing birth trauma healing (You can see the curriculum at http://www.castellinotraining.com/). The Five Stages of birth -- from the baby's experience --- create one sequence from the baby's initiation of labor to the completion of coming to the mother's breast to self-attach. The process of birth is monumentally important and critical as the human baby leaves the safe, warm, watery, spiritual world of the mother's body where s/he is symbiotic with the mother to become within hours and moments, a physiologically independent, but otherwise completely dependent still upon the mother. It seems absurd to me now that this is so denied and disregarded in our society. From this perspective -- that the BABY experiences birth and it is imprinted in that early part of the brain -- the action of beginning labor and completing the task creates the template for every in which the person will do every activity of every day. Hard to believe, I know. Think about it. Tuck it away for now and read on. I hope to get permission to share more of that later.

In my very first process with Castellino I did healing my prenatal experiences that lead to the cord wrap and over two years I did level after level of the cord wrap. One of the sessions is pictured here. I have learned that my cord wraps (2 times)were in relationship to my parent's relationship and their unspoken but held in issues (the 1/2 was done by the physician -- another serious healing session!).

Here, in the photo, my colleagues, Gene and Kitty, in the energy field of MY Central nervous system were able to "work out" my parental relationship. It's done as if I were in the womb -- with some guidance from me and some from following their own guidance, they are telling me that their relationship issues are not about me. We call it "differentiating" --- the adults differentiate what they are experiencing and feeling so the prenate, birthing baby, infant, toddler, child, teen, adult child doesn't have to "take on" and live the parent's stuff.
In this work, we say, "Children live and act out what parents don't deal with." I knew this even as a traditional child and family therapist. I never believed the child was the problem.

In the prenatal and birth work, as they, the parents, deal with their sh**, I, the baby, can relax. Finally, when they had worked out their stuff, I was able to let them (babies' boundaries need to be respected, even and especially by parents) come close to me and as a couple they supported, protected, and cared for me, the baby. I am "unwinding" the cord and releasing my needs, or mistaken beliefs, that I have had to carry from their relationship - for forty-seven years. I no longer have to carry and live their relationship as me, and I could clear drug imprints and forceps dynamics from my brain.

The picture to the right is later --- after me, the baby, is allowed to move through birth and into their arms. I am getting here what every human baby needs in the first moments of life --- safe, trusting, loving touch and eye contact with the mother and father. This is what activates the baby's brain and allows for the hormones that will create the ability to trust, love, and to attach. Just as in birth, in this process, the hormone oxytocin is flowing. There is a look and it is often seen in homebirth babies -- the bright, soft, clear eyes. We call it "Amgydala eyes." The amgydala is online at birth and is the seat of emotion. We can heal our earliest wounds at any age! Amazingly, my relationships with my parents as individuals and as a couple -- as the origin of me, dramatically shifted with no effort. No counseling. No boundary setting. No "I statements". No affirmations. It just shifted.

FORCEPS!!! As Ray held my head and both treated me and explained what he was doing, he said, "People born with forceps look for the hardest places and this little one reeeeeeally looks for the hard places." So true. I have always found the most difficult challenge to overcome and it always came with struggle and fight with the inevitable need and disruption of "outside help" that I resisted. That is what I learned from my birth -- it was how my brain was programmed at birth to function. When a baby is laboring and laboring and is stuck and requires ANY assistance from someone other than the mother, this imprints in the baby's brain as a need for assistance from someone outside themselves. The baby is at a wall, a barrier, and obstacle, and while the "new" brain (thinking, neocortex) knows there are other ways, that primal, "old" brain online at birth is programed to need "outside assistance". Forceps creates a confused way of being in the world.

According to Gerald Vind, PhD, and neurobiologist at http://www.pnri.net/, and other new cellular biology and physics understandings of humans as electrical, magnetic beings, this early experience is our radar throughout life and the part of the brain that draws to us what really happens, what we really get -- even when our neocortex (learned, thinking brain) wants us to have something different. An easy way, prosperity, a gentle love, to do something on our own timing, without people intruding or forcing these are things our neocortex sees and wants. Our Limbic system's first imprints from the birth experience seek often seek something quite different and that which we actually manifest into our lives.

Gene is my partner here --- I had to have a big, strong man to work with, because I had forty-seven years of anger built up, and two decades of attracting the angriest of men who were willing to act out what I couldn't. I was the "victim" and did not get to express my anger openly. We are doing "creative opposition" which allows the person to "be met" with equal force -- no pushing or pulling away like most human relationships are. This allows for the person to FEEL their impulse, to move through the anger (or whatever) in a healthy, met, and felt way. One can learn how to interact with babies and anyone in this manner -- with or without touch.

I was the strong, smart, motivated, driven woman who always fell into collapse at the hands of angry men. Collapsing into "powerlessness" is a FORCEPS DYNAMIC. Creative opposition requires eye contac to follow through in a healthy, met way. In the picture I am not yet able to that but I did. I was still in the expression of the intensity of anger vs going into collapse. No one, no man for certain had ever "met me" and recognized me, and held the boundary for me to feel my anger and powerlessness.

My left arm was up by my head at birth -- to protect me from progressing and dying because of the cord, I learned. Not because I was a "dumb baby" in the "wrong position" and not "going the wrong way" or "causing trouble" or "failing to progress". I was brilliant -- I knew how to save myself. But, not to get here with my mother flat on her back, drugged. The doctor moved my arm back into a horrible position that broke my clavicle, dug forceps into my left check and mastoid where the most pressure was applied and turned me, adding another 1/2 loop of my cord. He pulled me out, in the opposite direction of MY intention and movement. I tried to die -- and, was not allowed. My wounded left side, throughout my life, is the side I lead with, in SELF-PROTECTIVE anger and opposition, but always being the supportive, compliant, "good girl" (stubborn and defiant). I was blue and roughly resuscitated. Enter those who are happy to express their anger, to force, and to hit and harm, even though I was not abused as a child by my parents. Is it a surprise that I married a man becoming a doctor who had decided to do a second residency in obstetrics andthat this threw me, I mean blew me, into a tail spin? And, that he was a first year resident when I began this journey of healing?

So the third thing that happened was in April, 2000, my husband in his first year of obstetric residency, I began my CranioSacral coursework and I did an fast-track to completing them all that year. The training is as much experiential as it is didactic. We are sometimes on the table and sometimes we are the practitioner. I learned A LOT about when we go into the body for healing. My first child's birth and my own came bubbling, boiling, and bursting out of my body and soul to be healed. Four years of violence and abuse and unable to get out it and going into obstetrics poked the huge boil of unexpressed rage within me. Besides the two books, The Mind of Your Newborn Baby by Chamberlain, and The Secret Life of the Unborn Baby by Verney, two other books came into my life. Two wonderful books by extraordinary women. Two perspectives, two parts to the puzzle for healing what was bursting forth to be healed. For someone in the fields of counseling psychology and systems change for years, it was quite surprising to me.

The first book, Reclaiming the Spirituality of Birth (now titled Songs from the Womb) by Benig Mauger, I read it by the pool that summer of 2000. I had done the level one training in CranioSacral and would be doing level two in July. You can read the final chapter of http://www.itsthebabysbirth.com/artandwritings/benigmauger.htm. I remembering reading it and seeing my son come home from work and putting it down to greet him. Recently, I was rereading it and was AMAZED to read my underlinings and to understand how much of an impact the book had in taking me into my body and soul to heal his birth. The other book was Leilah McCracken's collection of writings.

Ironically, my twenty-five year old son had come home to stay with me for the summer in IL to be within weekend driving distance of the Army base, Ft Leonard Wood, MO where his bride of one year had three months of her Air Force training and she had to be on base. What a treat to have him home. As he was driving straight through from Phoenix in time for the 4th of July, and talking to me by phone when tired or bored, I began to realize the most amazing thing. I was home alone, and when he arrived it was going to be just me and him. I got giddy as I realized in all of his life he and I had not ever been alone. It was never just me and Andy. My now-ex was in an obstetric residency in Chicago several hours away, my older daughter lived in Phoenix, my son, GI Joe -- now in Iraq -- was at basic training in GA, and my six year old daughter was in Chicago for two weeks with her grandparents. It would be just me and Andy for the week. He had not been living at home for seven years and never had we been alone -- there were always siblings, father, or step-father. I made the intention to make it wonderful, healing, and loving and to savor every moment of it. It was glorious, as was the entire three months of having him home. Just like when he was a little boy, I'd just stop and watch him sleep. I'd feeeeel and whisper all of the unspoken joys and regrets that seem to get swept away with the day -- just like I'd do when he was a little, wild man and at the end of the day I'd feel like such a hag and bad mother as I watched him sleep, looking like the angel he really, truly is.

My daughter-in-law received her orders for her first assignment -- Germany. Their leaving coincided in early September with my trip to Phoenix to visit my daughter and to take the Upledger Pediatric CranioSacral course. While I was there he and his wife would be leaving for three years in Germany. We had taken his car to a military site to be shipped to Germany. They would fly out of OHare while I was in Phoenix. He was to drive me to my flight at Midway airport and leave my car later that week at the Amtrak in Bloomington, IL and take the train to their own flight. When he dropped me at Midway -- I can cry even now -- I didn't know when I would see my baby again. Three years prior I had taken a twenty-four hour train trip to Montana to see him before he was deployed to Saudi Arabia for eight months. These were the days when I could not go more than six months without an "Andy fix" and terrible withdrawals. At the airport, telling him good-bye, I lost my composure -- I felt such grief at saying goodbye, as never before. I just had to make eye contact and tell him how much I loved him. Not knowing when I'd see him again gripped me in such a deep place. It was so hard to part. I cried to the ticket gate. I know now that reading Mauger's book had gently spoken to my wounded soul and Leilah's site and book and correspondence had touched that deep boil of anger from the violations of my body and soul in his birth, and in my own.

Thank God for the CranioSacral work and the work of the pioneers in the pre and perinatal psych and trauma healing field. I know now that in twenty-five years -- and three other births -- I could never begin to touch these deep places as there was NO ANSWERS, NO SUPPORT, no way to change what happened. We have to suck it up -- whatever happens to us in birthing our babies -- and live with it. And, while expected to not talk about it. The help I prayed for came to me each step of the way, when I was ready, and when I needed it.

Remember I was en route to the Pediatrics course?? In doing my own work -- being a good subject for my partner -- I went into re-experiencing his birth. It would be the first of FOUR times I experenced rebirthing him, each time would involve one or more violations of our experience. In this first one, I became aware of the experience of being tied down and drugged -- scopalamine and narcotics had made me wild and thrashing as they are known to do -- and my body wanted to move into sideline position. Structurally, in the CranioSacral body work, I learned that the chronic pain in my left hip was from being tied down while everything in my body wanted to move into sideline position. I later learned at a homebirth that this IS the position a woman's body gets into so the baby's head will resolve a lip on the cervix. My cervix had torn during my son's birth.

I began to feel the memory of the contractions and my partner could actually palpate them. My son was born very softly and gently (far from the birth that was like a rape) and my partner intuitively grabbed her sweater and rolled it into a "baby" and handed him right to me saying, "Here's your baby, Andy." I never knew in my neocortex how much pain there was in my body and soul -- my uterus, heart, and lungs -- and how much I had grieved internally in my body for that moment. My only memory of the first day of his life was hearing, "Here's your baby" as I tried to pull my consciousness up out of the deep fog of many drugs, including gas. I saw him for two seconds as the cart he was in passed by. He was sucking his thumb. Just like for the doctor I was relieved he was "an alive baby". Somehow that's where most of us get stuck in this soceity. In healing the trauma we support the mother and baby to have a FELT SENSE in the body. That day, I had a felt sense, as real as if it actually happened, of having a kind nurse put my baby in my arms. When a mother does the work in her body it changes her and her relationship with her child, and with the world.

So, back to Leilah McCracken's work. Leilah's work was one of the first writings about birth that I encountered in the early months of 2000 and was fuel for my internal, unrecognized ever-burning flame of inner rage. My body knew it. My headaches and visual issue that lead to an angiogram, spinal tapes, scans looking for brain tumors, etc (my forceps trauma exacerbated by the forced pushing during his birth). My gallbladder -- bitterness and my stomach (ulcer) knew it. Our emotions – our true emotions – are “held” in the body, and our neocortex works hard to keep us safe from them.

Leilah put WORDS to the feelings - the violations that my body knew so well. She and I corresponded as I also defended my husband who was LEARNING how to violate women in their labor and birth -- something that was bringing our violent marriage to a huge head. Just as I was healing the roots of my part of the relationship -- and, why it is what I attract into my life (to heal). It still took me two more years to physically get out of that relationship and for five years I have been continuing to heal my inner self and the manifestation of my birth and that violent marriage in my life.

A violent birth at that hands of a male obstetrician, and marriage to a violent obstetrician and many stories in between -- what emotional, spiritual, and psychological relief to learn how this was the manifestation of my earliest experiences of coming into this world. Because of the experience of my son leaving for Iraq in October and some other coinciding events, some with the ex in August, I spoke publicly of the violence I experienced and participated in as a victim. I wrote the Safe Baby Resolution, part of the Hawaii Domestic HARMONY Initiative during September and October. I speak out now, not to harm anyone, but I do so to support the many, many, TOO MANY women who are victims of domestic violence and obstetric violence. I speak out now because I am realizing that life has brought me to another cross-roads and I intend to "turn this corner." Not even in domestic violence counseling is a woman’s own birth and her birthing her babies acknowledged. It’s time to break the cycle of violence in birth. It IS the root of my own history and of violence in this society.

This blog began as a counter blog to a female obstetrician who was verbally and emotionally violating women who shared their heart and guts with her. Her viewers were trying to convince her that their anecdotal story of a beautiful, peaceful, empowered birth was all they needed to know -- during a nasty debate where she claims that homebirth is danger based on a percent of a percent margin in one study.

And, SO IMPORTANTLY, I wish to share that in the midst of our worst is our best. Our shadows and woundings are become our gifts when we shine the Light upon them. God IS the Light of the world. There is hope for healing and living life on one's own terms. Healing doesn't always look so pretty to others, because it is exposing, and it is like cleaning an old stuffed closet. We have to take everything out and deal with it. Sometimes it feels like maybe it was easier to just tuck it away in the back in the dark and to try and keep the closet door closed over the stuffed mess trying to spill out. When one realizes "pain is inevitable, but misery is optional" and that tools exist to do it, one can move through the old pain to new places.

In this post, I found that I am disclosing to the world the truth and I am shining Light on the shame I feel about abuse I experienced. And, as I also wonder, of course, WHAT IF my mother had not been flat on her back and drugged? What if I had been sent home when I arrived at the hospital with non-labor contractions? What if I had not been induced without my knowledge or consent and then not given an arsenol of drugs? What if I had not been tied down so my body couldn't work? How different might my life have been? Yep, I am dragging out something very dark and old and bringing into the light of day on this beautiful spring day. That something is very last piece of ugly history, that fear of threats for my life over taking his money, me not making enough money, my thighs too big, over the fact I had a child at age eighteen, because my visions too unattainable, and because of my passion for caring for my babies above work and money. I do so to shine light on the darkness and wounding for many, many strong, articulate, functional women in every walk of life and socio-economic level who work every day to do their best to raise their babies in violent homes, while they put on their face and try to look happy and good and even help other women, but do not yet seem to be able to empower themselves. Teachers, therapists, doctors, nurses, midwives, accountants, and ministers -- women anywhere who are mobilized in their fear of being harmed by a loved-one or in birthing their babies. Whether it is a fear or has been your reality. There is hope. There is redemption from the "ideal of perfection." I let the shame release. Grateful for my birth and the gifts it gave me, grateful for my birth of my son and our healing, for it can be meaningful in bringing healing to other mothers and babies.

Thank you, Leilah! For speaking your truth and confronting me.

An excerpt from Leilah's Rape of the 21st Century. This is about forceps, epidural, and cesection birth. Go to http://www.homebirthissafe.blogspot.com/ to read the entire piece.

Forceps, created through the unbelievable reasoning that babies' heads will be protected from birth by clamping metal tongs, are often used in conjunction with episiotomy. Forceps (and to a lesser degree vacuum extractors) cause rectal injuries, and anal difficulties- such as chronic, painful hemorrhoids: the veins inside pregnant women's rectums are naturally very thin. And when artificial extraction equipment is used- especially in association with coerced, forced "purple pushing" births- these delicate veins become engorged, distended, weakened and bruised. Any existing hemorrhoids become fiercely painful, and often manifest themselves into lifetimes of drugstore analgesics and sitting on rubber rings at movie theaters.

Use of forceps can permanently disfigure women's genitals, and cause bladder injuries- sometimes women's bladders are so badly bruised that lifelong urinary stress incontinence problems result. For babies, forceps use can cause cerebral and Bell's palsies, cephalhematomas (pools of blood forming under the scalp), skull fractures, and great pain- and painful birth brings an increased risk of violent suicide later in life.

In 1920, the article "The Prophylactic Forceps Operation" by Joseph B. DeLee became the touchstone for physician-managed vaginal deliveries. It detailed DeLee's ideal birth: first cutting a large episiotomy on an etherized, unconscious, bound woman, then pulling her baby out with forceps. Then manually removing the placenta, and giving large doses of ergot to curtail postpartum hemorrhage. Then pulling the cervix down with forceps to examine it, and stitch up any tears. Then carefully reconstructing the vagina to restore "virginal conditions".

Scopolamine and morphine are given in the birth, and then for the lengthy post-delivery work to "prolong narcosis for many hours postpartum and to abolish the memory of labor." This one man's torturous birth ideal became the standard for women's births for the bulk of the twentieth century. Incredibly, there is a prestigious award given in his name… the "DeLee Humanitarian Award". It is awarded to doctors who have made outstanding contributions to the health of women and infants.

Epidural anesthetic has replaced scopolamine as the birth drug of "choice"- in some centers over 90% of birthing women will have an epidural- and it can lead to terrible consequences (none of which women are routinely told about when they ask- "is it safe?"). 70% of women will experience side effects- such as low blood pressure, fecal and urinary incontinence, paralysis of the lower extremities, allergic reactions, respiratory depression, headache, vomiting, and seizures. 20% will develop fever for which the baby will need to be treated too. 15-35% will have to be catheterized because they can't pee. 30-40% will have severe backache for hours or days after birth, and 20% will have severe backache one year later.

Epidurals cause one in ten babies to be born "blue" (severe fetal hypoxia- lack of oxygen; induction drugs cause it too). The Caine-derivative anesthetics used in epidurals rapidly cross the placenta and can harm both a baby's central nervous system and cardiac function. Epidural drugs- especially when given with a cocktail of other drugs- cause jaundice, as newborns try to metabolize the powerful drugs with their immature livers. Epidurals lead to a decrease in muscle tone and strength in the newborn, affecting the baby's ability to breastfeed properly. And since dose is calibrated to maternal weight, babies can easily get an overdose (a baby is about one-twentieth the size of the mother). Babies receiving epidural drugs, as well as any other kind of painkilling drug in their births, are more likely to be addicted to drugs later in life- and have learning disabilities and violent behavior. Epidurals make women four times more likely to have forceps or vacuum extractor deliveries, and twice as likely to get cesarean sections.

Cesarean sections are done for many reasons, mostly relating to impatience in the hospital staff. "Failure to progress" being the most common and infuriating reason: this is when a woman's cervix is not dilating according to the hospital's preset idea of how a labor should unfold, and she is literally stood over and told to dilate. She is threatened with surgery if she doesn't. Of course her body won't open for birth in such a dangerous and stressful scenario; and if the baby can't be blasted out by artificial oxytocin or dragged out by forceps, it will be cut out by an obstetrician.

A c-section may also performed due to the observance of normal fluctuations of a baby's heart rate (as noted on a fetal monitor, often the first intervention in the classic cascade of interventions); these fluctuations may sometimes lead medical personnel to erroneously believe that the baby is in "distress", and needs to be removed immediately. Activities like thumb-sucking, sleeping and even maternal thirst will cause dramatic differences in fetal heart rates. (Though sometimes the baby will be put in genuine distress through drugs or hormones given to the mother.)Cephalopelvic disproportion is another common excuse for a cesarean section: it is often claimed that many women's pelvic outlets are too small for babies to pass through. This is nonsense! If so many women had such useless pelvises for birthing, their ancestors would not have survived- and the only women alive today would have enormously wide pelvises! Modern women's bodies aren't broken- they know how to give birth, if only left alone; women who are said to be incapable of birthing without modern obstetrics are very likely to be supremely able to give birth without intervention- as long as they are nowhere near the institution that is so quick to intervene.

In most hospitals, one in five women will have a cesarean section; in some centers the number is as high as one in three. This statistic should not be any higher than three in one hundred! And the cruelty of cesarean section must not be diminished because of its frequency: women should be focusing on babies, love and breastfeeding in the first weeks after birth; not staples, catheters and weeping incisions!After my section (as in cross-section; vivisection) I understood misery: trying to care for my new baby while recovering from major abdominal surgery on a hard hospital bed was the most heartbreaking thing in my life. Every move was agony; gas pains ripped sickly through my savaged abdomen; my catheter hurt me when it was inside my urethra, and left sharp pains when it was out. I could barely move to change my baby's diaper, and the hospital staff were too busy to help me care for my baby. The tape that held the IV tube in my arm constantly had to be repositioned, and each time it ripped at my skin and hair.

I wasn't allowed to eat: first the liquids on Day One after surgery, then the gruel on Day Two, then the mash on Day Three was not the sustenance I needed to fuel my breasts for milk-making, nor to feed my healing, ravaged body. I was a patient, a sickly invalid, a twenty-one year-old woman who had to pee in a bag, and hold her belly together before rolling over in bed. I was helpless to care for my new baby, and I will always remember his first days of life as grotesquely uncomfortable, and full of sorrow. I couldn't even get up to brush my teeth.

And why are the significant risks of cesarean section not discussed? I didn't even know of the danger I was in. Women are up to sixteen times more likely to die after a cesarean delivery than a vaginal birth. Cesareans cause hemorrhage; women during cesareans are ten times more likely to lose their uteruses because of unstoppable bleeding, and hemorrhage is actually the leading cause of all maternal deaths. Cesarean sections cause ileus (intestinal paralysis associated with abdominal injury), intestinal obstructions and adhesions, pulmonary embolism, and Mendelson's syndrome (acid pulmonary aspiration). There is a 20% chance of a dangerous infection developing after the birth- a big problem with the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant hospital microbes.

After a cesarean, women suffer more from postpartum depression. And birth trauma, a much misunderstood condition that most doctors haven't even heard of, which stems directly from feelings of powerlessness and worthlessness that come from violent hospital births.Women can develop lifelong urinary stress incontinence when the bladder is peeled away from the uterus, and bladder and uterus injuries happen, as well accidental injuries to other organs, tissues and vessels. Cesareans cause respiratory distress syndrome in newborns- a leading killer of babies, and between 2-6% of babies will be accidentally cut by the scalpel.After cesareans, women are more likely to develop ectopic pregnancies (if they even manage to get pregnant at all); and future babies are at risk of poor outcomes. Women are also more likely to grow placentas that either block their vaginal outlets (placenta previa), or detach themselves while a woman is still in her pregnancy (abruptio placentae)- and both conditions can kill the mother and baby.

Future births will be considered high risk because of the slight chance of the cesarean scar rupturing, and a ruptured uterus can cause death for the baby and a lost uterus for the mother. VBAC women being administered induction drugs are at particular risk of uterine rupture, especially with the drugs Prostin (I was blissfully unaware of the danger I was in during the birth of my fifth), and Cytotec- an ulcer drug not even approved for obstetrical use by the FDA or its manufacturer: it makes women up to 28 times more likely to have their uteruses rupture in childbirth (despite this, its use has spread like wildfire in the medical and nurse-midwifery communities). The pain of cesareans just goes on and on.In a cesarean section, a private, secret, and sensual event becomes a sterile crucifixion in a room full of slicing, staring strangers. And the ultimate rape is that we are told we need to be cut. The sanctity and power of birth becomes a meek "yes, doctor" and we become spectators to our own violation; we even thank the doctors as they scurry on their way out of the operating room.