It is worthy of a long response that I am not breaking up into many posts covering a point every day or week.
I might point out that it is a usual tactic for some one defending their belief system to post so many links to stories that no one will follow all of them to determine if the links presented are actually relevant to the post. That doesn't help your argument. Neither does making a post so long that very few people have the time to read it at all.It is scholarly where I was trained to site references. And, just today I transferred the post to a document and saw it is ten pages. Amazing. A couple of hours work collecting the most basic of the scientific resources that support my OBSERVATION AND QUESTION, and there is so much more to prove my point in order to elicit some interest in research and stopping the violating treatment of women and babies. I am defending science that supports care for our babies prenatally, during labor and birth and after. I am only about making birth more gentle and aware for the baby. I believe a woman can sacrifice her rights and needs for the brief but lifelong critical experience of her baby's birth.
You might reach more people if you were to tackle one subset of what you wrote at one time--say like over a week or a month.
Thanks for your opinion. It's my blog and, quite frankly, it's just been a resource for me write about things that have been on my mind and heart for a long time and haven't opportunity to write about. I weave my post with threads from many of my thirty-two years of parenting four children, twenty-five years of professional work that includes working for multiple states on systems change to make the systems family supportive to empower women. It includes threads from my own healing process as I learned about the impact of birth trauma on the baby and the mother, being the deep and powerful work of healing, and then made it my business to meet and learn from many of the pioneers. And, the main thread right now is my own maternal grief and healing related to my son's deployment. The blog is about me having MY VOICE -- finally, and if I want to rant, I do. It doesn't matter to me if anyone reads it, (HEARS me), but I love that some people do.
You did actually say that the doctor in question wasn't going to learn. That is, in essence, name calling. If he were the doc to my children and had done a good job with them, then I would be offended as well.
If that is the criteria for name calling, well, it was pretty much a two-way. Anyone who knee-jerks with such a post as to reduce anyone and lump an entire group of professionals into a one-liner defense ("pseudoscience) and negate publicly a well-respected colleague/educator ..... well, that person is just not an open-minded person willing to learn something new. (Please refer to my post called, "Baby Cries." It will be pretty hard world for you then, and others, who want to focus on that as the point of the discussion. It's just not my choice/problem, or under my control, how you or they choose to (over) react to other than the facts.
When I was birthing my babies I first noticed that one could mention a doctor's name, any doctor, in any setting, and some would foam with loathing of him and some would gush with love of him as her hero. So, be offended. I am not in control. I'll address this more below.
If you choose to take on this energy of battle over protecting him, that's yours or their choice. He lives on regardless, and if he's as wonderful as you say, he knows he can't take every person's opinion personally. He knows at the end of the day the kind of job he's done -- while two people will have different views of it.
The information you presented was broad, interesting, and made me think (although not follow all those links).
Thank you. That's all I want --- because the only thing that motivates me is to create aware, safe, gentle practices from conception forward in order to create harmonious, healthy babies -- people. I spent fifteen years trying to support and help people get over their problems and the search took me back further and further to the earliest development. I have always been just ahead of the mainstream. Maybe you'll read the
Safe Baby Resolution I wrote for the state of Hawaii. I wrote it during September and October as my son prepared to go to war. I was literally on the floor in grief somedays and then back at the computer pouring my heart in a dream to bring each child into this world in love, safety, gentleness, and harmony. http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/sessioncurrent/Bills/SCR8_.pdf
I disagree with Dr. Wirth and the methods of his studies,
It doesn't make him wrong. I also disagree with the OB's who divided 120 babies in five research groups and gave them different combinations of bipuvicaine (narcotics) and fentanyl (in epidural)
to determine what dose of fentanyl (considered by the US Defense Dept to be a chemical weapon) counters the dangerous effects of bipuvicaine. !?!?! Bupivicaine seems to be the "drug of choice" for epidural after two decades of experimenting on LIVE BABIES DESPITE the science in the late 80's that showed epidural was dangerous. This is EVIDENCED-BASED research?? The buddy of your neonatalogist has not, in one year, come up with ONE single scientific research source that shows that ANY drug EVER used in obstetrics since the turn of the century was EVER researched and SHOWN to be SAFE for the BABY BEFORE USING and eventually become widely accepted as normal UNTIL removed from use for harming women and babies. Ether, DES, morphine, Demerol, Scopalamine, Cytec, other narcotics, and NOW, Paxil and Zoloft. Meanwhile, the science that Dr. Wirth's book is based on is well-accepted and actually can question the research on babies -- NON-consenting, NON-informed subjects (See post earlier this week about a Canadian decision about this.)
Dr. Wirth's book is a wonderful explanation of Candace Pert's work so that lay people can understand how the neuropeptides work. Pert is a well-known, respected researcher who found the receptor site for opium, and thus proving that in order for a drug to work there has to be a receptor site, meaning the body can make the needed substance for pain relief. She also used this discovery to create the first highly successful anti-cancer drugs and meds that took away the death sentence for AIDS patients. The medications use a receptor site (key and lock type image) to block the virus.
According to the literature, it takes 17 years for the new discoveries to make it into medical PRACTICE. Doctors often don't know, or do and don't change what they do for many years, if ever, until forced by consumers. Heretics, rebels, squeaky wheels, and whistle-blowers lead the way. Wirth is a leader in bringing info to his colleagues AND women. I admire that. It is truly amazing what "retired" people do when they no longer have to cower and comply with the Queen Bee, the demonized system. Pert's work is important in a discussion of labor and how a woman's body can make the chemical necessary for adequate pain relief
but she has to be in a safe, nurturing enviornment that adjusts to her and her baby's timing and pace as every women's body's labor is different, even among her own children. Pert is featured on the documentary "What the Bleep Do We Know." Wirth is very grounded in the current science.
but that doesn't mean that I disagree that babies feel something. I also don't think that the doc from Tales from the Womb would deny that either.
He did deny it and he called it pseudoscience BEFORE a decent discussion could happen. You don't seem to care about him denying it and trashing my colleagues by name ... because ... ? He pulled out the Scientology and Cruise card to mock "silent birth" -- a practice that is quite normal when doctors and nurses refute new information. Silent birth is a natural aspect of natural settings like homebirth, made extreme by the media mocking Cruise and scientiology. Meanwhile, the sheep just laugh and accept it in the extreme misrepresentation. Good luck to anyone wishing a quiet, reverent environment for her baby's birth in the hospital -- like the door kept shut, people pausing to let go of the crap going on in their lives or the hospital before they enter, entering and doing lawyer-based interventions and timing of them regardless of what the mother needs, etc., etc.) "What are you, a Scientologist, or something?" Someone who has never attended a birth that is guided by the woman's UNCONSCIOUS BODY that ALSO MADE the baby WITHOUT her NEOCORTEX or medical intervention, and cloaked in reverence for the baby -- homebirth -- will not "get this". They just join the sheep.
To me, that’s sadly ignorant that the environment of the hospital THEY create -- noise, disruptions, and strangers is considered normal - with NO REGARD for the BRAIN RESEARCH that shows us it is critical PRENATALLY and during INFANCY. Why not during labor, birth, hospital stay, and NICU. Simple question. Simple answer -- from my perspective. I don't have to change everything I do and the system I do it in. THAT, is the big issue here and reason for the inadequate response using Scientology. He doesn't appear to be knowledgeable about the Reichian work or the whole body of work it took me brief afternoon to google and compile. Doctors don't have time for their own family, let alone to read outside the scope of their work. It's my soulful, moral, and civic duty to inform anyone who wants to endure it. His buddy, an ex-OB, posted an additional mocking of the birth psychologists -- and I am pretty certain from her comments that she has no concept of the real prenatal and birth psychology work, just her defensive medical perspective of anything that triggers her.. Obstetrics harms the baby,
even while saving his or her life. (I never call the baby "it"). The work has a history in Europe where most quality, non-money influenced research comes from.
You just don't like his politics, and that appears to have affected your reading of his posts. I doubt you know my politics. I don't know his politics. I only know he hates George Bush - but so does 90% of the world. (Hell hath no fury like a war done in Jesus name, I hope.) If you are referring to the comparison of the NICU mom telling me to stop flinging insults and lies to me telling him to stop bashing my president, that was only an example. The purpose was to make a point of life is personal, but it doesn't change the facts. NICU effects your friend and you. The war in Iraq effects me equally. I have tried to find "what it's like" in a society who doesn't "get it".
After working with parents whose children have died and parents of children in NICU, there's just no comparison. A few weeks ago a nurse said who doesn't have a child in Iraq or Afghanistan said she thought it would be like a parent who's child is abducted or missing. And, she's right. Only we know where they are, what they are experiencing, and we can't do a damnned thing about it -- sort of like the NICU parent. Only we can't see them, comfort them, or hold their finger. They are 6,000 miles away -- there is no friggin' way to even see them, or call them, or even call a charge nurse to see how they are doing. We wait for any sign from them - a beep, bleep, a movement. In my head-body-heart, I am, on my blog, as was the mother whose daughter was missing in Aruba and was in the news doing everything possible. She could not sit in the US while her daughter was missing. A mother vigilant at her baby's side in NICU for weeks or months is in the very same physiological and emotional state, as is a mother whose child is at war. We mothers of soldiers can do N-O-T-H-I-N-G but put one foot in front of the other every day -- and watch the unaware masses living life normally. Sound familiar? There is NOTHING to be done to change our child's situation or to make them safe. I am glad the NICU doctor is the mother's hero for her -- where I am, there are no heroes to make it ok. Just our child, the hero.
SO, our personal experiences influence us, inform us, embolden us in our passions and crusades, and they can cloud us (I am saying this because I need to hear it.) I get your anger and need to defend the NICU doctor who made the difference. And, don't you dare dis' my support people or I might come out with teeth nashing too. So, I don't take it personally that those of you whose babies are alive and well because of doctor so and so. I would kiss the ground (and his or her ass) the person walks on if there was one person singularly responsible for bringing my son home alive -- and, with his vision, his hearing, his limbs, his brain intact, his body unscarred from constant shrapnel damage we don't hear about in the daily news. God, for him to come home with his healthy, optimistic, charasmatic wit and humor and with his compassionate heart will be a miracle. Will he ever be normal again? You mamas of babies who survived in NICU know the place we mothers live in -- that place in time, when you are waiting to hear the prognosis of your little one?? Your adrenal system is in hyper alert -- is your child going to live or die? And, what will life look like? Struggling not to hold your breath and daring to FEEL. THAT is where we moms of soldiers LIVE.
And, then there's the soldier's story -- and watching as a mother what you can not change. We know that frantic feeling of wanting to rip back time. But, it doesn't change the facts or confusion and controversy of the war and what got them there and keeps them there. Just like in birth and living life with the consequencs of some bizarre mix of choices we are responsible for and some we aren't. Such is life. In both cases, we have to focus differently and we have to look at ideas and options that aren't going to ever change what happened to your child or mine. We can only look to saving the newborns from damage and the way to end the war. Science, religion, and politics -- makings from the human mind to justify what it wants and needs, as it makes sense of the information in the body.
People get all jiggy about politics and mix it with other stuff. I LOVE learning about other's political and religious views and in the context of their personal lives. Each issue, for me, birth, war, gun control, welfare, abortion -- all stands on it's own, has to be evaluated outside of political lines. I do not have a party affiliation -- God forbid. I am cursedly on the friggin' middle of just about every issue. It is a curse and a blessing to see both sides. Do I think the Democrats have my child (who represents to me all of those who are sacrificing the most) in the mind and best interests? Hell, no.
For the record, from what I have read on his blog, he and I are very much in political agreement. I do have to say, I commented on two blogs that day -- one very much in support of his political comments and I said my son is in Iraq. I was disappointed in his lack of (zero) acknowledgement of that post, but then he was apparently busy writing the PseudoScience blog which I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated it as a compliment to be worthy of a post. (Hope you do, too). This is the first controversy I've had on my blog since I started it in November, two weeks after my baby was boots on the ground in Iraq.
Demonizing everyone who follows evidence based medicine isn't a good tactic either.
Modern medicine is very behind in practicing evidence-based science, and obstetrics is the worst. It is our place as consumers to confront it. The system is a demon -- the people are not. I understand how it is that they can not even confront the wrong doing that they see. Believe me, I understand the politics and the powerlessness of doctors and nurses within the system. It does not stop me from being the rabble-rouser I am --- to stir up women to take back the power in their lives and over their bodies - in labor and birth. And, it doesn't stop me from inciting doctors to rise up either. I always talk about how the doctors are the "worker bees" making money for the Queen (the status quo system-- that's who/what I see as the demon. Why are you not incensed that he demonized my profession, my colleagues -- I tell you, who are some of the most intelligent, astute, and compassionate people a mother would ever want to meet. www.birthpsychology.com and www.bebe.info. More links. Sigh. I am an information gatherer and a networker. I believe people need to have the resources.
And, lastly, you completely alienated me when you made this statement: they say cutting through a woman's abdominal wall to pull her baby out is safe for her and doesn't harm the baby. Good grief, lady. In some cases, this is the only way that a mother and child will not die--including me. Statements like those make reasonable women want to never read another word you write.,
But they will read what I write because deep within them in the body -- the unconscious as Pert says -- we women weep for the truth and to be free. Our heart breaks for our children when they suffer and struggle and we take it on and into ourselves. More guilt and shame and anger in the body -- something within us knows that it is not true. We are not failures, we are not the guilty one. I have been to those places and back -- and I speak from it. In the body we know the truth and it bubbles up, even if the brain chooses to translate it to anger. The brain is very much a relay station for the body's emotions and memories. The body is considered the "emotional body" and the "unconscious." The body remembers birth -- as a baby and a woman. What ONE FEELS is ones own stuff. I have posts way back about that.
C-sections may be over used, but they are definitely safer than dying.
A life saved by surgical birth is still a life physiologically and emotionally impaired -- for life. Actually, it's two lives. I suspect that you will zero find another who is as balanced, teetering in the middle, straddling the fence to the point of excruciating pain in support of the WISE AND APPROPRIATE USE OF MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY AND SKILLS as I am. I suppose one might say I am "radical" about looking at the impact of hospital birth on the 80% of women and babies who are experimented upon, deliberatly mislead and deceived and manipulated and who choose to use unnecessary medical technology and drugs for their own benefit. In the hospital, like in birth centers, women COULD be supported to birth without harming their baby -- for theirs and their physycian's convenience and malpractice avoidance. The problem is doctors, nurses, and women now defend the treatment of women and babies the has evolved as science based when it has not. And obstetrics answsers to no one. Women believe the are "liberated" women "choosing" to induce, use narcotics, and to have surgical birth. Not even feminists see the lies and the collateral damage to the dyad. AND, frankly, it is concerning to me that so many women now want to birth at home because of this treatment, the enviornment, and relationships. Medical caregvers DEMONIZE these women, and so do women who had traumatic births and were rescued by the physician who CONTRIBUTED to, if not caused it. It took me twenty-five years to see my first son's birth as a doctor-induced horror show and that THIS is why I thought birth was dangerous. How dare the medical establishment REFUSE to look at what they do and how dare they not PARTICPATE in CREATING a SAFER, RESPECTFUL environment for birthing in the hospitall.
I know how much medical caregivers go through to be able to do what they do. I respect that more than you can know. AND. AND.... the majority of women do not need the medical management of labor and birth. In birth centers the csection rate is 2-5% while in hospitals, it is 30%. My ex is an obstetrician. I am privy to some inside scuttle and shop talk, and how they are trained to protect their asses and their assets, how to manage their schedule and lives. And, I know they know it is done at the expense of mother's and babies. They come to believe their own propoganda.
I am sure your csection saved your life and your baby's life. But in about only 5 out of 30 are actually truly life threatening situations. The others vary in degrees of danger but a good number are created by MEDICALLY UNNECESSARY induction of labor or are "planned" by the physician. If your labor was induced for your convenience or openly for your doctor's convenience or even one of the many "BOGUS" excuses doctor's give (time management, baby), then the need for the life saving surgery was induced. Extremely high induction rates correspond to "life-saving surgeries". If your labor was induced for valid medical reasons (one high BP in the 8th month is not a medical reason. I mean a real medical reason) it still doesn't classify the surgical birth as necessary for life saving. Of course, at that time, it is life saving, but a woman can not really know that it was truly was or not. A woman's life becomes a mangled combination of her "choices" and medically-initiated self-serving practices --- SHE must live with the consequences in her body, emotions, and relationship with her child. The BABY will also LIVE with the consequences of being induced (physiologically and emotionally), with being drugged during birth, with not being able to get through an unripe uterus (think of how a nearly ready to bloom rose looks if one tries to force the bloom open).
The bell curve is very accepted way of viewing everything. Obstetrics ought to fit into that model as well. With 30% of women having surgical birth, the curve is way off. A certain number of women and babies will die no matter what. About 2-5% of women can also give birth without any assistance whatso ever. Another 10-20% can birth at home with a trained midwife or a physician with minimal assistance. Probably 10-20% of the women will have a very challenging birth -- long labors, prolonged pushing, structural pain, and emotional complications also cause failure to progress, need augmentation and drugs for pain, but I propose that 50-60% need very little of this. In the perfect world. Some European research -- in a country where natural and homebirth is the norm, showed that the cultural beliefs of the woman determine her ability to give birth without pain relief and interventions. In other words, in Sweden, a US woman screaming for her rights to her epidural at 3cm would be seen as odd and very troublesome on many levels. The cesarean seems easiest for everyone involved and it could be, but truly, logically and scientifically (physiologically), it doesn't make sense. AND, for the baby, though easiest in the moment surgical birth poses many other issues -- that are currently conveniently ignored and dismissed by the medical field. It's to their advantage to do that. Surgical birth insures patient populations for their colleagues. Hormones are key for all functions of the body. The body remembers everything -- that's really common understanding now.
Oh, the percentages? They're mine -- generally known stats compiled into my evolving theory/question. Hypotheses that obstetrics won't even let us begin to consider and get funding to look at. So, the natural birthers and women who would have died without cesection create the poles of what I suspect is the good ole bell curve. I expect that the obstetric bell curve would be pretty normal if women were allowed to follow their bodies. Apparently, there is a big debate going on between the two ends of the curve -- called "homebirth vs hospital birth. Neither is wrong. Both are right. For themselves. The other 90% of women who need or want neither, but to just have a loving, peaceful birth are the losers. We need to focusing on making birth SAFE for the women and babies birthing in the hospital, and creating ways to support women to birth at home and have access to medical care when needed. If you feel they are demonized it is because I know they have the skills and abilities to save lives and to provide a protective, gentle, peaceful haven in which to birth. But they don't, because they practice pathologically, defensively, and selfishly.
So, a main point of my blog is that BABY EXPERIENCES her or his birth REGARDLESS of whether it was medically necessary or a CHOICE. IF WE ONLY Recognize the BABY then we can support the baby to integrate the experience.
You are not the first woman or the last to rise up in anger at the idea of your experience and/or choices being a contributor to life long issues for your child. We mothers live it with it every day. We see our baby's struggles and pain, or deformities and disabilities and wrangle over it. We women need to come together to support each other from the beginning and through the whole walk of motherhood.
If you only get one thing, please let it be that the bottom line for me is making birth safer for the 70% of babies who don't have a voice, don't consent to drugs, don't consent to induction, or planned cesarean, but they get to live with the consequences. It's the baby's birth. The "Demon" is the system (all of us) that allows drugs, interventions, and procedures that were never shown safe for the birthing baby to become considered normal.
The denial that keeps us from seeing that the baby is learning and neurons are connecting around the experience -- fearful, happy, invaded, separated from mom, etc --- keeps the current practices going AND fear and denial prevent women from seeing that WHEN it had happened with their baby, we can heal whatever happened. It guides us to be more aware and respectful in the process of birth -- no matter what is happening, we can honor the baby's experience, as it is the baby's birth. And, we can support the baby and mother to heal AFTER. I try to always give hope with the message.
Thanks again for your post and the inspiration.
