Birth affects the lives of babies?

There is no scientific evidence that the experience of birth affects the lives of babies.

-- Amy Tuteur

There is no evidence to affirm nor to deny whether babies are or are not impacted by their birth experiences. It's simply something that hasn't been studied. So you can say it's 'fabricated,' but, in reality, you don't know. It's an opinion.It's no more fabricated than saying "babies aren't impacted by their birth experience.

It may be that in 10 years, someone will think to follow-up on children who are born in the typical medical model... induction, epidural, directed pushing, etc and compare them to children who are born in a natural birth. Until then, hypothesizing that these experiences might affect people is simply a matter of opinion/guesswork *on both sides.*

-- Mother of Six, poster on Tuteur's homebirth blog in response to Tuteur's statement

William Emerson, PhD who I consider the "Grandfather" of the field of treating birth trauma did indeed follow babies for decades. Most of the practitioners in the field have studied with him -- Castellino (http://www.beba.org/), Mines (http://www.tara.com/). Castellino and McCarty (http://www.wondrousbeginnings.com/) co-founded the BEBA (Building and Enhancing Bonding and Attachement).

You see a listing and you can purchase Emerson's work at his site: http://www.emersonbirthrx.com/orderform.html. Dr. Emerson and Castellino's have decades of video archive of therapy sessions where they began to identify the patterns. Dr. Emerson identified four stages of birth FROM THE BABY'S PERSPECTIVE and Castellino and McCarty built it up that to create five stages that form a sequence. This sequence is imprinted in the brain (as the brain is known to do with every other moment of development). We see the world through our experience of leaving our mother's body and coming into the world. There used to be a saying about a women having "a bun in the oven". Well, if the baby is the bun that is rising and baking, birth provides the frosting. That finishing touch is part of one's personality and will be forever the TEMPLATE for living.

David Chamberlain,PhD and Thomas Verney, MD are co-founders of the Association for Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Health (http://www.birthpsychology.com/). The website contains a massive amount of information about the research and practices of supporting the human being form conception through infancy. You can find practitioners in every state. APPPAH has had a professional journal for two decades. Members are international and much research has been done outside of the US. That makes sense when one considers the cultural and political climate of the US for birth to be controlled by obstetricians, Big Pharm, and politicians so that what makes birth safer for the baby is denied by the US.

So, yeah, the research is there --- the science is so simple, it's overlooked. It may be ten years before the average person begins to see that the human baby is a fully sentient human and that the birthing brain is being imprinted. I hope it's not that long.

I agree with Mother of Six -- because mainstream, controlled by medical science and it's psuedo-facts, hasn't studied and continues to do what it wishes to women and babies without studies first to show the safety, doesn't mean it's true. Tuteur's statement is shocking coming from an obstetrician --- "There is no scientific evidence that the experience of birth affects the lives of babies." Absolutely, jaw-dropping, shocking disbelief to hear that from someone trained to care for birthing women and the baby. It gives us insight in how it is that some physicians are actually able to do what they do. Case in point, a little boy for whom I have just created a blog --

The fact that birth affects a person is so logical that I think is it ignorant to not see the human baby as being affected by the birth experience. Who can attend a birth and not see this? Who can treat a baby with such harshness and disregard with the belief that the baby's brain for some twist of science and logic is NOT functioning. All one has to do is study the development of the human from conception through infancy to see that, "OH, MY GOSH! The laboring and birth baby's brain is ALSO WORKING! They "remember" because there is NO MOMENT that is not a part of their physiological development and life." DUH.

We know the prenatal, gestating baby is affected by the environment and experience of the mother. We all grimace when we see pictures of a doctor holding a baby upside down. It doesn't take a scientific research with controlled groups and long term studies to know that the use of vacuum extraction and forceps -- used on a soft, soft scull -- have an effect. We don't need a study comparing homebirth babies whose mother's are upright and whose hand supports the emerging head exploring her own body and supporting her own perineum to the baby whose mother is in a semi-reclining/sitting position with a physician's hand pushing on her perinium with a latex glove, grasping the emerging head, twisting the baby to turn his head while his body is unable to rotate yet.

Only ignorant or self-serving people would insist there is no effect of birth on the baby. Who would that be? Doctors? Hospitals? Drug companies? Nurses who participate in carrrying out the rituals against women and babies?

This passage was written by a midwife and is a beautiful description of birth that honors the mother and the baby.

I think the hands-on way of catching babies makes a midwife feel important, but is not in itself very important. Yet I can't do it easily myself either! I LOVE Sara Wickham, who Pamela H-P cites (check out www.withwoman. co.uk for some great stuff). I think the only benefit to hands on is to stop a head from coming too quickly - then again, that would really be hands-poised. If not in the tub, I hold a warm washcloth over the whole pubis with crowning, but just for the heat and the feel good effect, not any benefit to my hands. During the delivery of the head I use a warm one to cover the rectum. My other hands 2 or 3 fingers are on top of the babe's head to stop it if it tries to come too quickly. I'm a firm non-believer in counter-pressure, as I think babies know how to birth themselves just fine. I think many tears occur when birth practitioners try to deliver shoulders on the same contraction as the head, prior to restitution of shoulders. Unless ababe slides out, I NEVER tell women to push the rest of the baby out on the same UC. That's a precious, important time for her to catch her breathe, gather herself, let everyone wonder at the wee head, watch the baby rotate to and fro until he or she picks the right direction, let the mucus stream out of nose and mouth, etc.

IF this is not for the BABY'S SAKE, whose? Birth and all of the hospital and midwifery procedures, policies, protocols, techniques -- are they done only for the mother's benefit? Really!?! Is that true?!? You're kidding, right!?!?