Re-Programming Prenatal Experience

Re-Programming Life from Our Zero-Point
by Gerald Vind, PhD

Visit the website at: Transforming Dragons

Prenatal Re-Imprinting (PNRI) is a technique for accessing and re-imprinting the first-forming embryonic patterns that imprint at a cellular level. Thus, PNRI accesses the biological origins of maladaptive patterns, that is, their biological zero-point* of their existence. These zero-point maladaptive patterns, once located, can be easily re-imprinted and a permanent re-programming can be made to replace negative patterns with positive patterns.

How does that work?

Our personality begins to develop at the same time as our embryonic nervous system. And from our conception (our zero point) and throughout our development in our mother’s womb, we are imprinted with various foundational neurochemical response patterns. Our embryonic and fetal imprinting follows our mother’s response to her life experiences. Our mother’s emotional experiences (good and bad) produce many different emotional neurochemicals that pass through the placenta and imprint cellular-level response patterns. We become imprinted, and we adapt to our mother’s neurochemical “soup.”

This imprinting occurs in the emotional center of our brain (limbic system). And, it is our emotional center that will later guide our attention, awareness, attitude, mood, emotions, and motivation. Our embryonic imprinting establishes our foundational thresholds and set points that we become programmed to reactivate throughout out life.

After we are born, our life becomes organized around creating events that produce the same “flavors” of neurochemical “soup” in our emotional core that we experienced in our mother’s womb.

This is so important, and yet, it is astonishing that no one has addressed this problem in any meaningful way. That is, no one except PNRI practitioners.

PNRI is a science and methodology that takes us back to our zero-point to re-experience our prenatal imprinting. Through a novel and highly effective PNRI system, practitioners work with clients to transform their maladaptive personality patterns into positive and self-actualizing patterns. The results are achieved in a few sessions, and they are zero-point life readjustments.

The zero-point of our being is where we started to form the personality “grooves” that we continue to follow after birth, digging our early prenatal “grooves” deeper throughout our life. PNRI focuses on the early imprinting of maladaptive “grooves” or patterns because this is the place where profoundly beneficial changes take place with PNRI.

Locating the zero point of a maladaptive pattern and transforming it with PNRI releases negative foundations for our present problems (tracing all of the way back to the zero point). Without the negative foundation, our associated contemporary problems are able to resolve themselves and clear up quickly. Thus, PNRI is zero-point life readjustment that is effective and efficient. The power and potential of re-imprinting prenatal patterns is truly remarkable.
______________________________________
* The term “zero point” is borrowed from its use in quantum physics. There, it is used to describe the threshold of existence where, for example, a photon “pops out” of the vacuum of space into our observed local space-time. In quantum field theory, zero-point energy is synomous with “vacuum energy” that can be drawn from the vacuum of empty space; that is, the natural process of creating “something” out of “nothing.”

Hollywood Images of Birth

From a very interesting blog, Feminist Mormon Housewives at http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/?p=1462#comment-291738

The poster wondered about how common the Hollywood birth images are actually are in real life. That is one topic that neither Heather nor I have written on. One hundred forty some people responded. Here's mine:

The images we see of childbirth on television, Hollywood style, are like everything else on television …. designed to numb us, entertain us, and sell us. Rarely, does a woman go from not much happening to full transition, at the worst possible time … or most timely for entertainment. Like other forms of violence that humans watch mindlessly for hours every day, modern birth in the hospital is crammed into brains as the “normal” way, the safe way … they are selling epidural and the control of women’s bodies, minds, and souls just like they are selling the newest car, line of clothes, improved mop, and sexy shampoo. Like violence, like the sexual images our children are exposed to, the message of the horrible pain, the need for a crew of medical people pushing, probing, and coaching … all keeps us hyper aroused, over-stimulated and numbed — all at the same time. Our children hear shampoo commercials of orgasmic sounds, see women sprawled and wiggling in bras .. selling everything from cars to microwavable rice. And, they are expected to abstain — with images of sexual relationships everywhere … and, since society doesn’t question or confront this, it’s zero surprising that the images of birth — meant to draw women to the hospital where it is very lucrative — are indoctrinating our society. The walking wounded and numb make good, compliant women, consumers.

Thanks for this topic … it is one I haven’t written about on my blog … but will.

www.hospitalbirthdebate.blogspot.com

Comment by janel — November 29, 2007 @ 12:43 am

I couldn’t read all of the messages, but I did pick up on one vein of thought and posted a summary of what I wrote so extensively on last year ….

With all due respect to Janet’s husband, an anesthesiologist, apparently, I would like to ask him if he might be someone who could answer my challenge —

Throughout the history of modern birth, starting with morphine, twightlight sleep, ether and including Scopalamine, Demerol, Cytotec, and now epidural, these drugs have all been used on laboring babies and women with ZERO research to show their safety. ALL of them have been shown to be damaging and dangerous and were stopped because of the consequences … after use on millions of babies and women. Twenty years ago the choice drug was Demerol … and it is rarely used because of the impact on the baby. Since then epidural has increased in spite of the research in the late 80’s and early 90’s that shows it is dangerous. The drug, bupuvicaine that made it dangerous was counteracted by using fentanyl, an opiod … ALSO NEVER shown safe for laboring babies, but known to be extremely dangerous for adults. Mothers are encouraged and supported to give birth UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF NARCOTICS?? What a horrible contradiction. Yes, I have given birth under the influence of epidural. We are not just numb from our waist down — we are altered, drug-impaired while birthing our baby. And, this is considered normal. In the early 2000’s one study took 120 pregnant women and divided them into ten groups and each was given a different dose of fentanyl to see which dosage works best to counter the effects of narcotics. !?!?!? These babies and women are UNinformed and NON consenting subjects in a research study …. animals get better consideration. Women and babies (some who grow up to be men born “under the influence” of drugs) are one long research study. Psychology, medicine, human development, addiction studies. prevention, and treatment, and the myriad of other social and health issues, etc totally ignore the impact of birth on the lifetime of the human and certainly doesn’t consider that drug use and the resulting disruptions so well known, and the trauma form a foundation for life.

For a long time I have been looking for someone in the obstetric or anesthesiology field to give me ONE study that proves that ANY drug used EVER in modern medical birth was shown to be SAFE prior to USING on BABIES and WOMEN.

Doctors, nurses, and women will all … out of their own guilt, not imposed by others … resist the truth that drugs affect the baby ….because when we have chosen that or had it imposed upon us, or learned it was “fine” and “safe”, we face a huge journey.

There is a whole new field of understanding fetal and newborn learning, consciousness, and healing of whatever happens — whether it was truly lifesaving technology or doctor-induced for doctor convenience and malpractice avoidance (my ex is an OB), or by maternal choice. Ultimately, humanity has to begin to see that birth IS THE BABY’S experience of coming from somewhere into this physical life — and that the baby does not go to “OFF” during labor and birth. We know that the fetus is learning, responding in relationship with the mother and the environment … hearing, tasting, sensing, developing. And, we know that the newborn IMMEDIATELY is negotiating with a new environment during major physiological transition, and is interacting … LEARNING … It is clear that something very serious is amiss in medicine about the importance of labor and birth and how babies are also experiencing, responding, learning. All bundled together, that is results in memory. Prenatally, postnatally, and during labor and birth. The baby is experiencing everything. It is his or her birth. We can’t deny it away. Birth can’t just be about the mother’s need for pain relief or convenience, or the doctor’s needs.

Again, with all due respect and sincere wish for a real dialogue about what is really happening to babies in birth, I share my passion here.

Thanks.
Janel

I hope sometime soon, someone who is trained in anesthesiology will respond to my request for ONE research study that shows ANY of the drugs EVER used were studied BEFORE using on babies and women. The question is basically ignored by those promoting banning homebirth, and the wrong promotion of it as safe so that more women than not, now in 2007, will see it as perfectly safe. Drugs at birth is a collective consciousness that allows the cycle of dependency and drug addiction we see to be perpetuated. THAT could be a hypothesis for someone to study -- as it has never been studied. EVEN in addiction studies, with 80% of the present population born under the influence of drugs, IMPAIRED, with impaired mothers, the use of UNRESEARCHED drugs at birth has NEVER been studied as a causal or related factor.

The use of narcotics in labor and birth (while discouraged and even warred against in every other aspect of life) is disguised at giving women freedom from pain in birth … with no regard for her baby’s lifelong consequences of being born while they both are impaired “under the influence” of narcotics. In ANY other situation in life, a woman would be chastised and judged for being impaired while doing something so important, and she’d be seen as harming her child if she is impaired.

In this bi-polar society in seems daunting for anyone, especially medically trained people to see that even when they are using a substance for the right reasons, to facilitate the birth so that either or both mother and baby will survive, it STILL has consequences. Refusal to see that and to engage in ways of supporting the baby afterwards create this growing belief -- a monster that everyone ignores and denies -- that babies are unaffected by what we do, what they experience, what they have circulating in their body, and that their systems must work and struggle to adjust because of drugs and disruptions.

The research in the late eighties and 90’s were very clear about what the physiological response to epidural was for the mother and baby. This does not change just because they added ANOTHER harmful, unresearched drug to counteract (fentanyl). It doesn’t change because we deny it with the belief that women’s rights to pain relief, doctor’s time schedules, and convenience are as important, if not more, than the rights of a human baby to be born free of harmful, addictive chemicals.

It seems to me that the lack of any research and the ongoing research ON babies and mothers to find the right dosages with least complications, and the obstetric shop-talk sharing how to’s is outrageous.

Using Cyotec in the first place was done on women and babies without study and it was done between doctors and residents, in online chats, and general “shopt-talk” fashion. Dosages, complications, and responses was figured out like how we teach our young people to prepare, stuff, and cook a turkey. AND, meanwhile, simultaneously, THEN they began to research it …. THOSE who have it in their interest to continue using it. Same with epidural anesthesia …

YEAH, I AM blue in the face ....

I met a local anesthesiologist recently ... our conversation started over the war. It was a week after my son went to Kabul and I was working at being numb. He started giving me all sorts of things to send my son to read ... including something about the Heroin War, or something. I started to share my perspective that our violence and addiction starts in the primal period ... as I shared my oft cited research where 120 babies received different doses of bipuvicaine and fentanyl to determine the best dose combination, this new acquaintance smiled .... I said, "What, you are a doctor?" He, who is as crazed about the war and heroin use as I am about making birth safe for the baby by creating science-based protocols and using drugs and interventions only when needed, was shocked when I suggested that he and his colleagues have created the drug addiction crisis and asked how is it that any of you would be able to consider what it is that you have done to so many humans? I said it would take a spiritual crisis and awakening ... and our society does not support that. Anyone in any sort of emotional, psychological, or spiritual crisis is "diagnosed" and pumped with drugs that cause a myriad of other issues. We see it on television, in the advertisements .... around and around we go.

Progress in the "war on drugs", the "war on crime", the "war on gangs", the "war on violence", the "war on poverty", the "war on cancer" will happen ONLY when we start bringing babies into this world in an aware, safe, gentle, connected, drug-FREE, violence-FREE way. (Medical birth is violent).

We can conceive, gestate, labor and birth, and care for our infants with awareness, protection, gentleness, our time and touch EVEN when or ESPECIALLY when medical intervention ARE necessary. What is wrong with this world of obstetrics that promotes all or nothing ... either their way or no way.... zero compromise so that woman blindly follow, or live their lives damaged in silent rage and illness, unable to connect with their children in the way that both their mind and souls strive for and miss over and over and over.

Oh, my ....

Betrayal of Women in Obstetrics

Lest we forget .... how we got here today ....

Midwifery in Afghanistan

When I learned my son was going straight from Kuwait into Afghanistan a month ago, I had a huge mix of feelings.

One was ENVY ....

Four years ago I was considering going back to get my RN degree and I retook a lot of pre-requisites. My GI Joe was in college and asked, "Why in the he** do you want to do nursing school at your age!?" (Jeesh, I was only 47! Youth.) I told him if I just had that nursing degree that I had started to do twenty years before and if I was without parenting responsibilities (ie, his younger sister), "I would SO be in Afghanistan helping to bring midwifery back there."

He replied, "Yeah, you and your *#^% hippy friends, and when you'd get in trouble WE'D have to come save YOUR A**ES!!"

I exclaimed, "YEAH ... of course!! EXACTLY. THAT is what the military should be doing!! Providing protection for us to go do good there ... bring the things that they need to survive and to create self-sustainability."

(And, I zero mean Walmart, McDonald's, and StarBucks.)

So, yeah, it was envy ... one of the seven sins .. not simple jealousy. I was envious ... how could he do that? Go to Afghanistan while I am still here?

So, as usual, GI Joe's soul, in the body of a human brought through my body, is my muse, and his path (our "soul contract") is dragging me along (mostly kicking and wailing) this year, only this time, not quite happily, but with interest beyond wailing about my son being in a war. I so want to contribute to the rebuilding of the lives of the women there.

I pray his soul and his consciousness remember our conversation ... about how the peace nik, hippy, rabble-rousers AND those who are courageous and strong and willing to risk their lives in battle can come together and work together towards a common good. Harmony within the self and in the world.

(Raise them in the ways, and they'll return, right?)

WOW, what if the US would raise it's collective consciousness level and marry the MILITARY and the PEACE CORPS? What if we did that and spent our lifetime together seeking to bring health and wellness to all peoples of the planet, rather than seeking to maintain our consumer-driven lifestyle in the name of Jesus. (Watch for new documentary this week, What Would Jesus Buy?) I wrote about this marriage of polarity (like most human marriages) then, when I learned my son's second year deployed in Afghanistan, but I''ll mention it again ...

What if the 500 Billion spent on decimating Iraq had gone towards wedding this union ... the compassionate, skilled people of the US, either via military or the Peace Corp working together? There are so many Americans who would gladly do a rotation in a third world country ... sharing their personal and professional skills ... IF they didn't have to KILL and BOMB, and IF they deploy on mission of good and could do so without living in poverty (as most Peace Corp and Vista workers do.)

The expected trillions of dollars in Iraq and all of the consequences from it, could have been spent on going in to build roads, electrical plants, public communication, sewage plants, schools, and hospitals. My son says that Kabul is like every other city -- but without sewer systems and people blow themselves up. I have followed the plight of the Afghan women for a decade -- and, recently a high number of them are setting themselves on fire - because their lives are still so tragic. http://www.rawa.org/index.php.

There are some good things going on there, but do we hear about them, or the continuing needs? What if we were to fund creating healthy water, nutrition, and necessary BASIC medical supplies such as antibiotics. Women are not allowed to see male professionals, so the women desperately need female doctors, nurses, and midwives.

Last fall I researched and wrote a lot about the role of midwifery in making birth safer in every other industrialized nation in the world that has LOWER MATERNAL AND INFANT MORTALITY rates than in the United States. (Dec, Jan, Feb posts). While the United States allows physicians, drug companies, and lawyers to control women's bodies in birth and maintains that induction and surgical birth are as safe, or safer, than natural birth -- when their own research shows us this is false -- other countries have better outcomes for both mother and father. Spreading this way of birthing is part of the war on humanity.

Meanwhile, in Canada, of course, there is a group who is contributing to the plight of women in Afghanistan and making birth safer by training women in midwifery. Yeah!! Canada. Thank you!

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/
story.html?id=a81a5644-7d48-4970-aa85-114db0bce762&k=15021.

I waaaanaaaahhaa go, too .... and take the CanioSacral healing work there ... and, my cameras, of course, so I can share it with you all.

(I did not get the RN degree .... THAT is another story .... ONE day a colleague sneaked me into the newborn nursery in central IL. I was a "job shadow". Me, the birth trauma therapist and Baby Keeper. Oh, mama. I knew if I couldn't make it one day watching what they do to babies -- while calling it normal and scientific -- I couldn't make it through two years of BS.)

Birth with Dolphins

Star Newland, dolphin researcher in Hawaii on on YouTube.

Below, and at www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuYeP7ApwN4

Star discusses the Sirius Institute, dolphins and dolphin birthing and communities, the pod (community,) and the Domestic Harmony Initiative in Hawaii.

I, Baby Keeper, co-wrote the Safe Baby Resolution with Star in late 2006 and it was introduced into the Hawaii legislature in 2007. Baby Keeper is moving to Hawaii to complete work on the Domestic Harmony Initiative and Safe Baby Resolution.

Safe Baby Resolution asked legislators in Hawaii to study the early primal period of conception through infancy as the foundational time for health, wellness, and harmony as well as foundational time of the myriad of social and physical concerns of society. The resolution looks at what both our hearts and the science tell us that a human being needs from pre-conception through infancy as the foundation for a safe, healthy, and harmonious life. We seek to make gestation and birth gentle, drug-free, and safe for mothers and babies as well as for medical caregivers and society. The resolution supports all parties working together in partnership to create this foundation to support harmony for our babies -- and for the world.

It is up to each of us to seek the harmony within ... to seek harmonic resonance within and with others in order to live harmoniously in the world. Many on the planet are seeking "PEACE" in these times --- as am I, as I my son deployed directly from the Iraq war into Afghanistan for another year. I, like many families of deployed loved ones, have come to learn much about finding peace within. Rather than seek Peace --- somewhere out there, dependent upon what others do or don't do, and while failing to make sacrifices on behalf of others --- we propose seeking to BE and LIVE harmoniously, even when, or especially when our personal lives and/or the world around is so fearful.

Happy Birthday, Blog - Happy Thanksgiving, Friend

This blog is ONE YEAR OLD this week -- and thanks to it, I am a bit wiser, as well as older (my birthday is this week too).

This blog was conceived and born out of my angst of my son's departure to war and another blogger's disregard for women and natural birth. I found my voice this year, in thanks to standing up to her and starting this blog. Like most women, I was terribly violated in birthing my babies -- three grown and one teen. Since I was violated, so were my babies. It took me twenty-five years to acknowledge within me that my body remembers and my baby's body remembered, and to begin this almost decade long journey of healing to claim my body, soul, and mind. Claim myself from the insidious socially ingrained denial of the impact of medicalized birth on women, on me, and on all of us when we are born.

I had already participated in years of healing at a level that medicine and psychology deny, (because to do so would require they themselves to go within to heal, and it would require they change what they do that is so financially lucrative.) I have studied pre and perinatal psychology since 1999 -- and, I sought to share it here on this blog -- my personal journey and the new science and the application of the logic and science we've know for eons. Women are so disempowered and silenced in their experience of birthing. Their souls and bodies are violated, the baby is traumatized and brutalized, and the father of their baby, if there, is profoundly disempowered. This blog let me get it all out. Oh, mama, did I get it out.

I wrote 600 pages on this blog from November to May ... THREE books worth.

As my son deployed the experience shook me to my core. I had to look at ALL of the fifty previous years of denying my personhood and self. I had to look at my gifts and shadows, failings and successes, and prepare for the next decades --- making life safe; making birth safe. It opened up the floodgates. I found a bottom reservoir of grief ... I cried more tears last year than in my entire fifty before. And, then, like Forrest Gump's marathon back and forth across the country, I just stopped writing one day. I had to get out of "the cave" and walk this path it opened up.

The day after Earth Day, April 2006, I joined the local community radio station and was on the air within two days reading announcements. On Memorial Day I interviewed people and created a montage that is the opening for my segment, Until They All Come Home, a tribute to the men and women who are serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on KOPN 89.5 (www.kopn.org) on the News at 5, sometimes Tues and/or Thursday. (May 28th post). I did the fast track training to be able to "run the boards", do programming, and music shows. If you have a community radio in your community, check it out. In June I joined the Community Access Television (CAT) and I have been working on my documentary about birth ... a film for fathers about their babies experience of birth.

Please watch for a trailer coming very soon .... and an introduction version, hopefully in January, for midwives, doulas, women, and men. The introduction will be fund raiser to complete the documentary.

I am very thankful for all of the blessings of this year ... especially you. Have a blessed holiday.

P. S.

Below is a segment of my first posting on November 23, 2006. My challenge to the physician who stills taunts and verbally assaults women, to the neonatal doc blogger who devoted a post to me to dis' my work (Debunking the Pseudoscience of Infant Memories) www.talesfromthewomb.blogspot.com, Sunday, April 22, 2007 and my April 25th post here), and to the anesthesiologist I just met at the health food store the week after my son didn't come home and who screamed at me, "You've got to pray your guts out" when I said numbly, "I won't ever seen my son again. He'll die there" ("Dude, it's just a stage of grief), and to anyone else in MEDICINE who controls women's bodies ... is SHOW ME THE RESEARCH THAT INDUCTION, EPIDURAL, and SURGICAL BIRTH ARE SAFE ..... AND, that BABIES DON'T REMEMBER BIRTH (it IS the baby's birth and s/he DOES experience it! The unborn baby's brain is "ON" even during labor and birth. DUH!):

It is abhorrent that peer-reviewed, doctor/medical business and drug industry controlled research are medically and socially sanctioned to do decade after decade of medical and drug research on the bodies and souls uninformed, non-consenting women -- and their babies. The generational impact of this to the human baby, male and female is an outrage. It is morally, ethically, legally, and spiritually wrong.

It is obscene to promote the use of narcotics at birth as safe for the birthing human, WHILE "America's War on Drugs" rages on, and while school children (with poor impulse, motivation, and boundaries) are being drugged with prescriptions of narcotics but taught in billion-dollar programs to "Just say no!" It is immoral and negligent to promote cesarean birth as safe when there is no research to prove this WHILE the incidence of every devastating childhood illness goes up.

In pre and perinatal psychology we know that poor impulse control, motivation, follow through, integration, and boundaries are all established in the brain of the laboring and birthing baby. Medical establishment is fighting like hell to prevent this research that PROVES that disrupting by induction, drugs, interventions, surgery, and brutality of the first hour of life. THAT is the problem. A win would mean that women and babies are treated with aware, gentle, safe, and respectful care knowing that every single word, thought, and action is experienced and remembered by the birthing baby's brain.

THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS ON THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT AND THE PHYSICIANS TO PROVE THAT THIS IS INCORRECT, AND THAT WHAT THEY DO HAS NO DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS --- BEFORE THEY DO IT YOU. Otherwise, we are all just human guinea pigs.

SHOW ME THE RESEARCH THAT SHOWS THAT INDUCTION AND EPIDURAL RESEARCHED AND SHOW TO BE SAFE -- and worthy of being now considered routine and normal.

Pregnant Patient's Bill of Rights

Full credit to: http://www.aimsusa.org/ppbr.htm

THE PREGNANT PATIENT'S BILL OF RIGHTS

Many pregnant women are not fully aware of their right of informed consent or of the obstetricians' legal obligation to obtain their patient's informed consent prior to treatment. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) first publicly acknowledged the physician's legal obligation to obtain his or her pregnant patient's informed consent in its 1974 publication, Standards for Obstetric-Gynecologic Services, (pg 66-67) which reads:

"It is important to note the distinction between 'consent' and 'informed consent'. Many physicians, because they do not realize there is a difference, believe they are free from liability if the patient consents to treatment. This is not true. The physician may still be liable if the patient's consent was not informed. In addition, the usual consent obtained by a hospital does not in any way release the physician from his legal duty of obtaining an informed consent from his patient.

"Most courts consider that the patient is 'informed' if the following information is given:

• The processes contemplated by the physician as treatment, including whether the treatment is new or unusual.

• The risks and hazards of the treatment,

• The chances for recovery after treatment.

• The necessity of the treatment.

• The feasibility of alternative methods of treatment.

"One point on which courts do agree is that explanations must be given in such a way that the patient understands them. A physician cannot claim as a defense that he explained the procedure to the patient when he knew the patient did not understand. The physician has a duty to act with due care under the circumstances; this means he must be sure the patient understands what she is told.

"It should be emphasized that the following reasons are not sufficient to justify failure to inform:

1. That the patient may prefer not to be told the unpleasant possibilities regarding the treatment.

2. That full disclosure might suggest infinite dangers to a patient with an active imagination, thereby causing her to refuse treatment.

3. That the patient, on learning the risks involved, might rationally decline treatment. The right to decline is the specific fundamental right protected by the informed consent doctrine."

American parents are becoming increasingly aware that well-intentioned health professionals do not always have scientific data to support common American obstetrical practices, and that many of these practices are carried out primarily because they are part of medical and hospital tradition.

The distingquished obstetrician Dr. Roberto Caldeyro-Barcia, while President of FIGO, the world congress of obstetricians-gynecologists, cautioned two decades ago:

"In the last forty years many artificial practices have been introduced which have changed childbirth from a physiological event to a very complicated medical procedure in which all kinds of drugs are used and procedures carried out, sometimes unnecessarily, and many of them potentially damaging for the baby and even for the mother".

A growing body of research makes it alarmingly clear that every aspect of traditional American hospital care during labor and delivery must now be questioned as to its possible effect on the future well-being of both the obstetric patient and her unborn child.

There has been a three hundred percent increase in the rate of autistic children in the United States in just one decade. One in every 35 children born in the United States today will eventually be diagnosed as retarded; in 75% of these cases there is no familial or genetic predisposing factor. One in every 10 to 17 children has been found to have some form of brain dysfunction or learning disability requiring special treatment. Such statistics are not confined to the lower socioeconomic group but cut across all segments of American society.

New concerns are being raised by childbearing women because no one knows how drug induced changes in brain chemistry, oxygen depletion, head compression, traction and skull fracture by both forceps and vacuum extractor the fetus and newborn infant can tolerate before that child sustains permanent brain damage or dysfunction. The findings regarding the cancer-related drug diethylstilbestrol have alerted the public to the fact that neither the approval of a drug by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration nor the fact that a drug is prescribed by a physician serves as a guarantee that a drug or medication is safe for the mother or her unborn child. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Drugs has stated that there is no drug, whether prescription or over-the-counter remedy, which has been proven safe for the unborn child.

The Pregnant Patient has the right to participate in decisions involving her well-being and that of her unborn child, unless there is a clearcut medical emergency that prevents her participation. In addition to the rights set forth in the American Hospital Association's "Patient's Bill of Rights," the Pregnant Patient, because she represents TWO patients rather than one, should be recognized as having the additional rights listed below.

1. The Pregnant Patient has the right, prior to the administration of any drug or procedure, to be informed by the health professional caring for her of any potential direct or indirect effects, risks or hazards to herself or her unborn or newborn infant which may result from the use of a drug or procedure prescribed for or administered to her during pregnancy, labor, birth or lactation.

2. The Pregnant Patient has the right, prior to the proposed therapy, to be informed, not only of the benefits, risks and hazards of the proposed therapy but also of known alternative therapy, such as available childbirth education classes which could help to prepare the Pregnant Patient physically and mentally to cope with the discomfort or stress of pregnancy and birth. Such classes have been shown to reduce or eliminate the Pregnant Patient's need for drugs and obstetric intervention and should be offered to her early in her pregnancy in order that she may make a reasoned decisions.

3. The Pregnant Patient has the right, prior to the administration of any drug, to be informed by the health professional who is prescribing or administering the drug to her that any drug which she receives during pregnancy, labor and birth, no matter how or when the drug is taken or administered, may adversely affect her unborn baby, directly or indirectly, and that there is no drug or chemical which has been proven safe for the unborn child.

4. The Pregnant Patient has the right if Cesarean birth is anticipated, to be informed prior to the administration of any drug, and preferably prior to her hospitalization, that minimizing her intake of nonessential pre-operative medicine will benefit her baby.

5. The Pregnant Patient has the right, prior to the administration of a drug or procedure, to be informed of the areas of uncertainty if there is NO properly controlled follow-up research which has established the safety of the drug or procedure with regard to its on the fetus and the later physiological, mental and neurological development of the child. This caution applies to virtually all drugs and the vast majority of obstetric procedures.

6. The Pregnant Patient has the right, prior to the administration of any drug, to be informed of the brand name and generic name of the drug in order that she may advise the health professional of any past adverse reaction to the drug.

7. The Pregnant Patient has the right to determine for herself, without pressure from her attendant, whether she will or will not accept the risks inherent in the proposed treatment.

8. The Pregnant Patient has the right to know the name and qualifications of the individual administering a drug or procedure to her during labor or birth.

9. The Pregnant Patient has the right to be informed, prior to the administration of any procedure, whether that procedure is being administered to her because a) it is medically indicated, b) it is an elective procedure (for convenience, c) or for teaching purposes or research).

10. The Pregnant Patient has the right to be accompanied during the stress of labor and birth by someone she cares for, and to whom she looks for emotional comfort and encouragement.

11. The Pregnant Patient has the right after appropriate medical consultation to choose a position for labor and birth which is least stressful for her and her baby.

12. The Obstetric Patient has the right to have her baby cared for at her bedside if her baby is normal, and to feed her baby according to her baby's needs rather than according to the hospital regimen.

13. The Obstetric Patient has the right to be informed in writing of the name of the person who actually delivered her baby and the professional qualifications of that person. This information should also be on the birth certificate.

14. The Obstetric Patient has the right to be informed if there is any known or indicated aspect of her or her baby's care or condition which may cause her or her baby later difficulty or problems.

15. The Obstetric Patient has the right to have her and her baby's hospital- medical records complete, accurate and legible and to have their records, including nursing notes, retained by the hospital until the child reaches at least the age of majority, or, alternatively, to have the records offered to her before they are destroyed.

16. The Obstetric Patient, both during and after her hospital stay, has the right to have access to her complete hospital-medical records, including nursing notes, and to receive a copy upon payment of a reasonable fee and without incurring the expense of retaining an attorney.

It is the obstetric patient and her baby, not the health professional, who must sustain any trauma or injury resulting from the use of a drug or obstetric procedure. The observation of the rights listed above will not only permit the obstetric patient to participate in the decisions involving her and her baby's health care, but will help to protect the health professional and the hospital against litigation arising from resentment or misunderstanding on the part of the mother.

Prepared by Doris Haire ©2000
American Foundation for Maternal and Child Health