Natural, Ideal Cesarean Surgical Birth

Doctors at Queen Charlotte's hospital in London are pioneering "natural caesarean" births with the aim of making the surgery less traumatic for mother and baby.

Full story at:
BBC News Pictures of "Natural Caesarean"

Also check out:
The Ideal Cesarean by Robert Oliver, MD

The key focus of this natural cesarean is clearly to preserve the relationship between mother and child and to create attachment. On another blog that denies the safety of homebirth, the issue of mother-child attachment and the fact that this attachment is harmed in hospital birth is also denigrated.

The information here from the BBC showing a new approach to surgical birth in the UK is the sort of information that you won't see on other sites trashing natural vaginal birth and the growing movement of homebirth, and especially homebirth among women who previously gave birth surgically. What is it about American doctors that has them so entrenched in their denial and in their positions -- that they are the only ones who refuse to recognize the critical human need to re-connect with the mother on the outside of the womb in order to create the attachment that supports health, harmony, and wellness?

The impact of surgical birth on baby and mother is ignored there in order to perpetuate a war against natural birth. One site in particular refuses to allow a discussion of even the possibility of a detrimental impact of surgical birth on the mother and baby. What never enters the discussion is the baby's experience of the surgery -- EVEN IF it is done for life-saving reasons. To do so , that is, to entertain the possibility that any surgical birth is traumatizing to the baby, so that UNnecessary surgical birth is a very, very huge issue, well, this would lead to a very serious discussion in far corners about the MISUSE of cesarean surgery.

What women know, and what doctors especially know is that when a woman enters the hospital it increases the chances of a perfectly healthy woman and baby experiencing unnecessary, physiologically and emotionally traumatizing surgical birth. The discussion of the cost of this on many levels -- physiological, emotional, psychological, and spiritual, for their lifetimes -- never happens on another site that is so adamantly, rabidly opposed to homebirth with qualified caregivers.

Since homebirth's popularity is stemming from the conditions of birth in the hospital and the increased chances of a life-threatening surgery for no good reasons, it is an important discussion. They -- doctors and labor/delivery nurses (the "experts") -- further refuse to discuss how any surgical birth could have life long consequences for baby and mother. It is all said and done in the name of science. Yet, here we have those from the same party-- obstetric science-- confirming that surgical birth is dangerous and we do need to make attempts to do surgical birth more kindly, and with awareness of the impact on the baby and mother.

Why would we not!?! Do we really need empirical studies done over twenty years to finally tell us, "be kind to the baby", "make sure mother and baby make eye contact and touch", "make sure minimal interventions and touch by strangers in the first hours of life." No, the research on that is clear and has been for many decades. It is time to EXPECT and DEMAND that obstetricians everywhere follow the evidence-based science and to treat our babies gently and kindly.

Who should the public listen to? Who should pregnant women go to? Those who promote a balance between science and what we know logically and from our ancient history of birthing from the vagina? We need to create SAFE hospital birth by acknowledging that the human being is profoundly impacted by their birth experience ... wherever it happens. We need aware, kind caregivers willing to do what is morally and medically right for the human being coming in to the world, not what "has always been done" or is best "for my license" or to "prevent malpractice litigation."

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Baby Story

I just watched TLC's "Baby Story."

Oh, my, why do I do this to myself? I don't have television but I am visiting someone who has cable.

The mother went to the doctor and learned she was dilated to four and so they sent her to the hospital. The next doctor's immediate plan of action was to induce because her labor wasn't productive. Four cm? She was still just 5cm after some time on Vitamin P. The doctor added that women can do this for weeks; that is have sporadic pains. The medical profession is so apt at creating the illusions that allow them to manipulate and control women in labor.

Half of U.S. doctors mum about incompetence: survey

There is a measurable disconnect between what physicians say they think is the right thing to do and what they actually do," said Eric Campbell of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, who led the survey.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/246934/Study_Half_of_U_S_Doctors_Fail_to_Report_Medical_Mistakes

When considering where a woman and baby are safest -- hospital or home, one needs to consider what the current researchers and hospitals are saying about hospitals and doctors in general. There are many posts here on this blog that raise the question of particular interventions and protocols of obstetric medicine.

Virtually every study done shows that homebirth is AS safe as giving birth in the hospital for babies and it is safer for the mother to birth at home. Every other industrialized country where mother and baby are safer (lower mortality rates) than in the US have midwives caring for low to moderate risk and doctors caring for high risk. In those countries midwives work in partnership with doctors.

Have you seen Michael Moore's movie, "Sicko" yet? He compares hospital care in the US with several countries with universal health care. Ricki Lake's move, "The Business of Being Born" is also being shown in select cities and addresses the "business" of obstetric medicine. She follows a midwife on several homebirths. Viewers can watch the experience of birth at home as one with out chaos and trauma, which is critical for the human baby as she or he IS experiencing birth. Reviews on both sides point out that the midwife does not wear gloves (so I will too). Midwifery supporters lament that this will be a detractor for many women and that doctors will make a big deal of it when it is very rare in practice.

I would like to add that it seems the medical perspective for wearing gloves is much more about self-protection. I have seen myself, a nurse in a hospital take a glove out of her pocket and use it for a vaginal exam. She was protecting herself, with no regard for the mother and baby. Detractors will always find some relevant, but not critical thing to look at to verify their point that homebirth is dangerous. So, if you watch the movie, know that the midwife won't be wearing gloves. Feel your feelings about that part and then focus on the experience of the baby.

The baby ... that's what birth is about .... or should be.

Prenatal and Birth Memories

Prenatal and birth memories are a little more complicated than what we think of as memory. Prenates and newborns are very sensory. Their brain is recording every event from conception forward. Language develops over time as the human infant and toddler put words to feelings and make connections. A good example came up today at my house. My 14 year old was talking about "remembering" seeing her father and I in bed and how she didn't know what it was about. Now she does. That is how children learn everything --- just because they don't have words for the experience as an infant or toddler doesn't mean they don't remember it. By the time she KNOWs the language to understand and speak about sex, she has known about it for a very long time.

It is well- known and accepted that the brain wires in response to experience. Research and technology of the 90's confirmed and deepened our understanding of the brain. This development of the human brain begins in the womb, begins at conception and during the first weeks of life the neural tube is one of the earliest structures. The experience of the newborn and infant is as real as yours or mine is now. The baby is experiencing something -- and the brain responds and wires connections ... safe or scary, happy or angry, fearful or relaxed ... their sensory oriented body takes it in and it is recorded in the brain. This is why we talk to and touch the baby, and it is why we give them visual stimulus. It is known if this interaction with the environment is minimal or violent or distracted the baby won't develop intellectually or appropriately.

According to Gerald Vind, a neurobiologist and expert in prenatal brain imprinting and reimprinting"

Norepinephrine acts in the developing nervous system of a prenate to suppress the growth of irrelevant and undesirable neural connections, while at the same time facilitating the formation of relevant synaptic connections. Norepinephrine also provides protection in the brain, especially a part of the emotional center (limbic system) that is called the amygdala. It prevents damage to the amygdala and suppresses abnormal kindling activity (seizure activity) when operating under conditions of peak activity. Under conditions of acute or repetitive maternal stress, norepinephrine levels are depleted. This is typically accompanied by the secretion of natural opiates that also exert an inhibitory effect on the release of norepinephrine. During pregnancy these natural opiates are passed through the placenta and influence the development of the prenate. At any stage of a developing brain, the depletion of norepinephrine, along with excessive amygdala activation, and opiate release, can lead to permanent structural and functional alterations affecting brain interconnections, synaptic size and densities, as well as their responsiveness. With repeated instances of heightened stress activities, an abnormal form of neuronal interconnections can develop along with a reduced response threshold. In other words, severe maternal stress while you are carried inside your mother’s womb can really mess up the way your brain is "wired." This is how the foundational capacity for empathy and socialization is handicapped. 


And people get so "jiggy" about babies remembering birth and early infancy --- babies who are fully formed human beings from second trimester on, awake and looking around at birth, and their brains don't remember? Basic brain development is that the human baby experiences and interacts with the environment and the brain responds and "wires" up in response. Was it happy or sad, joyful or painful, stressful or gentle?

Once one understands that consciousness is present in the cellular matter of the egg and the sperm one begins to see how everything happening outside the womb of the baby is contributing to his or her development. Some say it's inappropriate to speak to children about their birth?? On some level that is so laughable, because of the utter ridiculousness that the baby doesn't remember -- as if the baby wasn't there and didn't experience the birth. HIS or HER birth.

There is a field of scientific research looking at the primal period of life and specifically the last trimester when the human fetus has been shown to be interacting, tasting, feeling, sensing, and hearing and responding to the environment. There is also a field called Infant Psychology and most major universities have a research lab looking at the ability of the human newborn's effort to interact with his or her new environment. Yet, we are expected to believe that this development from primal period to infancy is somehow in the "off" position during labor and birth? So, that a baby is not impacted by the experience?

We have evidence about prenatal period so it is inappropriate to dismiss the birth experience. THEN, one can begin to look at conception and the first imprint of perception, based on the mother's hormones in response to HER experience -- love, ambivalence, guilt, rape. Emotions result in hormones. How the cells join together to create the one cell of the new human in a particular hormonal environment is the first experience of the human being. It's so logical that in every cell that develops from that cell, the being knows what happened at conception. This continues through gestation, labor and birth. How can we logically and morally and scientifically say that process and experience of birth is insignificant to the baby?

Anti-homebirth folks rail against women for thinking only of their own experience. They are chastised for putting their baby in great harm and putting their need for a good experience ahead of the baby's. Most birth caregivers refuse to consider the baby's experience.

What would it hurt to consider how the birth might be experienced by the baby and that same science about development applies to the period of labor and birth as it does to the prenatal and post-birth period?