In passing today I saw a few moments of The View on ABC. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who co-hosts was talking about tomatoes. She is apparently freaked out because of the salmonella outbreak about "certain tomatoes" and is not eating any tomatoes at all. She was quite adamant about the topic. I had to laugh ... she is also the one I saw interviewing Patricia Arquette.
Ms. Arquette gave birth in the hospital and then had a homebirth. She was quite eloquent, though simply matter-of-fact about her experience, while the Ms. Hasselbeck was anything but an "objective news woman". She just couldn't "wrap her head around" the idea of a homebirth ... birthing outside of the hospital? She couldn't imagine not giving birth, not being safe in the hospital ... the germiest places on the planet where salmonella is the lessor of the evils lurking there.
A local news woman said this week about giving birth, "give me the IV and prop me up on the pillows". If not so sad, it would actually be funny. These women have so much influence and their "empowerment" is so shallow.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Modern Birth and Torture
By Rich Winkle
This country has a psycho-social parallel with pre-Nazi Germany which may be surprising to you.
First check out Democracy Now's interviews with Alfred McCoy, author of "A Question of Torture" (and earlier, the indispensable "The Politics of Heroin")
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a+question+of+torture%22+site%3Ademocracynow.org&btnG=Google+Search
See especially his description of the CIA's current state of the art "psychological torture" technique, which consists of two components:
-Sensory deprivation
-Self induced pain
When you understand how this combination works on the psyche, consider the fact that standard American obstetrical and medicalized pediatric practices have subjected a majority of native-born Americans to a slight variation of the above:
-Sensory and pleasure-sensory deprivation
-Other-induced pain
This is the "parenting" technique which was widely utilized in pre-Nazi Germany on the children who grew up to become war criminals and sadists. Those Germans who were spared this treatment were often part of the resistance to the Nazis.
The Political Consequences of Child Abuse
http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/politica.htm
What are the psychological consequences of the latter variation of torture? The destruction of empathy, the social glue which humanizes us and makes for livable societies.
This country has a psycho-social parallel with pre-Nazi Germany which may be surprising to you.
First check out Democracy Now's interviews with Alfred McCoy, author of "A Question of Torture" (and earlier, the indispensable "The Politics of Heroin")
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a+question+of+torture%22+site%3Ademocracynow.org&btnG=Google+Search
See especially his description of the CIA's current state of the art "psychological torture" technique, which consists of two components:
-Sensory deprivation
-Self induced pain
When you understand how this combination works on the psyche, consider the fact that standard American obstetrical and medicalized pediatric practices have subjected a majority of native-born Americans to a slight variation of the above:
-Sensory and pleasure-sensory deprivation
-Other-induced pain
This is the "parenting" technique which was widely utilized in pre-Nazi Germany on the children who grew up to become war criminals and sadists. Those Germans who were spared this treatment were often part of the resistance to the Nazis.
The Political Consequences of Child Abuse
http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/politica.htm
What are the psychological consequences of the latter variation of torture? The destruction of empathy, the social glue which humanizes us and makes for livable societies.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Womb is a School and All Babies Attend
The Womb is a School and All Babies Attend
By David B. Chamberlain, Ph.D*
Today thanks to lots of new science surrounding human gestation, pregnancy is a whole new world for parents and babies! It turns out that just about everything from conception to birth depends on a matrix of interactions between all parties, is fraught with both physical and psychological hazards, charged with motion and emotion, and the final outcome is more heavily influenced by the immediate environment—principally the intimate world of the parents—than by the genes involved. It turns out that babies possess powers of awareness that were overlooked, have senses nobody counted, and a vulnerable psyche absorbing information from all its experiences in the womb. And surprise, surprise, in this school room, parents are the teachers--ready or not.
In this precarious situation, here are some quick tips for parents who sense they are out of synch with the new facts of life before birth. First, reorient yourself in time to the fact that parenting starts before conception (not after birth) when you still have a chance to clean up your act before the sperm meets the egg. You will know what you need to change to get ready. Second, unload any ideas that clutter your mind about the pitiful ignorance and incapacities of babies and gamble on the opposite notion they are amazing humans who would like to grow up in your family. Third, don’t be fooled by their size, including the size of their brains, and immediately begin looking for their heart and spirit. Fourth, get right to work communicating with all the babies who cross your path; you need practice in communicating one mind to another. Your words, so communicated, will explain, support, and heal through every challenge life brings. Fifth, and finally, turn on daily the high energy nutrients of affection and laughter, the secret “glue” that holds families together.
*David is a psychologist and member of Birth and Early Parenting Educators. More about that group at www.BEPE.info. David is also editor of birthpsychology.com and noted for his popular book The Mind of Your Newborn Baby, now in 12 languages.
David also is co-founder of the Association for Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH) at www.birthpsychology.com
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Happy Father's Day
Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers out there ...
especially those fathers who have committed to being in their children's lives and being a dad, not just a father, but a Dad ...
especially to those fathers who have, for whatever reason, lost their relationship with their children.
and, to everyone in between.
"The greatest gift you can give your children is to love their mother."
Author Unknown
especially those fathers who have committed to being in their children's lives and being a dad, not just a father, but a Dad ...
especially to those fathers who have, for whatever reason, lost their relationship with their children.
and, to everyone in between.
"The greatest gift you can give your children is to love their mother."
Author Unknown
Saturday, June 14, 2008
From the Other Side Now
Two great people I admire and appreciate, Tim Russert and Edwina Froehlich, passed away this week. I doubt that Edwina will get the extensive coverage that Russet gets, but she should. Wouldn't it be a great world if the pioneers of promoting what mamas and babies need would be elevated to that of politicians, warmongers, wrong-doers, journalists, and oh, yeah, Hollywood stars? (Not that Mr. Russert was any of those).
Who is Edwina Froehlich, most people ask? She is the founder of the Le Leche League.
When I gave birth to my first child in 1975 breast-feeding was discouraged and it was socially the wrong thing to do. I was breast-fed, as was my mother, a twin, in 1930. I know now that ancestral memory is a contributor of success in breast-feeding. Thank God, because two nurses kept my baby from me and waited for my husband and mother to leave (I believe now). They worked very hard to discourage me ... "You are too young. It will tie you down." (Edwina was too old! What is the perfect age? How absurd that the childbearing body would be too anything to finish the task.) They said, "Formula is better." As they continued to brow-beat me and I resisted, as one said smugly, "We already gave him formula and he took it just fine." Fortunately, my sweet baby latched on like he'd been doing it forever. (So glad I had nursed my dollies along with my sister being breast-fed). I suspect (in my feeling, sensate awareness now) that my eighteen-year old look (or smirk as my mother would call such a look) said, "Ha!!! So F-you and go away," because they did. Thankfully.
Twenty-eight years later I was at a lactation training and when I heard the instructor say that the FIRST FEEDING COATS and PRIMES the gut system, a rage rose up in me. Seemingly outa of nowhere my usual "cool, calm, and collected" self felt and explosion boiling up. THAT feeling is the expression of the feelings and knowing of my body at the time ... that were suppressed and denied. I had to leave the room and go to privacy in the bathroom to do the things I know as a clinician of trauma healing to discharge it.
The feelings? How dare they? How dare they take away something so fundamentally necessary and simple.? Were his hospitalizations at age four for bowel issues related? What do we women (and men) do with our stuffed emotions about our violations during this most profound human experience -- birth? Woman have to stop doing this --- betrayal --- to other women.
Thank YOU, Edwina -- for you have contributed to my life personally and you have surely made the world a better place for eons to come.
June 13, 2008
Edwina Froehlich, 93, La Leche League Pioneer, Is Dead
By RONI CARYN RABIN
Edwina Froehlich, who was inspired to help found La Leche League to support breast-feeding after being told at the age of 35 that she was too old to make breast milk for her baby, died Sunday in Arlington Heights, Ill. She was 93 and lived in Inverness, Ill.
Her death followed a stroke two weeks earlier, said her son, Assemblyman Paul D. Froehlich.
A pioneer on several fronts of motherhood, she worked for Young Christian Workers, a Roman Catholic lay organization, before marrying John Froehlich when she was in her early 30s. She had her first child a couple of years later, making her comparatively old to have a first child at the time, and she made the controversial decision to forgo giving birth in a hospital in favor of a more natural delivery in her Franklin Park, Ill., home, with an obstetrician attending.
At a time when most pediatricians encouraged formula and bottle-feeding and when there were few scientific studies demonstrating the health benefits of breast milk, Mrs. Froehlich chose to breast-feed all of her babies, said another La Leche founder, Mary White.
"We used to tell the mothers the three main obstacles to successful breast-feeding were doctors, hospitals, and social pressure," Mrs. White said.
In 1956, when Mrs. White and a friend, Marian Tompson, decided to start a community organization to support and educate local breast-feeding mothers, Mrs. Froehlich was one of the first women they approached. Soon, monthly meetings were being held in Mrs. Froehlich's home, and a new phone line was installed so she could answer questions coming in from mothers across the country, Mrs. White said.
"We didn't have any information, " said Mrs. Tompson, another of the original group of seven La Leche League founders. "There weren't any books out there, and women just didn't talk about these things. Only 18 percent of women in the U.S. left the hospital breast-feeding at that time."
As La Leche League of Franklin Park grew, becoming La Leche League International in 1964, Mrs. Froehlich took on additional roles, including serving as assistant executive director for many years and, more recently, as a board member and a member of the Founders' Advisory Council.
She was one of the authors of "The Womanly Art of Breast-feeding, " the league's manifesto, which was first put together in loose-leaf form in 1958 and later published as a bound book in 1963. More than two million copies are in print.
Mrs. Froehlich was born Edwina Hearn on Jan. 5, 1915, in the Bronx.
In addition to her son Paul, of Schaumburg, Ill., she is survived by two other sons, Peter and David, who live in the Chicago area; a sister, Pauline, who lives in North Carolina; and nine grandchildren. Her husband, John, died in 1997.
Mrs. Froehlich donated her body to the University Of Illinois for research; her children think she wanted to continue serving science even after her death.
Who is Edwina Froehlich, most people ask? She is the founder of the Le Leche League.
When I gave birth to my first child in 1975 breast-feeding was discouraged and it was socially the wrong thing to do. I was breast-fed, as was my mother, a twin, in 1930. I know now that ancestral memory is a contributor of success in breast-feeding. Thank God, because two nurses kept my baby from me and waited for my husband and mother to leave (I believe now). They worked very hard to discourage me ... "You are too young. It will tie you down." (Edwina was too old! What is the perfect age? How absurd that the childbearing body would be too anything to finish the task.) They said, "Formula is better." As they continued to brow-beat me and I resisted, as one said smugly, "We already gave him formula and he took it just fine." Fortunately, my sweet baby latched on like he'd been doing it forever. (So glad I had nursed my dollies along with my sister being breast-fed). I suspect (in my feeling, sensate awareness now) that my eighteen-year old look (or smirk as my mother would call such a look) said, "Ha!!! So F-you and go away," because they did. Thankfully.
Twenty-eight years later I was at a lactation training and when I heard the instructor say that the FIRST FEEDING COATS and PRIMES the gut system, a rage rose up in me. Seemingly outa of nowhere my usual "cool, calm, and collected" self felt and explosion boiling up. THAT feeling is the expression of the feelings and knowing of my body at the time ... that were suppressed and denied. I had to leave the room and go to privacy in the bathroom to do the things I know as a clinician of trauma healing to discharge it.
The feelings? How dare they? How dare they take away something so fundamentally necessary and simple.? Were his hospitalizations at age four for bowel issues related? What do we women (and men) do with our stuffed emotions about our violations during this most profound human experience -- birth? Woman have to stop doing this --- betrayal --- to other women.
Thank YOU, Edwina -- for you have contributed to my life personally and you have surely made the world a better place for eons to come.
June 13, 2008
Edwina Froehlich, 93, La Leche League Pioneer, Is Dead
By RONI CARYN RABIN
Edwina Froehlich, who was inspired to help found La Leche League to support breast-feeding after being told at the age of 35 that she was too old to make breast milk for her baby, died Sunday in Arlington Heights, Ill. She was 93 and lived in Inverness, Ill.
Her death followed a stroke two weeks earlier, said her son, Assemblyman Paul D. Froehlich.
A pioneer on several fronts of motherhood, she worked for Young Christian Workers, a Roman Catholic lay organization, before marrying John Froehlich when she was in her early 30s. She had her first child a couple of years later, making her comparatively old to have a first child at the time, and she made the controversial decision to forgo giving birth in a hospital in favor of a more natural delivery in her Franklin Park, Ill., home, with an obstetrician attending.
At a time when most pediatricians encouraged formula and bottle-feeding and when there were few scientific studies demonstrating the health benefits of breast milk, Mrs. Froehlich chose to breast-feed all of her babies, said another La Leche founder, Mary White.
"We used to tell the mothers the three main obstacles to successful breast-feeding were doctors, hospitals, and social pressure," Mrs. White said.
In 1956, when Mrs. White and a friend, Marian Tompson, decided to start a community organization to support and educate local breast-feeding mothers, Mrs. Froehlich was one of the first women they approached. Soon, monthly meetings were being held in Mrs. Froehlich's home, and a new phone line was installed so she could answer questions coming in from mothers across the country, Mrs. White said.
"We didn't have any information, " said Mrs. Tompson, another of the original group of seven La Leche League founders. "There weren't any books out there, and women just didn't talk about these things. Only 18 percent of women in the U.S. left the hospital breast-feeding at that time."
As La Leche League of Franklin Park grew, becoming La Leche League International in 1964, Mrs. Froehlich took on additional roles, including serving as assistant executive director for many years and, more recently, as a board member and a member of the Founders' Advisory Council.
She was one of the authors of "The Womanly Art of Breast-feeding, " the league's manifesto, which was first put together in loose-leaf form in 1958 and later published as a bound book in 1963. More than two million copies are in print.
Mrs. Froehlich was born Edwina Hearn on Jan. 5, 1915, in the Bronx.
In addition to her son Paul, of Schaumburg, Ill., she is survived by two other sons, Peter and David, who live in the Chicago area; a sister, Pauline, who lives in North Carolina; and nine grandchildren. Her husband, John, died in 1997.
Mrs. Froehlich donated her body to the University Of Illinois for research; her children think she wanted to continue serving science even after her death.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Guns Don't Kill People, Doctors Do
Or should I title it, "Stats to Blow Dr. Amy's Away?"
.. doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.'
Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.'
I have decided (for now, anyway) that the focus of this blog will be to talk about how it is PEOPLE who make birth dangerous ... whether doctor, nurse, or midwife (or cabbie or EMT). Medical interventions meant to save women's and babies lives -- antibiotics, drugs, instruments to extricate stuck baby, and surgery -- are used indiscriminately, unnecessarily, and for self-serving
reasons.
reasons.
In addition to that, THE MAIN POINT of this blog is to talk about how the human being -- the baby, me, you, and all of our babies -- are sentient, feeling, and experiencing beings from the moment of conception. Before that we were consciousness, a soul, something .... that came into this physical body. So, certainly during labor and birth we are feeling, sensory, and aware of our
surroundings.
The people in the mother's environment MUST be aware of this --- Awareness and honoring of the baby as a conscious being coming in, a being who is FEELING, SENSING, and IMPRINTING the experience in his or her body and brain, THIS is what makes birth SAFE FOR THE BABY!!!!! ...
surroundings.
The people in the mother's environment MUST be aware of this --- Awareness and honoring of the baby as a conscious being coming in, a being who is FEELING, SENSING, and IMPRINTING the experience in his or her body and brain, THIS is what makes birth SAFE FOR THE BABY!!!!! ...
Where ever birth is .. home, hospital, woods, or car, regardless of whoever is there ... doctor, nurse, midwife, paramedic, or father, the awareness that this event, BIRTH, is sacred, that this event is tantamount, life defining, this is what will create in "them" a reverence for the baby. This is what will make birth safe, even when they need to use interventions.
So, here's a little humor to make a very strong point ... this is from a friend, and the author is unknown. Thank you whoever you are.
So, here's a little humor to make a very strong point ... this is from a friend, and the author is unknown. Thank you whoever you are.
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171.
Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Health Human Services.
GUNS
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S is 80,000,000. (Yes, that's 80
million)
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is
1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .000188.
Statistics courtesy of FBI
So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.'
FACT:
NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.
Please alert your friends to this alarming threat.
We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!
Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept. of Health Human Services.
GUNS
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S is 80,000,000. (Yes, that's 80
million)
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is
1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .000188.
Statistics courtesy of FBI
So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.'
FACT:
NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.
Please alert your friends to this alarming threat.
We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
A Little Edgy -- about Doctors And Where Birth is Safer
The most important thing that you can teach your children is that Well-being abounds. And that Well-being is naturally flowing to them. And that if they will relax and reach for thoughts that feel good, and do their best to appreciate, then they will be less likely to keep the Well-being away, and more likely to allow it to flow into their experience. Teach them the art of allowing.
-- Abraham
ANYONE who attends the birth of babies ANYWHERE ... should be emotionally, mentally, and spiritually qualified. THAT is what makes birth safe .... technology and knowledge in the hands of those are emotionally and psychologically fit.
-- Janel, Baby Keeper, in the film, "The Other Side of the Glass."
While the debate rages on about where birth is safer -- home or hospital -- the biggest reason that birth anywhere is unsafe is the people who attend ... the people who misuse technology ... the people who have forgotten that birth is a sacred event ... people who have forgotten that birth is the human's most singularly critical experience of life. And, that is, birth is a critical experience physiologically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually.
When we look at PEOPLE ... it is hospital birth that is most unsafe for women and babies ... and men who find themselves disempowered and unable to protect their partner and child. It is the PEOPLE attending birth that make it dangerous.
PEOPLE who work in hospitals ... especially doctors ... are as a stereotypical whole clumped together ... numb, morally dysfunctional, control freaks ... and there's a reason for it. The System. And, another reason is their choice to be in and stay in a system that is so dysfunctional (and lucrative). See link below.
I'll admit my prejudice and rancor here ... I was raised without insurance and using natural ways and aside from being brutalized at age eighteen in the birth of my first child ... and mislead and over powered in the other three ... and mislead that an angiogram was reasonable and safe way to explore my headaches at age 23, I have had little medical care. Until, I was later married to a man who was a medical student and then did five+ years of residency who thought everything needed to be medically checked out and managed.
Two and a half of those residency years were in obstetrics ... and then I got out with my life. I worked most of those with the exception of having a baby and taking time off to be with her, Brazelton style. He was a control freak to begin with, but he became progressively more so and extremely violent ... all based on money, and he began to hide money, which continues today. He is currently trying to get out of paying the percentage of what the state of Illinois says every non-custodial parent should pay. He believes it is unfair that someone who makes $50,000 a month should pay so much more than one who makes $50,000 a year. Math, logic, and ethics must not have been his forte. The same percentage is what makes it fair. I and my daughter sacrificed and helped him get there.
During the year-long proceeding, rather than work on the income tax forms he can't find, he did find time to divorce his wife (also a physician) but they still live together, and he found time to put over a million dollars worth of property in hers and his sister's name. That takes finesse and balls, and an "I have to manage everything" mentality. He has defied a year's worth of court orders and has even gone to jail once but continues to defy court orders. He still refuses to turn over his income tax returns for several years. Last year during the deployment of my son (his step-son) when my life unraveled and I was unable to work with babies for that year, he paid partial payments or none for two months at a time, because he felt I was "living off him." Now, as the proceedings wind down to a inevitable showdown and completion, he is mad. He is mad that I am doing this film, living off him to do so, and this month again, he paid a partial child support payment. Routinely paying it three weeks late is usually enough satisfaction for him. A partial payment of the support based on his residency income, far from what he should be paying like every other parent in Illinois has to. Have you also noticed that those with the most money never seem to have enough? He works in obstetrics, emergency rooms, and does aesthetics.
Is this who you want caring for you in the ER or in your child's birth or doing your skin abrasion? To be fair to him, he is not alone. He is not the exception, I suspect. He is not the physician who values money above humanity and that of his loved ones. He might or might not be the worst, but he is certainly, most likely, not so different from a lot of people in his profession. The perceptions we hold of these giants is an illusion, built and perpetuated by them and their control over our health and wellness. In fact, I was telling a friend recently that he was never required to take any sort of psychological evaluations or tests. He was shocked. I thought everyone knew that, so I thought you ought to know it too.
While the US Congress seeks to make all pregnant women be psychologically evaluated for depression, medical people continue to "self-regulate" themselves. They don't seem to self-regulate their own lives, but certainly do their profession. No one oversees them, not the CDC or Congress. AMA and ACOG are peer organizations, not regulatory entities. Congress is controlled by them, via the purse strings, via Big Pharm. Doctors are the holders of all power over our health and wellness, even psychologically, and yet, are not ever evaluated themselves. Again, let me remind you that that the fox is in charge of the hen house. Worse, they are not overseen by anyone. They do as they wish. So why wouldn't such a person believe that he makes all rules and that he is exempt from what others must abide by.
So, yeah, physicians are not deemed EMOTIONALLY, PSYCHOLOGICALLY, or SPIRITUALLY worthy of the station they hold. They are not certified. They just are of a mind and personality that can endure years and years of lectures and retaining the rote information and spitting more back than anyone else. They are good standardized test takers.
All one has to do to become such a powerful person in our society is to be able to memorize the information needed to graduate from college and medical school. He, like all physicians, LEARNED ON THE JOB ... in residency. The information, practices, and procedures were passed from attending to chief resident to resident. They take ethics courses but are not expected to abide by ethics. Medicine has it's own ethics ... meant to self-preserve regardless of the cost to society and to individuals. Nowhere is this more egregious than in the birth of humanity ... one baby at a time. It allows horrors to occur ... and in obstetrics this is serious.
In obstetrics women are allowed since the beginning of medicine, a few short centuries, to control women's physiological processes ... which is violating of women and babies during labor and birth.
Obstetrics is considered to be the most misogynistic and the most UNscience based off all specialties in medicine. From my experience, medical training took a fairly decent, but profoundly wounded person and turned him into a monster. They learn how to deny what is morally and heartfully right ... and how to focus on personal gain ... how to deceive ... how to create elaborate webs of denial and blame of others .... I could on ... but check out this research piece here sent to me by the fellow who donated a MAC to me ... to get this film done ... to stop the abuse of babies.
Link is at the end.....
"The majority of 1800 third year medical students surveyed reported doing something they believed was unethical.[564] One student admits, "What I learned was how to survive as a medical student by forcing myself to believe that what I was doing was all right, when deep
inside I knew it was not."[565]
"Sixty-seven percent felt "bad or guilty" about something they had done in third year. Of these students, three quarters had, "succumbed to that pressure against their better judgment." Sixty-two percent believed that some of their ethical principles had been "eroded or lost."[566]
Another student: "I live in a world in which I do not trust or believe in what I am doing, and where I have grave doubts about what I am inflicting on other human beings."[567]
"At present it is a rare person that emerges from medical training with his or her humanity intact."[568]
"In studies of third year medical students, ethical dilemmas mostly hinged around subservience to authority."
There you go ... and we all know that shit runs downhill .... the powerless exerting their power upon people who are just in need of healing ... and getting rich doing so.
Medical Students
to be continued .... in support of the midwifery model of care, and that ANYONE who attends the birth of babies ANYWHERE ... should be emotionally, mentally, and spiritually qualified. THAT is what makes birth safe .... technology and knowledge in the hands of those are emotionally and psychologically fit.
For that matter, wouldn't you like your heart doctor, pediatrician, and even your podiatrist to have been "certified" sane before they work on you, cut into you, prescribe drugs for you? Have you ever thought about the physician attending to you and what has been going on in his or her life? They and their personal lives are often stressed and compromised ... they are "compartmentalized" in order to do their jobs. The research above gives us insights into that ... how they are compromised and how they become those who compromise others for their own gain.
Want to hear something even more scary? My ex's medical school test scores were highest in PSYCHIATRY!!
Just a reminder .... stop the craziness ... check out the Petition against The Mother's Act
Monday, May 05, 2008
My GI Joe is Coming Home
He has his limbs, his eyes, his head, he is not burned or mutilated! He is ALIVE! He is coming home to the U.S. How blessed am I and how grateful I am. So many mother's wailing will never end and their hearts will never mend. These mothers who have lost their child to war need our loving thought and prayerful arms to hold them. I feel, I think, as if my child has been through a tragic event, like a bus wreck, and is one of the survivors. With all of my gratitude, I am a bit numb right now. Bless my other sisters.
I can not think only of my happiness, without feeling shared emotions with the mothers with whom I have so much connection and especially those who will never greet their child again. Never has anything connected me so deeply with other women ... birth comes close.
Can it really be after all of this time? Twenty-two months in a war zone -- two and half years since I have seen him -- smelled him, felt his soft neck when I hug him, an experience that transports me, and then his whiskered face that brings me back to the present.
Please keep our men and women and their families in your prayers.
Below are some pictures of my GI Joe in Afghanistan. He is an officer embedded with the Afghan Army. My favorite of him is him being hugged by an Afghan man. It brought me much joy to see him happy and being the goof we all know him to be. The picture is a stark cont
rast to night time maneuvers, long mountainous roads, and him standing, honoring his friends, fallen soldiers. He is in black shirt below. How can a mother's heart but break when her child sees and endures such experiences and losses? How can we as women, not reach out to other women who experience such losses ... whether it be to war, or to the egregious violation of her body, soul, and baby during managed, manipulated, medical birth.
If you've been reading my blog since I began it in November 2006, you know that my son was deployed in the months prior and it started out initially to counter Tuteur's attack on homebirth, midwifery, and natural birth when she banned me -- when my son had just left and I was clinging to his sacrifice, possibly dying, being not in vain if it protected our rights here. I was taking my right to speech pretty damned seriously.
You know that I am passionate about birth, the empowerment of women and men in birthing their babies, and more importantly, that I am a fierce advocate for the baby. You'll know that writing six hundred pages in the first seven months on this blog, entertaining you with my colorful and very passionate weavings (rants) about obstetric abuse against women, the history of midwifery, circumcision, and the consciousness of the baby, is what got me through the hardest year of my life. Have I mentioned lately that the drugs used in American medical birth have NEVER been shown to be safe for the birthing baby and woman?!? And! that wom
en and babies are one long experiment on NON-consenting and NON-informed women and babies?!
"In the cave," "over the cliff", "thrown on to the train tracks", and the "dark night of the soul" are some of my more graphic descriptions of my experience as a mother of a deployed soldier in this war. Thanks to you all who faithfully tuned in, I found a wonderful place to channel my energy and emotions --- as I unraveled a lifetime of ... of ... shi-stuff. And, then began to re-weave my life. Many days I would marvel at that amazing soul, my son, the one I saw come in at conception, and how we came to do this profound journey. Oh, how I would have given anything for a few days back ... so many would be "do overs", most would just be a day to enjoy him ... a baby, four years old, or fourteen, or 22. Mamas, hold them close and cherish every moment you have. Time slips away and all you have left is your dreams and justifications for why did what you did or didn't do what you didn't. Deployment dredged up all of those losses to be reviewed, like sorting through wet, stinky belongings after the backed up sewage goes down; and finding the joys within, to be appreciated.
Some days I was grateful that I was able to experience such depths of emotion ... even though much of it was very old and unfelt from days of numb living. Numb, that mechanism that most of us have that allows us to endure hardships, abuses, losses and to suck it up to go to work and put on the "happy public face" ... well, that mechanism goes haywire when we face losing our child, whatever the reason. And, I do mean, haywire. I found all of the times, all of the years that I didn't feel what I felt (like getting out of an abusive marriage to an obstetric physician) demanded to be heard and felt. All of those years living in Denial ... focused on worldly things not of that much importance really -- in the end when all is said and done.
Some days I felt, and do feel, profoundly blessed that I had this opportunity to recogniz
e my child, the man, who is his own soul and who came for a purpose. I am blessed to be called to "let him go" -- as mothers must learn to do -- letting go while embracing, and accepting him, at a level I never knew possible. It's at the bottom of the cliff, in the darkest recesses of the cave, and in the darkest place of the soul. It is the moment one realizes, lying on the tracks, shifting waist high in the sewage, that the light at the end of the tunnel is not a freight train after all.
My only sadness I will likely never lose is the realization that my son will never be the same ... for this war. He is expected to come back and live a normal life, where the majority remain numb to his (and his colleague's) experiences and sacrifices. They are so young and have so many years to live. I can't quite shake my resentment at the majority in this country who merrily continues on their normal way, while ours will never be normal again, and my outrage at what you ... this country ... owes him and every veteran of this war. How can you continue to do nothing to stop the madness?
I went through what is as close to losing a child (to death) that I wish to experience. When your child goes to war you have to feel the very real possibility of his or her death (it feels like being slapped, beat to the ground, and kicked in the gut while you are down, over and over) AND you have to have the most hope you've ever had. You have to find it. I likened it to things like getting the news that your newborn is in NICU and for that time when you don't know if they will live or die, you live in panic ... then numb .... then panic .. then numb ... then panic. You live that way everyday that your child is in danger or at risk of dying. Everyday ... until you just have to adjust in order to survive, and the overwhelm is always just right there, ready to spill at any moment. Life unravels.
I realized the panicked scream I felt for two years was exactly like the time my older son almost got hit by a car. Almost, so cl
ose, that it is our angel story. I was very pregnant with his sister. He grinned, knowing I couldn't catch him and he bolted down the sidewalk towards the busiest street in town. I couldn't get to him and all I could do was scream his name ... so loudly that people came out of their homes 1/2 block away. My scream came from my core and it seemed to have summoned an army of angels or maybe just the very big brave one that I "saw". After my younger son left the US I realized that I was in that very same scream ... watching my child go off to war all pumped up to do what is right, to do what soldiers do for their country, was like watching him run gleefully to the street with zero regard for the danger. He was so trained, so prepared, and so honored to go to protect what most of us (not me, mama) take for granted.
The scream of deployment goes unscreamed, stuck in me; numb and panicked, numb and panicked, all stuck because there is no place in our society for mothers to just lie down and wail for their babies. No place, no time for days of crying, or time to rest from the exhaustion, and there is no one to pick up the pieces of modern day life that come undone so quickly and that undo us until homelessness, until cancer, under drug use, until divorce ... or whatever consequence emerges from stuffing numb powerlessness and panicked grief. Breathe!!
It is all stuck inside and it gets called "Mother's Guilt" or women get ill, sometimes, deathly ill. There is no time to grieve our babies we lose in birth, or to war, or in accidents, or to cancer, or to strangers, to DCFS, to the other parent, and not even our babies who are born by cesarean or not how we know our body wanted. There is no time or place to grieve our babies and children's experiences when they and we do survive. Our bodies none the less wail. Our mind wails. Our soul wails. We women have no place to wail, grieve, to FEEL, and to process our guilt and abandonment and violation. My definition of "Mother's guilt" is that it an expression, a measurement, of the degree of violation a woman and baby have endured by a system condoned by culture.
I intended to and I did choose to go through the pain ... with zero drugs. I have a master's degree and a license that allows me to be the "expert" talking head to help others "talk it through". Nothing I ever learned and experienced prepared me for my own experience ... except the group of parents who had lost their children to death. I didn't talk to someone about my feelings and it would do no good to talk about how my life was unraveling without real empathy and without going into my body and the experience. FEELing it, living it, moving through it. I used yoga, Tai Chi, and I wrote, movement, trance dance, and I wrote, African dance, massage, and I wrote, and the Mother Earth. And, I wrote. It was the Great Mother who sustained me and deepened my faith and trust in Her Son and in His Father. My son's deployment gifted me with the most difficult and blessed journey of my life. I have come through it a much better person. Thank you for sharing it with me. When I picked myself up and dusted myself off, I realized that I had progressed, quite surprisingly towards some long-time goals and dream. The most amazing of those is the film I have wanted to do for four years now.
Thank you for your prayers for my son, my GI Joe, and for all of the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Thank you for your prayers for me and my daughter and my family. Please remember that the needs of our men and women serving are great - before, during, and after. Our veterans deserve our care, appreciation, and our attention. Their families are suffering and need your support.
Please pray for the babies and children of our deployed men and women.
I can not think only of my happiness, without feeling shared emotions with the mothers with whom I have so much connection and especially those who will never greet their child again. Never has anything connected me so deeply with other women ... birth comes close.
Can it really be after all of this time? Twenty-two months in a war zone -- two and half years since I have seen him -- smelled him, felt his soft neck when I hug him, an experience that transports me, and then his whiskered face that brings me back to the present.
Please keep our men and women and their families in your prayers.
Below are some pictures of my GI Joe in Afghanistan. He is an officer embedded with the Afghan Army. My favorite of him is him being hugged by an Afghan man. It brought me much joy to see him happy and being the goof we all know him to be. The picture is a stark cont
rast to night time maneuvers, long mountainous roads, and him standing, honoring his friends, fallen soldiers. He is in black shirt below. How can a mother's heart but break when her child sees and endures such experiences and losses? How can we as women, not reach out to other women who experience such losses ... whether it be to war, or to the egregious violation of her body, soul, and baby during managed, manipulated, medical birth.
If you've been reading my blog since I began it in November 2006, you know that my son was deployed in the months prior and it started out initially to counter Tuteur's attack on homebirth, midwifery, and natural birth when she banned me -- when my son had just left and I was clinging to his sacrifice, possibly dying, being not in vain if it protected our rights here. I was taking my right to speech pretty damned seriously.
You know that I am passionate about birth, the empowerment of women and men in birthing their babies, and more importantly, that I am a fierce advocate for the baby. You'll know that writing six hundred pages in the first seven months on this blog, entertaining you with my colorful and very passionate weavings (rants) about obstetric abuse against women, the history of midwifery, circumcision, and the consciousness of the baby, is what got me through the hardest year of my life. Have I mentioned lately that the drugs used in American medical birth have NEVER been shown to be safe for the birthing baby and woman?!? And! that wom
en and babies are one long experiment on NON-consenting and NON-informed women and babies?!"In the cave," "over the cliff", "thrown on to the train tracks", and the "dark night of the soul" are some of my more graphic descriptions of my experience as a mother of a deployed soldier in this war. Thanks to you all who faithfully tuned in, I found a wonderful place to channel my energy and emotions --- as I unraveled a lifetime of ... of ... shi-stuff. And, then began to re-weave my life. Many days I would marvel at that amazing soul, my son, the one I saw come in at conception, and how we came to do this profound journey. Oh, how I would have given anything for a few days back ... so many would be "do overs", most would just be a day to enjoy him ... a baby, four years old, or fourteen, or 22. Mamas, hold them close and cherish every moment you have. Time slips away and all you have left is your dreams and justifications for why did what you did or didn't do what you didn't. Deployment dredged up all of those losses to be reviewed, like sorting through wet, stinky belongings after the backed up sewage goes down; and finding the joys within, to be appreciated.
Some days I was grateful that I was able to experience such depths of emotion ... even though much of it was very old and unfelt from days of numb living. Numb, that mechanism that most of us have that allows us to endure hardships, abuses, losses and to suck it up to go to work and put on the "happy public face" ... well, that mechanism goes haywire when we face losing our child, whatever the reason. And, I do mean, haywire. I found all of the times, all of the years that I didn't feel what I felt (like getting out of an abusive marriage to an obstetric physician) demanded to be heard and felt. All of those years living in Denial ... focused on worldly things not of that much importance really -- in the end when all is said and done.
Some days I felt, and do feel, profoundly blessed that I had this opportunity to recogniz
e my child, the man, who is his own soul and who came for a purpose. I am blessed to be called to "let him go" -- as mothers must learn to do -- letting go while embracing, and accepting him, at a level I never knew possible. It's at the bottom of the cliff, in the darkest recesses of the cave, and in the darkest place of the soul. It is the moment one realizes, lying on the tracks, shifting waist high in the sewage, that the light at the end of the tunnel is not a freight train after all.My only sadness I will likely never lose is the realization that my son will never be the same ... for this war. He is expected to come back and live a normal life, where the majority remain numb to his (and his colleague's) experiences and sacrifices. They are so young and have so many years to live. I can't quite shake my resentment at the majority in this country who merrily continues on their normal way, while ours will never be normal again, and my outrage at what you ... this country ... owes him and every veteran of this war. How can you continue to do nothing to stop the madness?
I went through what is as close to losing a child (to death) that I wish to experience. When your child goes to war you have to feel the very real possibility of his or her death (it feels like being slapped, beat to the ground, and kicked in the gut while you are down, over and over) AND you have to have the most hope you've ever had. You have to find it. I likened it to things like getting the news that your newborn is in NICU and for that time when you don't know if they will live or die, you live in panic ... then numb .... then panic .. then numb ... then panic. You live that way everyday that your child is in danger or at risk of dying. Everyday ... until you just have to adjust in order to survive, and the overwhelm is always just right there, ready to spill at any moment. Life unravels.
I realized the panicked scream I felt for two years was exactly like the time my older son almost got hit by a car. Almost, so cl
ose, that it is our angel story. I was very pregnant with his sister. He grinned, knowing I couldn't catch him and he bolted down the sidewalk towards the busiest street in town. I couldn't get to him and all I could do was scream his name ... so loudly that people came out of their homes 1/2 block away. My scream came from my core and it seemed to have summoned an army of angels or maybe just the very big brave one that I "saw". After my younger son left the US I realized that I was in that very same scream ... watching my child go off to war all pumped up to do what is right, to do what soldiers do for their country, was like watching him run gleefully to the street with zero regard for the danger. He was so trained, so prepared, and so honored to go to protect what most of us (not me, mama) take for granted.The scream of deployment goes unscreamed, stuck in me; numb and panicked, numb and panicked, all stuck because there is no place in our society for mothers to just lie down and wail for their babies. No place, no time for days of crying, or time to rest from the exhaustion, and there is no one to pick up the pieces of modern day life that come undone so quickly and that undo us until homelessness, until cancer, under drug use, until divorce ... or whatever consequence emerges from stuffing numb powerlessness and panicked grief. Breathe!!
It is all stuck inside and it gets called "Mother's Guilt" or women get ill, sometimes, deathly ill. There is no time to grieve our babies we lose in birth, or to war, or in accidents, or to cancer, or to strangers, to DCFS, to the other parent, and not even our babies who are born by cesarean or not how we know our body wanted. There is no time or place to grieve our babies and children's experiences when they and we do survive. Our bodies none the less wail. Our mind wails. Our soul wails. We women have no place to wail, grieve, to FEEL, and to process our guilt and abandonment and violation. My definition of "Mother's guilt" is that it an expression, a measurement, of the degree of violation a woman and baby have endured by a system condoned by culture.
I intended to and I did choose to go through the pain ... with zero drugs. I have a master's degree and a license that allows me to be the "expert" talking head to help others "talk it through". Nothing I ever learned and experienced prepared me for my own experience ... except the group of parents who had lost their children to death. I didn't talk to someone about my feelings and it would do no good to talk about how my life was unraveling without real empathy and without going into my body and the experience. FEELing it, living it, moving through it. I used yoga, Tai Chi, and I wrote, movement, trance dance, and I wrote, African dance, massage, and I wrote, and the Mother Earth. And, I wrote. It was the Great Mother who sustained me and deepened my faith and trust in Her Son and in His Father. My son's deployment gifted me with the most difficult and blessed journey of my life. I have come through it a much better person. Thank you for sharing it with me. When I picked myself up and dusted myself off, I realized that I had progressed, quite surprisingly towards some long-time goals and dream. The most amazing of those is the film I have wanted to do for four years now.
Thank you for your prayers for my son, my GI Joe, and for all of the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Thank you for your prayers for me and my daughter and my family. Please remember that the needs of our men and women serving are great - before, during, and after. Our veterans deserve our care, appreciation, and our attention. Their families are suffering and need your support.
Please pray for the babies and children of our deployed men and women.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
More Truth About Cesaran Deliveries -- From the Baby's Perspective
I like to post comments I recieve on previous posts. "The Truth About Cesarean Deliveries (C-Sections) was a post by Heather a year ago.
Leavinglascrunchy has left a new comment on your post "The Truth About Cesarean Deliveries (C-Sections)":
While I agree with you that there are many risks involved in having a csection, there are also very valid reasons for having a csection. Each mom has to weigh in the risks of having a csection against the risks of waiting or not having one. I went into labor with my son early due to placental abruption. My son went into distress when I was about 8 cm dilated and they had to get him out quickly. In my case, I think the risks of doing nothing outweighed the risks of having a csection. Of course, I don't think that all csections are medically necessary but I think that doctors and patients can work together to decide when the benefits of having a csection outweigh the risks involved.
Of course, this is one of the few true emergencies and reasons for a cesarean delivery. I don't know anyone who debates that.
This is another opportunity for me to point out the main purpose of this blog --- to bring awareness to the needs and human rights of the human baby. EVEN when cesarean birth is done for medically necessary reasons, it is disruptive to the baby on the physiological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual levels. I know this will make many a woman rise up in anger to defend her child. That's a natural and normal, and desirable response. It still remains a fact that is logical, emotional, and scientific -- that the baby, child, or adult born by cesarean was disrupted and wounded. Disruption is a wounding. It has consequences. Long term consequences. Only one hundred years from now with the magnitude of that be known as common sense. People will look back and shake their heads at what humanity was doing to their newborn.
The baby born by cesarean doesn't get the lung compression needed to physiologically expel fluid and become an air breathing being. And, if the cesarean was done without labor, the baby didn't get the necessary compression of the scull and brain. Of course, vaginal birth is challenging; apparently, it was meant to be. However, it was not meant to be as challenging as it is made to be in modern hospitals. Every mammal is born this way. Pitocin induced labor is brutal and likely to be damaging to the baby, but undrugged birth is unlikely to be brutal.
It is a miracle that women are able to give birth at all when one considers the conditions that every other mammal requires and seeks out. A mama cat will typically not give birth even around her trusted humans. Women in hospitals give birth under the most dire, invasive conditions.
During a cesarean birth the baby is pulled through an opening that is not larger than the cervical opening -- partly to minimize damage to the mother's uterus and to minimize her scar. That is very important these days and it is part of the "maternal choice" movement that feigns feminism and women's rights. A woman has "a right" to choose to labor "under the influence" of narcotics and to expose her birthing baby to Fentanyl, a very dangerous synthetic opiod. It is used to counter the effects of the "caine" family drugs used.
Often forceps are used with ceserean birth -- see Anna Nicole Smith's video. An obstetrician who is foremost a surgeon, pulls the baby through very quickly with whatever body part presents ... arm, hip, shoulder, head. OR, she/he reaches in and moves the baby. Talk about pain and intrusion. This is baby's FIRST TOUCH. It imprints a message in the brain about touch, this world, people and lots of things. The mainstream research in multiple fields, including prenatal life and postnatal period tells us that the laboring and birthing baby's brain is as astute and experience and development is as critical as before and after birth. The brain is taking it in.
Many major universities have research lab and experts who are researching the prenatal period and how the prenate learns and interacts with the environment and how this IS the WAY in which the baby's brain is developed. Other major universities have infant labs that study the first hours to weeks to months of life and how the newborn human is aware and learning. It is ILlogical then that this society continues to promote that the human laboring and birthing human baby is not also engaging with the environment and making decisions, responding, and imprinting on a PRE-verbal and NON-verbal level of development.
So, every single word said, feeling felt, action taken by ANYONE in the environment of the laboring and birthing mother and baby is felt by both and their systems will react and respond, learn and grow, or survive and protect. The baby feels what the mother feels as well as what she or he himself feels. We know this about the prenatal baby and we know this about the newborn.
Physiologically, the baby is experiencing separation from the mother and will in a short but profoundly critical time of development, become a separate physiological being. Everything done during labor and birth has a physiological, emotional, psychological, and spiritual impact on the baby.
The separation from the mother and the placenta is a profound change for the baby. During cesarean birth the baby's cord is cut immediately and the baby will begin life outside the womb with up to 50% loss of blood volume. The cesarean born child has two major disruptions of a process designed by nature to ensure a healthy being. BECAUSE of the lack of compression on the chest and BECAUSE of the extreme blood loss, the baby must be forced to breath with fluid still in the lungs. It is well-known that cesarean born children have breathing and asthma issues, yet cesarean is still promoted as "safe" and even more desirable by many, especially doctors, emissaries of the medical and pharmaceutical systems.
While fluid in the lungs and minus their blood intended to start their lungs to breath air, cesarean born babies have to be stimulated to breath. In any other situation, this treatment of a newborn would be seen as at least painful, if not abusive by observers. I attended a surgical birth where the baby's skin on his chest was rubbed off by the neonatal doctor and this baby was doing well for a surgical birth.
During this process, separated from his or her mother, the baby is surrounded by masked and gloved strangers who are doing something that is violating and abusive. It is. It doesn't matter to the baby in that moment if it is for life saving reasons. It doesn't matter to the baby in that moment if the medical person is a nice, caring person. All one really has to do is try to imagine if the very same thing happened to them, right now, as an adult. Most of us would FREAK out about it ... and we would cry and rage about it trying to get someone to understand, until our friends and families would just send us to the counselor or the doctor for some drugs to calm us.
What the baby needs NO MATTER WHY THE BIRTH WAS CESAREAN is someone, ESPECIALLY the MOTHER and father to GET IT. The BABY needs the adults who brought him or her in to this world to understand that they EXPERIENCED their birth and it is now a part of their brain programming. They see, feel, and experience the world differently. They need the mother to deal with her own loss, disappointment, anger, violation, etc. that all leads to mother's guilt. Ironcially, mother's guilt also leads her to not be able to see how the situation impacted her. She is usually just left to believe that she should be happy and thankful that she had an alive baby.
Embracing the good and the bad ... the trauma and the joy ... acknowledging what happened, processing what happened is what allows whatever happened ... at birth or anytime in life ... is what facilitates healing and integration. Babies are not allowed this. So wherever birth is, with whomever birth is, and whatever happens, babies just need to be acknowledged and seen. Every time the mother or father tells the child's birth story and the REAL experience has never been shared by the baby and heard by the parents, the baby (whatever age) within is silenced.
We have profound new techniques and therapies to facilitate healing of our earliest woundings (i.e., unwanted at conception, stress and diet during gestation, trauma and separation at birth).
www.birthpsychology.com
www.bepe.info
www.myrnamartin.net
www.beba.org
www.wondrousbeginnings.com
www.healyourearlyimprints.com/
www.pnri.net
www.transformingdragons.com
www.emersonbirthrx.com
www.castellinotraining.com
Leavinglascrunchy has left a new comment on your post "The Truth About Cesarean Deliveries (C-Sections)":
While I agree with you that there are many risks involved in having a csection, there are also very valid reasons for having a csection. Each mom has to weigh in the risks of having a csection against the risks of waiting or not having one. I went into labor with my son early due to placental abruption. My son went into distress when I was about 8 cm dilated and they had to get him out quickly. In my case, I think the risks of doing nothing outweighed the risks of having a csection. Of course, I don't think that all csections are medically necessary but I think that doctors and patients can work together to decide when the benefits of having a csection outweigh the risks involved.
Of course, this is one of the few true emergencies and reasons for a cesarean delivery. I don't know anyone who debates that.
This is another opportunity for me to point out the main purpose of this blog --- to bring awareness to the needs and human rights of the human baby. EVEN when cesarean birth is done for medically necessary reasons, it is disruptive to the baby on the physiological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual levels. I know this will make many a woman rise up in anger to defend her child. That's a natural and normal, and desirable response. It still remains a fact that is logical, emotional, and scientific -- that the baby, child, or adult born by cesarean was disrupted and wounded. Disruption is a wounding. It has consequences. Long term consequences. Only one hundred years from now with the magnitude of that be known as common sense. People will look back and shake their heads at what humanity was doing to their newborn.
The baby born by cesarean doesn't get the lung compression needed to physiologically expel fluid and become an air breathing being. And, if the cesarean was done without labor, the baby didn't get the necessary compression of the scull and brain. Of course, vaginal birth is challenging; apparently, it was meant to be. However, it was not meant to be as challenging as it is made to be in modern hospitals. Every mammal is born this way. Pitocin induced labor is brutal and likely to be damaging to the baby, but undrugged birth is unlikely to be brutal.
It is a miracle that women are able to give birth at all when one considers the conditions that every other mammal requires and seeks out. A mama cat will typically not give birth even around her trusted humans. Women in hospitals give birth under the most dire, invasive conditions.
During a cesarean birth the baby is pulled through an opening that is not larger than the cervical opening -- partly to minimize damage to the mother's uterus and to minimize her scar. That is very important these days and it is part of the "maternal choice" movement that feigns feminism and women's rights. A woman has "a right" to choose to labor "under the influence" of narcotics and to expose her birthing baby to Fentanyl, a very dangerous synthetic opiod. It is used to counter the effects of the "caine" family drugs used.
Often forceps are used with ceserean birth -- see Anna Nicole Smith's video. An obstetrician who is foremost a surgeon, pulls the baby through very quickly with whatever body part presents ... arm, hip, shoulder, head. OR, she/he reaches in and moves the baby. Talk about pain and intrusion. This is baby's FIRST TOUCH. It imprints a message in the brain about touch, this world, people and lots of things. The mainstream research in multiple fields, including prenatal life and postnatal period tells us that the laboring and birthing baby's brain is as astute and experience and development is as critical as before and after birth. The brain is taking it in.
Many major universities have research lab and experts who are researching the prenatal period and how the prenate learns and interacts with the environment and how this IS the WAY in which the baby's brain is developed. Other major universities have infant labs that study the first hours to weeks to months of life and how the newborn human is aware and learning. It is ILlogical then that this society continues to promote that the human laboring and birthing human baby is not also engaging with the environment and making decisions, responding, and imprinting on a PRE-verbal and NON-verbal level of development.
So, every single word said, feeling felt, action taken by ANYONE in the environment of the laboring and birthing mother and baby is felt by both and their systems will react and respond, learn and grow, or survive and protect. The baby feels what the mother feels as well as what she or he himself feels. We know this about the prenatal baby and we know this about the newborn.
Physiologically, the baby is experiencing separation from the mother and will in a short but profoundly critical time of development, become a separate physiological being. Everything done during labor and birth has a physiological, emotional, psychological, and spiritual impact on the baby.
The separation from the mother and the placenta is a profound change for the baby. During cesarean birth the baby's cord is cut immediately and the baby will begin life outside the womb with up to 50% loss of blood volume. The cesarean born child has two major disruptions of a process designed by nature to ensure a healthy being. BECAUSE of the lack of compression on the chest and BECAUSE of the extreme blood loss, the baby must be forced to breath with fluid still in the lungs. It is well-known that cesarean born children have breathing and asthma issues, yet cesarean is still promoted as "safe" and even more desirable by many, especially doctors, emissaries of the medical and pharmaceutical systems.
While fluid in the lungs and minus their blood intended to start their lungs to breath air, cesarean born babies have to be stimulated to breath. In any other situation, this treatment of a newborn would be seen as at least painful, if not abusive by observers. I attended a surgical birth where the baby's skin on his chest was rubbed off by the neonatal doctor and this baby was doing well for a surgical birth.
During this process, separated from his or her mother, the baby is surrounded by masked and gloved strangers who are doing something that is violating and abusive. It is. It doesn't matter to the baby in that moment if it is for life saving reasons. It doesn't matter to the baby in that moment if the medical person is a nice, caring person. All one really has to do is try to imagine if the very same thing happened to them, right now, as an adult. Most of us would FREAK out about it ... and we would cry and rage about it trying to get someone to understand, until our friends and families would just send us to the counselor or the doctor for some drugs to calm us.
What the baby needs NO MATTER WHY THE BIRTH WAS CESAREAN is someone, ESPECIALLY the MOTHER and father to GET IT. The BABY needs the adults who brought him or her in to this world to understand that they EXPERIENCED their birth and it is now a part of their brain programming. They see, feel, and experience the world differently. They need the mother to deal with her own loss, disappointment, anger, violation, etc. that all leads to mother's guilt. Ironcially, mother's guilt also leads her to not be able to see how the situation impacted her. She is usually just left to believe that she should be happy and thankful that she had an alive baby.
Embracing the good and the bad ... the trauma and the joy ... acknowledging what happened, processing what happened is what allows whatever happened ... at birth or anytime in life ... is what facilitates healing and integration. Babies are not allowed this. So wherever birth is, with whomever birth is, and whatever happens, babies just need to be acknowledged and seen. Every time the mother or father tells the child's birth story and the REAL experience has never been shared by the baby and heard by the parents, the baby (whatever age) within is silenced.
We have profound new techniques and therapies to facilitate healing of our earliest woundings (i.e., unwanted at conception, stress and diet during gestation, trauma and separation at birth).
www.birthpsychology.com
www.bepe.info
www.myrnamartin.net
www.beba.org
www.wondrousbeginnings.com
www.healyourearlyimprints.com/
www.pnri.net
www.transformingdragons.com
www.emersonbirthrx.com
www.castellinotraining.com
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Struck me as funny
One in four Americans is affected by mental health issues each year. Become a mental health counselor and start making a difference.
I saw this on a website for a counseling program today and it really cracked me up. Is the presumption that one of those three mentally healthy people withOUT mental health issues should and will become a counselor? Oh, my gut hurts from laughin'. Now, is that likely? Wouldn't they be more likely to become a doctor, lawyer, or a judge? Or, is it an invitation for that one with mental health issues to turn that mental issue into something more profitable and engaging? Figure themselves out AND make a livin' at the same time. Recreating their dysfunctional relationships over and over when they don't figure it out? Cool.
I have a Master's in Counseling and I think that entitles me to make fun. I admit I was online looking for an online program to pick up some classes for licensure.
Ever think about what leads people to their life's work? Even psychologists know that people trying to figure themselves and their own lives out go into psychology (my undergrad degree is in psych!) One of my professors, a clinical psychologist, said she got her BS in Psychology. BS stood for Bull Shit. Then she got her MS -- More Shit, and finally she earned her PhD -- Piled Higher and Deeper. Pretty funny, eh?
Why do you do what you do? Do you think it has to do with your earliest prenatal experiences and how you were born? Or did you just start to experience the world, learn, and "remember" when you were three? Does it have to do with your innate talents? Pre-conception plans? Early childhood? Or, was it by chance? Did you choose it? Why does a person decide to become a caseworker in the state system? Is there a reason they want to "save all the abused children" but yet end up harming so many families? What about police? Pharmacists? Chefs? Midwives? Nurses? I heard in Counseling that nurses make good Co-dependents (high number married to addicts). Have you ever wondered if someone who is rabidly against abortion just might be someone who survived an abortion attempt? Or, if someone who was abused, neglected, and abandoned s/he might become a state case worker?
And, why do you suppose a person spends four years in college, four more in medical school, and then four more in obstetric residency (aka as Hell) only to be tired, in debt, and disillusioned? Do they do it all because they love women and babies? And, "they love women" can be interpreted several ways, now can't it? Do they just want the best for women and babies, for them to never have pain, and for them to be safe and have a sacred experience? Some believe obstetricians are misogynistic. Some believe they are control freaks. It is part of the training. Some believe they are more interested in power and money than a baby and woman's body, mind, and soul.
So, I was just wondering ... it's that psych and counseling training, darn it; if a woman and a man go to the hospital for the birth of their baby and there is a nurse and a doctor ... which one is the ONE OUT OF FOUR WITH mental health issues?
If a woman goes to court regarding her child and she has a lawyer, there is a caseworker, another lawyer, and a judge, which one is ONE with mental health issues?
Is it a coincidence that it always happens to be the disempowered woman with the baby/child?
Is mental health like pregnancy and potty training? A caseworker told my friend that it was impossible that her handicapped grandson was partially potty trained before the state took him. The older gent said there is no such thing as "partially potty trained." She told me that he said, "It's like being pregnant. Either you are pregnant or you aren't pregnant. Either he is potty trained or he isn't." Obviously, he's never done either - pregnancy or potty training a child. One out of four, eh?
Hmmmmm.....
YIKES!
I saw this on a website for a counseling program today and it really cracked me up. Is the presumption that one of those three mentally healthy people withOUT mental health issues should and will become a counselor? Oh, my gut hurts from laughin'. Now, is that likely? Wouldn't they be more likely to become a doctor, lawyer, or a judge? Or, is it an invitation for that one with mental health issues to turn that mental issue into something more profitable and engaging? Figure themselves out AND make a livin' at the same time. Recreating their dysfunctional relationships over and over when they don't figure it out? Cool.
I have a Master's in Counseling and I think that entitles me to make fun. I admit I was online looking for an online program to pick up some classes for licensure.
Ever think about what leads people to their life's work? Even psychologists know that people trying to figure themselves and their own lives out go into psychology (my undergrad degree is in psych!) One of my professors, a clinical psychologist, said she got her BS in Psychology. BS stood for Bull Shit. Then she got her MS -- More Shit, and finally she earned her PhD -- Piled Higher and Deeper. Pretty funny, eh?
Why do you do what you do? Do you think it has to do with your earliest prenatal experiences and how you were born? Or did you just start to experience the world, learn, and "remember" when you were three? Does it have to do with your innate talents? Pre-conception plans? Early childhood? Or, was it by chance? Did you choose it? Why does a person decide to become a caseworker in the state system? Is there a reason they want to "save all the abused children" but yet end up harming so many families? What about police? Pharmacists? Chefs? Midwives? Nurses? I heard in Counseling that nurses make good Co-dependents (high number married to addicts). Have you ever wondered if someone who is rabidly against abortion just might be someone who survived an abortion attempt? Or, if someone who was abused, neglected, and abandoned s/he might become a state case worker?
And, why do you suppose a person spends four years in college, four more in medical school, and then four more in obstetric residency (aka as Hell) only to be tired, in debt, and disillusioned? Do they do it all because they love women and babies? And, "they love women" can be interpreted several ways, now can't it? Do they just want the best for women and babies, for them to never have pain, and for them to be safe and have a sacred experience? Some believe obstetricians are misogynistic. Some believe they are control freaks. It is part of the training. Some believe they are more interested in power and money than a baby and woman's body, mind, and soul.
So, I was just wondering ... it's that psych and counseling training, darn it; if a woman and a man go to the hospital for the birth of their baby and there is a nurse and a doctor ... which one is the ONE OUT OF FOUR WITH mental health issues?
If a woman goes to court regarding her child and she has a lawyer, there is a caseworker, another lawyer, and a judge, which one is ONE with mental health issues?
Is it a coincidence that it always happens to be the disempowered woman with the baby/child?
Is mental health like pregnancy and potty training? A caseworker told my friend that it was impossible that her handicapped grandson was partially potty trained before the state took him. The older gent said there is no such thing as "partially potty trained." She told me that he said, "It's like being pregnant. Either you are pregnant or you aren't pregnant. Either he is potty trained or he isn't." Obviously, he's never done either - pregnancy or potty training a child. One out of four, eh?
Hmmmmm.....
YIKES!
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Doulas, Obstetricians, and Whistle Blowers
I read a couple of posts on BOLD Thoughts, Birth the Play Blog
and I posted a response.
The BOLD blogger wrote about a NY Times article trashing Doulas and about a showing of the "Business of Birth" at Cornell and how one obstetrician set the tone for a negative discussion, but a labor and delivery nurse was a "whistleblower." I wove my responses to both into one post ...about the baby in all of us:
Your posts on Doulas and the two comments raise real concerns. For every baby there is a story and observers will interpret it according to their beliefs and needs. The baby's story goes untold, unacknowledged, unprocessed, and unintegrated.
The story here illustrates a common situation --- the birth women wish for is unattainable in the hospital and most women who prepare for and expect an empowered, natural or whatever birth in the hospital, are profoundly disappointed in their experience after they have prepared for the ultimate birth experience. It has women from the different perspectives at each other's throats.
Women are in the process of reclaiming their power through birth -- and the experience is rarely as was idolized. The truth is that the empowerment comes from embracing was is, what happened, and resolving and integrating the experience ... whatever it is that one co-created. It involves also embracing that the birth is the baby's birth into this world. It is not the mother's birth. She had her birth. This is another soul's journey into this physical world through her. It is her experience of birthing her baby, but it is the baby who will have to live with the choices and consequences of every single moment provided by the mother and her caregivers. The baby and the mother will forever live with the relationship dynamics of birth and attachment that happen during birth.
The human baby is a sentient being who is experiencing birth and that the experience is imprinted into the soul, body, and brain of the human. It is illogical that a society of people would promote that prenatal development is critical, but that the labor and birth is not -- so that well-educated, well-intended professionals can do whatever it is that they happen to believe is right, all based on their own science and research.
With that said, my observation is that many doulas are well-intentioned and good-hearted people who are hardly in the work for the money. They have a burning desire to help other women have the birth they desire, and their unacknowledged fire comes from the need to heal the birth they did or didn't have. This is a huge issue in the doula profession. Doulas (like nurses and doctors), like doctors and nurses, are not aware of their own experiences of their own birth, and they have usually not processed and healed their experiences of giving birth. Witnessing the manipulation and brutality, an LD nurse is a rare one if she can stay aware and receptive to the real needs of a laboring woman. Ninety percent of the current population was born in a hospital. Since the thirties that has involved excessive drugs and inappropriate positions and brutal treatment. Generations of denying this has profoundly numbed the majority of people, so that they will smile and coo at a baby who is being brutalized with an intervention, such as bulbing and scrubbing to stimulate, both of which are shown to be not only ineffective but disruptive. Some of add to that unduly emotionally and spiritually traumatizing.
Regardless of the role of the person at the birth, they bring to that space and time their own unresolved birth trauma. People at the birth are actively trying to heal their own trauma. Women don't get to choose the majority of the people who will actually be in their space during birth. The most important event of their baby's life so far, and it is left to fate and is a cacophony of strangers crap into which a newborn enters.
It is not surprising that doulas are not regulated --- there is no standard of care in obstetrics in the US. Obstetricians are self-regulated. There is no oversight of what obstetrics do. Most drugs that they use freely are off label use, but promoted as safe under the guise of "maternal choice" until the social tide promotes the myth as well. I.e, induction and epidural anesthesia.
A woman can go through multiple shifts during a labor and birth and every nurse will enact her version of is supposedly scientific. It is mostly based on her personal preferences, that particular hospital's policies often formed around previous lawsuits and prevention of lawsuits, and the attending physician's quirks, needs, and preferences. The power over patients is so profound as to totally disempower a man who was prepared and educated. A man will know remember that this baby is HIS baby and that he say no and he can hold his baby.
Enter the doula into the mix. Everyone has their agenda and baggage .... doctors have an agenda to manage and control stress, time, and litigation. Doulas have the agenda to support a woman ... often to support her to do that which is the mother is not even prepared to do or truly aware of.
Bottom line, there is a profound black out in our society about what is best for the human being who is coming into this world. It is the baby's birth into this world.
It will surely come to pass that obstetrics will use credentialing and licensure as a means of controlling doulas, and they will fight, like the nurses and midwives.
It's the human baby that will continue to get hurt in this fighting and warring environment.
We are in a collective denial about the impact of labor and birth on the human and it allows atrocities to be done to babies. Until we embrace the truth that the human baby is aware, sentient, engaging, developing and learning being in the womb AND during labor and birth, the war will continue.
I agree that nurses see and know what is happening, and they are key people and need to speak out. But they are trained to think a certain way and it will be a rare person who will is willing and able to be a whistle blower and is able to pay the price. Squeaky wheels and whistle blowers will most likely still be lone voices and suffer ongoing consequences such as loss of jobs and livelihood until the masses begin to unnumb and wake up. As we incite and insight women/nurses to be whistle blowers we are not ready to support their process and their losses that result. One may want to blow the whistle loud and shrill, but can rarely continue to make a living. I was a whistle blower nine years ago and the losses have been great. All I have left is my ongoing mission to bring attention to the fact that the newborn human baby is conscious and aware and has rights.
and I posted a response.
The BOLD blogger wrote about a NY Times article trashing Doulas and about a showing of the "Business of Birth" at Cornell and how one obstetrician set the tone for a negative discussion, but a labor and delivery nurse was a "whistleblower." I wove my responses to both into one post ...about the baby in all of us:
Your posts on Doulas and the two comments raise real concerns. For every baby there is a story and observers will interpret it according to their beliefs and needs. The baby's story goes untold, unacknowledged, unprocessed, and unintegrated.
The story here illustrates a common situation --- the birth women wish for is unattainable in the hospital and most women who prepare for and expect an empowered, natural or whatever birth in the hospital, are profoundly disappointed in their experience after they have prepared for the ultimate birth experience. It has women from the different perspectives at each other's throats.
Women are in the process of reclaiming their power through birth -- and the experience is rarely as was idolized. The truth is that the empowerment comes from embracing was is, what happened, and resolving and integrating the experience ... whatever it is that one co-created. It involves also embracing that the birth is the baby's birth into this world. It is not the mother's birth. She had her birth. This is another soul's journey into this physical world through her. It is her experience of birthing her baby, but it is the baby who will have to live with the choices and consequences of every single moment provided by the mother and her caregivers. The baby and the mother will forever live with the relationship dynamics of birth and attachment that happen during birth.
The human baby is a sentient being who is experiencing birth and that the experience is imprinted into the soul, body, and brain of the human. It is illogical that a society of people would promote that prenatal development is critical, but that the labor and birth is not -- so that well-educated, well-intended professionals can do whatever it is that they happen to believe is right, all based on their own science and research.
With that said, my observation is that many doulas are well-intentioned and good-hearted people who are hardly in the work for the money. They have a burning desire to help other women have the birth they desire, and their unacknowledged fire comes from the need to heal the birth they did or didn't have. This is a huge issue in the doula profession. Doulas (like nurses and doctors), like doctors and nurses, are not aware of their own experiences of their own birth, and they have usually not processed and healed their experiences of giving birth. Witnessing the manipulation and brutality, an LD nurse is a rare one if she can stay aware and receptive to the real needs of a laboring woman. Ninety percent of the current population was born in a hospital. Since the thirties that has involved excessive drugs and inappropriate positions and brutal treatment. Generations of denying this has profoundly numbed the majority of people, so that they will smile and coo at a baby who is being brutalized with an intervention, such as bulbing and scrubbing to stimulate, both of which are shown to be not only ineffective but disruptive. Some of add to that unduly emotionally and spiritually traumatizing.
Regardless of the role of the person at the birth, they bring to that space and time their own unresolved birth trauma. People at the birth are actively trying to heal their own trauma. Women don't get to choose the majority of the people who will actually be in their space during birth. The most important event of their baby's life so far, and it is left to fate and is a cacophony of strangers crap into which a newborn enters.
It is not surprising that doulas are not regulated --- there is no standard of care in obstetrics in the US. Obstetricians are self-regulated. There is no oversight of what obstetrics do. Most drugs that they use freely are off label use, but promoted as safe under the guise of "maternal choice" until the social tide promotes the myth as well. I.e, induction and epidural anesthesia.
A woman can go through multiple shifts during a labor and birth and every nurse will enact her version of is supposedly scientific. It is mostly based on her personal preferences, that particular hospital's policies often formed around previous lawsuits and prevention of lawsuits, and the attending physician's quirks, needs, and preferences. The power over patients is so profound as to totally disempower a man who was prepared and educated. A man will know remember that this baby is HIS baby and that he say no and he can hold his baby.
Enter the doula into the mix. Everyone has their agenda and baggage .... doctors have an agenda to manage and control stress, time, and litigation. Doulas have the agenda to support a woman ... often to support her to do that which is the mother is not even prepared to do or truly aware of.
Bottom line, there is a profound black out in our society about what is best for the human being who is coming into this world. It is the baby's birth into this world.
It will surely come to pass that obstetrics will use credentialing and licensure as a means of controlling doulas, and they will fight, like the nurses and midwives.
It's the human baby that will continue to get hurt in this fighting and warring environment.
We are in a collective denial about the impact of labor and birth on the human and it allows atrocities to be done to babies. Until we embrace the truth that the human baby is aware, sentient, engaging, developing and learning being in the womb AND during labor and birth, the war will continue.
I agree that nurses see and know what is happening, and they are key people and need to speak out. But they are trained to think a certain way and it will be a rare person who will is willing and able to be a whistle blower and is able to pay the price. Squeaky wheels and whistle blowers will most likely still be lone voices and suffer ongoing consequences such as loss of jobs and livelihood until the masses begin to unnumb and wake up. As we incite and insight women/nurses to be whistle blowers we are not ready to support their process and their losses that result. One may want to blow the whistle loud and shrill, but can rarely continue to make a living. I was a whistle blower nine years ago and the losses have been great. All I have left is my ongoing mission to bring attention to the fact that the newborn human baby is conscious and aware and has rights.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
My baby was born thirty-three years ago today
That makes him thirty-four years and nine months old.
I called him this morning to wish him happy birthday. However ... I have to say that I have been disillusioned with this cultural concept of celebrating one's life on the anniversary of one's birth.
Traditionally, so I am told, the survival of the first year of life was something to celebrate; hence, now it is the modern version of one's BIRTHDAY and false way, an archaic way of counting time. On our birthday it is ANNIVERSARY of our birth. But it doesn't accurately count how much time we have lived in a human body.
I developed this line of thought as I was celebrating big anniversaries -- first, my fortieth, and then my fiftieth anniversary of my arrival to this planet (birth from the womb) and while studying the fetal life and psychology. We know now that the gestational period is the beginning time of life, a critical time in development, as is the experience of labor and birth and first moments living outside the womb.
My friend was turning fifty almost exactly a year before me. Trying to console her, I pointed out that, in fact, she was celebrating the COMPLETING or ending of her fiftieth year, not the beginning. For some strange reason, I pointed out, (totally serious and straight-faced, because I both think about these such things, AND, I wanted to console her), we don't count the first year, (or the nine and a half months in the womb. Nine now that they induce routinely). Sooo, I happily shared with her that technically, she was celebrating the completion of her 50th year and the beginning of her fifty-first year. I concluded that, "Hey, you've been fifty all year, so why worry about it now? Let's have some fun." No, it didn't work for her like it worked for me, even when I pointed out, I was the one actually turning fifty, (starting my fiftieth year as I would be "turning 49" in a few weeks). I was actually turning 50! at the end of my forty-ninth year.
It didn't comfort my friend at all, but I found completing my fortieth and then my fiftieth years to be quite fun and a celebration. (My 30th was another story, as the said birthday boy was old enough to go to Junior High and I only freak out about his age!) A few days before my "49th Birthday", my daughter and I rode AMTRAK from Chicago to Disney Land, with stops in Philadelphia and Washington, D.D. (homeschooling is so awesome!). So, the completion of my 49th year and beginning of my 5oth year happened in Washington, DC. What fun we had. I don't even remember what I did on my "50th Birthday", the completion of my 50th year.
Ok, so my point, other than to till the ground for thinking about seeing that life of the human begins at even before conception? I was just reading some Birth to 3, zero to 3 literature and thinking about my son and his son who is about 144 days old, according to the ticker on his mama's blog. When he emerges from his mama's womb in late August -- all sweet, slippery, and wonderful, kicking, wide-eyed and turning his head when his mom or dad speaks, and smacking his lips and ready to crawl to his mama's breast, baby Jackson will be ten months old. He will be IN his tenth month of human development. So, why does we (we, as not as me, but as in this supposed intelligent, scientific society) say he is zero? Why will his time on this earth and his age go back to ZERO when he emerges from his first earthly home, his mama's womb? How is it logical or scientific to disregard the period of conception and gestation in development?
In reality, my son was nine months old when he was born from my womb on April 8th, 1975 so technically, he is completing his 33rd year; and, if we add the nine months I knew him in my womb (an amazing little being who was alive and kicking and responding to me, making me drink milk when I never liked it before) then he is actually 34 years and nine months old today. Judging from his reaction to my exclamation this morning, "Wow, you are gettin' old," maybe I shouldn't tell him?
What are we really celebrating on the day of the anniversary of our birth or our loved one's birth? Society doesn't even honor the event as significant for emotional, psychological, spiritual, or physical development; forget seeing birth as a sacred event in this medico-techno world.
What is up with this human culture that is supposedly so smart? That we wait for eighteen months of our babies' lives to pass before we say, "Oooooone." (How could I convey a duh tone?) Only the youth can get this and also be happy to be one year older already, like age matters anyway.
We need to see and celebrate our day of birth differently ... not as simply a marker of age transition but an honoring of our baby's presence. Today, when my son said birthdays aren't that big of a deal when you get older, I told him again how blessed I am to be his mother and how happy I am that he is my son. "I always have been," I said. He softly said, "I know, mom." How much greater thing is there than to be loved and wanted by the people who brought us into this world? Doesn't every human being deserve this?
Shouldn't we straighten this mess about Birth Days and Birthdays, and the disregard for the importance of wanted babies AND in calculating our ages which results in IGNORING the first 18 months of our lives and our babies' lives? How did we get so darned confused?? How did we come to dismiss the most foundational, critical, important nine months and first year of our lives as not counting? It's not logical to say the baby is alive and growing and developing in the womb and then dismiss prenatal development as not important enough to even count. It has lead us humans to dismiss the importance of gestation, and the labor and birth as critical experiences in development. God, we are collectively stupid about really important things, like human fetal and consciousness development. Turn on your television, if you still have one, and look at the consequence of doing so.
I called him this morning to wish him happy birthday. However ... I have to say that I have been disillusioned with this cultural concept of celebrating one's life on the anniversary of one's birth.
Traditionally, so I am told, the survival of the first year of life was something to celebrate; hence, now it is the modern version of one's BIRTHDAY and false way, an archaic way of counting time. On our birthday it is ANNIVERSARY of our birth. But it doesn't accurately count how much time we have lived in a human body.
I developed this line of thought as I was celebrating big anniversaries -- first, my fortieth, and then my fiftieth anniversary of my arrival to this planet (birth from the womb) and while studying the fetal life and psychology. We know now that the gestational period is the beginning time of life, a critical time in development, as is the experience of labor and birth and first moments living outside the womb.
My friend was turning fifty almost exactly a year before me. Trying to console her, I pointed out that, in fact, she was celebrating the COMPLETING or ending of her fiftieth year, not the beginning. For some strange reason, I pointed out, (totally serious and straight-faced, because I both think about these such things, AND, I wanted to console her), we don't count the first year, (or the nine and a half months in the womb. Nine now that they induce routinely). Sooo, I happily shared with her that technically, she was celebrating the completion of her 50th year and the beginning of her fifty-first year. I concluded that, "Hey, you've been fifty all year, so why worry about it now? Let's have some fun." No, it didn't work for her like it worked for me, even when I pointed out, I was the one actually turning fifty, (starting my fiftieth year as I would be "turning 49" in a few weeks). I was actually turning 50! at the end of my forty-ninth year.
It didn't comfort my friend at all, but I found completing my fortieth and then my fiftieth years to be quite fun and a celebration. (My 30th was another story, as the said birthday boy was old enough to go to Junior High and I only freak out about his age!) A few days before my "49th Birthday", my daughter and I rode AMTRAK from Chicago to Disney Land, with stops in Philadelphia and Washington, D.D. (homeschooling is so awesome!). So, the completion of my 49th year and beginning of my 5oth year happened in Washington, DC. What fun we had. I don't even remember what I did on my "50th Birthday", the completion of my 50th year.
Ok, so my point, other than to till the ground for thinking about seeing that life of the human begins at even before conception? I was just reading some Birth to 3, zero to 3 literature and thinking about my son and his son who is about 144 days old, according to the ticker on his mama's blog. When he emerges from his mama's womb in late August -- all sweet, slippery, and wonderful, kicking, wide-eyed and turning his head when his mom or dad speaks, and smacking his lips and ready to crawl to his mama's breast, baby Jackson will be ten months old. He will be IN his tenth month of human development. So, why does we (we, as not as me, but as in this supposed intelligent, scientific society) say he is zero? Why will his time on this earth and his age go back to ZERO when he emerges from his first earthly home, his mama's womb? How is it logical or scientific to disregard the period of conception and gestation in development?
In reality, my son was nine months old when he was born from my womb on April 8th, 1975 so technically, he is completing his 33rd year; and, if we add the nine months I knew him in my womb (an amazing little being who was alive and kicking and responding to me, making me drink milk when I never liked it before) then he is actually 34 years and nine months old today. Judging from his reaction to my exclamation this morning, "Wow, you are gettin' old," maybe I shouldn't tell him?
What are we really celebrating on the day of the anniversary of our birth or our loved one's birth? Society doesn't even honor the event as significant for emotional, psychological, spiritual, or physical development; forget seeing birth as a sacred event in this medico-techno world.
What is up with this human culture that is supposedly so smart? That we wait for eighteen months of our babies' lives to pass before we say, "Oooooone." (How could I convey a duh tone?) Only the youth can get this and also be happy to be one year older already, like age matters anyway.
We need to see and celebrate our day of birth differently ... not as simply a marker of age transition but an honoring of our baby's presence. Today, when my son said birthdays aren't that big of a deal when you get older, I told him again how blessed I am to be his mother and how happy I am that he is my son. "I always have been," I said. He softly said, "I know, mom." How much greater thing is there than to be loved and wanted by the people who brought us into this world? Doesn't every human being deserve this?
Shouldn't we straighten this mess about Birth Days and Birthdays, and the disregard for the importance of wanted babies AND in calculating our ages which results in IGNORING the first 18 months of our lives and our babies' lives? How did we get so darned confused?? How did we come to dismiss the most foundational, critical, important nine months and first year of our lives as not counting? It's not logical to say the baby is alive and growing and developing in the womb and then dismiss prenatal development as not important enough to even count. It has lead us humans to dismiss the importance of gestation, and the labor and birth as critical experiences in development. God, we are collectively stupid about really important things, like human fetal and consciousness development. Turn on your television, if you still have one, and look at the consequence of doing so.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The story is unfolding
My odometer on my old car with 180,000+ miles with new tires is approaching 8,000 miles on the "trip odometer. " I am having breakfast at "Big Boys" in Ann Arbor, MI where they have WI-FI. This afternoon I will be in Northport, MI, waaaaaaaaaaay up there, and interviewing Dr. George Malcom Morley about cord clamping. His site is www.cordclamp.org.
Dr. Morley has just returned from his granddaughter's birth. She was born by cesarean section and her cord was left unclamped and uncut. The placenta was allowed to release still attached to baby.
I have about 5,000 miles to go before I begin to edit the film .... and to present you here with a trailer. My producer friend in L.A. is also waiting for it ... we have a "celebrity" spokesperson in mind. She is an actor who has had a hospital birth and a homebirth.
The documentary is about the consciousness of the human baby and compares the experiences of babies born in homebirth and hospital. It transcends the debate over where the baby is safer -- home, hospital, or birth center -- and with whom -- doctor, CNM, CPM, or lay person, or Unassisted Childbirth. It is about what an aware being, a conscious human baby needs, where ever birth is to be safe. It is about the touch, the respect, and the scientifically based care the human baby needs from who ever attends his or her birth.
I am lamenting this morning that I did not keep an online journal of my journey to capture video for my documentary. I had no idea how profound the experience would be, but yet, of course, I knew it. I have an amazing story about seeing the risen Jesus the day after Easter -- on the road to Flagstaff (to be posted later). I am hardly surprised. The story has been whispering to me, guiding me to new places physically, emotionally, and spiritually for three years. The film organic and wants to be made and following my guidance, the unfolding has been amazing. This film has been waiting to be told (born) -- it is like stories women tell of their awareness of a soul hovering about, wanting to come into her. The "story" and my cat, Puddy, conspired with the Universe to create an opportunity for me to "just go do it." THAT is another story, of course, connected to my year and a half being in "in the cave" over my son's deployments to Iraq, and now in Afghanistan. I have emerged better and stronger ... and on this mission to complete the film.
As I put my belongings in storage and prepared for the trip, I thought about investing in wireless Sprint so I could be online where ever I had Sprint; but the expense was too much. This video is self-financed. I gave up my home to go on the road and interview people in the fields of obstetrics, family practice, midwifery, trauma healing, and pre and perinatal psychology. It is a venture in faith ... that all will be provided.
I have been on the road since late January and interviewed nearly forty people ... in California, Phoenix, Ohio, and now Michigan. I have interviewed Michel Odent, MD (France, UK); Sarah Buckley, MD (Australia); David Chamberlain, Ph.D.; William Emerson, Ph.D.; Raymond Castellino, D.C., Mary Jackson, CPM, Gladys McGarey, MD, Marti Glenn, Ph.D., and many others. I will make stops in Illinois en route back to Missouri before heading to Oklahoma and Texas and then Minnesota, South Dakota, Connecticut, and Boston. I have asked Dr. Amy Tuteur for an interview when I go to Boston ... hopefully in late April or early May. Her perspective can be a very important contribution to this project.
In Illinois I will be interviewing a couple of fathers and the Homefirst folks. In Missouri for a few days I will interview the physician who attended the homebirth of the baby featured in my documentary. I will also interview a couple of fathers ... and fathers-to-be, including my son Andy in Minnesota. His son, Jackson, has joined our family. He will be coming into his mama's arms in August. My documentary is for fathers ... I feel the urgency of getting the info all complied for my son and my grandson ... and his mama.
My video (baby) got a name last night .... since "she" is not yet born... just gestating ... I will not reveal her name yet. I will tell you it came from a father sharing the pain, the guilt and the powerless of his experience at his daughter's birth. Fathers are the audience for my documentary.
I wish I had the financial resources and techno savvy to bring you ongoing clips on the road. I expect to be back home in Missouri by the end of April and complete the trailer in May. I will be posting it here as soon as possible. I had planned to be set up to accept donations via PayPal when I post the trailer. As I wrote this, I decided to set up now, if you wish to contribute now. I appreciate any support you can give me. I figured if 1500 people donated just ten dollars - less than the price of attending a Hollywood movie with popcorn - I would have the resources to finish the trip easily and to do the editing. If I edit full-time I can finish it by my goal of March, 2009.
If 400 people donated ten dollars between now and May 1, I will be able to re-establish my home in order to focus on the film. If 1500 people would gift $10 I will be able to realize that March 2009 goal. Anyone who donates $100 will receive a free copy of the finished film. Anyone who contributes anything will be honored on the upcoming website. Would you consider joining me in this effort? If I had 24 more hours in the day ... and the financial resources I would do a marketing campaign that includes a relevant gift for contributing. Sorry, I can only offer gratitude and appreciation for your support and a warm feeling for contributing to an effort to make the world a safer place for the newborn human baby.
As I edit, I will be posting more information and excerpts. I would love and honor your energy and your company in this effort .... it is for all of our babies. It is to give consumers -- women and men -- the information they need to make sure their baby is safe where ever they give birth.
Thank you and bless you ....
Janel
Baby Keeper
Dr. Morley has just returned from his granddaughter's birth. She was born by cesarean section and her cord was left unclamped and uncut. The placenta was allowed to release still attached to baby.
I have about 5,000 miles to go before I begin to edit the film .... and to present you here with a trailer. My producer friend in L.A. is also waiting for it ... we have a "celebrity" spokesperson in mind. She is an actor who has had a hospital birth and a homebirth.
The documentary is about the consciousness of the human baby and compares the experiences of babies born in homebirth and hospital. It transcends the debate over where the baby is safer -- home, hospital, or birth center -- and with whom -- doctor, CNM, CPM, or lay person, or Unassisted Childbirth. It is about what an aware being, a conscious human baby needs, where ever birth is to be safe. It is about the touch, the respect, and the scientifically based care the human baby needs from who ever attends his or her birth.
I am lamenting this morning that I did not keep an online journal of my journey to capture video for my documentary. I had no idea how profound the experience would be, but yet, of course, I knew it. I have an amazing story about seeing the risen Jesus the day after Easter -- on the road to Flagstaff (to be posted later). I am hardly surprised. The story has been whispering to me, guiding me to new places physically, emotionally, and spiritually for three years. The film organic and wants to be made and following my guidance, the unfolding has been amazing. This film has been waiting to be told (born) -- it is like stories women tell of their awareness of a soul hovering about, wanting to come into her. The "story" and my cat, Puddy, conspired with the Universe to create an opportunity for me to "just go do it." THAT is another story, of course, connected to my year and a half being in "in the cave" over my son's deployments to Iraq, and now in Afghanistan. I have emerged better and stronger ... and on this mission to complete the film.
As I put my belongings in storage and prepared for the trip, I thought about investing in wireless Sprint so I could be online where ever I had Sprint; but the expense was too much. This video is self-financed. I gave up my home to go on the road and interview people in the fields of obstetrics, family practice, midwifery, trauma healing, and pre and perinatal psychology. It is a venture in faith ... that all will be provided.
I have been on the road since late January and interviewed nearly forty people ... in California, Phoenix, Ohio, and now Michigan. I have interviewed Michel Odent, MD (France, UK); Sarah Buckley, MD (Australia); David Chamberlain, Ph.D.; William Emerson, Ph.D.; Raymond Castellino, D.C., Mary Jackson, CPM, Gladys McGarey, MD, Marti Glenn, Ph.D., and many others. I will make stops in Illinois en route back to Missouri before heading to Oklahoma and Texas and then Minnesota, South Dakota, Connecticut, and Boston. I have asked Dr. Amy Tuteur for an interview when I go to Boston ... hopefully in late April or early May. Her perspective can be a very important contribution to this project.
In Illinois I will be interviewing a couple of fathers and the Homefirst folks. In Missouri for a few days I will interview the physician who attended the homebirth of the baby featured in my documentary. I will also interview a couple of fathers ... and fathers-to-be, including my son Andy in Minnesota. His son, Jackson, has joined our family. He will be coming into his mama's arms in August. My documentary is for fathers ... I feel the urgency of getting the info all complied for my son and my grandson ... and his mama.
My video (baby) got a name last night .... since "she" is not yet born... just gestating ... I will not reveal her name yet. I will tell you it came from a father sharing the pain, the guilt and the powerless of his experience at his daughter's birth. Fathers are the audience for my documentary.
I wish I had the financial resources and techno savvy to bring you ongoing clips on the road. I expect to be back home in Missouri by the end of April and complete the trailer in May. I will be posting it here as soon as possible. I had planned to be set up to accept donations via PayPal when I post the trailer. As I wrote this, I decided to set up now, if you wish to contribute now. I appreciate any support you can give me. I figured if 1500 people donated just ten dollars - less than the price of attending a Hollywood movie with popcorn - I would have the resources to finish the trip easily and to do the editing. If I edit full-time I can finish it by my goal of March, 2009.
If 400 people donated ten dollars between now and May 1, I will be able to re-establish my home in order to focus on the film. If 1500 people would gift $10 I will be able to realize that March 2009 goal. Anyone who donates $100 will receive a free copy of the finished film. Anyone who contributes anything will be honored on the upcoming website. Would you consider joining me in this effort? If I had 24 more hours in the day ... and the financial resources I would do a marketing campaign that includes a relevant gift for contributing. Sorry, I can only offer gratitude and appreciation for your support and a warm feeling for contributing to an effort to make the world a safer place for the newborn human baby.
As I edit, I will be posting more information and excerpts. I would love and honor your energy and your company in this effort .... it is for all of our babies. It is to give consumers -- women and men -- the information they need to make sure their baby is safe where ever they give birth.
Thank you and bless you ....
Janel
Baby Keeper
Monday, March 24, 2008
Petition for Mother's Act
Petition against The Mother's Act
Here's mine:
The Mother's Act is an outrage. Post-partum depression is a result of generations of brutalizing women and babies in medicalized, pathology-focused modern birth. There is every scientific justification for NOT using drugs in utero or post partum for the MAJORITY of women. We know that anti-depressant drugs contribute to heart problems in babies. These drugs have NEVER been researched to show the are safe for prenates at ANY TIME. Stop drugging women and babies with drugs already shown to be ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. Stop allowing drug companies to use women and babies in their research --- babies are non-consenting and uninformed subjects. Women who truly recover from PPD, or anyone who truly recovers from depression ... that is, they go on to be fully functional and fully emotionally beings as we are meant to be, don't do so with drugs or even talk therapy. It sometimes requires drug therapy and talking but the missing piece is that it takes healing at another level that involves body-mind-spirit and energy techniques -- those "new age" and "alternative" modalities, when in truth it is the medical field that is the alternative to eons of care that is focused on health, not pathology. When the Mother's Act include putting our resources into providing them with what they need to focus on prenatal parenting, proper nourishment, and lower stress, then it will be a Mother's Act intended to provide support and protection of pregnant and birthing women and new mothers. Mothers need the US to join the rest of the industrialized world and provide a safety net in the prenatal period and in the postnatal period -- fund a minimum of a one-year paid maternity leave for mothers.
Janel Martin Miranda
http://hospitalbirthdebate.blogspot.com/2008/03/mothers-act.html
Here's mine:
The Mother's Act is an outrage. Post-partum depression is a result of generations of brutalizing women and babies in medicalized, pathology-focused modern birth. There is every scientific justification for NOT using drugs in utero or post partum for the MAJORITY of women. We know that anti-depressant drugs contribute to heart problems in babies. These drugs have NEVER been researched to show the are safe for prenates at ANY TIME. Stop drugging women and babies with drugs already shown to be ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. Stop allowing drug companies to use women and babies in their research --- babies are non-consenting and uninformed subjects. Women who truly recover from PPD, or anyone who truly recovers from depression ... that is, they go on to be fully functional and fully emotionally beings as we are meant to be, don't do so with drugs or even talk therapy. It sometimes requires drug therapy and talking but the missing piece is that it takes healing at another level that involves body-mind-spirit and energy techniques -- those "new age" and "alternative" modalities, when in truth it is the medical field that is the alternative to eons of care that is focused on health, not pathology. When the Mother's Act include putting our resources into providing them with what they need to focus on prenatal parenting, proper nourishment, and lower stress, then it will be a Mother's Act intended to provide support and protection of pregnant and birthing women and new mothers. Mothers need the US to join the rest of the industrialized world and provide a safety net in the prenatal period and in the postnatal period -- fund a minimum of a one-year paid maternity leave for mothers.
Janel Martin Miranda
http://hospitalbirthdebate.blogspot.com/2008/03/mothers-act.html
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Meet An Amazing Physician
I had the honor and pleasure today of interviewing Gladys McGarey, M.D. in Scottsdale, Arizona. She is a family practice physician who specialized in providing care for pregnant and birthing women. The last two of her 6 children were born at home.Dr. McGarey is the author of "The Physician Within You" and "Born to Live". On her publishers site:
Dr. McGarey is internationally known for her pioneering work in holistic medicine, natural birthing and the physician-patient partnership A founding member and past president of the American Holistic Medical Association, she also serves on a research committee of the Office of Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health. Dr. McGarey is a member of the International Advisory Board for the recently formed Institute for Natural Healing. Her work, through the Gladys Taylor McGarey Medical Foundation has helped to expand the knowledge and application of holistic principles through scientific research and education. Dr. McGarey is past president of the Arizona Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners, and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Holistic Medicine. She is on the Advisory Board of Arizona State University East.
From her website:
Read more about In the Womb project and the
Friday, March 14, 2008
The Mother's Act
Have you heard about the new proposed legislation, The Mother's Act.
Be afraid ... be very afraid ... and then rise up and make your voices heard .... on behalf of all mothers and babies and families.
SC 1375: Mom's Opportunity to Access Health, Eduction, Research, and Support for Postpartum Depression Act.
"A bill to ensure new mothers and their families are educated about postpartum depression, screened for symptoms, and provided with essential services, and to increase research at the National Institutes of Health on postpartum depression."
That last phase is KEY PHRASE ... "and to increase research at the NIH on postpartum depression." Here we go again ... women and babies are going to be UNINFORMED and NON-CONSENTING research subjects.
Lord of Mercy, folks, this is terrifyingly wrong. Track this bill at:
www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill-s110-1375
(Sorry, I can't link this with html code as I am on the road and using someone else's MAC and having difficulty with functions I am not familiar with. I will fix it when I arrive at a destination tonight where I will have wireless connection.)
Even within the document itself it is recognized that the incidence of postpartum depression is moderate ... and yet all women will be subjected to anti-depressants during pregnancy? We already know that anti-depressant contribute to fetal heart abnormalities.
"Baby blues afflicts up to 80 percent of new mothers, postpartum depression occurs in 10 to 20 percent of new mothers, and postpartum psychosis strikes 1 in 1,000 new mothers."
So, a one-size-fits-all research project will not likely look at what causes new mothers to be blue (WHERE does the 80% come from anyway? Perhaps a paradigm shift is order? A shift to seeing that new mothers are not being served well in this modern world that requires them to go back to work within weeks, for example? This project will likely not focus on "alternatives" (the ways that have worked for eons) and will not see themselves (medicine and psychiatry) as the real and recent "alternative". So, then, this project will not consider what has and did work, nor will they attempt to figure out a non-medical, non-intervention, non-drug answer, like, oh ... say ... paid maternal leave for one or two years like every other industrialized nation, or, oh, yeah ... what about a mother and baby centered model of care during birth that normalizes and naturalizes birth, gives decision-making to mother and father, and provides the social and systemic support. No, they are going to do what they always do ... treat the masses who don't need it with the cure that doesn't even work well for the few who do need it.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I will be revisiting my Safe Baby Resolution that was introduced in Hawaii last year. (www.safebabyresolution.blogspot.com) It supports social and financial support to be focused on the early, primal period where the baby is built to survive in a particular environment. It asks legislators to look at the current, compelling research such as the high incidence of depression related to medical interventions and disruptions, and to cesarean birth. It is insane to not create the safety net for birthing women during the primal periods and to then focus on resolving the consequences with drugs and psychiatry. The research exists to tell us much about depression in postpartum -- drugs and medical interventions are the cause. Good Lord .... I smell big Pharm.
WHAT IS GOING ON!?!?!?
The sponsor of the bill is New Jersey Senator, Robert Menendez. Co-sponsors are Durbin (IL has been talking about this for awhile), Snowe, Brown, Dodd, and Lautenberg. I had heard that Obama was a co-sponsor. He does not appear on the document.
Learn more about him at: www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id-400272
Contact him and let him know what you think about this proposed legislation to treat all women like depressed chattel at:
317 Senate Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
202.224.47744
202.228.2197 (fax)
One Gateway Cneter,
Suite, 1100
Newark, NY 07102
973.645.3030
973.645.0502 (fax)
208 White Horse Pike, Suite 18
Barrington, NJ 08007
856.757.5353
856.546.1528 (fax)
Let him know what you think of this proposed legislation ... that could further disempower women and hurt babies in so many ways. There is no reason to mass-treat healthy women, to force them into mental health services and drug therapy that we know do not work, but do further harm. When I say, "do not work" I mean do not heal the source of the depression nor the symptoms of the depression for most people and we know that drugs have serious side affects. These drugs should be shown safe for the baby and mother -- heart, liver, brain functioning is impaired by the use of these drugs and should not be used during pregnancy. What are these people thinking? Oh, yeah ... I forgot ... they are getting rich from their money from big Pharm.
People who are not building a human being who will live their whole lives with the consequences of the side effects (the baby) and who take these meds may minimize some of their symptoms and even become more functional, but rarely are people symptom free and rarely is the quality of their life greatly improved. Their "normal" is typically still far from normal. However, we have non-drug and non-invasive techniques, based in energy psychology and spirituality that are proving more effective. Do we really want to see all pregnant women forced into the medical, psychiatric drug world? So a few senators and drug companies and all of their cronies can get richer?
Just Say No to Drugs .... and say YES to your Baby.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Freebirth Reflections: How Unassisted Childbirth Impacted My Life
Freebirth Reflections: How Unassisted Childbirth Impacted My Life
Mother, Baby, and Family 6 Months Postpartum
It has been almost six months since my second son was born at home in our bed, caught by his father's loving hands before being passed into my own arms. I feel obligated as a proponent of unassisted childbirth to write about the impact freebirth has had on our lives. The birth of our son has been met mostly with positive reactions, and it has had a positive influence on our relationship as a family. My perspective has been forever changed by my son's simple, natural birth.
I healed very quickly from childbirth. I bled about half as much postpartum as with my first son, who was born in a hospital. With my oldest, I had second degree tearing and needed stitches. Being completely in charge of the birth the second time around, I sustained only tiny first degree lacerations. Besides the lingering baby weight, I was back to my old self in no time.
People have responded with fear and delight to our birth story, but always with surprise and questions. Upon telling a nurse that my husband "delivered" the baby, she asked snottily "WELL, what are his qualifications?" The ob/gyn who saw me just after my son's birth was rude enough believing I had a midwife that I opted not to even mention that it was a freebirth. The pediatricians at our clinic, although initially surprised and somewhat confused, were very accepting of our choice. They didn't give me any beef about it at all. The ER personnel we encountered the first and only time my son has been sick seemed confused, but indifferent, a reaction shared by the workers at the vital records office.
Getting a birth certificate was little fun. I had to clarify that my son was born at home without a midwife or prenatal care, when they told me proof of medical care was what they asked for as proof of pregnancy and birth. "Babies will come out without a midwife or prenatal care." My husband and I had to come in together with our newborn, a copy of his medical records, and two notarized affidavits from witnesses to my pregnancy. There were just two forms, one of which had to be redone due to my sloppy handwriting. Three weeks later, I was notified that they had forgotten our paperwork in a pile but were processing it immediately. After correcting a misspelling of his name, we finally received his birth certificate. His social security card followed a few weeks later.
I can't claim that freebirth has had an impact on my son's personality, because I don't know. He's as happy, easygoing, and social as our older son has always been. I do believe, though, that witnessing his brother's birth is one of the reasons why our sons are already so close. Our toddler has never shown jealousy, anger, or resentment towards his baby brother. He loves to play with him, make him laugh, and stroke his head, and he tries to help me care for him anyway he can. After the birth he began nurturing stuffed animals as we do the baby. When our toddler is in the room, our baby only has eyes for him. He watches him constantly, giggling at silly things his big brother does and brightening at all brotherly attention.
I am certain it has impacted my husband, though only he could tell you exactly how. He has expressed to me that catching his own baby, being the first to touch him, makes him feel more deeply bonded with him. It also seems to have strengthened his confidence in himself as a father and husband. Perhaps it put him deeper in touch with his paternal instincts. He views birth differently now, less like a medical emergency and more like a simple, normal, natural life event. The man who was once hesitant about having a homebirth now recommends homebirth, even freebirth, to all. His military colleagues think it's extraordinary that he "delivered" his son, though we've tried to explain to them that it's as simple as playing catch! One thing I know for certain is that it has brought my husband and me closer together. It is a testament that together we can do anything.
As for me, I am forever changed. I remember feeling invincible for weeks after the birth, euphoric, like super woman. I felt like I could do anything. I still look back and think, "God, I can't believe I really did that!" It was truly an amazing experience. It put me more in touch with myself, with nature, and with my instincts. It certainly made me feel more confident as a parent, to have taken complete responsibility for my son from the moment of his conception. The bond I have with him is as strong as the one I have with my older son, and yet different because of what we experienced together. I am in awe of my body, of birth, of life, and of the world, my respect and faith in each stronger. My house has a whole new history now, and each night I feel a new sense of safety and belonging as I fall asleep in the bed where my son was born.
Contributed by Heather B. If you enjoyed this article, please read more of my writings by visitting my homepage. I can also be found on Myspace. :)
Mother, Baby, and Family 6 Months Postpartum
It has been almost six months since my second son was born at home in our bed, caught by his father's loving hands before being passed into my own arms. I feel obligated as a proponent of unassisted childbirth to write about the impact freebirth has had on our lives. The birth of our son has been met mostly with positive reactions, and it has had a positive influence on our relationship as a family. My perspective has been forever changed by my son's simple, natural birth.
I healed very quickly from childbirth. I bled about half as much postpartum as with my first son, who was born in a hospital. With my oldest, I had second degree tearing and needed stitches. Being completely in charge of the birth the second time around, I sustained only tiny first degree lacerations. Besides the lingering baby weight, I was back to my old self in no time.
People have responded with fear and delight to our birth story, but always with surprise and questions. Upon telling a nurse that my husband "delivered" the baby, she asked snottily "WELL, what are his qualifications?" The ob/gyn who saw me just after my son's birth was rude enough believing I had a midwife that I opted not to even mention that it was a freebirth. The pediatricians at our clinic, although initially surprised and somewhat confused, were very accepting of our choice. They didn't give me any beef about it at all. The ER personnel we encountered the first and only time my son has been sick seemed confused, but indifferent, a reaction shared by the workers at the vital records office.
Getting a birth certificate was little fun. I had to clarify that my son was born at home without a midwife or prenatal care, when they told me proof of medical care was what they asked for as proof of pregnancy and birth. "Babies will come out without a midwife or prenatal care." My husband and I had to come in together with our newborn, a copy of his medical records, and two notarized affidavits from witnesses to my pregnancy. There were just two forms, one of which had to be redone due to my sloppy handwriting. Three weeks later, I was notified that they had forgotten our paperwork in a pile but were processing it immediately. After correcting a misspelling of his name, we finally received his birth certificate. His social security card followed a few weeks later.
I can't claim that freebirth has had an impact on my son's personality, because I don't know. He's as happy, easygoing, and social as our older son has always been. I do believe, though, that witnessing his brother's birth is one of the reasons why our sons are already so close. Our toddler has never shown jealousy, anger, or resentment towards his baby brother. He loves to play with him, make him laugh, and stroke his head, and he tries to help me care for him anyway he can. After the birth he began nurturing stuffed animals as we do the baby. When our toddler is in the room, our baby only has eyes for him. He watches him constantly, giggling at silly things his big brother does and brightening at all brotherly attention.
I am certain it has impacted my husband, though only he could tell you exactly how. He has expressed to me that catching his own baby, being the first to touch him, makes him feel more deeply bonded with him. It also seems to have strengthened his confidence in himself as a father and husband. Perhaps it put him deeper in touch with his paternal instincts. He views birth differently now, less like a medical emergency and more like a simple, normal, natural life event. The man who was once hesitant about having a homebirth now recommends homebirth, even freebirth, to all. His military colleagues think it's extraordinary that he "delivered" his son, though we've tried to explain to them that it's as simple as playing catch! One thing I know for certain is that it has brought my husband and me closer together. It is a testament that together we can do anything.
As for me, I am forever changed. I remember feeling invincible for weeks after the birth, euphoric, like super woman. I felt like I could do anything. I still look back and think, "God, I can't believe I really did that!" It was truly an amazing experience. It put me more in touch with myself, with nature, and with my instincts. It certainly made me feel more confident as a parent, to have taken complete responsibility for my son from the moment of his conception. The bond I have with him is as strong as the one I have with my older son, and yet different because of what we experienced together. I am in awe of my body, of birth, of life, and of the world, my respect and faith in each stronger. My house has a whole new history now, and each night I feel a new sense of safety and belonging as I fall asleep in the bed where my son was born.
Contributed by Heather B. If you enjoyed this article, please read more of my writings by visitting my homepage. I can also be found on Myspace. :)
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