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Author:Amy Tuteur, MD
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44 Responses to “Portrait of a birth activist”
Amy Tuteur, MD
Dr. Amy Tuteur is an obstetrician gynecologist. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1979 and her medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1984. Dr. Tuteur is a former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. She left the practice of medicine to raise her four children. Her book, Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting (HarperCollins) was published in 2016. She can be reached at DrAmy5 at aol dot com... More
Ah, the birth nutters show up after a few weeks.
How is this helpful?
I feel that a lot of these things on this site are just as judgemental as the natural birth/breastfeeding nazis. But that is just my two cents.
Sounds just like your moto, Amy. Lol
I love this site so much for sticking up for mothers like me who have medically necessary C-sections.
Please check out my newborn baby boy being abused by having to wear a HAT: DSC_1875-L.jpg
I know. We’re terrible parents.
Why didn’t that work?
Dammit, he looks so cute in his hat and I can’t upload him!
I would try uploading it to imgur or another image hosting site, and then just giving us a link.
Ta da! http://goeters.smugmug.com/Baby/Andrew/27714119_G3fWd2#!i=2335484002&k=6g8VcD8&lb=1&s=S
Mommy, no one said you were a ‘terrible parent’, I think that’s your own personal insecurity. No natural childbirth advocate pushes high risk women to have vaginal deliveries, we encourage low risk mothers to do so. Even in the most well known natural-home-birth-advocate classic documentary “The Business Of Being Born” depicted a mother who was suppose to have a homebirth being rushed into the ER to get a emergency c-section because she NEEDED ONE.
Any is a bully and has her title as coldhearted Internet troll. She calls people who dont agree with her fools, idiots or just stupid. She’s killed a patient in her birthing career. She surfs the web to insult other bloggers about homebirth vaginal deliveries and pushes her only standing dated study about home births. She is not a researcher, or a actual licensed professional and has very little experiance with babies in her lifetime. The only reasons she’s writing this blog is because she isn’t qualified to be with the actual ‘baby doctors’: the APP members who write pediatric journals, studies and reliable cited medical analysis. They all are advocating natural births and breastfeeding based on their current understood knowledge, something Blogger Amy is strongly and irrationally agaisnt, (despite this standing data that is recognized and pushed into practice by the World Health Foundation).
Please research her before falling for her lies and poor knowledge, most of it (and this is coming from a RN) is complete laughable nonsense.
I’m not the least bit insecure about having had a C-section. I did it to keep my son safe after a rough pregnancy. I’m not asking my perinatologist about VBAC for future babies because I know he feels it is too risky, and I trust him because he saves mothers and babies. My “terrible parents” joke was about the practice of putting the baby in a knit hat after delivery, which would have been more effective had the photo of my cute chubster in his hat showed up. I admit I don’t know much about Amy. But I do know that I had a very difficult pregnancy, a high risk baby, perinatal depression, and a 3-day NICU stay, and although we came out just fine and are doing wonderfully 6 months later, people definitely act judgy about my methods of delivery and feeding. It makes me want to scream because it’s nobody’s business. My pediatrician is very happy with how my baby is doing, and I love being his mama. I just really do not appreciate the people who act like I failed, and yes, they are definitely out there. It sounds like you are not one of them – but they unfortunately do exist. Perhaps I live in an area where people are particularly judgy.
Don’t even feel the need to explain! My sister had one because she wanted one. She preferred one. No labor at all. That’s her decision. I had several, and I’d have them all over again. My first was an emergency. My others were scheduled. Loved each one!
Thank you! I had a great birth experience. My son looked like he could have had a serious heart problem on my echocardiograms (he’s just fine, we’re so lucky and blessed.) The surgery kept him from any potential heart stress, just in case, and I really enjoyed feeling no pain or exhaustion when I first met him! Yes, the next week was crap, but it was so worth it to keep him safe!
Does this work?!
http://goeters.smugmug.com/Baby/Andrew/27714119_G3fWd2#!i=2335484002&k=6g8VcD8&lb=1&s=S
There you go, it worked. Nice baby, nice hat.
Beautiful baby! Congrats! Even cuter with that cozy warm hat 🙂
Thanks! That picture just makes me crazy with love. He’s such a little chubster and those hats are adorable. I hear some hospitals, if Mom and Dad are Christian and the baby is born in December, put them in cozy warm Christmas stockings. 🙂
This blog is full of news stories about moronic unqualified idiots who pushed their high risk clients into having homebirths, resulting in maternal and fetal deaths.
How can you make a blanket statement like “No natural childbirth advocate pushes high risk women to have vaginal deliveries” when there are DOCUMENTED cases of exactly that?
And when the hell did the AAP start advocating for natural birth?
Not constructive, I know, but I feel like this is one of many recent comments on this blog that should be imagined read in the voice of The Annoying Girl You Wish You Hadn’t Started a Conversation With from Saturday night Live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pRCeof-NKM
Shut up.
Of course, low risk is usually something that is determined by ruling out conditions by testing but most of these tests were ones I would tell my patients were “optional” and they could decline anything. Usually the issue was “if you have this, you will no longer qualify for home birth, birth in the birth center and I will have to refer you out to an OB” (this is coming someone who trained to be a CPM. I am now an RN).
“No natural childbirth advocate pushes high risk women to have vaginal deliveries, we encourage low risk mothers to do so. ”
Why do you care what other women, low or high risk, do? What earthly business is it of yours? Why don’t you just concern yourself with your OWN choices?
My 50 year old neighbor with a previous C was encouraged to have a hbac (with a CNM). The placenta didn’t come out, and she lost so much blood that she went into shock.
(She lives 10 min from hospital, but CNM waited 90 minutes before calling EMS.)
Oh please. Brush up on your facts.
HOLY SHIT! Was she okay?
Ok, I finally get to ask this question. Previous commenter’s pseudonym is “I sing to Andy,” and she likely prefers to be addressed as such, since she picked it. Why are you calling her “mommy”? It’s awfully familiar, don’t you think?
🙂 I don’t mind actually. I only recently became a mommy, and the title warms my icy lil’ heart. Besides, I did make my handle a mom-related name, since I’m a singer with a 6-month-old Andy. 🙂
I actually made a comment about this in another post- I noticed that lactivists and NCB crowd really like addressing women “momma” or ” mama.” I find it so strange. It was a perfect opportunity to ask an actual NCB supporter why she was doing that.
It’s utterly annoying. It’s the secret club password don’t you know. It’s patronizing and dehumanizing. I’ve seen some women I know throw that term around and I cringe each time I hear it. If we have children, we’re mothers, mommas, mommy’s, whatever you want to call it. We also have names.
Yup! It drives me crazy. Some time ago I left a bad review on a NCB Book on Amazon. NCB trolls parachuted in and started ” educating” me. I especially loved one comment that went something like this: “mommy, I am so glad you liked your C- section, but you shouldn’t post about it and scare other women about natural childbirth. Your birth went bad because you were scared of it. I hope you hire a doula for the next baby, have a VBAC, and experience what it feels like to be really loved during birth.” Nope, I am not kidding. Those words will stay in my memory forever. It was soooooooo creeeeepy. Ew. I don’t want to be really loved during birth, especially not by a paid “professional.”
I know of at least one male OB that isn’t against providing some lovin’ to his patients. And of course he’s an NCB advocate as well.
Ad hominem much?
The primary weakness in the arguments made by home-birth activists is their phrase, “low risk pregnancy.” Fact is, childbirth is inherently dangerous, midwives aren’t qualified to pronounce who is “high” or “low” risk, and sometimes the risk doesn’t emerge until the moment of birth.
Some of the papers cited as proof of the safety of home births are either co-written by midwives, or otherwise biased, and they cook the numbers to favour their position. For instance, if you take your intended home births that end up in hospital and count them as hospital births, you reduce the number of adverse outcomes from home births. But it takes a close reading of these papers by people skilled at appraising medical literature to reveal such skullduggery, and most home birth activists don’t have this skill, and never read past the abstracts anyhow.
Mortality rates of babies and mums both in those countries where women don’t have access to medical care clearly show the hazards of childbirth. Compare the maternal mortality rates of about 1000 per 100,000 live births in Chad and Somalia with between 2 and 10 for Western European countries.
Modern obstetrical care was invented to address a need: the horrible awful mortality rates of mums and babies when you let nature take its course. You have to play statistical games to hide this basic overwhelming fact.
So was I imagining it when all those people in just my due date club insisted that I needed to get a homebirth midwife for my breech baby so they wouldn’t do a c-section? They linked to Ina May talking about breech. Was it all my imagination when all of my NCB minded friends told me I had to read Silent Knife after my c-section or all of the nurses taking care or me at one hospital that I was at for preterm labor actually chided me for saying that I wanted a repeat c-section even when she was having small decells from just the uterine irritability? The eye roll from one nurse about not breastfeeding even though I was on 9 different medications? Ever seen some the stuff that pops up online with women having HBA4C or footling breech?
If I’m remembering the B of BB correctly her baby had some IUGR or was at least SGA and shouldn’t have been a homebirth in the first place but the midwife missed it.
I suspect you will enjoy this photo.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=505503712858514&set=a.362877670454453.86314.362145030527717&type=3&theater
Like she seriously couldn’t just take a break for a few minutes, that’s one thing I specifically liked about breastfeeding… but, as you would rightly point out, this isn’t about breastfeeding anyway.
All I can think of is the “bonding” that’s only available to babies who breastfeed. How is whipping your boob out on a bicycle any different than propping a bottle in a carseat?
It’s gonna hurt mom if they hit a bump and the toddler accidentally bites mom. This is just plain silly nursing while riding a bike.
It’s all about mommy-dearest.
Another great pic the kid can bring to the therapist in the future. As they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words……
Lord, the safety issues: mom without hemet. FLIP FLOPS on mom?!?! Open shoes on baby. But she’s BF’ing, so all is well.
Yes, because BFing cures maimed toes and fractured skulls, didn’t you know?
I shudder every time I see a young man on a motorcycle in a t-shirt and fip flops. Motorcycles aren’t very safe to begin with, they can be unstable and they’re driving along with huge vehicles at high speeds. But to wear flip flops makes me wonder if you take it for granted that you have skin.
I bet it is extra difficult to do that while also going slow enough to be photographed so clearly. My guess is the photo is taken by babby-daddy on neighboring bike, but the background is clear enough that I think they are going slowly. Seems like a wobbly mess.
Those are not good fish lips. Mind your latch, young ‘un!
Good luck to that girl. That’s going to be one trip of a mother/daughter relationship.
Um… what the….? This photo has got to win a prize for something.