The world of natural childbirth is remarkably totalitarian.
It is filled with websites, blogs and Facebook pages that enforce ideological conformity by deleting dissenting comments and banning anyone who does not agree with the claims of natural childbirth advocates. I’ve created a new Facebook group, Deleted from Birth Pages to serve as both a repository and a public forum where those who have been deleted and banned can share screencaps of comments and discussions that have been expunged.
Women who are researching natural childbirth and homebirth are being hoodwinked into thinking that everyone agrees with natural childbirth and homebirth advocates. At Deleted from Birth Pages, they can learn the truth, both about the duplicity of many claims and about the amount of deleting and banning that goes on to prevent them from learning the truth.
It is a public group, so everyone is welcome; anyone can post screencaps or report being banned, and there are no restrictions on comments.
Please share your screencaps!
Don’t forget: when you post a comment that you think will be deleted from a birth page, be sure to screencap it at the time that you post it. Dissenting comments often disappear in the blink of an eye.
In addition, feel free to dig out old screencaps and post them, too. It doesn’t matter so much when they occurred since one of the points we want to illustrate is how very, very often it happens.
When a comment (or entire thread) is deleted from a birth page, post the thread on Deleted from Birth Pages, and we can continue the discussion there. All are encouraged to participate.
My hope is that Deleted from Birth Pages will become an important source of information for women researching the truth about natural childbirth and homebirth.
I thought you all might enjoy this article!
I am new to this page but I have read several of the stories of homebirth deaths. I would like to share some of my experiences down the natural path and the resurfacing of a more practical me. Most of it wasn’t even something I tried to seek out, it just came to my attention. I live in a small community where a very large portion are the homebirth/Doctors are evil/ don’t trust science/ people. I started down my “natural” path after the onset of autoimmune illnesses. Then I got pregnant with an unplanned gift! And my world was spun by all the well meaning homebirth advice from friends and neighbors. My older children had all been born in a hospital and I had nothing bad to complain about other than the I convenience of actually having to leave my home and be seperated from my other children and the obnoxious constant checks on me after I delivered. I always like to be alone so I can relax and not be “bothered”. But, those were my only reasons for entaining the idea of delivering my baby at home. I did not, I had a beautiful uncomplicated, unmedicated, *gasp here* induced labor at the hospital on my due date with a certified nurse midwife. She broke my water at 10:30 AM and I delivered at 1:04 PM. After 3 pushes my son was born. THEN. I hemorrhaged. It was stopped but I had a good team of doctors and nurses that took care of it. But back to my considering a homebirth: One of my friends has had 4 home births after a c-section. Her first born was born at 41 weeks, labor was induced, she failed to progress, she had a c-section, she was group b positive and the baby was hospitalized because of contracting group b strep. This friend chooses to think the hospital and doctors caused her son’s illness. She had two more VBAC births at he hospital and has since had 4 homebirths. When she found out I was pregnant she tried very hard to get me to use her midwife for a homebirth. I did some checking and discovered her “midwife” was a DEM, had NO medical training and had been arrested in 1993 for practicing the healing arts without a license in connection to a death of a newborn. So I immediately ruled that one out. I still wanted the convenience of not having to leave home so when I became pregnant again I checked out the other midwifes I had been recommended and found they were all equally scary. I told them I had a history of GD and was told that as long as I ate healthy I had nothing to worry about, that doctors exaggerated the complications of GD. I told them I had a history of PPH and they told me it would not be a factor in homebirth because they do not rush the placenta out or do cord traction. I told them I was GBS positive and they told me not to worry antibiotics are not proven to keep the infection from an I fanr and as long as you don’t have cervical checks while your laboring it won’t be transmitted to your baby. Now, I am not the smartest person in the world but I had done a TON of reading about all those conditions and they way the uneducated lay midwives brushed them aside as nothing to worry about scared the crap out of me. So, I chose to have my baby in the hospital with my CNM again. It was another beautiful delivery. Now I will say we all missed the size of the baby even though AJ had weekly bpp Sono’s and growth checks. We estimated the baby at about 9 lbs and my others had all been 8 1/2 pounders and very little pushing required to get them out. Seriously, two or three pushes and they were here. So… When I had to push for 15 minutes I thought I was dying, then she got stuck at the shoulders (it was handled professionally) but she weighed just over 10 lbs!!!! It was another induced labor, no other interventions, labored 3 hours. And guess what hemorrhaged again. Required surgery that time. And because it was an unmedicated birth I had to be put out. It made it to where I couldn’t see or home my baby for 4 hours after birth. Now…I am having a “What you gotta be kidding me, you were supposed to have a vasectomy” baby. I have 14 weeks 3 days left of this pregnancy and I am planning an induction with an *gasp* EPIDURAL! I look forward to it. The last time I had an induced labor where my OB broke my water and used pitocin the labor was so quick 1 1/2 hours ai didn’t ha e time to get the epidural before the baby came out (3 pushes) so this time we have already decided to place the epidural BEFORE starting pit and breaking my water. I always dilate between 3-5 before I go into labor so it should not be a problem. With the last pit/water breaking birth I was at a 3 when they started the induction. With my last two I was at a 4 and the next was a 5. I refused pit because I was afraid of the contractions that it brought on. But since I plan to have an epidural this time bring on the pit and get the labor/delivery over with and hopefully it will help keep my from hemorrhaging this time. And while they are at it they can tie my tubes! I have also given up my organic diet routine and am enjoying so many foods.
My friend that had the “midwife” that has been arrested has told me that the midwife cleared raw milk consumption during her current pregnancy. Told her that as long as the cow was a grass fed organic cow that raw milk is much better than store bought milk. The same DEM has told her to never nurse a baby solely from one breast because the baby will develop a lazy eye. The “midwife” is nuts. And has people convinced they need to eat their placenta! So many of the people in my area are eating the placenta. Oh man, so gross. Anyway, I am glad I found this website and read about those horrible homebirths. I have shared some of them on my Facebook but the homebirth people I know all look at me like I am so under informed and misguided because I do not share their beliefs. I have actually been told by my friend that she has better information and is better educated which is why she is having the safer birth at home while I risk my life and my babies at the hospital! Unbelievable.
Sorry about all the typos, I typed that on my phone.
Welcome! And thanks for sharing your story. Good on you for not backing off on sharing the truth.
Holy smokes!
Ya think?
Yea, that lazy eye thing is way out there…
Well we don’t want our kids to end up like that guy on The Waterboy.
That’s for sure! lol!
Thank you for sharing! Good for you for standing up for what you know is right and not listening to your home birthing acquaintances. And yes, that midwife is definitely nutso!
Hey, thanks for sharing your story! And yes, those midwives sound SCARY!
“I told them I had a history of GD and was told that as long as I ate
healthy I had nothing to worry about, that doctors exaggerated the
complications of GD. I told them I had a history of PPH and they told me it would not be a factor in homebirth because they do not rush the
placenta out or do cord traction. I told them I was GBS positive and
they told me not to worry antibiotics are not proven, and as long as you don’t have cervical checks while your laboring it won’t be transmitted to your baby.”
Thank you so much for helping highlight what kind of complete disregard for the safety of the mother and the baby is hidden behind the walls of lies that are the foundation of lay midwifery in America.
I don’t think midwives or home iron should be put down! I agree, they may be undereducated in your area but I think this blog is a victim of overgeneralising. In my opinion natural, home births are just as good as going to a hospital so long as skilled medics are ready to help if something goes wrong. I don’t care either way but it all depends on who you’re trusting!
Don’t you think that a quality of a service provided by any member of a professional union like MANA ought to be subject to universal professional and ethical standards and not geographical distribution or “luck” of living in an area where lay midwives are supposedly more adequately educated? We are talking about a profession that, first of all, pretends to be health care providers, and, secondly, presides over matters of life and death in pregnancy and childbirth.
Those “skilled medics” that you seem to trust ARE subject to stringent formal training and professional standards of education and scope of practice. And yet, somehow, you think that pointing out that “anything goes” situation in lay midwifery as unacceptable is somehow “overgeneralising” this issue.
Unless said skilled medics at home have the ability to perform an emergency c-section (preferably with appropriate operating theatre equipment), home birth will never be “just as good as going to a hospital”.
Not “will never” but “CAN never” be just as good. It’s logically impossible.
How can they be? Can you explain that?
Because even with “skilled medics” ready to help, there are going to be emergencies that are going to occur that cannot be handled outside the hospital setting. Do you deny that?
Meanwhile, there are not going to be any situations that occur in the hospital that are better treated at home.
Therefore, I don’t how natural, home births can be “just as good”, unless you deny the existence of emergencies.
I am not putting down midwives, I use a real midwife myself. I like the care I get from my real midwife. But she also works in an office with OB’s, has real medical training, and delivers at the hospital because she is licensed. The problem with these others are that they have no medical training, they are CPM’s which means absolutely nothing. I could study online and get that “certification”. I absolutely adore my midwife, she is smart, educated and takes things concerning pregnancy seriously. She recognizes signs and symptoms of problems and is quick to offer whatever is medically necessary. She is a real midwife, not someone that some up one day and decided to put out their midwife shingle and start delivering babies. My real midwife worked hard and earned the right to be called midwife. If someone wants to deliver at home so be it, that is their choice but I have a problem with birth attendants claiming the title of midwife and totally dismissing real medical issues. At the very least there should be laws governing how much education is mandatory before a person can claim the title of midwife. It is misleading to people and not everyone has the capabilities to search out and discover the differences.
You are so right. The CPM “qualification” is a joke, at best. I worked with CNM’s for a long time who were in practice with OB/GYN’s. They were awesome and so skilled. Plus the doctor was a phone call away. It was truly a win-win situation for mom and baby. Home birth is a crap shoot.
And while there are CNMs that do home births, they are a minority among CNMs AND among home birth midwives.
You’re right. The ones I worked with didn’t do home births. In fact, I didn’t know any who did.
Wow, what a story. Thank you for sharing it! It’s very difficult to look rationally at the numbers when everyone around you is telling you sunshine and roses about their own personal experiences, so good on you for keeping it sane in a place where it sounds like it’s difficult to. Your family is better off for it! Wishing you an easy and pain-free experience this time around.
Thanks for sharing your story Wowed! It’s important to warn others. I am so glad you avoided that midwife! This line cracks me up:
“So many of the people in my area are eating the placenta.”
It just puts a weird picture in my head. Lots of people here too. Drink the koolaid, eat the placenta?
That’s so funny! I always think to myself after talking to some people, “better remember that name because I am going to read about them in the paper ones day because they drank the kool aid and caught a ride on the comet”
There’s some old ones I’ve got screencapped. I’ll have to go back through my old images.
I can write some code to monitor NCB websites and forums for deletions if there’s enough interest.
Which websites would you be interested in?
ICAN is really fast about deletion, and their rank-and-file has no idea it’s going on. Pretty scary, actually.
VBACFacts, Midwifery Today, MANA, ICAN, Improving Birth….
Also Evidenced-based birth.
TFB’s facebook page.
Check out the timely discussions of midwifery on social media here: http://www.midwiferytoday.com/enews/enews1701.asp
So, so clueless…
A: As a midwife practicing “under the
radar,” I have to be diligent when working with families to remind them
to please not tag me, post a picture with me in the background or talk
about their midwife on Facebook. Even vague references can be enough to identify me.
Right.
I guess this shows the paranoia in this space. Women must be led to believe that someone who has helped them will be hunted down and victimised if what they are doing is more widely known; usually a (legitimate) business person wants more contacts and business.
Also if I was up to risky behaviour I wouldn’t want any photos at all: if I then had to make a strategic exit how would anyone ever prove I’d been there at all?
I guess it adds to the danger level and persecution complex as well as the idea that the midwife will be in very serious danger if the mum has a complaint. Seems like an unhealthy dynamic. I’m sure there must be some psychology in that.
It explains the contracts of care that so many midwives make clients sign. One explicitly states that this midwife (who is licensed and a CPM) does not carry malpractice insurance, deviations from diet and supplement suggestions are the most likely reasons for complications with pregnancy and labor and that the midwife is under no obligation to accompany the woman during a hospital transfer. Nothing that we haven’t heard before, but it’s just more manipulation and control. If you make someone sign that, you are implying that they can’t sue you, complications are error on the pregnant woman’s side and they will be abandoned in a place (the scary hospital) that they wanted to avoid in the first place.
Actually, I have to say at this point, I actually kind of agree with Katie McCall. If you are signing something like this, it is absolutely “Buyer beware.”
And you can’t say that you haven’t been warned.
You’ve certainly been warned where the other parties priorities lie, but you haven’t been warned about the actual risks you run.
And some of these people may well believe a doctor would want the same kind of thing signed and be mean and uncaring during really short appointments, while poking and prodding for no reason, as well.
“Oh, this sort of contract is very typical, don’t worry about it, darling!”
.. as she affectionately pats her on the head.
“deviations from diet and supplement suggestions are the most likely reasons for complications with pregnancy and labor”
This is so wrong on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin with it. It’s bad enough they don’t carry malpractice insurance, but then to actually make a mom sign something that puts everything on her, including that over which she has no control, is insane. The fact that women are actually buying into this and signing it is even more disturbing. It’s no wonder people like Katie McCall feel they can do whatever they want with minimal to no recourse.. because they can.
Is that person possibly practicing midwifery in one of the states where it is illegal if you’re not a nurse midwife
Must have been in a new edition of “From Calling to Courtroom”.
Although it’s a pretty small world when it comes to the birthing community. A doula who posts “off to help a laboring mama” often gets references to who she is helping and who will be the birth attendant in her comments. Especially in a place where there are very few midwives who do home births. If someone I know is having a home birth in Eastern Oregon, I can already tell who the midwife is going to be.
How about the sidebar, “Learn about Twin birth”.. so much for “low risk”..
DID YOU SEE THOSE EARRINGS??
(Sorry – just went across there – top of the page – gravid uterus…)
You know, I looked at the page but never noticed the earrings!!! EEEEWWW!
Considering I was expecting to see a yoni, that doesn’t bother me at all.
That would have been worse for sure!
I’m sorry, but it’s gets much better/worse than the gravid earrings.
Here you go.
http://www.midwiferytoday.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=MT&Product_Code=C409RW6
What? You don’t want fetus earrings? EVERYONE wants to wear silver fetus earrings.
If it wasn’t so serious, the ‘5/1000 is NOT the same as 1/200 because we had to do 1000 x to get y outcome *5’ would be absolutely hilarious! I might put that into a paper somewhere and see if I get away with it! lol.
Ah, yes, 5/1000 =/= 1/200. That was one of the most straight-up bizarre things I’ve ever read. “Because 1000 cases were necessary to find those 5 deaths.”
So many times I have tried to think of a way to snark it, but just sitting back and reading the direct quote and basking in its crazy – I can’t top that.
It would probably blow minds at MT if they ever realized that there could very well be 5 deaths among the next 200 they have.
There is a 63% chance of at least one death in a sample of 200, assuming that the true rate is 5 per 1000, and a 26% chance of 2 or more.
That is a sobering set of numbers.
Is there a name for this? “Woomath”? “Alternative mathing”?
anyone else getting Error establishing a database connection messages when accessing the website sometimes? More likely to happen if I click on a link or I don’t put in www in front o fthe URL.
My webhost is having a problem with some database servers. They have no idea when it will be fixed. Until then, I can’t put up today’s post. It should spark a great deal of conversation. The title:
Does homebirth midwifery have more than its share of sociopaths?
Oh I hope it’s fixed soon!!
Yeah – I like the title already!
I can read it now. How about you guys?
I can’t WAIT to read this one!
I once ended up in one of those feminist birthing groups which proclaimed they were open to all birth choices and strictly non judgmental.
I posted about my choice for elective cesarean and formula feeding. … I have never seen so much pressure and judgment come together in a single thread. I was lectured about the selfishness of my birth choice by people who were planning a HBAMC. No one saw anything wrong with that. Same with feeding: the benefits of Internet-sourced donor milk over devil’s juice aka infant formula were pointed out to me, and there was no understanding whatsoever for choosing not to breastfeed.
When I pointed out the dissonance between the group description and the ideological conformity the group was enforcing I was swiftly banned. I regret not screenshotting the whole debacle.
So hypocritical.. they had the gall to criticize you for a C/S and formula, yet here they are promoting TRULY dangerous choices, like internet-sourced breast milk, and home birth after C/S!
I know this is OT, but the discussion about when/if anyone gets deleted just reminded me that I am so grateful for this page, where no one ever tries to sell me essential oils. If those people ever show up here, please, please, someone delete that shit.
Speaking of essential oils, I had a labor patient several weeks ago who was using some sort of oil and the smell made me feel nauseous. I had to tell them to put it away. They were nice about it, but I got the distinct impression they weren’t too happy about it as they truly believed the oil was “helping” the mom’s pain… sigh..
Do any of them help? In my experience, they seem to give me a headache and make me nauseous and I was not even wearing any of it.
I know… me too..
Perhaps the nausea was distracting her from the pain? Not my idea of success, however, each to their own.
It wasn’t making her nauseous, but she claimed it was helping with the pain. I know, to each his/her own, for sure. If they think it “works” whatever.. the problem was me, I couldn’t tolerate it and she was on oxytocin, so I had to stay in the room the entire time.
Essential oils trigger asthma for me. Unpleasant.
Me too (and sets off migraines), and yet my mum-in-law keeps sending me them. She’s crunchy. We re-gift it.
My mother won a raffle and her “prize” was an essential oil treatment for her pony. And… I was going to say more about that but I will just leave it there.
At least her pony smelled nice!
Sorry this is OT! Hello Dr. Tuteur,
I am an ex-homebirthing mother of 3 children. In this post
http://skepticalob.blogspot.com/2011/10/lose-your-license-keep-practicing.html?m=1,
I found out the midwife assistant who attended my last 2 births, Kaleem Joy, lost her RN and LM licenses in the early 2000s. How do I find out more about the charges and the incident? She is a popular midwife in the area and 2 of my good friends use her.
Thank you for all you do. I am so fortunate nothing went wrong at my children’s births. I am having my next child in a hospital. I am also happy to report my children are also nearly caught up on their vaccinations. I still feel terrified and angry of what could have happened to my precious children because of all the misinformation making us parents afraid of the wrong things.
NCB was my gateway into weird and it must be exposed. I regret ever taking that Bradley childbirth class. It made me distrust medicine and make decisions that were not the best for me, my family, and community. Also, I actually like your straightforward style. People’s lives are at stake.
Jennifer
https://www.breeze.ca.gov
Go to licensing–>midwives–> lookup name ?
Thanks for taking your time to help. The link just brought me to the most basic info. I want to know if it is possible to find out more details of exactly what happened in the incident of negligence. I just don’t know how to get there.
I wonder if you could call or email the CA department of licensing and ask if there are additional public records you can obtain?
Thanks! I will try that.
It must have been chilling to find out that you placed your life and your children’s lives in the hands of someone who was stripped of their license (I guess you gave birth after she lost it).
Since you are a new commenter, you might be a new reader here, so I’ll tell you that we repeatedly get midwives and homebirthing mothers landing here to holler about making an informed choice, aka the onus is on the mother.
Well, I think your case represents a clear violation of informed choice. You thought you were hiring a professional and instead you got a lying liar.
Informed choice, ha!
It was chilling enough just to find out that homebirth was dangerous. I looked at my children and thought, “what if I had lost one?”. Then, to find out last night that our midwife had her license stripped. I am so angry. But I am angry too that all these parenting decisions I made came from the foundation of NCB. Also, I NEVER would have had a homebirth if I knew the real risks!
I started questioning everything 2 years ago when I was so utterly exhausted from all of the natural mothering and had hysterical breakdown in my kitchen one day where I told my husband I wanted to run away. I started by putting my homeschooled oldest child in school 2 weeks later and saw how great that was. The teachers were kind and wanted to help my kids and my son had way more enriching opportunities there. Then I started letting go of “natural” food ideas, then anti-vaccine ideas and NCB/homebirth/AP, breastfeeding is a must ect.
I am angered by the needless suffering I went through thinking it was helping my kids. Here is just one example. In my first birth, my son was presenting OP. I was in screaming agony for hours (about 6?). I asked them if I was going to die. Even if I wanted to go to the hospital, I was in so much pain I cold not move. Plus, they would give me “dangerous interventions”. My midwife was a CNM and the apprentice told me later that the CNM did not want to tell me about the OP ahead of time because she thought it would scare me. WHAT?! Seven weeks later I get hit by severe anxiety/PPD/unrelenting insomnia like a ton of bricks. I don’t quit breastfeeding (because that mean that my baby would be unhealthy/die of SIDS ect) but I do quit 2 weeks later when I am finally admitted into a psych hospital for a weekend.
My life is so much better now because everything is not up to me. I feel like I have a community on my side of doctors and teachers helping my family thrive. Jennifer
Thank you for sharing your story. It is so terrible to think of all the physical and mental pain you went through in all of this. But it is so heartening to know that you were able to break out and move past it. It gives me great hope.
Wow, I’m glad you were able to realize that the NCB/AP lifestyle wasn’t doing you and your family any favors and break out of it. That must have been so difficult for you and I admire your strength.
I hate that the NCB/AP ideal is a mother who martyrs herself for her family. It seems like they think she MUST be miserable or else her children are being shortchanged somehow. While the extremes of NCB/AP are still quite fringe, some of the ideology has definitely crept into the mainstream, with the “mother sacrificing everything, up to and including her mental health” finding its way in for sure. We (women in the Western world) need to watch out and be sure not to internalize that message, because its just a set up for failure and depression.
I am so grateful for women like you JJ, who take time to comment here on their own experiences with this natural madness and how much guilt and shame and heartache it has caused them, and I’m glad to see you’ve emerged stronger and empowered for real from it.
It is so painful to hear others mothers experiences mirroring my own in regards to AP. I really do hear you and had very similar experiences as your own. It is so freeing to let all of that stuff go isn’t it? And sometimes life saving. You’ve inspired me to be more open about my experiences as well. Thank you for sharing a bit of your life an experience with us here.
Been there too, not to the same degree, but I too thank the heavens that I found Dr. Amy’s site. I really appreciate that she doesn’t say “just trust your doctor 100% all the time” like the NCB people allege, but just look at things with actual informed consent, and trust that the system is not out to get you!
I’m about ten weeks from delivering my second baby, and went from being a nervous freakout wreck that there weren’t any midwife options in my area like I did with my first child, to absolute amazement that things went so well with my first child, and relief that I DIDN’T have that midwife option again here, because I wouldn’t have ended up here. I mean, the midwives the first time around didn’t do a Group B Strep test! That alone is, like, yes – sheer luck that I wasn’t a carrier and my daughter didn’t get it and die of pneumonia. There were a lot of other issues – we turned out fine, but the fact that I had deluded myself so far as to not even be able to recognize those issues until I landed here…it’s amazing.
Isn’t it nice to NOT constantly worry about GMOs and organic and all that, too? I just gave in and let my daughter start bringing Lunchables to school. Me from six months ago would be floored. 🙂
OK, so here’s my question: did that mean anything to you at the time? Did you even know that a GBS infection was something that needed to be tested for? Or did you just not think it was important?
There are some great commercials on tv right now (for Luv’s diapers, I think) that compare moms with their first child and then the second. My favorite is when the mom hands the baby to the car mechanic and is like, “Here, hold him”
I have always thought that experience as a parent just reinforce’s Dr Amy’s advice
1) Don’t sweat the small stuff
2) Most of it is small stuff
At first, we are all paranoid about every little thing. As time goes on, you start to figure out what really matters.
I didn’t know about GBS at all. It wasn’t til I read something that mentioned it here and the wheels started spinning. There’s a small chance that they did it and I just don’t remember, but it’s a VERY small chance – I doubt it’s something I’d have forgotten! Not that a quick anal/vaginal swab is traumatic or anything, but forgettable – probably not.
They never even did a vaginal exam till about week 40, when I asked for one to see if I was effaced/dilated at all. After giving a sheet for the gestational diabetes test that allowed us to make an egg sandwich as a subsitute for the glucose drink, discounting sonogram high birth weight predictions, and not being at all concerned when I was quickly approaching 41 weeks with little progress – i was lucky that I didn’t have undiagnosed GD and a kid with macrosomia/shoulder dystocia! she was born at 40wks5days at seven and a half pounds.
I’d never even heard of shoulder dystocia til I found this site. So much for being “informed,” right! But that’s the thing with NCB – if you can’t fix it, you don’t talk about it in your literature. Birth is all rainbows and puppy kisses, and if something goes wrong it’s because you weren’t trusting it enough.
Make an egg sandwich as a substitute for the glucose drink? That’s a new one on me. I’ve heard of the jelly bean substitution, but that at least is sugar! Egg sandwich (protein and complex carbs, no sugar!) sounds like a good way to guarantee that everyone passes.
Yeah. I didn’t critically analyze that til this pregnancy either.
My husband didn’t tell me til after I’d found this site and was reading him stuff (he didn’t think it would be helpful to my state of my at the time, and he was probably right), but after he mentioned some of these things to our insurance company, they started doing reviews, and that group lost coverage under them. Viewed in the light of reason, I see why!
So here’s the problem: IT’S NOT YOUR JOB to “critically analyze” their practices to determine whether they are appropriate or not. They are the ones who are responsible for that.
So it’s not your job to know the appropriate ways to test for GD, or to know that you should be testing for GBS. But it absolutely needs to be done, and that is the responsibility of your provider. If they are relying on you knowing that it needs to be done or not, they are absolutely failing in their care.
No surprise, of course.
Exactly. That’s what we are paying the care providers to do!
Is it not sensible to be on one’s toes?
For what?
As a patient, you cannot be responsible for knowing what you need to know. That’s why we have medical experts to help care for us, because they know about the types of things to pay attention to.
I have a chronic medical condition. It behooves me to know about my medications, their interactions and dosages. I had an intake nurse who missed an interaction once, and it was not pretty.
That’s what I meant.
Yes, I do believe it’s smart for a patient to pay attention. But, the error was the nurse’s fault, not yours.
Good news: I’ve never let that happen again. Nurses are busy people, and in an ER transfer from paramedic to nurse, things can get lost, or misspoken. The error I mentioned happened even when I had a typed list of my meds. I take it along to every ER visit because I can’t trust my memory.
Insurance companies do know how to recognise and measure a risk. Them pulling cover tells us all we need to know.
I’m a fourth child – and I’m _really_ a fourth child, one where my parents clearly decided ‘screw it’ on the small stuff. And I have to say, I think I got the best of the lot. 🙂 I love them dearly and think I’m lucky to have them as parents – and to be in the birth order I was!
It’s funny that their rules for me then aren’t far off of my rules for myself as an adult. Don’t overdo it on the junk food, read a lot of books, eat a lot of fruit and veg, get outdoors on a regular basis, brush your teeth and get your vaccines, get exercise and have fun doing it. And for god’s sake make your bed and vacuum up already.
Margo WooZealand. worked with a paed who used to acknowledge anxiety re ffirst child by telling this story……first child cuts finger,parents rush to emergency dept….second child comes along in time, cuts finger and parents put a plaster on cut, third child is born…cuts finger and parents say “don’t get blood on the carpet”….yep no need to sweat small stuff. Lots of pressure on parents, maybe more than years ago?
Yes! Now we eat “normal healthy” and I don’t cook for hours everyday. I used to be so worried that I could not do all these natural/organic things because I simply could not afford it. I was so happy the other day when I could get some Eucerin lotion for my dry winter skin and not think about the “toxins”. It was affordable, at my local market, and it works! I have also been using fluoride rinse for 2 years and I have been enjoying not getting cavities between my teeth. I LOVE being alive in 2015! But it will be all my fault when I succumb to cancer from eating too many pesticide laced fruits and vegetables. At least I enjoyed living while I could, I guess.
I did have to go to counseling for 6 months because I had so much anxiety about food, sending my kids to school ect. Good for you on the Lunchables! I totally understand the freedom that comes from those simple choices that used to be so agonizing. Jennifer
Hehe, since we’re all going to die of cancer from eating too many pesticide laced fruits and vegetables, we can as well go out with class. You’re welcome to join our petition (that’s, the petition that a few other commenters and yours truly will start one day. Maybe) to Lindt to bring back the white chocolate with almonds. Everyone knows that having just a little bite of this vile but oh so delicious stuff is guaranteed to bring you straight to the door of the Unnatural Hell.
On a more serious note, your post sounds downright scattering. So happy for you and your family that you were able to scramble out of the Natural Hell.
Maybe you’ll succumb to cancer and maybe it will be due to something external and not your DNA, but my uncles and grandfathers were all farmers and were regularly doused in all sorts of dodgy chemicals and none of them have died of cancer and most are living to a good and healthy old age. It’s why I’m not fussed by organic fruit and veg.
Organic farmers still use chemicals and pesticides; they just don’t want you to know about it. http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/guidance/industries/pesticides/topics/reducing-environmental-impact/use-of-pesticides-in-organic-farming
You poor thing! I am so sorry you went through all of that. I haven’t really looked, but are there any FB groups for moms such as yourself? Maybe something along the line of “The Natural Childbirth/parenting lie and how to normalize your life”? I’m thinking out loud, but is there anything like that to help moms escape the woo?
There should be one. Wish I had time to start one, but if someone does I’d love to contribute
Real Birth Community is a new group on FB. Started by Danielle, Gavin Michael’s mother. For posting birth stories from any venue, good and bad.
Great idea! “Escape the Woo” is actually a good title 🙂
I love it!
It’d be a great title for a SOB post.
I am so glad that you and your children are doing well! It is really difficult to take a critical look at dearly held beliefs, and ever harder to recognize that much of what you thought was true was not. Welcome to our group!
Hi Jennifer, I took Bradley with my first baby, had a great hospital birth, then became a Bradley instructor, and then with my second had a lovely homebirth with two CNMs. It was probably as safe as a homebirth can be and it was a very positive experience. But I was so in love with birth and babies I decided to make a career of it. So when I became an RN and began working as an l and d RN it started to confront my cherished beliefs too. I saw low risk become high risk without evil interventions to blame, I saw how it takes a team and equipment to save a life, that it would be impossible for two people in a home to replace that, I saw how death is real, and final, and happens to people who have done nothing to deserve it. Another thing that slapped me in the face is how self critical “mainstream” ob’s and RNs are compared to the Bradley crowd. There is a scary almost religious fervor to the Bradley thing and I have shame that I took a three day seminar, did their reading and was out there poisoning the minds of mothers with their dangerous groupthink. I still respect the people who delivered my daughter, I got real informed consent and risk screening, and they didn’t think “Bradley” and I suspect if all homebirth providers had their education the stats would not be so bad and this board wouldn’t exist. But I still would choose hospital birth because I no longer belief the “as safe or safer”…. I am not ok with safe enough, not after seeing what that risk looks and feels like up close.
I’m glad, Jennifer, that you have been able to “come to your senses” (for lack of a better term). It can be very hard to admit that things we used to think or do were mistakes – it makes us feel like all the time and effort put into it were wasted. I’m glad you can say, “I regret it.” However, now that you are at this point, you can move and and start focusing on the things that are important.
Heh, heh, heh…”straightforward style”…. we definitely got that here!
Welcome! Please contribute more! You have a lot to add to the discussion!
Thank you and welcome! I’m glad, too your home births went well, and your babies are healthy. I agree with Bofa, it can be very difficult to face your beliefs and change your perspective. When the Bradley method first came out, we used to call it “husband-controlled childbirth” because it seemed the husbands made the decisions about pain relief, etc… as if that was somehow appropriate.. look forward to hearing more about your perspective from “the other side.” 🙂
Love it!!
Amy banned ಠ_ಠ for calling people c__ts even though she was well liked around here. So she won’t just let the NCB insults remain, she’s willing to ban someone who’s a supporter if they won’t abide by community rules.
Is that why she got banned?
That’s what I remember. If I’m wrong let me know.
I thought it was because Dr Amy was deleting the posts that were purely insults, and eyes kept reposting them. Happy to be corrected on that though. Eyes was hilarious though.
I always wondered who she was. She was Jewish, that she made clear, and a scientist. One time she posted under another profile name (by accident?) and that was the name of a well-known MD/researcher. But it’s not clear that it was really her name.
That wasn’t her real name, she was just toying with an anti-vax commenter.
Well liked, highly competent and could lay a smackdown with the best of them.
I think Dr Amy over reacted on that one, but each to their own.
I suspect she still pops up under different names though.
Interesting idea.
Let’s remember some of the most egregious deletion incidents of the past few years:
1) Disgustingly deleting pages and pages of comments on Midwifery Today during and immediately after the death of Gavin Michael Yeager.
2) On a lighter note, that time Jen Kamel of VBACfacts wound up with a whole carton of egg on her face. Remember when she posted that “If you can’t admit you’re wrong, you aren’t doing science” meme? And then immediately after, when she posted an article that took flack, she took it down and denied any of it ever happened? Who has good screencaps of that foolishness?
I want them to post Grunebaum’s comments on Gavin Michael in particular because they were brilliant.
Posted now are at least three separate multi page screen shots of the Gavin Michael travesty, on a public page that anyone can read and link to.
Very powerful.
“They” can try to dismiss it as being sourced from Dr. Amy, BUT screen shots are so damning.
I’ve only been banned that I know of so far by Jan Tritten over a single comment on her murder-by-lay-midwife-crowdsourcing-allowed-in-real-time personal fb profile. My comments have been deleted from Improving Birth and I think a couple of more pages, but usually it was the whole thread or post disappearing.
Worst old case I can think of was Christy Collins CPM posting “Babies are not library books” meme poem on her personal fb page two days after she killed Gavin Michael. I don’t have a capture of that, I was too young at this game and too abhorred by her doing that when it happened.
Thank you birth pages for constantly reminding me of my childhood years and how ridiculously ineffective in the long run communist censorship and brainwashing was, just like all ideological zealotry always is.
Also, this is a comment from NGM’s blog that has NOT been deleted but I find it appalling. This is what happens when there are traditional birth attendants that have no proper regulations to ensure they are qualified to attend births.
http://imgur.com/2ofmxwT
10 years and no training beyond cpr? What the actual eff? I was a sailor in the navy that never got closer to delivering a baby than the day I gave birth. I was mandated to get cpr training through out my career, and I know babies normally come out through the bottom half of a lady. I did it once too, so obviously I am an expert right? Does this mean I am equally qualified to be a birth attendant? Holy cheese batman!
As a teacher, I keep up my infant/adult CPR + First Aid certification. I’ve never given birth nor seen a human give birth in person.
I think I’d make a better birth attendant….because my first thing would be to call 911 and do whatever actual trained people tell me to do while waiting for better trained people to arrive and transport the mom to the best trained people available.
One of my friend’s wife teaches high school, she ended up delivering a student’s baby in a toilet (concealed pregnancy).
She only did that because she chased after a girl who ran into her classroom, grabbed a pair of scissors and ran into the girls’ bathroom. She thought she was going to prevent a stabbing…instead the girl’s friends were planning to cut the umbilical cord with them!
So…you never know…
*Blink*
New life goal: Never deliver a baby. Especially not in a high school bathroom.
It’s a good thing she was there.
They knew about cutting the cord, they did not know about clamping it first, and I don’t think anyone had thought about what they were actually going to do with the baby…Thankfully, everyone involved was OK.
Anyway, teenage girls are not very good midwives.
So I didn’t know why the cord was cut-apart from the ‘set me free’ thing-and rather than asking on here, I googled it, and came up with this lovely item (first hit):
http://thinkbirth.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/umbilical-chord-why-do-we-clamp-it.html
My favourite sentence in the context of this topic is: ‘Women and midwives have been talking about and promoting…’, so yet again it is up to the pregnant woman, not the ‘care’ provider to be responsible for what happens.
I’ve added ‘never deliver a baby’ to my life goals as well. Should be simple enough to avoid, surely.
Maybe that’s the problem with the DEM community: so many of them act like teenage girls.
Belfast?
I wonder which protocol they are using. Global NRP maybe? There is one taught for low resource areas by the Helping Babies Breathe project. The goal of the project is to have every baby delivered by a skilled attendant. I don’t think they mean to have it taught by and for DEMs and CPMs for use at home birth.
Really? I don’t work with babies at all, and I have to renew my CPR every 2 years.
Wow. How comforting to know they are delivering babies with absolutely no neonatal resuscitation skills..,
So it was on her business page, I did not catch that, she was all over the facebook saying how awsome “the midwife” was. then after she realised that she had been identified she deleted everything. I think there were also her comments on Midwifery Today page where she discussed at length the high that she gets from births, her superior knowledge and education, and was nitpicking terminology how in her current state she was practicing not illegally but “alegally” – just like our recent guest of honour believes it is oh so important to know the differences between a felon and someone who was just a felon once but is now a felon taking a vacation from being a real “felon”.
I hope there really is a place called hell sometimes, for people capable of doing what they do.
http://www.drmomma.org/2014/02/pregnant-pause-my-babys-not-overdue.html
That is so disturbing… ugh!
That poem, given the circumstances, was one of the coldest, most sociopathic things I’ve ever seen.
I really don’t know why that was posted…
I mean…I really don’t know.
Normally I can have a guess at what people are thinking, or try to empathise…but I literally have no idea what prompted that poem.
Was it Christy’s attempt to comfort herself?
I don’t know.
It was just all kinds of wrong.
Gaslighting. Convince people that any postdate test results are scaremongering.
I don’t think I’d better read it. For my blood pressure.
1. The time the actual doctor that wrote an article about pelvic floor issues that was the subject of a blog post on Science and Sensibilty showed up in the comments to dispute the conclusions by the writer (Can’t remember who that was? One of the big names there) and they kept deleting his comments and then started reinstating his comments when it was pointed out that they were deleting the comments of the lead author of the paper.
2. That awful post about how one mother loved one of her children more than the other and felt more bonded to him and if faced with the awful choice would rather her elder child die than him. And someone linked it to NCB blatherings, then deleted swathes of comments and edited her article without acknowledging that she’d done so. I think that one was on HuffPo.
Kate Tietje on Babble. There is a heavily edited version that can still be found on google, but you need the way back machine to find the original.
it’s available thru web.archive.org? you may want to screenshot it.
I personally would be happy to see that one disappear forever, for the kid’s sake.
I still can’t get that one out of my head. 🙁
Once again taking the high road – Dr. Amy has never deleted comments that question her – or medical care – or anything, really. The only comments I’ve ever seen her remove – and I’ve been a reader here since 2009 – have been for doxxing, at the commenters request, or on extremely rare occasions, deliberately derailing and off topic posts. And those have invariably been commenters who have been repeatedly warned for derailing and off-topic posts, for weeks, before any deleting happened.
Bravo. It amazes me the amount of straight up harassment, abuse and hate Dr. Amy has directed at her, yet she never hides it away, or lets it prevent her from speaking out.
Or those awful and really obvious spammers trying to sell magic love spells over the internet. And even those tend to stick around if there’s not a bunch in a row.
Dr Amy has also deleted abusive (usually profanity filled) comments directed at other commenters – but not the ones directed at herself.
Just think of PODBA-where is he/she by the way?
It speaks to another key difference between natural childbirth bloggers and myself: I’m not afraid of the truth.
There’s nothing that natural childbirth bloggers can write that I can’t address, correct or explain. They have a lot to hide, therefore the truth is often the first casualty.
I also remember another difference… At least once you have taken issue with someone ( that Christian ethicist doctor) who you could easily have used as evidence for your arguments. Yet you saw the holes in what he was saying and pointed them out. This is the complete opposite of the natural bloggers, who seem to be able to embrace anyone ANYONE with an MD ( biter, fishbein) if they happen to support their issues. I have no doubt that if you encountered a well done study supporting homebirth safety you would present it.
There are a lot of issues and opinions that regulars on this blog and in the Fed Up online community disagree fervently over, both among themselves and with the administrators. It does not get anyone banned, and there is, from what I saw, a fair amount of characters from NCB world with false internet identities doing their “undercover” work in those groups. They always word their posts or comments in that snarky middle school tone of voice, so they are quite easy to spot once you’ve gotten used to the dynamics of the real people in these online communities.
And yet, no one has bothered to go to the paranoid lengths that Jan VBAC Fiction went to when she cleansed her following’s safe spaces. We even keep resident trolls because in places where real facts are not deleted stupid and ignorant can’t do much harm.
People may be ignorant, they may use shortcuts in thinking, but they aren’t stupid. When you have free debate with plenty of time to get the facts out there, facts tend to win.
Totally agreed, I was thinking more in terms of ‘evidence’ than people. I wouldn’t imagine many falling for the downright insane pseudoscience available in Midwifery Today ‘articles’ or from quackos like Carla Hartley. When you are exposed to such garbage and such garbage only for months or years, your ability to think will eventually get heavily compromised.
She just deleted one of my comments that was on-topic about the relationship between sociopathy and NCB advocates.
Err….I still see your comment on that post, without having to follow the link/click on the timestamp. Sure Disqus wasn’t messing with you?
Could be Disqus messing about.
Disqus has been kinda iffy the past couple of days.