The most deadly thing about homebirth midwives isn’t their ignorance; the most deadly thing is that they are arrogant in their ignorance.
Over the last two days, regular readers have been treated to a festival of blazing stupidity courtesy of Abby Reichardt, posting as Sweet Baby Jesus. I’ve known all along who she is, but she just outed herself to the rest of the group this morning.
Who is Abby?
[pullquote align=”right” color=”#0f100f”]At the end of the argument, Abby is no more knowledgeable than at the beginning (even about arithmetic).[/pullquote]
Abby Reichardt, B.S., is a … graduate of the University of Florida in Family, Youth & Community Sciences. She first became involved with FSTM as a student midwife and completed one year, taking time off to work so that her husband, John, could pursue his degree at UF also. She has been working with FSTM’s Academic Department since spring 2012. In September 2013 she gave birth at home to her first child, John Earley. Abby is passionate about midwifery education and practice and intends to complete her midwifery schooling and become an LM/CPM.
What is FSTM?
The Florida School of Traditional Midwifery offers excellence in direct entry midwifery education in an environment that encourages students to reach their full potential.
What’s Abby’s role at FTSM? Having dropped out of the school temporarily, she worked at the school as … wait for it … Academic Director!
But as I said above, the most amazing thing about Abby is not that she is so ignorant that, as she demonstrated, she cannot do 4th grade math. The most amazing thing is that no matter how many times she was corrected on matters both large and smaller, she continued to aggressively insist that she has something to teach the many doctors and CNMs who were correcting her.
Abby parachuted in like so many homebirth advocates do, determine to share her special brand of “knowledge” with the rest of us.
With your impressing curricula vitae, Dr. Amy, it would appear from this post that the facts and examples you obtained came from sitting in the break-room with other colleagues from your exact background sharing anecdotal banter about “lay midwives” from a painfully narrow and biased perspective. Where are any real facts and figures in your post? What research have you conducted on midwifery training and accredited schools in the US, or for that matter the national infant and maternal mortality/morbidity rates in this country?
Abby then graced us with the typical talking points of the homebirth movement and concluded with a flourish:
My final charge to you, Dr. Amy, is this: I challenge you to re-post your very same argument in response to my comments using REAL statistics and CURRENT information regarding obstetrical practice in the United States. I want to see facts that include the actual state of CPM education in our country and a comparison of those overseas…
Written by a student midwife seeking CPM/LM licensure in the State of Florida, previous Academic Director of a MEAC-accredited midwifery school and mother of one beautiful and safely home-born boy.
Abby promptly demonstrated her astounding inability to do arithmetic:
Neonatal death—all newborns
Homebirth: 2.0/1,000
Hospital Birth: 0.9/1,000
(increased risk with Homebirth is 0.1%)
Let’s leave aside for the moment that the death rate for low risk white women at term is actually 0.4/1000 which means that the risk of death at homebirth is 5X higher (400%); any 4th grader should be able to divide 2.0 by 0.9 and get 2.22. I can’t even begin to fathom how Abby came up with 0.1%. What’s even more remarkable than that is that she couldn’t see, just by eyeballing that she was spectacularly wrong in her “calculations.”
When it was pointed out to Abby that the increase risk of death at homebirth (using her numbers) is 1.22/1000, she dismissed such deaths as so rare as to be unworthy of consideration.
That is a blip on my radar. That is also a trade-off for some of the things that can happen when only-hospital birth is enforced.
Who wants to be cared from by a provider who thinks your baby’s death is a blip on her radar?
After expounding on the risks of C-sections, someone asked Abby if she knew the risks of vaginal birth. Her response:
I think that is a great question and vital to a true informed consent. I will get back to you on that because I think that it will take time to gather info…
She then favored us with this gem:
The number one maternal killer in the US is suicide.
Abby does not realize that when we speak about maternal death we are referring to deaths cause directly or indirectly by the pregnancy or other medical conditions. Suicide is not even on that list. The number one cause of maternal death in the US is maternal cardiac disease.
After being corrected repeatedly on her assertions, Abby had this to say:
I’m going on anecdotal evidence at best. There is not a whole lot of research on out of hospital birth as a whole that isn’t horribly slanted toward the hospital-birth bias. I would love to see more. Would you listen? When I posted evidencebasedbirthblog above everyone laughed, so apparently attempts to research it are made fun of. Preeeeetty discouraging.
No, Abby, what’s pretty discouraging is that you think a website run for profit by a cardiac nurse is a research source.
Abby believes herself to be an expert on obstetric training. First she told us that during 4 years of internship and residency, OBs see only 75 spontaneously vaginal births. When informed that the average OB resident sees that many in two months, Abby retorted:
Does every OB see every complication during training before they start managing birth? It’s not like #81 is guaranteed to be a cord prolapse. You train hard and you learn how to manage it and you practice in clinic and you continue education. Just like every single medical provider out there. Your standards are out of reach even for OBs and it makes for faulty logic.
Actually, we see all but the rarest complications (and even some of those) because we train in teaching hospitals. So not only did I myself perform hundreds of deliveries and care for thousands of women during the years of my internship and residency, but I went to Morbidity and Mortality rounds every week where all complicated cases were discussed. Since more than 6,000 babies were born at the hospital every year and since I was there for 4 years, I heard about complications from over 24,000 deliveries and how best to manage each and every one of those complications.
Abby wailed repeatedly about the hardship of becoming a real midwife (CNM):
Did you know that there are only a handful of CNM programs even available in this country? One has closed recently in my hometown and leaves very few options left in our region of the country.
So what? Providing safe healthcare for women isn’t about what is convenient for Abby and her friends; it’s about the education and training needed to be a safe provider. Just because it isn’t as easy for them to obtain the necessary training is not a reason to dumb down the training to make it convenient for them.
Abby flounced repeatedly, but could not stick the flounce. She kept returning to provide more evidence that CPMs are utterly incompetent.
At the end of the argument, Abby is no more knowledgeable than at the beginning (even about arithmetic), despite being corrected repeatedly:
I will end with this: The perinatal risk of having a homebirth over a hospital is 0.1% greater.
Abby has taught us a lot … no nothing about math, medicine or obstetrics … Abby has demonstrated why homebirth midwives are responsible for so many dead babies. Many homebirth midwives, like Abby, are blithering idiots who mistake their own ignorance for knowledge.
Addendum: Abby deleted all her comments, but I had already saved them. Here they are (in reverse order).
[gview file=”http://www.skepticalob.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Abby-Reichardt-compressed.pdf”]
Nice caption: Ignorance is Bliss.
Ignorance becomes a Bliss only when you are enlightened enough to know that you have to behave ignorant 😉
http://www.hcmarketers.com/midwives-email-list
Would somebody please post screenshots of Abby’s posts, so that they are preserved here for posterity?
I saved all of Abby’s comments. I’ve posted them above (in reverse order).
I really love this piece: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/07/daily_beast_and_home_birth_fear_trumps_data_in_a_new_story_on_having_babies_at_home_.html
If you don’t think Dr. Tuteur is credible, then how about Amos Grunebaum. It’s not like Dr. Tuteur is the only critic of homebirth.
I actually am not a proponent of home birth (or an opponent). I think it’s a personal choice. So personally, I delivered both of my daughters at a hospital & both were great experiences. I do think the Skeptical OB is a provocateur & that this post is dangerously close to libel, if not over the line though I doubt any group that would spend time slowly pulling apart a person – and Abby is a person, an actual person with feelings, family, hopes, and dreams – would appreciate that.
Abby attended my birth this summer. She was supportive as I chose any and all medical intervention 🙂 including an epidural. I see what you all are trying to paint her as – it’s inaccurate and unfair. I guess has given you all a distant face with which to direct your anger.
I won’t engage any further than this post and am ashamed of myself that I would even engage this much. But no, this isn’t Abby, though I am a close relation. Abby chose to disengage you all because that is the right thing to do. The Abby I know is smart, cautious, loving and kind. I wish you all could know her because to know her truly is to love her! She would never treat a stranger the way you all have – shameful.
Skeptical OB seems to be a Grade A narcissist with a modest following of the same. Good luck to you all.
Hi Emily
thanks for saying this, and good on you for wanting to support your friend.
If someone would post any screen shots they have of Abby’s remarks on the Jill Duggar post, you might find they go some way to explaining the extreme negativity-and frank mocking-you see here. Abby deleted her posts and didn’t say why.
She had previously identifed herself by putting up screen shots of facebook exchanges she had with Dr T without hiding her name.
I can understand why you wouldn’t want to read them, even to a stranger it appeared Abby became unhinged during the exchanges, but they do reflect a person very different from the one you know. Accusing total strangers who disagree with her of wanting to harm her children was my limit for interacting with her, others found their limits before and after that.
I agree that it is a personal choice, but women deserve the correct information in order to make that choice. Abby showed herself not to be able to give accurate information due to her poor grasp of mathematics and statistics (and did so in a rather rude, arrogant way). When I tried to explain how to calculate absolute risk reduction, she told me that I wasn’t doing it right. Funnily enough when I posted a link to the BMJs website showing that my method was indeed correct and her method was wrong, she didn’t reply.
There was also a post where she stated that 2% of women giving birth want home births, then said that meant something like 6.9 million women. However 6.9 million people is 2% of the entire population of the US, including children, women past reproductive age and men. I’m not sure whether she posted that figure out of gross misunderstanding or a deliberate desire to deceive, but either way it does not make her look good.
I hope that in the future Abby will be able to give women under her care good advice and accurate information with regards to risk. But she needs to improve her knowledge of statistics first, and the first step would be to acknowledge her limitations in this area and show a willingness to learn.
If the Abby you know is smart and kind, than it’s not the same Abby that was posting here. The Abby that was posting here was arrogant, mocking, egotistic, and self-aggrandizing. She treated the strangers here with contempt and cruelty. So, maybe not the same person?
And for something to be libel it has to be untrue. Unfortunately for Abby, there are screenshots that show exactly what she said. So don’t go there.
I smell a CPL. Certified Professional Lawyer.
Okay, no one CHOSE to engage with Abby. Abby came HERE to engage with us. She came here spouting incorrect information, we tried to correct her and she blew up. We (speaking for myself here) had no idea who she was and would not have bothered seeking her out if she hadn’t come here and revealed her own identity first.
Sorry, but Abby made this mess for herself.
Seriously. She came here to Dr. T’s “home” and aggressively attempted to “educate” a bunch of physicians, CNMs, statisticians, and PhDs. She came back to engage again and again. She was so arrogantly sure of her incorrect information that she posted her real name. She was so stupid that she did all of this using her work/school email.
None of us did this. Abby did it to herself.
And, I mean, she thinks the WHO has a recommended section rate ffs. Getting something like that wrong is so very basic.
I had all of my children at home, the midwives were amazing. all had an apgar of 10. None have been vaccinated and none have atopy or learning difficulties. If I recounted the stories of fucking hospital nightmare births. blah. like we could all talk about home birth death too. What is your point, some midwifes and doctors are great, some are crap, it isn’t a duality, it’s life.
What does any of this have to do with the fact that the WHO don’t have a recommended section rate?
Clearly she was over her head coming here. Not just in ignorance, but, to be fair, this group is also very well-versed in the rhetoric. I refer a lot to Pablo’s First Law, about how assume someone knows more about a topic than you do. However, it goes beyond simple knowledge, it also has to do with the rhetoric that accompanies it. Make no mistake, when she showed up here spouting off her “facts”, she didn’t say anything we hadn’t heard a hundred times before. We knew what she was going to say, because it was the same old same old. That’s why we could walk her right into the traps and let her catch herself. So when she started with the “unnecessary c-sections” I could get her to admit that she couldn’t actually identify such a thing.
Granted, she got herself in a lot of other trouble. Unprepared for what was here, she thought she could make stuff up. For example, she thought she knew about what doctors see in med school for deliveries, and got hammered. And that wasn’t the only place where she had to retract her initial claim and she would thank whomever for setting her straight.
She thought she could get away with making stuff up, and you can’t do that here. She thought that it was enough that she was a practitioner. Means nothing. She also assumed that others here just made shit up like she did, and that didn’t work either.
She was out of her league in so many respects. She was used to being an authority. It became clear very quickly that we weren’t going to accept her authority, and she melted down as a result.
I will admit that this place can be very hard on newbies, In part that’s because you have to know your stuff, but you also have to be ready for the directions it will go. We’ve heard it all before, and there is a response. You want to head that off before it happens or you end up curled up in a ball on the floor sucking your thumb. Abby wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last to have that happen to them.
Sometimes people are really good at hiding who they are. The Abby who showed up here came off as, frankly, crazy. And also entirely ignorant of middle school math, which doesn’t become a person who thinks they should get to lecture other people on statistics and rates.
With any luck, someone will post the screenshots of the things Abby said here. If you’re honest with yourself, you will read through them and ask yourself some questions. Ask yourself if the crank who wrote those comments, sounds like the person who attended your birth. Ask yourself why she’d present such a different image to you, than she would to people who challenge her to support her assertions with evidence. Ask yourself why she’d give you leeway on birth decisions, that she doesn’t think any other woman ought to choose.
Because I’ve got a few guesses, and they’re all unpleasant.
Go on then, tell us why it’s dangerously close to libel. Here’s hoping you’re a real lawyer not a lay one.
Abby? Is that you?
Abby’s maiden name is Owens.
Ah. So it’s probably her sister.
What is up with all the dirty deleters sending family in to back them up? Jane the NZ midwife sent her mommy to come deal with us and tell us how nasty we all were. Come to think of it, Jane’s bs was alarmingly similar to Abby’s, despite the fact that Jane was highly educated.
It’s without a point, though, isn’t it? It is hardly a rousing endorsement of homebirth, and blows a pretty feeble trumpet for choice. She clearly doesn’t approve of Dr T, but that’s hardly relevant and she doesn’t quite have the guts to say so in so many words.
I’d give her a C, I’m sure she could tighten it up, do better, and actually make whatever point she thought she was making.
I think it’s ironic that she used the name “Sweet Baby Jesus” because I’ve always suspected that math skills that poor make the Baby Jesus cry.
FWIW, I don’t know that fourth graders are necessarily learning division with decimals anymore (I am a high school math teacher with a child in the fourth grade; they’re doing an awful lot with basic algebraic properties and multiplication algorithms; plus I recall learning the decimal operations in the fifth grade back in the late 80s/early 90s)…..but certainly anyone who is incapable of such work in high school is WAY behind the curve. Even my highest-need students can handle basic arithmetic.
” I’ve always suspected that math skills that poor make the Baby Jesus cry.”
Beautiful.
This is a bit OT, but I wasn’t sure where else to put it and “arrogant ignorance of homebirth midwives” first pretty well.
I stumbled upon the “Birthkeeper Midwifery Services” and the lies and misinformation they spew is just… unbelievable.
https://www.facebook.com/Birthkeeper-Midwifery-142175026231/?ref=hl
Quote: “Research has repeatedly indicated that home birth is not only just as
safe as hospital birth with regards to death rates, but actually SAFER
with regards to complications and injury.”
http://birthkeepermidwiferyservices.blogspot.de/
Maybe for many of you this won’t be surprising but for me it was the first time to be confronted with that kind of stuff in such concentrated form…
Meet the midwife page – no credentials at all, and a midwife so legal and trustworthy that she remains anonymous: http://birthkeepermidwifery.blogspot.hu/p/meet-midwife.html
Lack of regulation in Utah that enables the quack you came across is deadly: https://safermidwiferyutah.wordpress.com/ and unfortunately she is the rule, not an exception.
This page was created to raise awareness about how untrained and unregulated fake midwives in Utah ( and much of US) are:
http://utahmidwives.weebly.com/
That is a whole lot of crazy on one site.
Yeah, I still cannot really believe I’m reading that. No, it’s more that I’m still in disbelief that somebody wrote that. And meant it.
For example:
“Women are perfectly capable of birthing out in the middle of the forest
without anyone else around. They definitely do not need an overbearing,
controlling Midwife to step in and make things unsafe.”
http://birthkeepermidwiferyservices.blogspot.de/2011/11/caution-choose-carefully.html
Well, to be fair, it may well be safer to birth unassisted in the woods than to birth at home with Abby Reichardt.
Look at this: “I also provide Doula Services for those who need to have a medically warranted scheduled cesarean. (This excludes cesareans for Breech and Twin births) Fee: $500”
So she’ll only be a doula for you if she approves of your reason for a section. I wonder what an approved reason is, if she won’t count breech or twins?
She thinks having a zero transfer rate in labor is a good thing? The studies that she refers to all show that transferring during labor is pretty common, especially in first time mothers.
Oy. Right, it means she is too incompetent to realize when a patient needs to transfer. And/or so malicious that she refuses to transfer a patient who asks for it.
The UK Birthplace study, where first-timers’ babies suffered 3X excess mortality, had both a tight risk-out policy and then a 40% transfer rate.
The Netherlands transfer rate is also about 30%. That’s with all high risk women previously risked out, ICM standard educated midwives with full hospital privileges and integrated care system. Gives you an idea how reckless US fake midwives are, and just how idiotic it is to see them boast about low transfer rates.
I wonder what her death rate is.
Oh gosh. My husband is a graduate of the University of Florida, and we worked there for a combined total of roughly 15 years. Abby doesn’t do UF’s graduates any service, that’s for sure.
ETA: Seriously? I didn’t realize the school to which she refers is also in Gainesville (unfortunately a hub in North Central FL for some serious woo). Their prereqs for midwifery are a joke – nothing medical – and the link to “safety” at the school brought me to this page. http://midwiferyschool.org/pdfs/Crime-Statistics-Reporting-2015.pdf Are they kidding? It’s in one old Victorian building; of course those safety numbers would be great. What about the safety of their current and/or future clients?
Really infuriating.
Her Facebook said nothing about UF, but did mention Santa Fe college in Florida.
I heard the teaching hospital does some great carpal tunnel surgeries, I know nothing else about it
Santa Fe is the community college in Gainesville…offers a few bachelor’s programs, but otherwise is generally referred to locally as “UF light” – a lot of the kids try to transfer to UF at the end of the associate’s degree.
UF’s teaching hospital (Shands) is pretty good, from everything I’ve heard. Unfortunately my guess is that the midwife school has absolutely zero affiliation with it or with the other hospital in town…
Dr Amy doesn’t quote perhaps the stupidest comment she made. Unfortunately, it kind of got buried and therefore didn’t get the mockery it deserved. It was her comment about how 2% homebirth in the US, so that means we are talking about 6,455,320 (or some other ridiculously precise value). Aside from the awful misuse of significant figures, it’s so stupid that you can’t even know where to start!
As was pointed out, all she did was take some population of the US and multiplied by 2%. That means that it includes women, men, children and childless women.
Even if she had that right, it ignores the fact that some women have more than 1 homebirth. So if 10% of the women who homebirth do 2 homebirths, that means that you have to decrease by 10% (it’s like divorces – true, half of all marriages end in divorce, but then again, divorced people account for more marriages than non-divorced couples; it takes 6 couples NOT getting a divorce to make up for Rush Limbaugh’s 6 failed marriage. And even though half of the marriages end in divorce, only 37% of the people got divorced)
Then again, she wasn’t all that numerate, so it’s not a surprise. However, the claim that 2% are homebirths means 6 million people is jaw-droppingly clueless.
Not sure where she got the 2% either. It’s less than 1% according to the CDC, though I admit their numbers only go up to 2009.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db84.htm
Oh, you can take 1.5% and round it up to 2%. But then, that’s where questions above significant figures come in.
I saw the other day that the rate of homebirth in the UK, with all their great midwives and whatnot, is all of 2.7%.
Twice that in the US, but then again, it’s not all that common, even in England. It’s more about midwife led birth centers, not homebirth.
It’s less common in some parts of the U.K. than others…
I know of only 3 home births in this city in the last year, and we have two hospitals delivering more than 5,000 babies a year, this is despite all low risk women being offered home birth as an option…
Somehow, I missed that one.
The fact that she STILL didn’t understand her mistake, after all that, tells me all I need to know about the quality of education being doled out at the Florida School of Traditional Midwifery.
AND being supervised by this insightless person.
Well, if you take a look at their site, the prereqs aren’t exactly stellar…or much of anything, frankly.
I see Abby’s gone and deleted all of her comments. What a surprise.
Yep, she deleted her account.
Who could have anticipated that? 😛
Too late Abby – this blog with your name ( thank you for that!) attached to your idiot comments and repulsive display of arrogance can’t and won’t be deleted like that.
I wonder if she believes that deleting her account and comments will erase everything. Similar to how people believe their public blog is private.
Her understanding of the Internet might be as comprehensive as her understanding of math and biology.
I was wondering when that was going to happen.
At least our suggestions for birth songs are still there. Not sure about the rest of you, but that gave me quite a chuckle.
You think she will send her parents or some other family friend to defend her now, like Jane the NZ midwife did?
Yes, the songs were funny. We need to create a playlist!
I hope she doesn’t send someone else here. I’m not sure I could tolerate another math fail like hers. It didn’t seem to matter how many times or how many ways it was explained to her. She just couldn’t grasp the concept (and/or maybe just didn’t want to?). Gave me a headache.
It’s going to be interesting for her when her son gets old enough to need help with his math homework.
I do think there needs to be a guest post of cheesy music turned birth songs, and let’s make sure there is a math song in the mix.
Could you imagine working in team with someone like that, someone so sure they are right? What physician would want to back her up?
I wouldn’t want to back up any CPM, but yes, she would be especially frustrating.
I don’t know what “back up a CPM” actually means. To the extent it is realistic, it is already happening. Real collaboration would require the CPM to go well above and beyond what is typical. For example, if they don’t have their own malpractice insurance, you want to make sure you have NOTHING in terms of a formal agreement.
Unless there is a written collaborative care agreement with an OB with hospital privileges, approved by that hospital, it usually means that the quack midwives are lying and there is no such thing at all.
A written collaborative care agreement will specify circumstances under which a woman is to be risked out of homebirth or transferred. The problem is that the homebirth in USA is so unregulated that even in places like Florida where there are some risking out criteria in place it is easy to fake records or approval.
Abby “math is hard so I’m gonna watch a couple of youtube videos and show them doctors I’m smarter at medical statistics than they are” boasted how she and her fellow quacks follow strict risking out guidelines in Florida. The reality is that many OBs there, when seeing women for mandatory risking out consultations, are now writing in medical records notes that specify how all of their recommendations are for hospital birth only.
Perhaps we should ask the OB/Gyn backing up Christy Collins – if such a figure even exist, I am a little lost on this one. I’d go by limb, take this isolated case, apply it to the general homebirthing population and say that “backing up a CPM” means taking her flak for her this one time (of all the times when she does things behind your back) when her gamble fails.
No, neither the OB that she claimed was her backup nor the hospital she claimed to have a transfer arrangement with had any agreement with her, or oversaw/approved of any of her neglectful actions that caused the death of Gavin Michael.
In her state she was not even required to have a license to practice midwifery. Ultimately when family went to police to try to file charges they were told that she was legally as qualified and as responsible for delivering babies as any random person accidentally present at birth.
Remember she is walking around free, and most of Abby’s fellow idiot quacks who helped Christy M. Collins crowdsource Gavin’s death are still delivering babies: https://exhomebirthers.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/does-your-midwife-have-blood-on-her-hands/
I remember that, sadly. Not that Abby will care or something.
I’m afraid we’ve just terrified Barbara Delaney, though. I know *I* was terrified when I first landed here – and by the time, the lunacy was not this out of control, I think. Or perhaps it wasn’t written about so much. This is 21st century. Incredible.
I will admit I was under the impression that Jill Duggar was an anomaly. I thought that midwives in this country were well educated CNM’s and tightly regulated. I was stunned to discover an entire group, seemingly a movement, of unskilled highly dangerous amateurs masquerading as health professionals. I was very surprised to see the name Ina Mae still floating around. I remember her from quite a long time ago. I had just naturally assumed she was either in prison or possibly dead by now.
If only. There was a home birth to hospital transfer within the last year from The Farm. The baby died.
My first encounter with this site was when I googled “Janet Fraser” “dead baby” (after a fatal homebirth here. Eastern Europe where she DID live 5 minutes away from a major maternity hospital, I found out that such a thing as a homebirth by choice existed and was treated to Janet Fraser’s deadly advice. Imagine my shock to find out about her own baby.) I saw “My birth rape was traumatic, my stillbirth was not” and I clicked here to finally see someone explain what those American “traditional midwives” were. The sad thing is, I felt relief that finally I had found someone who thought the whole thing was madness. 99% of what I saw skimming through the internet (real percents, not like Abby’s) was how great it was and finally I had to ask myself, “Err, Amazed, perhaps you’re the one off the bat?” What a relief to see that I wasn’t!
Oh she’ll be back with a vengeance, nastier than ever, under a new handle.
And will no doubt be shocked – SHOCKED – when her new handle is outed. These fools don’t begin to comprehend IP addresses.
I wanted so badly to get in on that, Huey Lewis and the News ‘I Want a New Drug ‘ for the laboring woman in severe pain whose midwife is offering her a tennis ball, Dire Straits ‘Money for Nothing’ or what was this $4,000 fee for, Culture Club ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?’ the answer is a resounding yes! if it furthers the cause for CPM’s, U2 ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ for the CPM who can’t tell how dilated or effaced a woman is who has a retroverted uterus.
I’ll stop now. (sorry)
And the ultimate cheese, dedicated to every CPM “healing modality” including castor oil and birth affirmation, Hall and Oates “I Can’t Go For That”.
By your list of songs, you have proven you belong here! Ask Bofa if that list qualifies you to be a Pablo Certified Midwife. Some of us here have been working toward that certification for quite awhile but are coming up short of credits. I think you possess the talent, humor and smarts to do the Bofa equivalent of the PEP process and be a PCM right away : )
Has someone put forward “I Wanna Be Sedated”?
“Kick Me, Baby, One More Time” for a post-dates woman hoping the kid is hanging in there.
How about “I Ran” by Flock of Seagulls for the drop and run midwife “hospital transfers”. “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin for the space-holding, knitting midwife. Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” for the dead/severely impaired baby situation. The Divinyls “I Touch Myself” for Ina Mae’s button rubbing set. Sting’s “King of Pain” for the contractions, er, rushes. Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” for those going the homebirth route and Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” for the entire homebirth/CPM insanity.
I love the Divynls, excellent choice for illustrating Ina Mae’s fetish. And ‘Land of Confusion’ was tailor made for this nonsense.
How about the Rolling Stones ‘Start Me Up’ for the repulsive ice cream/castor oil labor stimulant, Soul II Soul ‘Back to Life’, what CPM’s demand doctors and paramedics do for the moms and babies they’ve fatally injured, and Nine Inch Nails ‘Head Like a Hole ‘ to describe Abby particularly, and all CPM’s in general.
Ooh, I have one!
“Bulletproof” by La Roux for the HBAC.
“Tick, tick, tick, tick on the watch
And life’s too short for me to stop
Oh baby, your time is running out
I won’t let you turn around
And tell me now I’m much too proud
All you do is fill me up with doubt
This time, baby, I’ll be
Bulletproof
This time baby, I’ll be
Bulletproof”
Apt, no?
Very. Good for repeat home birthers, ‘been there done that messed around’. I’m getting nostalgic for mix tapes.
“Sisters are doing it for themselves”- for the UC crowd and the ones whose midwives don’t show up on time
“Take a chance on me” ABBA because faulty math skills have left home birth midwives with the thought that the chance of anything happening is remote or rare
“Satisfy Me” By Elvis, for the midwives who expect a catered lunch or just have their services paid for before the actual birth
Meatloaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” for those that rocked their HBAC and didn’t tear, but baby is in the NICU. “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye for the orgasmic, healing homebirth. “Time Warp” from Rocky Horror for moving the due date around.”Pretty Fly For a White Guy” for all the CPM’s swearing that they ARE plenty educated, thankyouverymuch
Ooh, one from the opera repertoire:
“La mamma morta” from “Andrea Chénier.”
This is not the first time, and will not be the last time, that a midwife deals with an unexpected situation by running away and trying to erase all record of being present.
Maybe one of her trusted friends pointed out that she was astoundingly, embarrassingly WRONG. Oops.
I do hope someone has screenshots so they can be posted for all to see, forever.
Completely OT
Kiddo #2 got his first set of vaccines yesterday.
Diphtheria, Tetanus, Polio, Pertussis, HiB, Meningitis B, Rotavirus and Pneumococcus.
Slightly unsettled yesterday, but nothing that a bit of paracetamol and cuddles didn’t sort. He even slept through from 11-6, and I was fully expecting to be up a couple of times.
Vaccinate your children please!
My first is up to date! Even this year’s flu. (So are we :))
My daughter just got her first doses of MMR and Varicella along with her other 1 year vaccines and flu shot. I’m so relieved she now has them since I know there’s a few anti-vaxxing families at daycare. Grr…
Thank you for reminding me. Kiddo is booked in for HepB and varicella boosters. He doesn’t get those on the NHS. 🙁
Thank you for making the effort to get those vaccines for your kiddo!
Yep!! My kids both got their flu shots yesterday!
My kids sleep more after shots, too. IMHO that is a feature, not a bug!
Mine got MMR last week, I think it did affect her, she was eating less solid food, and wanting lots more milk, which was waking her up in the middle of the night either hungry or needing a diaper change. I’m a wimpy parent for being annoyed by 5 nights of waking up in the middle of the night (haven’t done much of that since Christmas), but obviously that’s way less work than dealing with measles!
My baby got his first round a few weeks ago; we were advised to take a bit of Tavegil (antihistamine) to reduce inflammation and whatnot (and to keep Paracetamol at hand in case of fever). Baby was sleeping right after getting shots (and having a bit of breastfeeding to calm down) but it seems that Tavegil just made him sleepy and whiny but not able to fall asleep. Anyway, I’m happy to have him vaccinated and looking forward to next round so after that we can plan some traveling abroad (while he’s still not very mobile and thus easier to deal with). Unfortunately, pediatric nurse admitted that more and more parents refuse vaccinations in their office, and we don’t have any laws in place that could keep them from attending public daycares and schools afterwards.
I’m generally reassured when a child has some evidence of inflammatory response to vaccine – it means the vaccine is likely to be effective and the child will mount an immune response.
The Men B is brand new, the U.K. is the first country adding it to the routine vax schedule, and it seems to be associated with higher risk of post vax fever.
Because of that the old advice to give Paracetamol (Acetominophen) only if the baby develops a fever has been changed to advice to give one dose pre-emptively before the vax and two further doses at 4-6hrly intervals.
Having treated children with Men B and the after effects of it, I’m only too happy for him to get the vaccination, fever or no.
Sleeping through the night isn’t vaccine related, he’s been doing that since he was 7 weeks (Sleepless nights with BF apparently aren’t inevitable) I got lucky with this one, so far he’s been the ideal child.
My 6-year-old and 9-year-old got flu shots today. We are in regular contact with immune compromised individuals, so we opt for the shot and the killed vaccine. The doctor said the CDC only specifically recommends shots instead of mist for those on immune suppressing drugs after transplant surgery, but as ice cream after the appointment cured all ills, I prefer to go for the killed vaccine and be sure.
We’re still waiting with baited breath to do the 1 year shots (couldn’t get an appointment before 13 months, unfortunately). In the meantime, I think I’m the only person who asks the pediatrician if we can get our flu shots before the baby’s stomach bug has cleared up.
Yes! I gave my daughter her shots when she was still getting over a cold because I knew it I waited she’d just get sick at daycare again. I was tired of waiting and her temp was technically under 101 so we did it. And she was fine.
*bated
Did it make you feel good about yourself to correct that five-day-old, very common error in word choice? I bet it did. That bit of petty frisson probably felt so awesome.
FOSBJ (friend of Sweet Baby Jesus) or at least her 4th Trimester Collective
I’ve just realised that mini monkey turns 6 months on the day we start travelling from Australia to Ireland (flights were booked before he was born, and he was late). And as far as I can tell he won’t be allowed to get his vaccines a few days early. That’s going to be fun on a plane!
I’m not familiar with the Aus vax schedule, which ones will he be getting?
The U.K. vax at 2,3,4 and 12 months.
I’d just bring paracetamol, chlorphenamine and ibuprofen in your hand luggage and hope for the best.
OT: Not sure if you knew him, but Dr Morgan Savage has passed away.
Here, the flu vaccine isn’t this popular. Ha! Understatement of the year. It’s a measly 2% who vaccinate. I am currently in the process of convincing my teacher (by definition, exposed to about 200 students per week if we’re talking close contact) mom that it’s a good thing to get one since my niece would be born in the peak of the flu season. Just talked to the Intruder. He was amazed that I’d suggest that everyone vaccinates. He hasn’t had a flu one in years. Said he’d think about it, though.
Must admit that it didn’t sound all this convincing when I had to admit that *I* hadn’t had the vax. Yet. Since 98% of the population doesn’t use it, I didn’t find it in the pharmacies close to me. Off again next week!
Got my flu shot yesterday!
Hope I can say the same this time next week! If I manage not to get sick at the GP’s waiting room, that’ll be a bonus. If I didn’t lose too much time waiting, I’ll do a tap dance on the ceiling.
Got my flu shot a couple weeks ago! Patients on the NHS who have asthma like me, or diabetes like my hubby get first crack, mwahahaha!
It really bugs me when people say “I got the shot but still got the flu, the vaccine doesn’t work, WAAAAH!”
I always feel better when they get the first set of shots. I think my Pediatrician’s nurse thought I was crazy by how excited I was. I also made all of us get our flu shots to protect the little one. I have one more week before mine gets her first set and I can’t wait.
https://catalog.ufl.edu/ugrad/current/agriculture/majors/family-youth-and-community-sciences.aspx
I was curious about the requirements involved with getting a degree in Family, Youth and Community sciences. “This interdisciplinary applied social science program provides the general and technical education necessary for graduates to enter careers in human services, including public, private, nonprofit and for-profit organizations. This includes family life education, youth development, human services, community development and extension education. Students receive the training needed to understand and help youth, families and communities by taking foundation courses in sociology, psychology and economics as well as advanced courses in youth, family and community development.
Students must earn a minimum grade of C in all critical-tracking courses, 3000/4000-level core courses and specialization elective, which must be at the 3000/4000-level. A 2.5 GPA in the core courses is required for graduation.”
I considered the FYCS degree at UF when I studied there a few years ago but ended up in Sociology instead. The introduction class was a joke, and the requirements outside of the major classes are low because it is in the Agricultural College instead of Liberal Arts. For context Tim Tebow was a FYCS major because he couldn’t major in Football.
So it’s a major you do if you want to, among other things, meet guys from the football team?
After reading further down I see that’s exactly what Abby did. Sociology was also popular with the football playing set until they started requiring a second statistics class. (Sociology was a third major for me, I enjoyed the subject matter and I had enough time in my schedule to add the classes.)
What i don’t understand is why she didn’t go for RN offered there, it would have satisfied a lot of her midwifery requirements.
She’s turning out to be quite a piece of work. Football team groupie with a DUI. No wonder she doesn’t seem to have learned much from her college education.
Now, I will say normally, I really don’t care to judge such things. College is a great time in life, and everyone should have fun. But when you come around touting your great degree and your education, you better back it up. You screwed around in college, whatever. I’ve seen total jackoffs from college end up going on and doing good things with their lives. I’ve also seen jackoffs turn out as dumbass losers. The difference is that they don’t pretend that they are hotshit just because they have that degree, and they don’t try to “educate” people who know more than they do.
I worked at UF for 7 years and was thinking the same thing: FYCS isn’t exactly one of the more academic tracks at the school.
Shouldn’t that be 1.1/1000, not 1.22? Or am I misreading something?
If you have read any of this at all, you might want to take a break. The math was really bad, to the point where I have up reading the numbers because I was getting dizzy.
I meant in Dr. Tuteur’s writing, not the quotes from Abby.
She was using the number provided by the commenter to point out the mistake.
It wasn’t really maths, it was self abuse with numbers.
Using the figures provided by SBJ (death rate 0.9/1000 for hospital birth, 2/1000 for home birth), the correct figures are:
Relative risk 2.22
Relative risk reduction for hospital birth (or increase for home birth) 1.22
Absolute risk reduction 0.11% (or 1.1/1000)
Thank you for explaining. I was looking it at as absolute, not relative.
Which thread was this on?
http://www.skepticalob.com/2015/09/jill-duggar-dillard-is-not-a-real-midwife-shes-a-cpm-a-counterfeit-professional-midwife.html
How disappointing…I had convinced myself that she was a troll because how is it possible that anyone could be THAT stupid and THAT ignorant and THAT nasty and THAT arrogant and THAT conversant in memes and internet culture? I should know better. :/
OT: can anyone direct me to that former cpm blog exposing the system that was posted awhile back? My sister is thinking about home birth and I’d like to send it to het. Thanks!
http://www.honestmidwife.com/
Thank you for the link! That PDF she created was a really good read!
Thank you! She changed her mind! I sent her links to some of the studies and the blog, and she wrote me back last night and said she wasn’t going to put her own experience over her baby’s safety. You guys are doing good work here.
Cheers for the fencesitters who can be reasoned into reason!
Honest Midwife
I thought she subtracted .9 from 2.0 but that equals 1.1, maybe she decided that the result meant .1 percent??? Its entirely the wrong operation but maybe that is how she arrived at the number.
I am currently wrangling with how to report on a local midwife discussing an infant death as being inevitable (true knot in the cord). I am on the lookout for evidence that explicitly states the usefulness of electronic fetal monitoring in detecting a knot in the cord in order to save the baby’s life. I read the article on this website about knots but I wasn’t sure it was enough to condemn what happened. The midwife feels confident discussing the death because she cannot conceive of a way that the hospital could have caught the complication. If anyone knows of evidence that relates to this manner directly I would be very grateful.
I’m sure one of the OBs will chime in, but I’m pretty sure that a true know will lead to some significant late decels that would be caught on EFM.
I would agree that it would cause late decels, particularly once pulled taut.
My son was induced for late decals on monitoring during rule out labor. He had a knot that pulled tight during pushing. I think without EFM he could have sustained brain damage, but instead when his heart rate plummeted we went from controlled pushing to you must get him out NOW!
A knot in the cord causes deep variable decelerations first not late decels which are caused by placenta insufficiency. Which are very obvious even if doing intermittent auscultation with contractions
Thank you!
Her math test hroughout was confusing. Initially she stated that the risk (not specifying whether she meant relative of absolute) was 0.1%, then quickly corrected herself saying it was 1.1%. When she was called out on that, she proceeded to “show off my stats learning skills”. She did get the relative risk of 2.22 correct (but not the interpretation of those figures – she stated that she was 1.2 times as like to have an adverse risk). But where things got baffling was when she tried to calculated absolute risk reduction. She came out with a figure of 0.02% – I still don’t understand why. When I corrected her and pointed out that the absolute risk reduction was 1.1 in 1000 or 0.11%, she told me that that wasn’t how you calculate it. Funnily enough, when I posted a link to the BMJs website showing that I was correct, she didn’t reply.
When you try to apply logic to nonsense, you get a headache.
I just hope she pops up all the time in association with these posts, when people go searching on the internet. She did a great job making clear exactly what she’s like, which may scare away a few potential patients/victims.
At a further point she upped her numerical and statistical ignorance to a whole new level when she came up with this:
“Absolute risk is 0.0011% increase.”
All I could come up with as a reply after that was to point her in the direction of resources that help with adult innumeracy.
Using the relative risk of 2.22 she calculated the difference in relative risk as 1.22, then for some reason multiplied that number (rather than the original number of 2.22) by the absolute risk for hospital birth (0.09%), obtaining a number of 0.11% (more accurately 0.1098%) and concluded that the difference in absolute risk is 0.02% (the difference between 0.09% and 0.11%). She ought to have multiplied 0.09% by 2.22, not 1.22, which would have given her 0.1998 – a difference in absolute risk of 0.11%, or 122% of the absolute risk of hospital birth. It seems she almost got there a in a later post, but for some reason divided the percentage by 100 again, ending up with 0.0011%. She’s really just randomly throwing formulas that she’s picked up off youtube, blogs or, god forbid, her studies at numbers without having the least understanding of what those formulas actually mean, which is horrifying considering how simple they are.
My cord knot was not detected but cord compression from that knot was detected. It was detected by CEFM but I was tod it would also have been detected by strict intermittent monitoring.
I love how they call this death inevitable when I was told my baby could have been delivered vaginally by the same folks. Knots are not always fatal, they do raise the risk of death by 4x.
I can only share anecdata- we had two babies have true knots on their umbilical cords- the last had two true knots in her cord. She had meconium and had a crummy run on her strip that made us ‘get her out now’…. when the doctor and nurses saw her cord with the knots they said they typically see that in cases of stillbirth. So, obviously, some deaths from true knots are unavoidable. However, if the event that constricts the cord/knot happens in labor and one is being monitored, logic would lead me to believe that absolutely they would be able to save the baby at the hospital. Wouldn’t you think?
My daughter had a knot in her cord that pulled tight in the final stages of labor. EFM detected her sudden distress and vacuum assist was used to get her out quickly. Today she is a healthy, lovely toddler. I definitely believe that EFM saved her life.
Anecdata: my first cesarean was performed for a true knot. I went into the hospital in early labor and heart rate abnormalities showed up on the admission NST, so they kept me at 3 cm when they might not have otherwise. As my son descended and the knot pulled tighter, the EFM clearly showed a deterioration in condition and I had an emergency cesarean. Unless the knot killed the baby prior to labor starting, it is idiotic to think that EFM wouldn’t enable the providers to realize something is wrong and allow them to react before tragedy.
The most surprising thing for me was, after the whole back and forth with Abby, I actually felt Jill Duggar was a better and less dangerous midwife than Abby! Mind you, they’re all underenducated and dangerous but I got the impression Jill is less arrogant. Arrogance plus Dunning-Kruger level ignorance is super dangerous.
I also can’t see Jill Duggar flinging insults.
Me either. I get the impression she’d actually be more willing to transfer because she’d be too scared.
(Or rather, appropriately scared)
She might say she is praying for you?
Oh I can see that, but that is just her answer to everything so I wouldn’t care that she might be doing it passive aggressively since it’s all she’s got. I have worked in the ER, you have to be ready to be undermined, insulted and not lose your cool so SBJ just seemed like a full moon ER patient to me (yes, I know that is not a real thing, it just feels real sometimes)
I’m not sure about full moons, but I have a firm belief in the Friday 5pm psychiatric patient who requires a GP assessment before they can be sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Seriously, always Fridays, always late afternoon, never home before 8pm.
Thankfully, only a handful of times a year, and the same few patients.
Her faith in god to save everyone does the same job as unfathomable arrogance in an emergency.
I just went back and read and now I have a headache.
I really enjoyed where she “dude”d, “buddy”d and generally insulted everyone’s intelligence then claimed she was being targeted through ad hominems. I think Bofa took the brunt of her nastiness (sorry Bofa!).
The insinuations she made about commentators on this blog threatening her child were the turning point for me. That’s when she went from being just another insultingly stupid and arrogant idiot fake midwife to a vile human being overall.
And a delusional one at that, since no one made any such threats.
Makes me wonder if there isn’t something much deeper going on with her mental health
Especially since she came back to autodoxx herself.
Just out of curiosity, where was all this happening? On the FB page? Cos if it was here on the blog, I totally missed it.
The Jill Duggar post.
That is mental. We have seen those who doxx (strangely enough CPMs who can’t admit they are wrong) other people but to say she is being threatened and then posting her own full name, there is really something wrong
I used to work with a fellow who was never/could never be wrong. He would panic-literally panic-when corrected.
We were working on a document-to go out under my name, and I made some changes to his section. In particular, he had incorrectly used a word. In the end I pulled the dictionary to make my point, to which he dismissively responded ‘Well if you need to fall back on the dictionary’ and walked out for the rest of the day.
He wasn’t right either.
Currently arguing with a bunch of the people in a publishing house about the cover of a book I translated. The editor and I are of the same mind and we’re the only ones who actually read the damned thing. But the rest of them all have opinions, no matter that they haven’t read the book. They don’t read this kind of books. But they cannot be wrong. They *know* what sells! No matter that everything screams at them being wrong.
It’s really trying, ultimately it’s their funeral though.
Hope it doesn’t come to this. Because it’s kind of mine, as well. For years, I refused to read Pearl Buck because her books were labeled, I kid you not, Classical Love Novels. With a cover that spoke of anything but a Nobel prize winner. And given the fact that about this time, we’ve had all kind of “love novels” labeled Forgotten Love Novels, Historical Love Novels and so on, you know the vein… (Was a great fan in my teens! Them, and soap operas. Drove my mum crazy.) Well, I thought it was nothing this different. And I’d really like to have people read “my” novel and work on the author’s next one. We’ll see.
I must say the people I’m arguing with cannot hold a candle to Abby, though. They’re generally right about what sells. Just not in this instance. She’s patently wrong. About EVERYTHING.
Sorry about that. I’ve read some Pearl Buck, though not labelled that way. Weird.
And yes it would be frustrating to work so hard and fear no one will read it.
Abby is going to the special Hall of Infamy (Stubborn and a Bit Thick Category), it’s a hard one to get into.
I wish we could have the Skeptical OB Hall of Shame, category: Passionate Dolts. Abby belongs there, under the subcategory of can’t do maths.
I think it should come under Arrogant Dolts – can’t do maths, thinks she can! Which makes it far more dangerous.
Seriously? Pearl Buck was always labeled historical fiction for us.
The only thing I’ve found trying to write is that people have pigeonholed me and no one thinks I can string together a non-technical, cohesive sentence. Damned depressing.
Totally serious. Enough for me to turn my back on her completely before I knew who she was.
I am trying to write but it depends so much of mood and inspiration, I can’t believe it. And a good deal of the inspired time is dedicated to translating things, so that I can make, you know, a living.
Oh, I know. Don’t despair. Sign up for Nanowrimo =) You’ll still have no time to write, but you won’t be alone.
And when the writing comes, trust you me, it will be glorious. (and it will spoil you forever)
Wow, thanks! I’ll certainly look there. When I get published, you get a free copy of my first book, haha.
Lol Just got straight to kindle direct. Saves you time, but you have to do the advertising yourself (curse you, amazon).
7 books down, several more to go =)
Sadly, in this case, it’s someone’s baby’s funeral.
I noticed that! It felt like she was baiting people to do it so she could feel victimized.
Yes that was extraordinary.
Is there a real child, I wonder?
Yes, she is a mother.
Oh, she TRIED to be nasty. However, she never did come up with an example of anything I said that was wrong.
I especially liked when she tried to call my bluff on the Netherlands homebirth rate. HoustonMom beat me to it, but she basically left me alone after we provided the source.
It reminded me of this scene from White Men Can’t Jump (NSFW)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgJ2CaTfaxU
Billy Hoyle
She kept calliing me an idiot. But she could never show anything I said was wrong. I may be an idiot, but I knew more about it than she did.
She really didn’t approve of you one bit.
Though she was pretty snaky with everyone by the end.
Shout out to Barbara Delaney, who kept it classy while telling her off.
Barbara Delaney has to stay as a regular! I insist!
Count me in!
Thanks so much. I told myself to read comments only since I’m not familiar with the community and I tried, God knows I tried. I thought this community was so patient, and behaved in an exemplary manner, I was so impressed with what I read. But finally I couldn’t restrain myself. Her insults of professionals coupled with her own breathtaking ignorance finally overcame my reluctance.
Incidentally, the group working to stop the announced Duggar/Dillard/Seewald specials on TLC have convinced over 500 sponsors not to support these shows. One is described as Jessa’s birth special. My efforts to prevent it from airing are because I’m afraid it will be an advertisement for CPM’s and more babies will die needlessly.
The work you are doing to get those sponsors to pull their support is helping women and babies much more than any CPM ever could.
Just read yours, BD, and couldn’t agree more with The Bomb.
Yeah, thanks Barbara for your efforts.
And stick around. You have a lot you can contribute here. You might even have the ability to avoid getting bitter and cynical like certain posters here….(like me)
It started when I didn’t accept her crap about “unnecessary c-sections.” Got her to admit that she couldn’t actually say that any specific c-section was unnecessary, despite all her stories from women complaining (the Mitt Romney binder of women).
She didn’t like me after that.
And it was when I asked her in what respect the US was really bad that she brought up infant mortality.
Interestingly, just like her cause of maternal mortality is suicide claim, these are topics absolutely worth talking about, and there are things that can be done to improve care. But it’s not about crap like homebirth and unncessary c-sections. There could have been a really good and productive conversation (I wasn’t the only one who mentioned post-partum doulas). But she had to make it about CPMs and other nonsense.
Where’d she do it? I love reading this drivel.
The suicide quote isn’t quite a crazy as all the rest of it. She is confusing maternal with perinatal mortality. Suicide is referred to as the first/second most common cause of death in the first year postpartum in some papers. Citation is British Journal of Psychiatry (2003): http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/183/4/279#T1 And there is Science Daily article “Suicide accounts for about 20 percent of postpartum deaths and is the second most common cause of mortality in postpartum women.” – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130314124618.htm
I wonder how much it would help if women were encouraged to combo or FF if they were having mental health issues that could be managed with pharmacological help, and/or were having issues related to sleep deprivation and/or overwork (where combo would allow a partner to help).
I wonder how much it helps if you’ve been encouraged by your CPM to avoid medical intervention and lie about your dates (as SBJ did) to get your Picture Perfect Birth, and then end up with a more emergent and/or traumatic experience than it had to be.
PPD is an evil bitch who gets far too much room to wreak havoc. It is just barbaric to me that we STILL shove that noise in the closet when it can cause so much harm.
Recipe for disaster:
1. Set women up to “fail” their birth plan by lying about the realities of childbirth, both its dangers and the experience/pain commonly involved.
2. Equate “failing” the birth plan with failure at motherhood and harming the baby.
3. Set women up to “fail” breastfeeding by making it as difficult as possible (crazy pumping schedules, no relief bottles, no pacifier, no rest).
4. Equate “failing” breastfeeding with failure as a mother and harming the baby.
5. Set women up to “fail” at newborn care by divorcing the “right” method/choice from actual needs and resources (rigid AP, cosleeping, babywearing, etc).
6. Set women up for PPD through sleep deprivation, maternal erasure, and excess anxiety by emphasizing “perfection or doom” as the only possible outcomes.
7. Make treatment inaccessible (breastfeeding “right” means very restricted meds and little time to pursue treatment) without further “failures”.
The NCB have a share in this, undoubtedly. Their aggressive propaganda is there to traumatize new mothers. Kate Winslet (Kate Winslet, for heaven’s sake!) was depressed for years because of it. What about ordinary women then, who don’t have that much money and help? I don’t mean they make new mothers suicidal, but they CONTRIBUTE to it.
Here is what I wrote “You just insulted yourself. You have stated that we have had the experience of dealing with isolated cases of bad behavior by CPMs. That might be true, but you haven’t made a case for being the exception. I would like you to think about this very hard: you are aspiring to provide healthcare to women. In that capacity, you will be in the position to have to be the bearer of bad news and also inform women about things they may not want to hear. You have said you are going to adhere to a very strict risking out process and so there will be women seeking your care who are going to disagree with you, who are going to hurl insults at you and who are going to have unhappy family members too. Are you going to react in the same fashion you have to the people on this board? It only gets harder from here.” I got “stuff it” as a response, which is par for the course when trying to have a civil conversation with a CPM when you ask the hard questions.
It just never even occurs to her that _we_ are the test. We’re women who are interested in women’s health and come to the table with a certain amount of information and expectation. It’s like she thinks this conversation is all totally unrelated, and when it comes down to her and a client, everything will just magically be smooth.
She is dangerous. This is her birth story, how she induced her own labor with castor oil and ice cream when she was 38 weeks pregnant. http://barefootbirth.com/blog/2014/2/7/earley-bird-gets-the-worm-a-gainesville-birth-story-tampa-bay-home-birth
If she practices this way with her patients, she is going to see heartbreak and be on that list of “sister” before she knows it.
At least on the surface she was willing to go in if her labor had not started after her water broke? I don’t give her a lot of credit but on paper at least she wasn’t a total idiot.
Bar is set pretty low though.
Indistinguishable from the ground, but she could have been a “with no exams there is no chance of infection so I am just going to chill here on my piddle pad and wait for nature to rock this.
“… only 38 weeks! First-time moms almost always go post-dates. I even
adjusted my due date back a week to October 11 (the real one was October
4) just to ensure that Earley’s birth would be as hassle- and
intervention-free as possible.”
WTF
OMG. . “I even adjusted my due date back a week to October 11 (the real one was October 4) just to ensure that Earley’s birth would be as hassle- and intervention-free as possible. After conversing with the midwife, we decided that I would put a pad on and see if I continued to leak fluid—a sure sign that it was indeed my bag of waters and not an oh-so-common accidental pee.”
That’s right. The proper way to deal with a potential complication is lie to make things happen the way you want them too.
And sorry, throwing on a pad is not a sure way to tell if you’re leaking amniotic fluid or not.
It’s so funny, it’s exactly what we have been saying all along and she insists doesn’t happen. If she thinks adjusting the date does anything to endure against hassle and intervention, I hope that there will be no women or babies who suffer for that belief.
My blood pressure’s 200/150?
Here, I’ll adjust my numbers down by 80 points from each number on this piece of paper, just to ensure I don’t have a stroke!
So, wait, miss “You nasty OBs don’t have open and honest lines of communication and transfer with CPMs!” was lying about her due date?
And her post-dates child was named Earley? No wonder she’s asking the Internet for help naming the next one.
that is exactly how the baby was lost in the Fort Mill birthing center. They pushed the date ahead a week so the mother instantly become 41 weeks instead of 42 so she didn’t have to get risked out of the center.
“Barefoot Birth is a birth service company specializing in concierge home birth services, personalized prenatal care, doula support, childbirth education, massage therapy, postpartum support, professional birth photography, and acts as a resource for expecting families.”
Vomit.
Wow. They charge $6000 for a home birth (where apparently you need to run out to the store during labor to buy all of your supplies. Some concierge service).
$6000 is a hell of a lot more than any OB makes for a birth, the preceding 9 months of care and the 6 week post partum period.
Plus all that concierge care- the midwife was almost there through the entire crowning. Now that’s service.
They do say that they will work out alternative payment arrangements! Which, at least from everything I have read, means we accept barter and trade, just make sure you are paid up before 34 weeks.
I got some chickens. They worth six grand? I hope so because my insurance don’t cover this midwife.
One CPM was building her birth center and put on her Facebook page that any client who wished to come and work on it painting or whatever could work down their birth fee that way. So she was expecting her pregnant clients to come work. Classy
Well they’ll only have to stop briefly to orgasmically breathe out their baby and then they can get right back to painting, just like them primitive wimmen in the rice paddies, huh? /migraine-induced snark
But surely inhaling paint fumes while pregnant is how nature intended things to be.
I think kale cancels out volatile organic compounds.
Doesn’t that just say ‘professional, solvent, organised’ to potential clients?
Especially in light if the fact that the birth center was being built in part thanks to a gofundme. A bunch of the tools that were purchased from that fund were stolen, so she ran another gofundme to replace them. She also has put it out there that if anyone didn’t want to keep her baby she would be the midwife and also adopt the baby. CPM world is such an unethical place.
I wonder what they would do if you hired them as a doula service and when they sat with you to discuss your birth plan you told them this: I’m having a scheduled c-section, complete with epidural and pain meds after. I’m formula feeding, so I’ll expect you to do the first few feedings because I’m planning to sleep and recover. I’ll also need you to keep the. LC’s out of my room because I’m not breastfeeding and be available to take the baby to the nursery when I need a nap.
I wonder if their collective heads would explode.
“Being well-rested and not in pain is very, very important for my bonding with my baby, so I need you to be my firm advocate.”
Supporting women’s choices. As long as they’re the choice that we approve of.
I suspect $6000 (or whatever they get paid) would buy some level of compliance.
I was vomiting already at Barefoot Birth. Barefoot and pregnant – could the misogyny be any more obvious?
I like to be barefoot :p
I spent a good chunk of the first half of the year barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. But mainly because it’s stinking hot here, and I like to eat. 🙂
Same 🙂
At least the mom would have a professional quality portrait of her dead infant. Don’t underestimate the importance of that service.
Wow. Reading between the lines of the autobiography:
1) Planning ahead is wasn’t much of a priority – getting birthing kit at 38 weeks (or even 36 weeks); driving to the middle of nowhere in labor; sending hubby for food and ending up alone in 2nd stage with a dirty bathtub.
2) Her actual labor sounds painful as hell.
1) you forgot to mention taking a drug meant to induce labor and THEN driving an hour out of town, in active labor, with the midwife a couple hours away. As she feels gratitude she’s not in a hospital bed WITH LIFESAVING DRUGS AND STAFF AND EQUIPMENT FOOTSTEPS AWAY. I just can’t even.
2)Labor hurts like hell, even if you never ever lay down on a bed and moo like a cow and only your husband and doula and dog are there and only push with a natural urge, and are never monitored, and anyone who says different is definitely lying or trying to sell you something. Ahem *bradley method*cough cough
Leaving a pregnant woman with ruptured membranes in ACTIVE LABOUR who has taken 4oz of castor oil alone in a remote farmhouse… Yes indeed that is the epitome of surrounding her with love and support!
Newsflash- if you can’t bear to sit in a moving car, your contractions are making you vomit and scream, it is not the time to send your husband out for food.
Seriously, if Anno was on her way over anyway, why not ask her to bring food?
Why was the midwife more than an hour away from a term client with ruptured membranes that she had advised to take castor oil? Most of them average a birth or two a week, after all.
Even re-framed as positively as possible, this still reads as neglectful care by the midwife, outright stupidity by everyone else, and no, I don’t buy the magical labour and birth, it sounds awful.
All that “freedom of movement and giving birth in the position in which you feel most comfortable” …in that crammed little bathroom and that tiny tub.
And with your 300 pound husband “assisting” you. It seems that the dream of performing in a capacity you’re unqualified for is a shared activity for Abby and her husband. She dreamt, (and yes, Abby, dreamt is correct usage), of being a medical professional while her husband dreamt of being a college football player. In 2012 he attended the University of Florida and was briefly a walk on for the Gators. At thirty years old he was elated to find himself living his fantasy for a short time. He never actually played in a game but he attended practices.
The differences between Abby and her husband are stark. He never endangered any lives while he pursued his childhood fancy. And after a short period he was able to put away his adolescent ambition, something Abby doesn’t seem able to do. They are now parents themselves. You would think having a child of her own would finally awaken Abby to the terrible risks she encourages other women to take but living in her castle in the air is more important to her than the lives of children.
I don’t understand why they think inducing with castor oil is better than inducing with pitocin. Ok, there’s no needle but castor oil makes you shit your brains out.
I remember that Henci Goer’s book had a recipe for castor oil and something to make a milk shake to induce.
Anything a doctor doesn’t use is ‘natural’ and natural is always better.
I don’t understand how consuming that disgusting concoction, and fudging the dates, equals ‘trusting birth’.
What a raving lunatic.
Is the ice cream supposed to help with the induction of labor? Or is it just supposed to make the castor oil less disgusting?
I think it just makes it more palatable. The castor oil is also used in orange juice with vodka or in root beer for the same purpose.
Isn’t alcohol tocolytic? In fact I think NARM list it as a treatment for preterm labour.
Yes, it is.
In the days before tocolytics you got IV ethanol or a few shots of whisky for pre-term labour…
But alcohol and castor oil are “natural”, unlike potocin, apparently.
Despite the fact that pitocin is identical to endogenous oxytocin, while castor oil is a gut irritant and alcohol is hepatotoxic and neurotoxic.
CPMs don’t have anything against either trying to induce or stop labour, as long as the method chosen is “natural”. So sex, pineapple, hot curry, lunges, castor oil, homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic and cocktails are fine, Cervadil, Pitocin and IV tocolytics aren’t.
A shot-full of whiskey makes the medicine go down…
My god, this is horrific.
Reading over the story again, it looks like her water broke and it was close to 24 hours after that she decided to take the castor oil ice cream concoction.
So what part of ” risking out a patient” does 24 hours after water breaking fall under? I know my question sounds clumsy but isn’t it logical to switch a patient over to the care of an ob/gyn in a hospital if more than 24 hours have lapsed since water broke?
It is, but she wanted her home birth in a dirty tub at her parents house in the country. If her midwife was a real one, not someone who was her friend, she would have counseled her client to take her temperature and also would have insisted on her going in to have someone listen to the baby’s heart beat, not tell her to take castor oil and drive into the country.
Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have no medical schools. Would-be medical doctors have to travel pretty far to the nearest one. Delaware also doesn’t, but Delaware is tiny and surrounded by good schools reasonably close by. Lots of people travel major distances to get to the school they want. I’m not impressed because her local one closed. Florida has 7 med schools; they don’t seem to have a problem with enrollment.
Any links to these conversations?
http://www.skepticalob.com/2015/09/jill-duggar-dillard-is-not-a-real-midwife-shes-a-cpm-a-counterfeit-professional-midwife.html
She’s going under the handle “Sweetbabyjesus”?
That is our delicate flower of obduracy.
Oh boy. I’ve made mistakes and believed they were correct even when people pointed them out, too, but that’s pretty bad.
One part delicate flower, two parts pig headedness. Its a great combo all around.
that description makes me giggle
You should hear the names I give my cats.
Rita Mae Brown adopted a tiny kitten that she had to rescue from the toilet after it fell in. She called him Baby Jesus because he had tried to walk on water. I’ve always thought it was a great name.
How is it possible that someone can obtain a B.S. in *anything* with math skills that are so poor? As an arts grad, I was told there would be math if I chose a science-oriented degree program. Seriously, UF, wtf? If there’s no math required in the degree, do what everyone else does and call it an arts degree. And if there was math required, how did she graduate?
Thinking back to the bare minimum of math you could take at my undergrad – you could graduate with basic calculus and algebra or geometry, I think. No statistics required. And you could get a C in those courses.
True, but she was failing at basic concepts taught in high school (possibly earlier, I forget when I learned). I wouldn’t expect her to have an advanced understanding of biostatistics or anything, but being able to tell that 2 is more than double 0.9 (and that n/1000 is not expressed as n% but 0.n%) is very basic stuff.
Earlier than high school. I knew it in 6th grade. That’s, when I was 12.
my “math for liberal arts” was a cake walk for me, but your average 4th grader would struggle with it. It had a little algebra.
I attended an Ivy League school and I never had to take a single math class. I really regret that my math education stopped in high school. At the time I was thrilled because I suck at math but in retrospect I really missed out.
I’m more or less of the same mind, myself. My math/science education stopped in high school. I was okay at math but didn’t particularly enjoy it. Now, of course, I’m wishing I could go back and learn some more about basic stats, etc. I’m tempted to try and take a couple of courses, but I’ve forgotten so much since high school, I don’t know if I’d be able to keep up.
Her maths skills are beneath high school level, that’s the problem. I fully expect her to bounce back and educate us about a triangle with two right angles.
Well, all angles are right, aren’t they? I mean, who are we to say that they’re wrong???
🙂
To someone that obtuse, everything is right?
I posted this in response to her last comment on the Jill Duggar Dillard is not a real midwife post because I want her to see it. I hope the analogy can make her understand that NOTHING she says is going to convince this group that she is right. I also wanted to post it here.
Dear Abby,
Lay midwives are the dangerous equivalent to what a lay pilot would be. Imagine if you had to get in a commercial aircraft with a pilot and co-pilot who had only ever trained in a simulator in “normal weather conditions”. You wouldn’t do that right. But now imagine that the airline went to great lengths to ensure you were fooled into thinking that they had as much experience as a pilot who had actually flown this type of aircraft. You would feel deceived and angry. If the flight (flown by lay pilots) crashed and the airline said some people are meant to die in aviation accidents or this crash isn’t even “a blip” on their radar you would be outraged.
That is what the regulars here at SOB understand about lay midwives. NOTHING that you say and no “evidence” you present will convince us that ANY lay midwife could POSSIBLY be a safe choice for pregnant women and babies.
I’d be convinced if they all got evidence-based medical training, carried liability insurance, laid the facts out about HB to women, attended only women who were adamant they couldn’t/wouldn’t give birth in hospital, urged/enabled women to attend prenatal appointments anyway and get their flu/whooping cough jabs etc. That sort of midwife would be a godsend to women in many terrible circumstances, but meeting one seems to be as likely as running into St Nicholas*.
*probably because I’m not nice, but MEEEN.
I can’t even figure out why she went out of her way to engage with this community. There was no universe in which we would ever come to consensus. Why dredge up a months old post only to start a fight where you know that nobody will be converted and next to nobody will agree with you? Why would anybody choose to keep engaging when it became clear that the conversation was going nowhere? I understand people who come looking for screenshots or who want to blindly fling insults, but why would she come here seemingly expecting polite conversation? It is like me trying to go to tea with my Mother in law. Great in theory, but there is a 0% chance of it ending well.
i believe she stated several times she was here to leave replies that will testify to the public how awesome and superior to all real midwives and doctors CPMs are.
She thought she was having a peer to peer professional discussion between equals in which she was going to demonstrate her unique insight and intellectual accomplishment. Sadly, she may very well think that’s what happened.
That is like me going to my doctor and telling them what I found on WebMD. I know she dies a little bit each time but I somehow can’t stop myself.
That is what brunch with the woo witches is like when they do a review of a CPM after a tragedy. No brunch here, and no praise for trotting out the same old crap either. How can anyone believe they should be taken seriously when they can’t write a rebuttal that doesn’t dip into language used by fifth graders?
Ouch. Number one hit on Google.
So fantastic.
The day just got better.
And the blissy thing is, she did it to herself.
“Did you know that there are only a handful of CNM programs even available in this country? One has closed recently in my hometown and leaves very few options left in our region of the country.”
Abby has clearly never heard of the idea that bad money drives out good. Of course there are only a handful of CNM programs in this country. Why would anyone (except people who are actually dedicated to the health of the mother and baby) take a long, expensive, arduous course of education when they can get a credential for relatively little money and effort from programs like Abby’s? Especially when people like Abby insist that CPMs and lay midwives are just as qualified and should be given equal recognition as CNMs or even OB/GYNs?
Abby and lay midwives made credentials something you buy, not something you earn. Of course people are flocking to the cheapest option.
My Dad’s degree in respiratory therapy was a fairly intensive 2 year course, but aside from a few doctors with shiny new degrees who were having a bit of their own dunning-Kroger or just not listening to the veteran nurses, he’s well aware that any MD, especially lung specialists, is going to know a heck of a lot more than he does. (Seriously, one doc he dealt at the hospital with kept forgetting to wash his hands when he went from one patient to another. Not even that damned hand sanitizer everyone’s so in love with now. …must remember to tell people at the obs’ my morning sickness *hates* hand sanitizer…)
God, nothing is worse than an engineer fresh out of school. All the arrogance of a 22 year old somehow multiplied by the blind surety of someone who has been told their entire life that they are smart because they can do math.
You have morning sickness?? That must mean you *are* pregnant – congratulations!!! I must have missed the update. So glad for you!!!
Been nauseous for weeks now, yep. I go in for an ultrasound on Monday.
Hooray!!
Yay! Hope everything is perfect on the ultrasound. (And that the morning sickness calms down)
Good luck to you and your little demigod! Ever thought of naming him (or her) Percy Jackson?
hahaha, no.
No? Why not? I think Perseus Jackson is a great name for a little female demigod (or demogod? Like the demo version of a god? Or the demo version of a demigod? *scratches head*)
Because, my sparkly crystal child should be named after goddesses! Freya Amaterasu
Such good news! Thanks for sharing with us.
Best wishes for Monday.
Hopefully the sickness will settle soon, if not, I heartily recommend Zofran.
thanks. its manageable, no where near as bad as some, so long as I avoid some things
I gotta say–the math/stats stuff was really helpful to me. I didn’t do a lot of math, and I didn’t take stats in college. ( I DID take logic–Stats was at 8am, logic was at 11am, which may have factored into my decision.)
What I can’t stand about some of the NCB arguments is that, even if you set aside risks of death or injury to the baby, or risks of tearing for mom, an epidural, or C-section, or pitocin, in and of themselves, are not actual complications. Yes, there are risks involved in surgery or an epidural, but if none of those bad things happen, then was the procedure itself a complication? Not to me. The complication would be the small risks associated with a procedure, not the procedure itself.
I don’t know if that makes sense. Thought experiment: the C-section rate is, what, 30%? But what percentage of the C-sections have complications? I’m making up numbers, but let’s say 10%. So, If 30/100 have C-sections, and 10% of those 30 have complications, that’s 3 women out of the original 100, right? So, 70 will have had vaginal births, and 27 will have had uncomplicated surgery.
So, using my totally unscientific numbers, and ignoring any risk factors, obviously–if I were pregnant, and went to the hospital to give birth–my actual risk of complications would be 3%, yes?
That’s a very different way of looking at things then “1 in 3 women will have a C-Section!!!”
Ugh. Stats was a required course for my major (Psychology). It sucked. Thankfully I don’t have to repeat it for my Masters (Social,Work).
What percentage of those CS women would have a child who died during labor or had a severe, long-term disability due to a vaginal birth?
Plus, of those 30% of women who have CS, some percentage of those women would have major physical complications if the vaginal birth was allowed to continue; it’s not like nature doesn’t extract a bill on the mother for obstructed labor.
Oh, I know I was massively oversimplifying, and that vaginal birth has it’s own set of a potential risk factors.
My overall point is that the homebirth types are massively inflating the “risks” of hospital birth by naming procedures/interventions as negative outcomes.
I will never ever be able to figure out how in any sane world an epidural can be counted as a negative outcome. It defies all logic.
Some even consider ‘foetal monitoring’ as a negative outcome. It’s ridiculous.
They are not very logical folks all in all. Like, they talk so much about peace and privacy in labor. How a vaginal exam will make their labor stall, how they will feel exposed and humiliated in the hospital. But somehow they don’t mind giving birth in a room crouded with relatives of all proximity, stark naked and being taken pictures of. What is this if not exposure and humiliation. Cause all the photos from homebirth I’ve seen look somehow like that: naked woman in the pool, everyone and his brother staring at her, midwife bossing around. Is it OK to show off your lady parts in front of your in-laws and other sex children? Sorry for long rant. Their double standards just make me sick.
Yup. I want my toddler and my in-laws *somewhere else* during anything that involves me not wearing any underpants.
Don’t forget nipple stimulation to help stimulate labour…
Also, it’s not ‘1 in 3 women” when you break it down into subsets. If I recall the Csection rate for women who haven’t had any babies yet is something like 10-15%. The rest of those are planned/repeat sections. So, while 30 of 100 women might have Csection, it won’t be 30 women who have never had a baby or a Csection before. If a woman is having her first, or has already had a successful vaginal birth, and has no obvious complications, she is not so likely to have a Csection.
Oh for sure. When woo-people post stuff on FB or ask you about your birth “plans” and trot out the “1 in 3” business, they are massively overstating the “risks” associated with hospitals.
The way procedures or interventions are portrayed as a negative outcome, no matter how necessary and regardless of how successful the intervention was, is what drives me crazy.
Don’t forget the women who have vaginal births and complications.
In the UK c-section rates are much lower than in the US. But guess what? I just read an article on Facebook about a young woman from the UK with a colostomy bag due to obstetric fistula. I was shocked and googled some more to find out that it does happen in developed Western countries NOW. WTF? To keep the c-section rate down for God’s sake! Back to the Middle Ages! Amen!
That’s beyond terrible! My grandmother is with a colostomy bag due to bleeding CANCER! I thought giving birth was not a disease?
I never even knew such a thing exhisted! This is it: http://community.babycentre.co.uk/post/a15198835/fistula_and_colostomy_due_to_negligence_during_labour
I learned it the hard way with Gran. I remember how terrible it was to her at first – and she was in her sixties, not a new mother.
I am lost for words.
Oh FFS. It’s like the Irish women who were split open instead of given C-sections because God demanded they had eleventy billion kids and a C-section might get in the way of that. Women who are having kids are mostly having smaller families by choice, maybe 1-4 kids these days – huge families are a rarity. So why the effing eff are we worshipping vaginal transit to such an extent?
Mad. Rage.
Speaking of the Middle Ages–I was just reading about Eleanor of Aquitaine. She had 10 children, and only one died in infancy, which is pretty good for the 12th century. Her daughter? Had 2 children, and was pregnant with her 3rd at 33 years old. She went to a convent (she wanted to be a nun), and it became apparent while she was in labor that she was dying. So, they made her a nun, she died, they did a C-section, and her baby lived just long enough to be baptized.
So, yeah, let’s go back to THAT.
“In the UK c-section rates are much lower than in the US. ”
Not really.
UK CS rates are still 20-25% on average.
Given that the UK has a whiter, healthier and less obese population than the US, with much higher rates of VBAC, I’d say CS rates are pretty much on par.
Oh man! I’m late to the party. I just went back and read through the comments between Abby and the regulars. It reminds me of the video on the news the other day of the toddler with the icing on his mouth insisting he didn’t eat a cupcake. No matter the evidence to the contrary he insists he didn’t eat a cupcake. Abby has cupcake frosting all over her mouth.
drat you, now I want a cupcake…
Any healthcare professional who thinks a dead baby is a “blip on her radar” has no business being around pregnant women. Or any type of patient for that matter.
This woman is a danger to pregnant women and babies.
I lost it when she said it was ok for the midwife to expect the client to make her meals and provide food as long as it was arranged ahead of time.
But hey, she did claim that the midwife should lose her license if she didn’t clean up the mess afterward.
My wedding photographer didn’t even require that I feed her and she was doing a hell of a lot more than knitting in a corner.
Can I get a number of hands: How many people here moved out of their areas to get their education?
FTR: It sucks that higher education is so very expensive.
My husband and I moved to an entirely different state where we had no family and knew no one. He had to get a new job. Those are the sacrifices you make when getting a real education is important to you.
Pick me, pick me!
And let me guess, you did it again when you matched?
Bingo. Leaving behind my significant other.
Across the flipping ocean.
That’s how far I moved.
I did too. My nursing education was in NY; I studied midwifery in the UK.
Halfway across the country to undergrad, fully across for grad.
I didn’t move for mine. I had already married my husband and neither liquidating the farm* to have both of us move nor having a commuter marriage sounded workable.
Instead, I was very, very flexible on the subject within biology I was studying. Likewise, if I pursue a Ph.D, it will have to be in education at one of two major universities within driving distance that have a strong distance learning component. It’s not ideal, but I’ve always known that we’d end up financially ahead if I am more flexible in my career progression.
Anyway, for Abby, it’s a moot point. She can’t get into a CNM program; she’s not an RN or a BSN.
*My former advisor repeatedly explained that my husband and I needed to be willing to sacrifice the farm (i.e, his career) for mine. I kept explaining that that made no financial sense. Ever. Even right now, in epically bad milk prices and high feed prices, my husband brings home way more income and assets than I can. Full stop.
Wait, you mean you didn’t have perfect choices?
Nope. 🙂
Oddly enough, I’m quite happy because I know that I have no perfect choice. I thought about what was best for me. I love my husband and want to build a life with him far more than I care about being a tenured-track academic. I’ll keep hopping along in weird bits and spurts and get to where I get to.
I moved from Sonoma to Los Angeles. Currently in grad student housing. The good news is almost everything around me is a Greek system hous, so there’s plenty of eye candy! And since I’m 10 years older than them, I can ogle guilt free! I know, I feel like a dirty old woman and I haven’t yet hit 30
I did. Halfway through the country. I moved to my current flat where I had a TV, two chairs, and a couch. That’s how I lived for a year.
I was 18. First thing I did was spend my monthly allowance in less than two weeks. Somehow, it didn’t occur to me that there wouldn’t be food waiting for me at the table when I came home – it would be all bought with the money that I, you know, spent. A few months later the electricity company almost plugged me out because the paper bill had flown out of my doorless post box and since the bill didn’t come, I, of course, didn’t think to ask where the damned thing was. Good times – and I am not kidding. That’s all part of growing up, for many.
My mom moved from her village to the city with the best language school in the region when she was 14. My mom, I say. Not my mom’s family. For a year, none of her classmates wanted to sit next to her because she was a village girl – the only village girl in their year. But she had placed third at the entrance examination, competing against the whole region, wow.
Anyone thinks Abby would have had such a strong motivation to move house? Somehow, I doubt it.
I moved for every school. Two hours for college, 90 min for med and grad school, 1000mi for residency, 800mi for fellowship (7mo pregnant), and 60mi for my current job. Family was approx 2hrs for the first two only and my patient spouse following for the last three. Med school and further training is just something that most people move for…
We moved 1400km last February as part of my husbands surgical training program. We’ll be here for another year and then moved on again. Hopefully we’ll be moved back to Brisbane at some point, but there are no guarantees- we’re at the mercy of RACS.
Oh but they are SO kind and understanding and supportive! /s
When they called my husband to tell him where he was being placed, they gave him a choice of two towns and wanted an answer straight away. At least they were nice enough to extend it to three towns and two days to answer when he told them that his wife had just told him that she was pregnant. 🙂
Although we’re pretty happy that he’s on the training program. After 3 years working in Ireland, we packed up and moved to the other side of the world, which set us years back in our career plans. So it’s nice that he’s finally making headway.
Yo. Couple thousand miles.
Around 300miles. Not actually that much, but when you are a poor student without a car, it might as well be across the country. For 5 years I saw my family once or twice a year.
That was halfway through the country for me. It’s just that the country is small. The same thing – a student without a car. Going home three times a year. One of the first traditions I established after graduation was going home for my grandfather’s birthday. Haven’t been at the Intruder’s nameday (just a week after my grandfather’s birthdat) for so long that when, a few weeks ago, I was suggested a few days off with friends, it didn’t even occur to me that I could stay at my hometown instead and go to the Intruder’s party.
So what? Didn’t stop my family and I from loving each other. Must be because Mom was in a hospital with well-baby nursery with me and was way too happy to have the Intruder taken off her arms before he slipped out of those same arms when the nurses realized that this. Baby. Would. Not. Stay. With. Mom. No. Matter. the. Hospital. Rules. Bad attachment for everyone all around, I think, that’s our problem.
I hear you, I was only on the other side of a very small state, but the main reason I got home as regularly as I did was because I had an assortment of relatives more or less evenly spaced along the route who were happy to oblige if necessary.
Went 75 miles from home to go to college.
Moved 400 miles from their for grad school.
Moved 1100 miles for my post-doc.
Moved 570 miles to my first faculty appointment
Moved 1100 miles to my current position
2 hour drive for my college. Dh had only 15 minutes for his first, 3 hours to his grad school (but only one from me 🙂 ), and another time zone for both his doctoral attempt and for his training for his current job. Which is 650 and 700 miles away from our home towns.
OMG. One of the midwives who owned the birth center that nearly killed me via placental mismanagement and then slow action to call EMS after manually trying to retrieve it twice (traumatizing..) while I lay bleeding out having a postpartum hemorrhage went to school here. Typical. P.s my second born was in the hospital, no postpartum hemorrhage, and another positive is I was treated like a human being and given pain relief. Guess which birth I still have nightmares about..
Oh, but Abby Reichardt would just give you a shot of pit and all would be well!
Hmm, I don’t know. Do moms who receive pitocin still love their babies? Why risk disrupting those natural hormones just to avoid bleeding to death? Isn’t that pretty selfish of the mom?
Yeah… All the units of blood I needed and the cat scan to my lungs because I had fluid in them from all the screaming in pain I did, oh and let’s not forget the internal bruising to my pelvis from all the manual removal attempts resulting in not being able to correctly walk for a few weeks without agony, That definitely disrupted the natural birth , bonding and breastfeeding process.. My death would have also disrupted it. 😛
Guess you didn’t trust your body enough. Read Ina May Gaskin’s books next time!
Well, if you aren’t “fully invested” in birth, you forget to do things. Like buy cinnamon candy. Too bad the midwives didn’t have any to blow in her face : )
Or anywhere else…
Lol Ina may gaskin. Lay midwives are some kind of special. After i was finally discharged from the hospital and went to get my belongings from said birth center after nearly dying, they ask, “so let’s see how breastfeeding is going.” I nearly lost my mind. (Couldn’t even attempt breastfeeding anyway for days because of all the meds they had to use to stabilize me, cat scan etc.)
Ina May: “did you fondle her sufficiently and was she trusting her body enough? Ask her uterus to stop bleeding and it will! Start chanting it and light some candles, maybe she’ll be fine.”
OMG that is adding insult to injury. You were treated terribly, so sorry you had to go through that.
I want to laugh, but that whole Ina May cult of assault of laboring women is SO utterly creepy and fucked up.
OMG! This sounds so awful. I am so sorry that happened to you. I hope that your story convinces at least one woman considering natural birth in a birthing center that it isn’t all candle light, music, and baths.
It was really traumatic for me… I’m glad it happened looking back though because I can share this story with anyone who will listen and hopefully deter people away from “natural birth.” If it hadn’t have gone wrong I could have sadly had my second there too and God knows what could have gone wrong. I’m very very thankful that my babies are okay, I was sadly misled and thankfully now I have seen the light. It’s definitely not all candle light and water births… ! I feel sick every time I visit this birth centers website with all the pretty candles and decorations and see photos of the room I nearly died in, and they pretend none of it ever happened. It infuriates me to no end and they can’t stand that I have posted so many bad reviews about them – they think they had no responsibility. Uggghhh.. I could go on and on.
Again, I am so sorry that happened to you and I commend you for having the courage to share your story.
There is Hurt by Homebirth website and a Homebirth Loss and Trauma Website if you would like to share.
Is Hurt By Homebirth still running? I know the latest story was a while back.. I’d love to share the story somewhere but I feel strange since it was injuries to me, baby was okay… My heart shatters for the moms who’s babies pass away :'( but if my story could help even one person Id definitely share it. Preferably without images and my last name.
I believe that Dr Amy runs Hurt by Homebirth. If you don’t want to share your name and identifiers, just make up a new anonymous email address at gmail.com (or yahoo.com, etc) and get in touch. Honest Midwife (honestmidwife.com) may have interest in your story as well. Homebirth Trauma and Loss’s administrator has a webpage here, I believe there is an email if you do not feel comfortable using Facebook.
http://amartin030.blogspot.com/
Mothers matter too! No matter what CPMs and homebirth advocates like to paint us as, we don’t mean “A healthy baby is all that matters!” to mean “Mother can be mistreated ten ways till Sunday and it won’t matter, as long as baby is fine!” Hurt by Homebirth was meant for people hurt by homebirth, so it was meant for you. It would be good, I think, to see that there are things that cannot be excused, no matter that no one was permanently damaged ot preventably dead.
I’m sorry you went through that. That sounds horrific.
Nah, I’m sure your family could’ve dredged up some breast milk from somewhere. Your death would’ve been no big deal.
There’s a Family Guy episode where Stewie helps Brian campaign for legalization of marijuana by singing a peppy dance number called “A Bag Of Weed.” During the conversation yesterday, I kept hearing that as “A Shot Of Pit.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpS4ebEtLUE
Actually… I think all three who own that birth center attended this “school.”
I’m sorry to hear that. I’d be interested to know what, if anything, happened at the birth center after that. Was there any attempt to analyze what had happened and learn from it?
That’s the sad part, actually. My husband and I met with the midwives to explain what had happened exactly and to try to help them Learn from it so it wouldn’t halogen again. (The midwife who performed he birth lied and didn’t mention a few details to them so we went over everything that went bad.) they were very, VERY defensive and took absolutely no responsibility for what could have been done better. (Placental management, hospital transfer took almost an hour even though we were across the street, and midwife was panicky and seemed confused about what to do… She did not ride to hospital with us to explain what had happened which made hospital staff have a hard time figuring it all out, etc.) after we met with them and explained we wanted this to never happen again to anyone I never heard a peep, apology, or any word about improvements in emergencies, I waited 6 months to hear anything and I didn’t. Then I wrote detailed reviews about this place because I believe it is dangerous and people should know about it if they aren’t going to fix it or take responsibility, THEN surprise surprise, days later I get a voicemail, “we had no idea you were so traumatized about it and maybe you can come in and let us know how we could improve emergency transfers, maybe we could even do a counseling class at the center with you,., please call back!” Nice try ladies, i will not shut up, you had your chance and the Internet is forever.
Well, there goes Abby’s assertion that her school trains midwives to accompany their transfers and they bring their charts.
That was just an isolated case! How DARE you!
You RULE! So glad you posted detailed reviews!
I had a manual exam of my uterus sans pain meds directly after giving birth. I cannot imagine having it done twice. Fortunately, I was in a hospital with a competent CNM who had already called for backup (and given me pitocin and cytotec for the hemorrhage). I am so very sorry that you had to go through this. It scared the hell out of me, and I knew that I was in a safe place.
I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. I’m sorry that there were no lessons learned on their part – but I cannot say I’m surprised.
What was puzzling was her insistence that every incidence of a dead or injured baby or mother along with examples of bad practice among CPMs was that these are isolated. If someone has really looked into CPMs and how they practice state to state (not just your own state and then focus on how midwifery is a done in all those places where care is midwifery run) and actually see why midwives like Valerie El Hata, Brenda Newport and Sherry Dress are considered dangerous. She claimed that I would have no idea how she would communicate with her future clients when it came to communicating need for transfer of care (she has no clue how a transfer works but thinks they should be seamless) but I can see that if someone doesn’t like what she is saying, she can’t control herself. That is not going to be considered professional.
“Seamless?”
Shit. We can’t get a seamless transition in secondary education between schools when all of the people involved have actual training, forms that are similar and a very limited number of options for classes e.g: CHM 101 is probably chemistry….
Compare that with an unknown patient coming in with an attendant who has no notes that mean anything to actual medical professionals who could have one or more of hundreds of things wrong with the mother or the fetus. That’s never going to be seamless because you’ve already ripped the fabric; best case scenario is a smooth seam.
I can’t get a seamless transfer between units in the hospital, where the chart is electronic and everything is in the same building.
Seriously. I’m trying to think of the last time I “seamlessly” transferred a patient from the surgical service to the medical service. Or even a “seamless” transfer from the ER to the floor.
It is seamless for the midwife. She gets to drop and run.
I had a recent seamless transfer, but it involved lots of work on either side. A community hospital has sending me one of my own patients – known isoimmunized, last seen a week prior. Mom has felt decreased fetal movements, they did an ultrasound and diagnosed hydrops. They bypassed the normal transfer protocols, called me directly, and I accepted her. Her husband drove her, but we sent her lab samples ahead, so the blood bank could have blood ready. NICU was ready, we had set up the OR c-section with possible neonatal resus including transfusion and chest tube (large pleural effusion). We even had the blood in the OR. Mom and dad arrive, NST showed sinusoidal tracing while getting her prepped for the OR and we had a healthy baby at 36 weeks within 30 minutes of arrival at the hospital. Exchange transfusion was done later that day.
It worked well because we have communication tools and we talk to each other. That is what makes a smooth transfer, not just getting someone somewhere quickly. It is one of the reasons I prefer working at a smaller teriary care centre, I can make things happen more smoothly and quickly than a bigger insitution. Mom and baby are both well.
It worked because everyone involved understood the urgency and the professionals worked together. I will bet that the mother wasn’t being combative and asking why she had to have an IV, why there were so many people in the room, why they kept asking her questions.
That’s awesome. But home birth folks should pay close attention to this sentence of yours: “We had a healthy baby… within 30 minutes of arrival at the hospital.”
That’s how it works, even when it’s seamless. That’s how long it takes when a new patient arrives–a whole lot longer than if the patient had already been in the hospital laboring. So “I’m only 10 minutes from the hospital” is really meaningless.
I have seen one and it was such a unicorn moment, an ER transfer to med/surg. It was one of the med/surg charge nurses being transferred in. It was easy because she knew how to give an H&P and which one of her veins would be good to draw labs from. But it’s not happened since 2001, leading me to believe it may not again
I worked part time a few years back as a medical education registrar, and as part of that we used to run simulation sessions with the interns. As part of each sim, as the scenario was winding down one of the med ed team would walk in, usually acting as the ICU or surgical reg and ask what was going on. It took a long time before we started getting good handovers.
What stunned me was her uniform attitude to all of us. I called her names, downright labeled her a future murderess, used rude words. You were nothing but polite and educated. And at the end, we got the same hysterical reaction.
It isn’t rudeness that she has a problem with, it’s being disagreed with. Just a hint that her “knowledge” might not be perfect, and she loses it.
I pity women and babies who would find themselves at her path.
What I don’t think lay midwives understand is WHY transfers aren’t seamless is largely down to factors THEY control.
Why should medical professionals who are insured and will be sued take the word of someone who will walk away if the proverbial hits the fan? If you were them, wouldn’t you double check things?
Why should they trust your diagnosis or conclusions, when the current omnishambles regarding lay midwifery means that they can have no confidence in your level of training or experience?
They know their colleagues went to accredited colleges and sat the same exams they did. When you can be a CPM with a GED, a correspondence course and having “attended” fewer than 60 births, if you were them, wouldn’t you want to double check things?
If you want a seamless transfer, firstly make your qualifications actually indicative of knowledge and expertise.
Secondly, chart like medical professionals. Don’t “journal the labour experience”, use a partogram. Don’t write “foetal heart tones strong”, actually document the rate before, during and after a contraction.
Thirdly, if you want to be part of the team, get insurance, so that if the rest of the team is held responsible, you will be too.
Per the midwife thinking blog
”
There has been a recent and very comprehensive study in the UK
(google it) about homebirth. Based on this research midwives and
obstetricians are calling for more homebirths for ‘low risk’ women. They
include a clear breakdown of what they consider ‘risk’. However, I
don’t give much value to quantitative studies for a number of reasons
(perhaps a blog post?). Also in the UK homebirth is very medicalised ie.
partograms are used which are known to increase intervention. The
transfer rates are huge because of the parameters they use to define
‘normal’.”
Time to delete your posts and slink away, Abby dearest!
Don’t give her any ideas. Better to let her expose herself to any future clients for what she really is.
It won’t help. I’ve already copied them all.
She’s right that UF recently closed their CNM program. But it wasn’t because of people trying to make it harder on CNMs. It was because they were averaging 8 people per year entering the program.
8.
And that just wasn’t enough to maintain the program. And why should someone go through the time and expense of a CNM when they can sign up for the FSTM and become a LM instead! I suspect more people would enter the CNM if it was the only way they could catch babies.
It may or may not be related to lack of student interest. As I understand it, lack of teaching staff is the problem in many advanced practice nursing programs. (The pay sucks.)
This article goes into more detail. http://www.gainesville.com/article/20150127/ARTICLES/150129648
Lack of teaching staff might be part of the decision to close, but the very low number of new students couldn’t have helped.
There are a number of things that really bug me about Abby, but her constant attempts to play the victim card are what bother me the most. Look, Abby, many of the men and women commenting on here had to make great sacrifices to obtain their education and training. Getting two Masters degrees was not a cakewalk, but it pales in comparison to the training and education required of doctors, nurses, and real midwives. You complain that you need real professionals to collaborate with you to improve your profession. When it is pointed out to you that no other developed country would allow CPMs or DEMs to practice, the response is that there aren’t enough CNM programs. You state that you want to be held accountable in the same manner as OBs, but you haven’t indicated that you would be willing to take out malpractice insurance, which is a major way that OBs maintain their accountability to patients. You are willfully ignorant about statistics, and are more concerned about hurt feelings than actually improving your knowledge. You are, in essence, everything that is wrong with American homebirth midwifery.
I should also note that real professionals don’t get very far when their chief complaint is that their critics are “mean.” Put on your big girl panties, open some books, start reading peer-reviewed literature, and then PROVE to us with evidence that anything that you are saying is true. If you cannot do that, don’t expect us to take you seriously. Women still have to work twice as hard as men to be taken seriously in the workplace. We don’t need you and your “feelings” about things to make it anymore difficult.
“There are a number of things that really bug me about Abby, but her constant attempts to play the victim card are what bother me the most.”
This is what bugged me also. Everything she said was about her and she seems to think that respect should not have to be earned. Never once did she attempt to address the increased perinatal mortality at homebirth. The ignorance of math, statistics and obstetrics is sadly the least terrifying thing about her (and that’s pretty scary too!). Her arrogance was far more terrifying.
I believe that Florida does require practicing midwives (including CPMs) to hold professional liability insurance and I believe Abby said that she said she had professional liability insurance. I think she also said the maximum payout per incident was $250K. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Here’s one insurer that has policies advertised towards CPMS, DEMs
http://www.cisinsurance.com/Midwives/PDF/CIS_Midwife_SlickSheet.pdf
I missed that. I asked several times yesterday and never got an answer.
I can’t even begin to fathom how Abby came up with 0.1%.
I got this:
2.0/1000 = 0.2%
0.9/1000 = 0.09%
The difference is 0.11%, or 0.1% of you like. Basically, she only cares about absolute, not relative risks.
Yes, she meant there was an increase of one percentage point, not one percent.
Actually, the funny thing was when she started with an increase of 0.1% (which, as I pointed out, is about as meaningful as pointing out that drunk driving increases your risk of a dying by 0.0002%), but then “corrected” it to 1.1%.
I understand where she got her 0.1%, but never figured out where the 1.1% came from.
Someone by the name Abigail Reichardt was arrested for drunk driving by the University of Florida police in 2010. According to the Alachua County court website she pled guilty, paid a fine & did community service. According to the DOB on the court record, she would have been 24 at the time. The mugshot looks like her. http://florida.arrests.org/Arrests/Abigail_Reichardt_1202371/
So she’s familiar with 0.1%? 🙂
Can you get into nursing school or get a license with a DUI on your record? Someone in my husband’s family had his RN license held up for the better part of a year because some of the soldiers in his unit were investigated for theft (he was cleared and honorably discharged).
It’s typically not a felony, so no.
It depends on the state and your board of nursing. Some will require you to go through a monitoring program, some will require a hearing, some will flat out deny you a license.
I know someone who was kicked out of nursing school when it was time for her clinicals because she had a shoplifting conviction as an 18 year old.
“I understand where she got her 0.1%, but never figured out where the 1.1% came from.”
Cause 2.0-0.9 = 1.1
And %, because weren’t we talking about percents?
Isn’t that how math works?
*Slow clap*
The greatest thing is that by posting this, you’ll probably save some lives because your post will come up when prospective patients google Abby’s name.
“Abby Reichardt, B.S.”
Never was a degree name so apropos.
I just love that she kept touting her Bachelor’s degree….and it turns out to be in an unrelated field from a school that I (as a native Floridian) know is one big party for a large proportion of students.
But she has so much to teach us!
LOL! Just checked: the Gators are the #10 party school in the US, per the Princeton Review.
My alma mater was listed as #11 on College Prowler’s 2013 list of least party-friendly schools. Nice to know it hasn’t changed much. :p
With CPMs, it’s ALWAYS in an unrelated field. If it was nursing , I might let that one slide. The CPMs who run the top birth center here and who also teach at Bastyr all have Bachelor’s degrees: one in studio art, another in religious studies, one liberal arts and another pre-med. Of course, they all have “Masters in Midwifery” degrees, which is another joke.
Sounds like the philosophy department professors’ list of bachelor’s degrees at my alma mater.
My spouse loves to point out that he went to “Playboy’s Number One Party School”. It isn’t anymore, but was he he was a student. My alma mater is known to be the site of a bar that has the most alcohol consumed per square foot in the US (and second in the world behind some bar in the Soviet Union). Woo hoo!
I heard it’s Iowa now. However, I can’t say for sure because I don’t read Playboy anymore. I used to only read it for the pictures.
Yeah, it’s a degree for which she might need a science class … one that I could be teaching (although I don’t teach intro classes).
Are you surprised that it’s urelated, Addi?
not. at. all.
It always amazes me when people attach a degree or accreditation that no one else bothers to attach because it manages to make you look pompous and ignorant at the exact same freaking time.
If you go to the FSTM page, they all do that.
Ooof. One of the faculty members lists her A.A.
Seriously.
I mean, it’s bad when your faculty member’s highest degree is an Associates from Broward Community College.
I also can’t stand how each faculty member lists how they gave birth to a child- at home, or unmedicated, or whatever. Like that’s some sort of accomplishment to list on your CV.
What is that degree? Less than a bachelor’s?
It’s a two-year degree awarded by community colleges. Traditionally, you’d list it on a resume or a CV, but it’s not something you’d use to append to your name.
Leaving aside for the moment all the Alcohol Anonymous jokes….
It’s an associate’s degree from a community college (or “junior college”). It’s much less than a bachelors. Basically you need a GED and a checkbook to get into a community college.
You don’t even need the GED. I got my AS before I’d graduated high school.
I might start putting my EMCS on mine. I did actually end up swapping section stories with the last person I applied to for a job (she’s an old friend who I rang before applying to sound her out)
Demodocus, BA, MA,
AirPlant, licensed driver.
Sadly, those degrees are liberal arts and philosophy. My dear Demodocus is not known for his firm practicality.
And yet I am positive he could grasp the concept of risk as outlined with the endless math lesson that the past couple days has become.
He’s actually quite good with lower levels of math. Anything with graphs throws him though.
Melinda Eadie, BS in Biology; MS candidate; holder of Secondary Education Provisional Teaching Certificate in Biology(DA) and Chemistry (DC); LPW -CDRR 2012-2015; eSLBBP
*LPW-CDRR = Lead Poultry Wrangler at Capt’n Duckie’s Ranch and Resort
**eCBP = emergency skill-limited bovine birth professional.
The Bofa on the Sofa, BS, PhD, PCM
I like how you think.
Azuran, M.V, DECScN, DES
Mine are in even in french, it provides additional pompousness.
I was shocked that none of them listed Reiki Master 4th degree.