Remember unassisted birth advocate Meg Heket? Heket, you may recall, is the sister of Janet Fraser (My dead baby was not as traumatic as my birth rape). She is also a co-administrator with Ruth Rodley of a number of homebirth and unassisted birth groups. No doubt you remember Ruth. She’s the one who, in the wake of 7 homebirth deaths in 1 week, referred to the death of a baby as “a little hickup.”
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.[/pullquote]
Heket has an extraordinary amount of blood that is on her hands. I cannot keep track of the many, many babies who are dead because she encouraged their mothers to have unassisted homebirths. I wrote yesterday about another member of her group who is boasting about her unassisted VBAC at home despite the fact that the baby is dead (The unspeakable callousness of a homebirth loss mother). Evidently someone shared the post with Heket is this is her response:
No, so I just make sure to make things really confusing so she’s GUARANTEED to misinterpret it on her blog.
I HATE ALL CAESAREANS! NO CAESAREAN WAS EVER NECESSARY AND IT’S BETTER TO DIE THAN HAVE MEDICAL INTERVENTION IN LABOR. Excuse me, I need to go and eat babies now.
PS. I haven’t seen the blog post because I go out of my way to avoid anything and everything she and her cult ever say. It works brilliantly
Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!
But the worst thing about Meg’s inanity is not that she’s dancing on yet another baby’s grave, although that is despicable. The worst thing is that she and her unassisted birth buddies never learn … anything. Despite the astronomical perinatal death toll in her group she has been completely unable to make the connection between the dead babies and their unassisted births. She and her compatriots repeatedly counsel women that they should “trust” birth even though birth lets them down time and time again.
As Albert Einstein explained, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Over and over again Heket encourages high risk women to give birth unassisted at home and over again babies die. She seems to have a serious problem with the concept of cause and effect.
Heket is hardly alone.
“Jackie” addressed herself to me in the comment section of the post about the mother’s callous response to the baby’s death:
…You are disgusting and pathetic to use this mothers tragedy for your douchebaggery blog post! Having lost my father a few weeks ago, I’ve seen first hand how everyone around me copes with death and EVERY SINGLE PERSON handles it differently …
Indeed, they do; there’s a very broad range of normal responses to grief. But boasting about your role in another person’s death is outside the realm of normal, particularly if the dead person is a close family member.
“Wow! Did you see how I was handling driving 90 mph before I hit a tree and killed my daughter?” is not a normal response.
“You’ve got to admit I’m a great arsonist!” is not a normal response to the accidental death of a your toddler in the house fire that you set.
“Look at me! I pushed a baby out of my vagina and killed him in the process!” is not a normal response to your baby’s death.
It’s the response of a cult member and Meg Heket’s unassisted birth group is a cult. The most important rule in a cult is to keep believing in the wisdom of the cult leader regardless of how often he or she is demonstrably wrong. Meg Heket is like the leader of a millennial cult who is constantly specifying the day that the world will end, and constantly being proven wrong. Mentally healthy people would learn from that experience and stop believing a person who is wrong over and over again, but not cult members. They keep believing the predictions and hoping that this time is going to be different.
I write about the deaths of these babies for a reason. I don’t want them to be buried twice, first in a tiny coffin in the ground and then in the minds of the people who were responsible for their deaths. I am not hoping to change the minds of those who made the irresponsible choice; it’s too late for that. I’m hoping to change the minds of the other cult members and, especially, of people thinking about joining the cult of unassisted birth. If I can prevent the death of even one baby, I’ve accomplished the job I set out to do.
Thinking about unassisted homebirth? Then think about how these women sacrificed their babies and think again.
“You’ve got to admit I’m a great arsonist!” is not a normal response to
the accidental death of a your toddler in the house fire that you set.
Especially not “I’m a great arsonist! Arson is great! Burning your house down IS possible and you should do it too!”
The “lol” at the end of the mother’s post somehow takes it from heartbreaking territory into something entirely worse. If it can be worse.
I actually asked on FB a general question: “When you use lol in a post, are you really laughing, or is it a nervous tic?”
OT a bit, I’ve been asked to provide an expert report into the death of a baby. Mother 47 years old, primigravida, no antenatal care initially, late Booker, wanted to deliver at home unassisted but was told that wasn’t legal in England ( I’m not sure what the actual law is but you can’t plan to have someone who isn’t trained acting as midwife, acceptable if it’s an emergency which is why taxi drivers end up getting involved, but you can’t deliberately plan to ‘free birth’). Got a midwife who agreed to take her on, ended up going to term +21, laboured for 48 hours, midwife insisted she went to hospital, argued about it another 24 hours , developed infection, emergency section on arrival, stillborn baby.
Mother is now suing the hospital for killing her baby.
Cognitive dissonance. Its very, very powerful.
Holy SHIT.
Thank you. I was thinking this exact phrase.
Am I reading that correctly? A 47 year old first time pregnant woman went to 43 weeks gestation, labored 3 days (so now 43+3) against medical advice, developed chorio AT HOME, and this is the HOSPITAL’S fault??? That woman is lucky she didn’t die of overwhelming sepsis!
Was there any sign of cardiac activity on arrival? Or was the emergency section solely for removing the source if infection?
The fetal heart was thought to be heard at 60 bpm on arrival in the emergency dept, but it could have been maternal. The baby was stillborn and covered in meconium but there was no maceration of the skin-maceration takes a few hours to set in, so its likely the baby died a couple of hours or so before admission. However, because of the possible heart rate, the mother is saying that the 25 minutes the hospital took to get the baby out from the time the mum arrived in the emergency dept to emergency section under GA was too long and that was why the baby died.
Like I said-cognitive dissonance, the mum will only believe what fits with her version of events.
Edit-yes, mum was in for a couple of weeks after delivery. She had a lot of bleeding and major problems with wound breakdown (that is forming a large part of her claim, that she won’t be able to get pregnant again because of the side effects).
Wow! Twenty five minutes from arrival to delivery is lightening fast! Likely due to the better integration system in the UK versus the US and the hospital staff knowing the background. Arrival, history, physical, US, IV placement, labs drawn, transport from ED to OR, rapid sequence intubation, cut, baby out. Damn that was fast! Kudos to the staff!!
I didn’t get all the medical and nursing notes, but I got the impression that there had been a lot of ongoing discussion between the midwife and the hospital and they were basically on stand by waiting for her to arrive.
I just wonder how obstetricians and midwives keep going when they are doing the best they can, providing emergency care for someone with this sort of antipathy and disregard for their training and expertise who then turns round and accuses them of murder. Personally I would find it hard to hold my tongue, it would be hard to accept your patients choices when they are fundamentally stupid and risky. Maybe that’s why I stay put in my lab and don’t get out to meet real people a lot.
25minutes from arrival to delivery is about as quick as it can be done. You want a crash GA CS in under 20 minutes, you physically have to be in the building during labour. I mean, it probably took 5minutes just to get her from A&E to the OR.
The “delay” was in the 4 weeks of refusing induction and the 3 days of refusing transfer in labour. Sure, maybe if the baby had been delivered 30 minutes earlier it would have survived, but if the staff were physically doing everything as fast as humanly possible, they can’t be faulted.
If she had agreed to transfer an hour or two earlier, maybe her baby would have survived.
Also, OF COURSE you’re more likely to have bleeding and infection if you’re cutting into an exhausted, infected uterus, and yiu’re doing a “smash and grab” section.
Want to bet that every single MW and OB in the hospital was on tenterhooks for the entire duration of her labour?
Going home at the end of their shifts worrying that she hadn’t transferred yet, hoping that she would have come in before their next shift started, asking about her first thing when they came in, hoping she’d come in before they went home…
There is a hospital not far from us where I would likely have my C-section, because it is closest to us, I would be high-risk and want a NICU if baby needs it (call me paranoid, but I was a preemie). It has a birthing centre sort of attached.
Their idea of a transfer? Wheeling the patient’s bed across the parking lot. SMH
I forget sometimes that the woo is NOT strong here.
I had a patient who had some pre-existing conditions which made her high risk seeing me for booking and I took a deep breath and said “and had you any plans for the birth?”. Preparing myself for a possible fight about having to deliver under a consultant.
And she looked at me and said “umm… No” and I said “well, I think because of X and Y you’ll be under consultant care, and some options might not be a good idea for you, and you might need a bit more monitoring during pregnancy and labour”.
“What options?”
“Homebirth, Waterbirth, birthing in one of the MLUs away from hospital…”
“Oh G-d no, I’ve waited long enough for this to happen, I’d NEVER give birth away from hospital, and all my friends told me to get an epidural!”.
“Ok then.”
And that is honestly 99.99% of my patients.
This particular mum is a Reiki healer. You know, I try and be accepting and open to new ideas and different ways of life, and different ideals and all that, but after reading all the documentation about this case, and discovering the the mother is a woo-master, I have to work very hard to overcome my internal Daily Mail reader and stop myself thinking ‘You should be prosecuted for infanticide, you selfish, ignorant woman’.
You know, I had a feeling that this was either someone with a significant mental health history (late booking, distrust of doctors, but probably not because no court orders sought) or someone so steeped in woo as to be unamenable to logic and reason.
Reiki healing… Explains a lot.
“I took a deep breath and said “and had you any plans for the birth?”.”
Me: “…Getting the baby out and home safely. There are other options? Pshaw!”
By my last pregnancy my response would have been “both of us alive, and it doesn’t matter how you do it”.
I’ve read, mostly from you guys here, that by the eighth month or so, that a lot of women say or plead, “JUST GET IT OUT!!!” 😉
My sister’s first pregnancy was twins, and afaik, everything went well. They’re 6 in a few weeks. I can imagine she must’ve wanted the pregnancy over and done with by the time they delivered – a month early, but apparently with twins that’s OK. They were about 5 and 6 pounds respectively.
They’re growing so fast in the pictures we get sent. I wish we had more tme to interact with them in person, but it really depends on if we’re both healthy enough to make the trip across the pond.
The longest I ever made it was 36 weeks, so I honestly have no clue what it’s like to be in the 9th month. I was just hoping they’d all stay in long enough to be born alive. Not all of them did, and one barely made it.
I’m so sorry.
It was a long time ago. It was devastating at the time, but I’m at peace with it all now. And if sharing my experience helps just one person who’s reading these comment threads realize that childbirth isn’t all sunshine, roses and unicorn farts, and helps that person make a better decision about protecting her baby, then it’s worth it. There’s nothing I could have done differently, but hopefully those experiences will make people realize that pregnancy and infant loss is a reality, even today.
Met a woman a couple months back who also had a string of premature babies. And proceeded to tell me that her “body knows how to have babies.” I was nice and didn’t say what i was thinking out loud.
I didn’t start having contractions until after they gave me the pitocen after my water broke. Who knows how long i could have wandered around with my strep and assorted other germs having easy access to my munchkin…
It would have been difficult for me to hold my tongue. Of course, having had a whole bunch of premature and dead babies myself, I get a little more leeway than most in speaking my mind on such matters.
True. Would have been interesting to watch you tell her off.
Since I’ve only had the 2 pregnancies, and the first was no preemie, I’d just come across as pointlessly mean. (#2 is officially 25 weeks; I think i felt a couple scattered contractions on my walk today. None now, though…)
I’ve been told I come across a lot like Professor McGonogall from Harry Potter when I get into that mode. Is have probably said something like “hmm, it seems to me a body that ‘knows how to do pregnancy’ would be capable of making it to term”.
Sadly, I’ve neither taught nor been a mean parent long enough for that, 😉
I had a great mentor. The other Dr. C in my life, not related in any way, had a gift that’s beyond compare. He could tell you to go jump of a bridge and you’d ask him which one. Those Upper class Brits just have a way.
Right about now i’m going for preferably as soon as possible and Spawn #2 still being healthy
“I took a deep breath and said “and had you any plans for the birth?”.”
Me: “…Getting the baby out and home safely. There are other options? Pshaw!”
Hee. I never went on motherhood chatboards–all my time on infertility chatboards was exhausting enough–so I had actually never heard of a birth plan before I was pregnant. When one of my doctors asked if I had a birth plan, I was like, “What? That sounds like an oxymoron.” She explained what it was and I said, “My birth plan is we all come out of it alive and well.”
My crash-section with my youngest took less than 10 minutes but I was:
1: Already in the hospital
2: Had IV lines already in
3: Had been being monitored carefully, including an anesthesiologist who was just hanging out in my room because things were going downhill fast, but they were still trying to keep me pregnant because of how early I was.
4: Had the OB hanging out at the nurses’s station for the same reason
5: OB’s had insisted on keeping an OR ready for me “just in case” since the day before.
6: When it became clear we couldn’t wait any longer (sudden and extreme blood pressure spike), the anesthesiologist started pushing meds while they were wheeling me to the OR so he could put me under general if he had to, but wound up having enough time to do a spinal while the OB’s were scrubbing in, so I was loopy, but awake,.
7: My hospital had several OR’s on the maternity unit, so it was a distance of about 200 feet from my room to the OR.
Yeah, my urgent section was something like 5-10 minutes between consent and cutting, but I was also in a hospital with an OR dedicated to l&d, on monitors, with an epidural in place. I actually felt like, if anything, my doctor and midwife gave me a little extra time in labor before making the call because they knew how fast it would happen once we did – there was no need to advise at the slightest hint of a problem because I didn’t need extra ambulance transfer time, etc.
My section went from urgent because this labor business just wasn’t working out to “crap, get it out NOW!” emergent when I spiked a serious fever. Being already on my way to the OR with the surgeons already scrubbing in and an epidural already in place moved things along nicely. I couldn’t really tell you how long it was, but I heard the baby starting to cry while I was still saying things like, “Um…I’m not real sure if this anesthesia is quite complete…oh, well, no one seems to be paying attention, I guess it’s not significant.” (Note that the sensation that made me fuss about the anesthesia was not pain, which is why I was sort of commenting quietly and ignorably, not screaming.)
Sorry to say, if the baby had been born alive there would have been massive cytotoxic brain damage-inflammatory mediated cell damage had caused the brain to virtually liquify. There would have been minimal brain function (the cell damage was well advanced, probably started 5-7 days before death).
I feel very sorry for the midwife-its going to come down to her word against the mothers. She has documented all the discussion and listed who she spoke with and what she was telling the mother, but all the mum has to say is that the midwife didn’t say XYZ, or she didn’t clearly communicate the risks.
I thought that UK law made theese bs cases much less likely?
I think most cases come via the NHS Litigation authority and there are fixed amounts-we don’t get the millions and millions awards for punitive damages. A stillbirth compensation claim typically is only £20 000 or so. It sounds cruel, but the way its worked out is financial loss to the family, so if it had been the sole wage earner who died because of negligent care the next of kin would get far more, but babies aren’t worth very much.
In this case, the mum is also suing for loss of earnings as she no longer feels able to work and for severe psychological stress and post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the violence of the delivery. This is the biggest part of her claim.
I think if its decided that her actions were directly responsible for the death then she won’t get as much.
You can’t simultaneously ask for a section to be done faster AND less violently (especially not on a uterus that has been labouring for 3 days with active infection).
I’m hoping that there were written advice leaflets given to her with things like “the risks of prolonged labour include infection, foetal death, instrumental delivery and CS and all the associated maternal risks- including infection, bleeding prolonged hospitalisation and death”.
I’m a big believer in information leaflets. If I gave a leaflet, I know that the patient has been provided with written information about risks and benefits. If they choose not to read it, or to throw it away and forget about it, or not to believe it, at least I did everything I could to make them aware of the situation.
Also, this is another reason why obstetricians play the dead baby card, even if the risk is low.
People tend to remember being told that their bad choices may kill their baby, even if they don’t remember much else in a risk/benefit discussion.
Given that this was such a predictable situation, and no suggestion of the mother’s incapacity to make decisions about her health was ever made, I’d be very surprised if there was anything but EXTENSIVE notes on the discussions about risk.
In fact, I’d put money on these being some of the most beautifully kept, exhaustive medical records you’ve ever seen. Everyone involved would probably have had a bad feeling they’d be called to explain their actions in a court when it went inevitably wrong, and that bad feeling would have started long before labour.
That is usually the point where you contact your indemnity organisation and they advise you to keep scrupulous, extensive notes.
this is another reason why obstetricians play the dead baby card
I hate that phrase. On several occasions I’ve been talking with someone who complained, as if it was an unfair move, that her doctor “played the dead baby card.” I always ask, “Well, why was there a dead baby card for her to play?! Because you were doing something that risked killing your baby!”
Oh boy, that is just so hard, but it does appear as if much was wrong well before labour started.
Probably means the water was broken 2 days before labor started? Or more? Hoo boy.
25 minutes seems like the sort of time the crew should be high-fiving each other for making, if it hadn’t been so foreseeable, preventable, and such a *no expletives suffice* tragedy for the innocent third party.
Unspeakable.
Umm….47 these days isn’t as old as it used to be, but wanting to get pregnant again might not be the best idea (Please note, I myself am 47)
Considering my grandparents were 45 and 48 when I was born…
“47 these days isn’t as old as it used to be”
These days, 47 may not be as old as it used to be for the mother, but it’s just as old as it has ever been for her eggs.
47 these days isn’t as old as it used to be
When it comes to eggs, it’s just as old as it used to be.
The oldest woman who was ever documented to have had a baby with her own eggs through IVF–and her only fertility problem was age; she did IVF just to speed things up/increase her chances–was 46. And there’s only one of her. Here’s a story on her (note that they had to transfer 4 embryos to get one baby):
http://www.bionews.org.uk/page_424607.asp
One east coast clinic has claimed success in a 49yo woman whose eggs were harvested when she was 47, but that wasn’t confirmed–it was in a press release, not a medical journal–and another patient at that clinic told me that her doctor told her that the 49yo in question had done TWO DOZEN back-to-back IVF cycles, at a cost of upwards of $300,000, freezing every embryo she made in those 24 months and testing them all for genetic normality, in order to get the “one good egg.”
If you look at the CDC’s statistics on IVF success rates, which are available in the most user-friendly format on SART.org, you’ll see that the chances of a FERTILE woman–that is, a woman who is doing IVF solely because her husband has “male factor infertility” (i.e. they need a doctor to get the sperm into the egg)–having a baby after a round of IVF drop starkly with age:
– Women under 35: 43.8%
– Women 35-37: 36.6%
– Women 38-40: 25.8%
– Women 41-42: 15.4%
– Women over 42: 8.3%
And that optimistic 8.3% number is what you get when you lump all fertile women over 42 together. The CDC site breaks it down more here: http://www.cdc.gov/art/pdf/2013-report/art_2013_national_summary_report.pdf
Look at page 21. You’ll see the following:
– While 25% of 40yo women got pregnant from IVF, only 12% of 43yo did, and half of them lost their babies.
– Similarly, only 8% of 44yo women got pregnant and almost half lost their babies. Only 4% of women over 44 got pregnant and only 3% had babies.
Those numbers are much higher than they used to be because a lot of clinics are now using CCS or similar testing to determine which embryos are chromosomally normal before implanting them. Obviously you can’t do that without doing IVF, so natural pregnancies in women in this age range are much less likely to “take” (i.e. many end in miscarriage before they’re even confirmed) or to last (many end in miscarriage later on).
Goodness. Those numbers make me think I won the lottery.
I’m glad you won. 🙂
What about the 24 hours of the mother arguing with the midwife? That’s an order of magnitude more than 25 minutes. Plus, I will bet that midwife has agonies about this case, wondering if there wasn’t something different she could have said or done that would have brought the mother to her senses. How ghastly.
She won’t be able to get pregnant again because she’s 47 fucking years old. I gave birth at 41 and knew going in there was a good chance I’d never have a second (and a major postpartum complication made it a reality). This bitch is cuh-ray-zee.
She won’t be able to get pregnant again because she’s 47 fucking years old.
Seriously. It was a medical miracle that she got pregnant at all at that age, particularly with her first child. Seems like her grasp of reality is pretty tenuous all around.
So laboring at home for 3 days was fine and dandy, but 25 minutes from ED to delivery was way too long. Yeah. Cuckoo town.
A vet where I live was sued last year for stupid reasons like that. The owner called her at closing time because her dog had dystocia, the vet referred her to us, telling her to come in immediately, since we are the ones covering for her for emergency and we are better equipped for c-section and have more staff ready to handle the puppies. They never came to see us, instead they waited until 10am the next morning to go see her. She did the emergency surgery, surprisingly 4 out the of the 10 puppies were still alive. Then the owners sued her claiming its her fault the puppies died because it took her too long to take the puppies out of the uterus during the surgery and she didn’t have enough staff to take care of them. Fortunately she lost her case.
Oh fuck me. That’s got to be animal abuse.
It probably says a lot about the state of pets that I’m not surprised nor outraged by this kind of behavior anymore. She doesn’t even come close.
People are willing to wait ridiculous amounts of time and try very dangerous home treatment before they see the vet.
At 47 she probably won’t be able to get pregnant again anyway.
Because of her stupidity she let what is most likely the only baby she will ever have die a completely preventable, awful death.
Given that where I work in the UK any primips over 40 are consultant led and induced as close to 39weeks as possible, and clearly advised that their risk of CS is about 50%, I’m going to guess that there were multiple meetings with her and about her, and extensive documentation, with many advice calls to the MDU before she even went into labour.
In other words, I’m guessing the obstetricians and midwives could see this outcome a mile off, did everything they could to persuade her to agree to induction and transfer during labour and documented her repeated refusal, despite being informed of the risks, exhaustively.
I have a feeling that if this is the case, her legal team will advise her to drop it.
I’m doing the pathology side of it-the actual cause of death and placental features. I’m staying well away from the obstetricians and midwives roles-they can fight that out for themselves.
There’s triple vessel necrotising funisitis in the cord meaning that infection had been present for at least 3 days and probably far longer.
Oh that is just awful. But utterly, utterly foreseeable.
What law in the UK would prohibit a woman from giving birth without a licensed MW or physician? I have doubts that this is true (no, I’m not condoning this as a good thing to do)
It’s illegal for anyone who is not registered as a midwife or medical doctor to assist at a birth unless under the supervision of a midwife or doctor (unless it is an unforeseen emergency). It’s not illegal to give birth unassisted but to be sure of staying on the right side if the law the woman needs to labour and deliver alone. Any companion would be liable to prosecution.
It is a law specifically designed to prevent a Lisa Barret scenario.
No doulas or “friends” attending births.
The law understands precipitous labour. Parents, paramedics, taxi drivers and passersby catching babies who arrive unexpectedly aren’t prosecuted.
It does NOT allow for labouring at home while “supported” by a “childbirth educator”, or her partner who has read an article about natural birth and thinks all he has to do is boil some water and have some warm towels waiting….
You absolutely can legally UC… But the emphasis is on UNATTENDED.
British women can demand to deliver at home and refuse to deliver in hospital. In which case, my understanding is that the NHS HAS to provide midwives. So UC is very, very rare.
Thannks-I knew it was a bit more complicated than just banning unassisted birth outright.
If it were ever possible (though highly unlikely), I would be proud to be your patient when I have kids. 🙂
A friend of mine – we see each other at our local coffee shop – is in (legit) midwifery school. I asked if I could be her patient when she’s completed her training, etc.
Thank you, but I’m just a GP.
Cradle to grave, knowing a little bit about everything, being comfortable with diagnostic uncertainty, using time as a diagnostic tool and advocating for my patients, that’s me.
I leave the clever medicine to others.
I take quite a few work experience students every year and we discuss various pros and cons about different specialities. For me personally, risk management and diagnostic uncertainty would be absolutely horrible-I would be terrified that I’d missed something and would end up sending every patient in for a second opinion. I like my medicine black and white-under the microscope it’s either cancer or it isn’t. It’s interesting how many potential medical students have very little idea about what GPS actually do, the answers I get when I ask them range from doing medicals, arranging tests so you don’t have to go to hospital for them, working for the specialists in the hospitals, or trying to save money by not letting people be referred to hospital.
I tell them it’s an entirely different concept from hospital specialities, and get them to think of it graphically– I know a huge amount about a very tiny area, GPs know a certain amount about a huge area but overall the volume of knowledge is the same. At this stage of my career, my general medical knowledge is probably at the same level as the girl guide first aid badge award!
But that is the joy of medicine.
You have to be reasonably intelligent and good at both pattern recognition and puzzle solving, but after that there is a niche for everyone!
You and I both know that while the stereotypes aren’t always true, specialties do tend attract certain personality types.
GPs are the people who tended to play hard rather than work hard in medical school, who love gossip and who are generally soft touches and bleeding heart liberals.
Surgeons are high functioning sociopaths.
Neurologists complete the Times crossword daily, in pen.
A&E are adrenaline junkies who probably base jump or sky dive on their days off.
Psychiatrists wear tweed and are a bit odd.
Radiologists were encouraged to sit in a dark room and avoid patients for a reason.
Pathologists are just happy that that can’t make the situation worse (I kid, you do important work).
Sometimes GP is barely medicine and veers into social work, providing simple common sense or a secular confessional, but I do believe we make people healthier and feel better.
Its the same even in the lab specialities-all cytologists have OCD, all forensic pathologists are ham actors, and microbiologists were the weird kids who ate their own scabs….
Anyone who can recognise Staph Aureus by smell alone *definitely* qualified as a weird kid. Bless them.
I can recognize C diff by smell alone. Close enough or does not qualify because no one who’s smelled C diff forgets it ever again?
Oh no…C Diff is not easily forgotten.
The microbiologists who can sniff a petrie dish and diagnose the organisms… that,as a specific skill to have voluntarily developed, is a bit odd.
I remember doing that in micro class in college.
And speaking of horrific smells: the pus from a pilonidal cyst!! I had a poor peds resident who just about fainted when I was teaching her how to drain one. Then, I left the room and asked her if she wanted to grab lunch really quick. She turned green. Poor thing! But she was a total trooper by the end of the rotation and is going to be great at urgent care (her choice of specialities).
The worst smell in the world is a retained tampon. I did in general practice attachment as a medical student-she had been having a brown discharge for a few days. Turned out she’d forgotten to remove a tampon at the end of her last period. I think she had one in, then put another one and that pushed the first tampon’s retrieval string up inside. She took the second one out but forgot or didn’t know there was another.
Anyhoo, the GP got her up on the couch, stuck in the speculum and found this rancid, decomposing black mass that absolutely reeked. It was the worst smell I’ve ever come across, this was many years ago but even thinking about it makes me gag. Poor woman was mortified, she stank the room out and the doctor had to move offices for a day until it cleared. He double bagged it and put it in the clinical waste bin, but the smell couldn’t be controlled, it was like a physical presence in the room, this black miasma that seeped out. At least it cured her discharge!
Been there, smelled that!
yup, I’ve been the physician in that scenario twice (two different women, thank goodness–it’s a lesson I don’t think most women easily forget next time around!) and I can absolutely second that. couldn’t use that exam room again that day. no chance. but the women were both incredibly thankful and pretty embarrassed, and I was grateful to be able to figure it out without making them feel awful and stupid about it.
on a related note, interestingly, one had been “diagnosed” with some sort of vaginitis (at an urgent care center, before coming to my clinic) and given antibiotics–but had not received any sort of exam. don’t get me started about diagnosing pelvic conditions without a pelvic exam! what’s the big deal about doing a pelvic exam?! sometimes you need to look at closely the body part in question *gasp!* to figure out what’s wrong with it, and then the answer is just staring you in the face. there are probably lots of analogies here to less-than-qualified providers in OB care diagnosing things that they don’t understand because they don’t know what to look for, where to look, what questions to ask. or because it’s off their radar, being outside the scope of their comfort zone….
/rant
I managed to forget one and doubled up once when I was a teen, but found it a few hours later rather than days. No stench, but I was watching for TSS symptoms because it freaked me out. Never again.
Never smelled staph aureus before.
But I can diagnose yeast otitis and cutaneous myiasis by smell.
It’s the same in the math world. I joke around that we statisticians are the ones who thought accounting was too exciting.
Mabel! Another paed/perinatal pathologist in the house! Hello from down under.
We are few and far between!
I love our histo folk. They are SO anal-retentive. I really want that in a histo lab!
A good friend of mine works (at a different company) on the fixing/embedding/slicing/mounting side, and you should see how she makes dinner. I’m afraid to touch it and mess it up.
I second the ED stereotype: we are all woo-woos with ADHD.
“Sometimes GP is barely medicine and veers into social work,”
Just “sometimes”? I think 75% of what I do is probably social work.
Pathologists are just happy that that can’t make the situation worse (I kid, you do important work).
Heh. I know you’re just making a joke with the stereotype, but a bad biopsy call can be deadly. Fortunately, most pathologists love the microscope and want to stare at the slides until they figure EVERYTHING about it out.
Yep like the saying goes: GPs know less and less about more and more until they know nothing about everything. Specialists know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
That could explain Dr. Ben Carson
The world needs good GP’s. Specialists are great, but you guys are the front lines; the ones who see things first, who know when to transfer to specialists, who know when to just assure us that things will be fine, and the ones who hopefully keep us grounded when things start getting scary.
A good GP is a truly wondrous thing. Mine retired and I am sad about that.
My daughter wants to be a GP. I’m absolutely for it. We need more good GP’s!!
Dear god.
Yeah, good luck with that lawsuit.
‘nulli prosecu’ – no case to answer.
maternal autonomy – her body, her choice, her bad.
stillborn baby – not a person – no harm done
No.
Harm done.
Just not anything that would appear to fall under the definitions of medical negligence or malpractice, the medical team appear to have done their best, given the circumstances.
Because the consequences of your own bad choices don’t come under tort law.
Exactly – nothing will come of this
Just because there will be no legal sanction doesn’t mean there are no consequences, or that no lessons can be learnt.
To be exact, harm was done… by the mother.
harm cannot be done to something that doesn’t exist
The baby existed. If she had delivered him a day earlier, he’d be alive right now. But she chose not to.
Nope – mother can kill the Fetus by her choices.
No live birth equals no rights or existence in any legal sense at all.
No harm done, nothing to see here, move along, move along.
There’s a difference between nothing the law can prosecute, and nothing that can be learnt or taken from this terrible scenario.
Whatever drove this mother’s decision making, I’m sure she wouldn’t thank you for characterising her fetus/baby as ‘nothing to see here’.
We can agree that people have choices, and rights, without having to agree with every choice they make or the way they choose to exercise those rights.
And what, pray, do you suppose she has taken from this scenario?
I am autonomous and the law can’t touch me, so whinge and bitch all you want, it makes not one dot of a difference.
I think you’re missing a critical point here: The woman in this scenario wanted a living baby. The lesson to be taken from this is that ignoring medical advice and arguing with your provider for 24 hours during a critical situation are bad ideas if you want to bring home a baby and be healthy yourself.
Who exactly do you want to charge legally for this and why? What would it help to prosecute someone in this scenario and again who?
Not missing the point at all. The point is that there is no case.
Why are you bringing it up at all? No one is arguing for legal consequences. If you have no other agenda then you are simply stating the obvious for no clear reason.
What are you talking about?
Mabel said “The mother is suing the hospital for killing her baby”
No one here is arguing for legal consequences.
Doesn’t mean there can’t be lessons learnt.
Doesn’t mean that it isn’t important that people know if they choose to ignore medical advice there can be real life consequences ie someone dies or is left seriously ill.
The mother is suing the hospital for failing to treat her properly resulting in negative consequences to her health and loss of a desired fetus. It’s a ridiculous case and will be thrown out. You seem to be arguing that the mother should face some sort of legal charges for her actions. Am I misreading you?
Yes you are.
Well, then, perhaps you could clarify? What is your point? You’ve commented several times, which suggests that it’s fairly important to you, but you haven’t really explained what you want to say or why.
I have no idea, and I don’t much care what she has taken from it.
The law draws simple lines, and life is complicated. If the choice is between allowing women to make their own decisions about their own bodies, and not allowing it, then I’d allow it. Which is how we get to here.
Just because I support the right to make that choice doesn’t mean I think the way it is exercised in any particular case is right.
By the way, it is the law that characterises her fetus as ‘nothing to see here’.
I know.
If you know, then why ascribe the comment to me?
You said it. If you don’t like being disagreed with, don’t be sloppy.
If you want to pick a fight, try harder.
No, the law said it. And you agreed that you knew the law said it. What exactly would you like to fight about?
I have no wish to fight, but you seem to want to.
Or perhaps you just have an unfortunate, slightly pugnacious, manner.
Probably a pro-lifer trying to force you to agree with them, based on the language and anger.
Why do I need your agreement?
You certainly need something, why else are you here?
To partake in your intelligent and delightful communication.
Oh I think that’s right. But it’s fun to watch the dancing.
Dancing on your own is really kind of sad and pathetic.
Well you should stop then. I’m sorry you feel that way about your habits.
Ooh diddums.
Nope, wrong assumption again. Not a pro lifer.
2/10, troll harder next time.
Which bit didn’t you understand Mishimoo?
Or are you just disappointed that your standard pro-life retort didn’t get the desired respond?
Response*
I’ll have to dock a point for that, sorry. 1/10
Now that is just pugnacious.
So far you have called me narrow minded, sloppy and pugnacious.
Pot..kettle?
Thinking the law is the only way to resolve issues you don’t like is narrow minded. Not name-calling, fact citing.
Sloppy-just read what you’ve written.
Pugnacious-you’re spoiling for a fight. If I took your tone, we’d be fighting now. I’m respectfully responding to your specific remarks.
Go and entertain yourself, the adults are busy.
Your opinion is very important to me,thank you.
So, by your rules, my respectful response should be that you are ignorant, smug and opinionated, with an inflated sense of self worth?
There is harm done in the sense that women who are over 40 weeks pregnant obviously want to have a live baby. Then other women come over and tell them to not listen to their doctor, that they don’t need medical care, convince them to birth at home without any real assistance. They lie to women and tell them it’s safer at home, many of those women are convinced by the natural childbirth industry that they are taking the safest path, which is far from the truth, they are not properly informed of the risk. When they lose their baby as a result of the lies the fake midwives and birth junkies told them, it’s not ‘no harm done, move along’. Those lay midwives should be held responsible when they do things AMA and it result in the death of a baby.
So, try to report them or sue them and see how you get along. Good luck with that.
So narrow minded. You can’t sue people for being vicious, or ignorant. Which is a good thing.
They can be called out in public for their actions, exposed as hypocrites and birth junkies. You’ll see Dr T publishes under her real name, how many times has she been successfully sued for what she writes about these birth hobbyists?
Seeing as it is not my domain of work or expertise nor do I have any links with any victim, it is not my place to sue them.
But as a medical professional myself, I understand how much harm someone can do out of ignorance and I still have the right to believe that anyone offering any kind on medical care (including birth) should be expected to have a certain level of medical knowledge and education and have accountability for their actions.
Accountability for their actions? How about reporting them? Good luck with that too.
Exactly. It’s a free market, people can sell what they like and others are free to buy it.
Agreed, and the market is regulated by the law.
Soooo obsessed with the legal system. Surely if you’d spent any time in it you’d realise it is a blunt instrument that doesn’t fix all that much. Good people behave anyway, bad people either work out how to dodge trouble, or get punished over and over again for the same thing.
Name and shame the people who give bad advice, dry up their authority. Make sure they get a good long mention in the coroner’s report.
We don’t punish people for being ignorant and obnoxious. Not yet, anyway.
It’s a free market, people can sell what they like and others are free to buy it.
No, it’s not. It’s illegal to do false advertising, which includes lying about your own goods or services or lying about someone else’s. It’s illegal to make medical claims about the “snake oil” you’re selling. Some things are just plain illegal to sell even if you’re telling the truth about them (“Buy my handcrafted meth–it will get you really high”). And some things are only legal to sell if the seller has certain educational and professional qualifications; for instance, only pharmacists can sell prescription drugs.
All of that is highly relevant, IMHO, to Certified Pretend Midwives who tout the alleged health benefits of their services, lie about the safety of their services, lie about the alleged dangers of giving birth at the hospital, and sell healthcare services despite having no medical training. Now if only we could get our state legislators to see what a problem this is…
and the fact that there is nowhere to report them IS the problem.
Exactly
Not a full-term fetus, sorry. Roe v. Wade protects a mother’s absolute right to abortion only up to viability, defined in the law as 6 months’ gestation. Beyond that, states can and do completely ban abortion.
Except if the choice happens to be a full term high risk unassisted stunt birth.
Yes, that’s where things get complicated from an ethical standpoint, because the mother’s right to consent or not consent to XYZ medical treatment conflicts with the baby’s right to remain alive.
To be clear, I am and always have been adamantly pro choice, but when you’re talking about a full-term fetus it does have, IMHO, a right to life. Once the baby is capable of surviving and thriving outside the mother, whether that’s at 7-8 months or 9 months or whatever, IMHO it has rights. By that point I can’t really conceptualize the mother as having any right to abortion anymore, not just because of the baby’s rights but because once it’s that big, getting it out of the mother is difficult no matter how you do it, so it’s not like the woman can avoid the risk and potential trauma of childbirth by aborting it.
But not having the right to abort doesn’t mean she lacks the right to decide what medical treatment she’s willing to undergo during childbirth.
It is a minefield. As I’ve said before, the law is a blunt instrument, and ultimately, if the mother’s consent to medical treatment (or even screening or testing) is needed to achieve a healthy baby, and she won’t give consent, then that’s the end of the story.
I agree. That’s one of those situations where I think the person in question is morally wrong (how could you decline a medical procedure that could save your baby’s life or brain function?), but legally right.
The law, at least US law, is no good at subtlety and too many people in this country are hell-bent on interfering with women’s bodies, so making laws that balance the ethical considerations here, not to mention implementing/enforcing those laws, is just a total minefield, as you say.
Thank you for a mature response. I think I am in agreement with you.
It’s a really grey area. No one wants to put any law to this because of bodily autonomy of women. But it does create some weird consequences:
A mother can do whatever she wants before the kid is born and cannot be held responsible if the baby dies as a direct result from those choices.
If a doctor does a mistake resulting in the death of the baby, even before the birth, he’s held accountable and can lost his license and be sued.
If a women gives birth to a life baby, but then the baby shows signs of illness and you don’t bring it to a doctor and it dies, it’s criminal negligence.
A mother can do whatever she wants before the kid is born and cannot be held responsible if the baby dies as a direct result from those choices.
That’s not actually true. There are of course legal protections for abortion, but causing the death of a fetus by other means is prosecutable in most states, and the language of the statutes often doesn’t indicate any exception for the mother being the one who caused its death:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/fetal-homicide-state-laws.aspx
True, but I meant it regarding the birth of the baby, not mothers trying to kill their foetus.
47 year old first time mother, 3 WEEKS postdates, 2 days of stalled labor…? Jesus.
Yes, really. What could possibly go wrong? (sarcasm)
Sorry, mabelcruet, but I think you’re mistaken here. The birther is now suing the hospital for killing her crotch fruit. I see no mother here.
Out of curiosity, what does “late Booker” mean?
It means she presented herself late for antenatal care. In the UK, when a woman gets pregnant, she usually goes to her general practioner/family doctor, and then they refer them to the local hospital where they are seen in obstetrics and their care planned. This is usually about 8-10 weeks gestation. Women who don’t present themselves until late in the pregnancy are late bookers, we’ve had cases where the mother chose not to seek any obstetric or midwife care until she was well into the third trimester.
What I’m missing in watching this cult is the Blame the Victim ideology, something so risible in cancer woo, for instance (they just didn’t do it right, whether genuflection or purity of thought and deed). Maybe they’re unique in this respect?In any case, doubling down is pretty close, so I’m not sure it makes any difference.
Oh, they blame the “victim” nonstop. Blame for going to an ob, lying on your back, not doing the brewer diet perfectly, not “trusting birth” enough, allowing someone to bring “negative energy” near you…
A mother lost her baby. It is desperately sad. The End.
Who are you to comment? You weren’t there, you don’t know the full story.. you are not even a Dr. and haven’t been for 13years. Let this mother grieve without vindication. Shame on you.
Dr. Tuteur is a doctor.
Can you please point to where the mother is grieving? Are you privy to other/more/different information?
She is still a dr, though she no longer practices obstetrics. This is not news.
The mother put her birth catastrophe in the public sphere. Her comments read like she sees the “successful” vaginal birth as more important than the baby’s life. This is a pretty repellent view. If she’s simply expressed herself badly, she has a right to know she’s been misunderstood. If she means it, she needs to know that HER ATTITUDE IS NOT OKAY. If she wants to make these statements without attracting public attention, she needs to stop making them in public.
Oh, and I am plenty willing to withhold vindication from her. I think you meant “vilification”.
I am SO SICK of this “You’re not a doctor.”
She went to medical school. She USED to practice medicine. She RETIRED to stay home with her children (how dare she?!?!).
Being non-practicing doesn’t negate YEARS of experience. She has NOT lost her medical license – it is inactive. If you’re going to argue, get the facts right.
Tell me about it. Doctor is a degree. If she’s earned the degree, she’s a doctor. Period.
And I’m an inactive attorney right now. I apparently lost my ability to discuss legal matters when I failed to pay my active bar dues this year. I was fine as of December, though. Now I’m apparently just the average non-attorney.
Can you tell this argument pisses me off?
Nope. Not at all.
I think we’ve had this discussion before. I let my teaching license expire when I A) moved out of state and B) left the teaching profession. I guess that means I can no longer explain mathematics to people.
Yeah. We lost all of our higher education credentials.
I guess it’s a good thing that teachers here don’t hold a license like doctors and attorneys, or my mom would have been in big trouble. She left school about 9 years ago, returned 7 years later (she worked in the field but not at school during that time). It was almost as her 25 years at school meant something after all.
Anyway, if Dr Amy isn’t to be taken seriously because she retired, then why fucking Jan of the no knowledge of the no amniotic fluid is revered like the Virgin come again?
My uncle’s PhD is still valid, and we could call him doctor (though that’d be weird, ’cause Dr. Uncle? and he doesn’t want people confusing him for an MD), though he retired from both shrinking heads and teaching several years ago.
I guess I could be Dr Dr Gene. I have two doctoral degrees. But I only use the title when I’m working. At home, school, the store, a party, wherever, I’m just Gene. Even at work if someone slips and calls me by my first name in front of a patient (the horror!!), it’s not that big of a deal. The only reason I always introduce myself to patients/family as Dr Gene at work is because if I don’t, the patients tend to bitch that they never saw a doctor, just a nurse. Must be the boobs…they tend to suck all knowledge and education from my brain. (Not denigrating nurses at all! Our male nurses (high percentage in the ED) get called “Doctor” at least once a shift)
MrC knows he’s in trouble with me if I call him DrC. He has a Ph.D. so it’s a valid title.
And it’s an accusation that inevitably comes from someone who has never been a doctor, and generally could never have been.
I’m a practising medical specialist. I’m glad that someone with the knowledge and experience that Dr Amy has, together with the time to analyse all the data and blog about it, is available to do so.
And honestly, even if my baby was destined to die no matter what, PUSHING HIM OUT OF MY VAGINA WOULDN’T BE SOMETHING I GAVE A CRAP ABOUT AFTERWARDS.
Jesus Christ. That is not grieving! It is BOASTING about something that matters not at all under the circumstances (and I personally don’t think it should ever matter… but that’s just me since I never wanted a vaginal birth to begin with).
So yeah. The mother’s response isn’t normal. It’s just not. Telling other women they can VBAC is irresponsible since some of them could also lose their babies… or die themselves… if something goes drastically wrong. You say it’s wrong to be on her case here? What’s wrong is the entire natural birth movement that promotes natural birth at all costs and results in dead babies and mothers. THAT is wrong.
You guys don’t get to encourage dangerous behavior and then pretend you are being persecuted when something goes wrong. The natural parenting movement pities women who get c-sections, bullies them for not breast feeding, and then starts crying that everyone is SO MEAN when we point out they took a risk, came out on the wrong end, AND THEN LOL’ED ABOUT IT. WTF?
You said it!
Honestly, pushing a baby out of my vagina when I knew that they would die immediate was one of the most harrowing, traumatizing things I have ever done, and I had to do it with three babies/two pregnancies.
((Hugs))
I can imagine. That’s awful to go through (I have t but I can empathize as best I can). I’m sorry you had to do it even once, much less multiple times.
suspect this mother never thought he’d actually die…they’d call the EMT’s and it would be fine. She seems so disconnected from the death but bizarrely connected to the birth. Abnormal…I can’t see it any other way.
I did it with one, though she died before I delivered her. No one should ever have to experience what we did. I’m so sorry you have had to do it twice.
Thank you. It sucked big time. The worst was that the doctors never really explained why I had to deliver vaginally. I had major problems with pre term labor and they couldn’t stop it at 18 weeks with the twins and 16 weeks with the singleton. I had two additional ectopic pregnancies and managed three surviving children, born at 36, 32, and 24 weeks. I got very little pain relief with the twins, adding insult to injury. I switched doctors. I got an epidural with the singleton, but still didn’t get a proper explanation for why it had to be that way. It wasn’t until I started commenting here and some of the doctors who are regulars explained it to me that I understood why. The only live child that came out the natural way suffered shoulder dystocia. I refused to deliver vaginally after that. They did try to convince me to try for a vaginal birth with my middle son, using the argument that at 32 weeks he’d be small enough that SD wasn’t a huge concern, but I was so traumatized by that point in addition to delivering a baby that would have to be whisked off to NICU regardless, that I wasn’t willing to take any additional chances. That baby was huge for his gestational age, weighing in at 5 lbs, 4 oz. My youngest was a crash section that was done as fast as possible because they were losing both me and the baby. I was only 24 weeks, but they were doing their best to keep at least one of us alive. He was a teeny tiny 504g, but after six long months, came home.
MrC and I had a pregnancy scare about a year ago. I was late and a hpt came out positive in spite of the fact I had a tubal right after my youngest was born. Turns out that the failure rate goes up a little bit after ten years. I didn’t know that. Anyway, I made an appointment with my doctor and the morning of the appointment (a few days later), my period started. Who knows what really happened there. I don’t count that as part of my OB history.
*hugs*
She was bragging online about her successful vaginal birth. What kind of person calls pushing a dead baby out of her vagina a successful birth?
That’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is a movement encouraged a mother to medically neglect her baby and it died. And they’re still encouraging people to do it.
You’re absolutely right, it is desperately sad, particularly as it would have been entirely preventable had the mother chosen to get the proper care. It would be one thing if everything that could have been done to prevent the baby’s death was done, and the baby died anyway. In this case, the mother purposely chose to be without immediate access to life-saving care, and that stupid, stupid decision had fatal consequences. Bluntly, she fucked up. She chose to take an unnecessary risk by having an unassisted childbirth at home. Unfortunately, the baby paid for her fuck up with his life.
“you don’t know the full story.”
Yeah I’ve heard that before. When Gavin Michael died. Guess what? The full story was far, far worse than what dr Tuteur posted while she was the only voice speaking to prevent him from being buried twice.
That’s exactly what we were told about all other babies dr Tuteur has written about, and whenever there was an epilogue in the shape of a final order or a coroner report, the full story made me hate even more apologists like you who tried to shut dr Tuteur up.
A mother lost her baby in a very preventable way. It is desperately sad and we need to insure that no other baby dies such a useless preventable death. The end.
Not to mention that the mother played a form of Russian Roulette with her own life. Did she give a thought to what might happen to those who love and depend on her in her eagerness to promote herself?
Vindication? That’s an ironic word choice. I think you mean victimization, but the problem here is that the mother believes her trust in birth was vindicated by the fact that the baby transited her vagina even though he ended up dead.
I actually googled “vindication” to be sure I understood it correctly. Ironically, my understanding of “vindication” has been vindicated!
Also, the word she/he/ze was looking for might have been looking for might be vilification.
Well what would you say about a mother who threw her child in a river hoping to teach him how to swim because “our bodies are made to swim” , then after the kid drowned explained on Facebook that even though he is dead it isn’t such a bad method to teach a kid how to swim ? You would call that child abuse and manslaughter.
I’m 100% pro choice and supportive of women’s bodily autonomy but you have to admit that this a problematic case. Abusive parents also think that beating up their children is a very legitimate way to educate them but that doesn’t mean that we let them brag about it on the internet after they killed their children.
Sigh. Do we have to have the tutorial again? Dr. Tuteur did not renew her license to practice medicine when she stopped active practice to rear her children. She still has her M.D. and uses her title. She also stays up-to-date on a lot of OB/GYN/General medicine material because she writes, publishes and speaks about it on a regular basis.
Sad? For whom? Not for the freaking birther who LOLed about it. This thing is not worthy to be called a mother. Its worth laid in its vagina, aparently, and the vagina proved faulty, so it has no worth at all now.
Here. I said it. Eat me alive now. Everyone who tries to invent excuses for the creature who bred. Oh, poor mom is shocked! We shouldn’t judge! She’s grieving! I guess sometimes it sucks being decent people. Like when you meet, IRL or online assholes this big. People feel drawn to find excuses to justify this level of callousness. The thing is, nothing that she ever wrote in the long, long months before birth contrasts with what she wrote after. She is still the same shitty person she used to be. She sounds the next Janet or Meg to me.
As to you, Fair Person, fuck you and your self-proclaimed, non-existing fairness. Just how much blood do you have on YOUR hands?
Unfortunately Meg’s response is all too typical of my experience with leaders of these cult-like natural birth/parenting groups. They employ group cohesion tactics and strong peer pressure to vulnerable women, and then laugh and gaslight anyone that dares to call them on their behaviour or its consequences. The implication being that you were free to make your own decision and leave anytime, even though their tactics were designed to just about ensure that you wouldn’t.
So basically you cannot handle harash criticism of your sick obsession with humiliating mother’s who are grieving over the deaths of their babies?
Who has humiliation ever convinced? These women distrust doctors, OBs and hospitals. Instead of building back up that relationship of trust you violate their trust by posting their stories without their permission and publically humiliating them over the loss of their children. Congratulatuons, you’re pushing these women further into their “cult”. As far as convincing pregnant women again you’re missing why they are seeking out alternatives in the first place. Its not crazy to think, OK the first time I gave birth it was horrible and my doctor was horrible and they did things I didn’t want them to do, so what’s the alternative? Instead of saying, well maybe if you do a little research you could find a better OB etc, you tell women not to even bother with a birth plan, that if they want to do a natural birth their falling for ” woo” etc. That isn’t even remotely helpful. Then you fall back into your own echo chamber of supportive commenters who want to feel less guilty about either being part of a medical industry that can be very negative and emotionally harmful to women or want to feel better able their own planned c-sections etc (even though there’s really no reason for them to feel guilt about them in the first place). This is exactly like people who say its OK to humiliate “anti-vaxxers” because their too stupid to understand studies anyways and will never change their minds. OK, then why bother?
She’s not violating anyone’s trust because, as you say, both Heket and Isaac’s mother already don’t trust obs.
Even Dr. Teuter isn’t against a woman’s choice to birth however and wherever that woman wants. She advocates for INFORMED choice, which means the mother must be given all the information and risks of her choice.
However, the current home birth, free birth, CPM, crunchy communities deliberately hide the research and the stories that contradict the party line and their misinformation can have horrific consequences.
A) Most women who have an unpleasant birthing experience find a new OB without needing Dr. Amy’s ok. That’s elementary adult living skills.
B) I’m a consumer of the medical industry, not a provider. That medical industry has saved my life (severe prematurity), my twin’s life (severe prematurity), my mom’s life (postnatal pre-eclampsia), my youngest brother (late post-dates needing an induction) and is currently saving my sister-in-law’s and nephew’s lives (severe pre-eclampsia starting in the first trimester). If any of us had decided to go NCB at home, we’d all be dead by now.
C) It’s NOT ok to encourage women to follow a course that led to the death of an infant. My best friend died when she missed a stop sign on a country road; her family did not encourage people to ignore traffic signals in the wake of her death. My little brother died of a medical misdiagnosis; my parents didn’t encourage people to listen to doctors and ignore their instincts. I give grieving people lots of leeway, but not unlimited leeway.
1. they’re
2. The woman whose post was referenced the other day (the mother of the late baby Isaac) has not been identified by Dr. Amy. Her words were not put here to humiliate her, they were put here so that her baby would not be forgotten and to shine a light on the real consequences of practicing UBAC. Her story (Isaac’s story, really) will be deleted on the UBAC group I’m sure, but not here.
3. There are many people here who came to criticize and stayed to learn. Maybe you will too.
4. There are also many here who feel no guilt whatsoever about being part of the “medical industry.” We spend all day, every day helping others. And yes, we resent it when those who don’t know medicine think they know better.
“Congratulatuons”
“their too stupid to understand studies anyways ”
Just a giggle for posterity.
Pro-tip, writing a draft and then editing it for spelling and clarity will, indeed, make you appear less stupid overall.
I doubt that will happen, though. I think this disorganized barfing of words is exactly how Brooke thinks.
We all make typos, but when you improperly use “their” like six fucking times in one paragraph – well, we have a fundamental problem then.
I think her thesis is that Dr T is humiliating this woman to prove a point and that humiliation is ineffective, but that’s just a guess; her writing is really unclear, and her tendency to tangent is high. Again, I think she’s a very unclear thinker, and that is why her writing is so terrible.
I didn’t have a very good experience of birth (with a Canadian midwife) but I don’t get why/how the default is, “do something really dangerous next time around.” I could choose another provider next time around. I could change providers if I’m not happy. Freebirthing in my home or choosing a poorly educated provider (CPM) would not be default options.
She’s not grieving. She’s celebrating that she got her UBAC, lol. Oh yeah the baby died, BUT SHE GOT HER UBAC, lol!!!!111!!
Point me to her actually posting about how sad she is that she murdered her baby, and I’ll change my tune. But from what she posted, she’s not grieving a baby, she only cares about celebrating a UBAC.
But don’t forget it wasn’t quite a UBAC as she had her emergency team present for the last bit – shame about that, but oh well she achieved her main objective lol
(SATIRE)
That’s the part of her post where NCB dogma speaks the loudest. The EMS *almost* ruined her perfect, completely natural UBAC for her.
I know. It’s incomprehensible.
HER body worked like it was supposed to! It was the BABY who was broken. No use crying over spilt milk! He was a goner anyway! We can and should celebrate her body working just as designed!
That’s where I just want to throw myself on the floor and pitch a fit that would make a toddler proud. Our bodies are “designed” to deliver a live offspring. The whole point of pregnancy and birth is to perpetuate the species. That can’t happen with a dead baby. If the baby didn’t make it out alive, her body *didn’t* do what it was “designed” to do.
Brooke! Grow Up! Stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution. If a mother has a disdain/fear/hate of doctors and medicine and hospitals she does not need to have her feelings validated..she needs to get professional help. The mother who so feared/hated/avoided going to an OB/Gyn had her full term otherwise healthy infant die during childbirth. We here are publicizing her forum posts so her baby is not buried twice.
I don’t know, I’d say she handled the fuck out of that.
Brooke ” “anti-vaxxers” because their too stupid to understand studies”
Hey, Brooke: Please get your baby vaccinated.
Actually science says humiliation does work. Although I don’t think that was the point of the post.
Why would I feel guilty about being part of the “medical industry?” I’m very proud of the hard work I put in to get where I am and I’m proud of the work I do to help people in their daily lives.
Where is your contempt for people who cause harm by spreading medical misinformation?
I am a history teacher, not in medicine in the slightest. Neither of my children were/are planned c-sections. It was probably in the back of my ob’s mind when my bp unexpectly skyrocketed while in labor with #1, but they got it back under control and 14 hours later i had toddlerboy in the usual way. My mother was not the least ashamed of her planned c-section with the twins. She’d already given birth 4 times without so much as a tylenol.
As far as the antivaxxers go, it’s not a case of stupidity but of experience with the type of writing and their own certainty that they must be right. How many Supreme Court rulings have you read? I read several and although i’m considered reasonably bright, academically inclined, and have a pretty good level of reading comprehension, I struggled with them.
But then, you told us you learned how to read scientific journals in high school whereas my high school didn’t. They probably shouldn’t have awarded us a blue ribbon, eh?
I’m genuinely curious what your suggestions are for rebuilding relationships of trust with OBs and the mainstream medical community. Care to share?
Btw I feel absolutely no guilt about my planned c-section.
Me. It convinced me away from the Farm and into a glorious, maternal request induction, epidural’d hospital birth. I thank Dr. Amy every day (and my husband probably does even more).
Hi designates asshole! You with your sadistic 5% CS rate and Meg Heket would be such good friends!
That’s a good point. Isaac’s mom was doing her part to keep the C/S rate at the Brooke Approved Number.
I’m damn proud of my daughter who just graduated with a degree in Biology from a good university and is working as a Medical Scribe while she studies for the MCAT and tries to get into medical school.
I’m not “proud” of the fact that all my babies came out of my vagina. I’m ecstatic to have my three awesome kids, but the fact that they came out the “usual” way means precisely jack-shit in the grand scheme of things.
“They did things I didn’t want them to do..”
Let me put it this way; I was born with a bicuspid aortic valve. When I was nine, I had a small surgery to create a tear in the fused section of the valve, and I require yearly visits to the cardiologist for an echocardiogram and an EKG. I don’t like echoes one little bit. I find them horrifically boring, I hate being smeared with cold gel, and I hate that they give me a glorified paper towel to wear that nearly always rips at the armpits and puts my tits on full display for everyone in the room to see. Do I want them to do it? No, it sucks. But every year I put on my big girl pants and suck it up, because I know that it’s in my best interests to prevent heart failure, which would suck a hell of a lot more. Same idea with birth. Eating kale and doing prenatal yoga can do very little to prevent a shoulder dystocia or a placental abruption, or a baby who just doesn’t tolerate labor well. Birth is fairly uncontrollable, so you might as well roll with the punches, cut your losses, and accept the fact that sometimes you have to endure things that suck because it’s in your best interests in order to prevent an outcome that would suck even more.
And like birth, your surgery is much safer with a better success rate than it used to be.
My dad’s mom also had a bicuspid aortic valve. She was born in the late 1920s and had her first surgery around 1958. When they used to go in through your back instead of the front. She got all her affairs in order and wrote, updated her will, and told my grandfather to adopt out my two oldest aunts to her sister if she died so he could move on and remarry. That’s how bad her chances of coming out alive were. But if she didn’t have it done then the next time she got pregnant and went in to labor she would almost surely die and so would the baby. Thank goodness she had the surgery done and survive. That third child that would have died was my dad.
She had several more open heart surgeries after and had three different types of heart valves in her life. One time a surgeon wasn’t even sure how the hell he was going to attach a new valve because her anatomy was so distorted by that point. Had a stroke on the table from a badly designed valve that threw a clot when they went in to change it out. Had to be on blood thinners the rest of her life with the weekly to monthly protime tests that come with it.
There was a learning curve on how to treat bicuspid aortic valves but the fact that people can actually live long lives (she died in her 70s due to colon cancer. Heart valve performed admirably until the day she died.), have children without wondering if their heart is going to just give out and kill both them and their baby, and just plain live relatively normal lives is a freaking miracle. And it’s only been getting better. A co-worker of mine in her twenties just got her bicuspid aortic valve treated. Your never know there was anything wrong with her.
Medicine is an amazing thing and the demonization of it just baffles me. So many people that bitch about it just plain wouldn’t exist without interventions.
Huh, I’m the only person I know whose ever even heard of a bicuspid aortic valve. How on earth did you come across 2 people? With me, they inserted a balloon into each of the inferior vena cavas into the aortic valve. I was in the hospital overnight, followed by a 48 hour recovery time that had me bored out of my mind, but was completely pain free. Then it was right back to business as usual, and 2 decades out I’m healthy as a horse. I maybe get winded a bit faster than the average joe. The valve will need to be swapped out at some point, but they’re pretty close to coming up with a technique to do it laparoscopically, so I’m hopeful that by the time I need a new valve, recovery will be far shorter, and dramatically less of a pain in the ass. After reading about your grandmother, though, I’ve never been so happy to be a millennial! Good on her that she came through everything okay!
Because many anti-vaxxers and homebirthers have a strong ego component in their philosophies. “I’m special and educated and not like all those sheeple.”
If we make it clear that they’re not going to get their egos validated by pretending they’re more educated than doctors, hurting their kids, or (best case scenario) having births or parenting experiences that are in no way superior to other people, we’ll peel away a lot of people who might otherwise hurt their children with their own pride.
Okay then, why does this mother believe the OB that told her the baby didn’t die because of the VBAC/UBAC attempt and that an emergency CS wouldn’t have saved him (notice nothing said about an ELECTIVE CS)?
Their mentality – It’s laughable.
“The big ol’ meanie, bullying doctors will HURT ME if I labor in the hospital, so I’mma stay home! That’ll show ’em! Oh noes! My baby died! But a nicey, nicey doctor told me that it wasn’t my fault! The baby would’ve died anyway! But I pushed him out, just like I said I would, isn’t that great??? What’s that about an elective CS? Oh no… I didn’t ask about that. I just know the emergency CS wouldn’t have saved him.”
Also… did you ever think that the “cult” existed BEFORE Dr. Amy started blogging? She is a RESULT of the cult.
Oh… and I never needed anyone to make me “feel better” about my planned CS. I ASKED for it. I loved it. How about YOU start helping women who are worried about it feel better about it instead of spewing BS like a 5% CS rate? THAT is the kind of BS that makes women feel guilty.
She wasn’t grieving over the death of her child, she was boasting about her unassisted birth at home, in a birthpool, the large size of her baby and the fact that it came out of her vagina. For God’s sake read the post! Open your eyes! How blind do you have to be to not see what’s going on in the minds of these women who have been indoctrinated into this culture of natural birth at all cost. This event has unfolded right in front your eyes and you still can’t see it.
That, Brooke, is the nature of indoctrination and strict observance to an ideology and belief system. Even when presented with irrefutable evidence to the contrary you will persist with your own distorted view and interpretation of events.
Most adults can figure out that it’s possible to get another OB and go to a different hospital. Though the cult groups discourage that 100%.
The challenge is that sometimes OBs work in a group. Most are wonderful but you have no choice as to who delivers your baby. You get the doc that is on call. One or two bad eggs create a real challenge for the rest of the OBs and there isn’t much accountability. People will say “I just want a competent Doctor, who cares about bedside manner” but that’s not all there is to it. I find it challenging sometimes because I would love to see NCB followers consider other options but there doesn’t seem to be much bridge building going on. Speaking from experience, there are some doctors that I would never let near me because their behaviour with patients can be downright abhorrent. When you have a pregnant woman who is dealing with other issues like past trauma or mental health issues, these are the situations where they decide to free birth.
or a planned c-section with an ob they do trust.
I think this is a fair comment. Depends on where you live but there are parts of the US that are severely underserved and maybe the only OB you can afford and is closer than 150 miles away is an old fart who trained in the twilight sleep days and hasn’t updated his practices since. Even big cities are experiencing a shortage of OBs. But that doesn’t exonerate these fucking nutbags cheering on women to do crazy dangerous things and it doesn’t exonerate this mother in particular. I’m usually very sympathetic to the mom and I don’t like Amy’s posts about them but this woman is so callous that I have trouble believing it’s a true story.
Agreed. This will keep happening though and nobody seems to be coming up with a strategy for actually stopping it. You have two camps of people and you are with one or the other. How can you actually convince people to trust the medical establishment again?
Can’t be done. Whether it’s lack of trust in doctors, or overdeveloped trust in ‘nature’, people are allowed to make all the stupid, selfish, irresponsible decisions they like.
And others have the right to express their own views about either the action itself, or the outcome.
I deplore this woman’s choice, and would do even if Isaac had been born well and happy.
The people I feel sorry for now are pregnant women in that group, wondering how their baby will be and whether they should do something different, and so risk the ire of the ringleaders.
I am damn proud of my planned C-Section. I have seen what “magical” vaginal births do to women, how they destroy their lives and they are too embarrassed to say anything because they are supposed to be proud of their vaginal births. And you go around touting some 5% C-Section number and seem to think all us women who had sections are uneducated. I have read your posts, you can’t lie. I am supposed to believe you think I shouldn’t feel guilty for my section? I don’t believe that for a second.
THIS
Must be logical that I feel completely OK with making fun of anti vaxxers then.
I have a limited tolerance for “Brooke” posts anyway, but this time I couldn’t get beyond “mother’s (sic) who are grieving.”
If you can’t master the most simple grammatical structure of the English language – plural ‘s’ – how can you possibly discuss complex issues?
dyslexia isn’t *that* common and most adult dyslexics try much harder to use grammar and spelling correctly, even on the internet.
I’m mildly dyslexic, among other brain wiring problems, and am probably the only person I know who bothers with capitalizing, spelling, and punctuation when writing text messages. My spelling of names can be bizarre, though.
my sister too, although she still has some trouble with there and their.
The mother here humiliated herself. Her words, published by her.
If she doesn’t care for publicity, perhaps she should avoid behaving like a heat-seeker.
Instead of saying, well maybe if you do a little research you could find a better OB etc, you tell women not to even bother with a birth plan, that if they want to do a natural birth their falling for ” woo” etc.
If you read this blog, you would realize that isn’t true. Dr. Tuteur has no problem with women deciding to birth vaginally (as I recall Dr. T. birthed all four of her children that way) or doing so without pain relief. What she has a problem with is people who insist that epidurals are harmful, no one should have them, they interfere with [insert whatever good thing here], they’re a sign of weakness, yada yada yada.
Neither Dr. T nor anyone here has any issue with a woman who independently decides she wants to give birth without pain relief. You want to do that? Go right ahead. Wouldn’t be my choice, but my own mom did it and had a good experience. But what we have a problem with is people who are intolerant of women’s right to make that choice… in other words, people who judge women who choose epidurals, people who loudly insist epidurals are bad, etc.
As for birth plans, the problem isn’t having one, the problem is having a long, extremely detailed and inflexible one that’s based on total ignorance of how childbirth works and what the risks are. Google “birth plan” and you’ll see plenty like that.
As far as anti-vaxxers go…because their lies are DANGEROUS – same as promoting drunk-driving would be.
I don’t CARE if Buddy sincerely believes that he is a better safer driver when drunk but if he starts PROMOTING THE IDEA then I’m going to shout him down and if he ACTS ON THE IDEA then we definitely have a problem.
The sad thing is that these moms lose their babies….and Meg and Ruth carefully erase any evidence in these groups. If you weren’t watching (and believe me, people are watching) closely enough to watch it all unfold, you’d never know it was happening. When a death happens, they carefully cover it up. When some fool manages to do it all without apparent damage, they trumpet it to the skies. They are sick, evil, and twisted.
Encouraging others to do the exact same thing that lead to the death of your baby isn’t a healthy grief response.
I was speaking to a colleague yesterday who is in the third trimester (going to deliver at the hospital I delivered at) and I gave her my PSA in person “if anything seems remotely abnormal, just go to triage and get checked”. Why do I give her my PSA? because I do not want her to go through what I went through. I want her baby to come home (not to mention her other kids are older like mine was when her sister died, I know how awful it is all around).
Yeah, my ob politely told me off Monday for not going immediately to the hospital when I fell Sunday (and ended up on my belly) Fortunately, my poor abused knees took most of the force.
The last two post have shown the truth behind the basic premise of “natural” vaginal birth: A vaginal birth is always possible as long as you value vaginal birth more highly than a healthy, living baby and a healthy, living mother.
Once someone has decided that a vaginal birth is the most important thing in their life and the lives of people around them, there is very little anyone can do to stop bad outcomes.
In other bad, sad, and horrifying news – Lisa Barrett is attending births again.
I hope the next dead baby (and with Barrett that is going to happen soon) will land her in jail for the rest of her life, because there is no other way to stop that psychopath serial killer.
is she allowed, or is she like Lemay calling herself something like a ‘Traditional Birth Attendant’?
Per this article , Barrett is permanently barred from midwifery services.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-11/ex-midwife-lisa-barrett-fined-and-banned/5312462
Maybe she’s calling herslef a doula?
What they really need to do is bar her from being PRESENT at any births. Like, not even in the room. Unless she’s the one giving birth.
Yes there would need to be a court order saying exactly that. Like a permanent restraining order to stay the hell away from all women in third trimester.
She’ll probably say she’s just a really good friend of the mother.
Says she is there to provide services unrelated to midwifery. She was reported and nothing was done. It breaks my heart to know that until another baby dies she is free to do whatever she wants, even supported and enabled to do it by the highest ranking midwifery advocates in Australia.
“The order prohibits Ms Barrett from providing advice before, during or after a birth and any breach of the order could result in fines of up to $10,000 or jail for two years.”
Don’t know what she could legally do at a birth since she can’t open her mouth let alone do anything…..which I’m perfectly fine with.
I’m sure she’ll say she was providing ‘support,’ not ‘advice.’
Or she’ll pretend that the mother just started giving birth and that she was just randomly walking up the street and is just a good Samaritan that happened to be passing by.
she can knit. The knitting is so important.
But what are they even knitting, since hatting is a big no-no?
A sling to put the baby in so the little angel can hang out next to mom’s boob for a few years.
I belong to a knitting club (crochet-inclusive). We meet at the cafe in winter and at the pub in summer.
SHould we branch out into Birthing?
She can “hold the space” whatever that is supposed to mean.
Gloria Lemay is attending births pretending to be a doula.
I don’t think she ever stopped. She and Gloria Lemay can call themselves advocates, doulas, whatever….but people I know say they’ve been attending births all the same. Doctors in Vancouver still report seeing Gloria come in with transports, and Australian women have seen Lisa at births.
Oh my god. Please tell me this is a joke.
I wish I could. The sad, twisted joke is the fact that a registered midwife is her direct enabler, and that the oversight body to which this was reported did nothing.
WHAT? She’s doing it OFFICIALLY now? Didn’t Australia put an end to this?
Are there people who’re mad enough to hire her?
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I felt no pity for the women who hired her the last few times around. They knew who they were getting entangled with. I feel no pity for the loons who are sick enough to hire her now. I only pity the poor babies who will pay the price.
“Indeed, they do; there’s a very broad range of normal responses to grief. But boasting about your role in another person’s death is outside the realm of normal, particularly if the dead person is a close family member.
“Wow! Did you see how I was handling driving 90 mph before I hit a tree and killed my daughter?” is not a normal response.
“You’ve got to admit I’m a great arsonist!” is not a normal response to the accidental death of a your toddler in the house fire that you set.
“Look at me! I pushed a baby out of my vagina and killed him in the process!” is not a normal response to your baby’s death.”
Yes, this.
This woman didn’t just make choices that were not in the best interests of her baby, she deliberately made choices that were counter to her baby’s best interests — and then bragged about the results.
I think Meg Heket and her cronies are deplorable human beings caught up in validation from People On The Internet, but at the end of the day, this woman is ultimately responsible for the death of her baby. I made some really crappy choices when I was pregnant and had a lot of woomeisters cheering me on, but I take responsibility for choosing them as my care providers. This woman had choices, too.
They don’t learn because they don’t understand the cause and effect. If she is convinced that the outcome would be the same either way, what is there to learn from it?
Lol, I love that the cult addresses us as Dr. T’s “cult.” Yep, I’m such a cult member. Using that damn science and logic….
especially when various regulars do argue with something Dr. T. wrote. Totally cult-like
That’s obviously because we minions have been ordered to present a different argument so it can A. be shot down showing the superiority of the true path and B. to lure in innocents on the fence as grist to the cult conversion mill.
I remember the “best way to get pregnant is to have sex” post.
The general response in the comment section was “That’s probably true unless you have weird periods/uncertain ovulation dates/disorders that cause vaginal sex to be uncomfortable/a deep love of collecting personal data” which was comforting to me because vaginal sex 2-3x per week is doable for me, but really uncomfortable. Also, I like data. Therefore, OPKs are totally worth the added cost for the reduced discomfort.
Yeah, sex alone doesn’t work for my husband and me either. Otherwise, my sister teases, we’d be on our 3rd set of twins. (they run in the family)
I mean, it’s definitely the most straightforward way, but is it the best? I feel like there’s probably a better way if ‘getting pregnant’ is the goal, lots of people seem to like sex though…I don’t get it. But then I’m a biromantic asexual in a QPR with a girl, so *shrug* if I want babies in future it’s a good ol’ fashioned turkey baster for me 😉
“The best part about kids is making them”
Thornton Melon, Back to School
Haha I guess?? I just don’t see the appeal, human sexuality is weird…awesome, but weird lol
I feel like I am a terrible cult member. I occasionally disagree with Amy, I comment only sporadically and I haven’t been asked to sexually service anybody in DAYS.
Pretty much everyone that comments here is failing at being a cult member.
Hail, hail, fire and snow/Call Dr. T, we will go/far away, for to see/Dr. T, come to me.
“NO CAESAREAN WAS EVER NECESSARY AND IT’S BETTER TO DIE THAN HAVE MEDICAL INTERVENTION IN LABOR”
She’s trying to be haha funny sarcastic, but it’s only a slight stretch from what her actions show she believes.
No, she doesn’t think it’s better for the _mom_ to die than have medical interventions. She thinks it’s better for the _baby_ to die than for the mom to have medical interventions.
“she doesn’t think it’s better for the _mom_ to die than have medical
interventions. She thinks it’s better for the _baby_ to die than for
the mom to have medical interventions.”
Meg Heket, leader of dealdy online NCB cheering squads, in a nutshell.
Considering there is a whole culture of “Monday-Morning obgyn/midwife/birth junkie” that tell women their CSes were unnecessary, and they were just conforming to the patriarchy (I am a staunch feminist and hate that some people have appropriated feminism into ncb culture and that they’re being feminists, but us hospital using women are not), the doctor was rushed, the doctors don’t understand how birth works. How many C-sections do they actually agree are necessary? I’m guessing very very few.
I’m sure if Isaac had been born by CS at 40 weeks, healthy and pink, it would have been counted as unnecessary
I have no doubt. My daughter was born at 41.5 weeks via a c/s, for a while I was convinced it was unnecessary, then I realized it wasn’t done because my doctor wanted to go home, but she was worried about my and my baby. She was healthy and pink, she’s still very very healthy 9.5 years later. She doesn’t care how she was born.
42 weeks for my first here, and she WASN’T heathy and pink (she was dried out from the vernix being completely gone, and orange from pathological jaundice), and people STILL managed to convince me that the c-section was unnecessary. Over the phone (Nancy Wainer) or internet (MDC and ICAN). That’s…..crazy. Like, dangerous. It wasn’t until I got pregnant again and realized what was at stake that I started to leave the woo crowd. By that time, other differences in our lifestyles and philosophies were becoming apparent– they were suggesting lavender oil for my debilitating migraines, were to a person anti-vax, and pretty much thought the public schools were tools of Satan (I’m a teacher) and were all able to homeschool since they were all married to guys who make a lot of money.
The question is, were they able to actually teach their children? At a level that’s acceptable, I mean? I have yet to see the homeschooling mom who can teach her children better English than my own teacher mom. And I am not talking about stupid mothers. Or uneducated mothers. Or mothers whose relationship with their kids is, well, crappy. I am talking about intelligent, educated women who are great with their kids and were stunned to realize how much more rounded their kids’ knowledge became when they came to my mom.
I homeschooled for a while, during the time when my youngest had been sent to a different state for wrist surgery. It was easier to homeschool them that year than to enroll them in a Seattle area school for a few months then transfer them back to their old schools. Since I’m a teacher myself, I was more prepared than most homeschool parents, but I did harass some of my friends more than I care to admit for questions about how to teach English and writing. Again, there’s another place I had an advantage: I could post a question on my Facebook page and expect at least a half dozen teachers of that subject area to see it.
To be honest, some of the DO do an okay job homeschooling their kids, because they know their limits and farm out a lot of it to pros. Not sure at what point that stops being homeschooling and starts being “private tutors,” which is basically the only way people were educated until about 300-400 years ago anyway. But more don’t. The most appalling instance was a mom who bragged on Facebook that they did “science” when one of her kids asked what made helium balloons float and she told her.
I’m going to guess than quite a few teenagers would prefer the idea of being born via c-section rather than have to face up to the fact that they came out of their mother’s vagina. But they get over it in the end.
yep. If the baby is born by C section and lives, that proves the C section was unnecessary. If the baby is born by C section and doesn’t make it, the C section was pointless. Ergo, no need for any C section ever.
I didn’t realize she was actually being sarcastic at first.
To be honest, I don’t think she actually expect a different result.
Either she truly believe that all those baby who died were supposed to die and nothing could have been done to save them.
Or she know they could have been saved, but doesn’t care because ‘vagina’.
The victims – those who fall for the natural childbirth ideology – fucnction on the level of basic denial that their baby cannot and will not die if they do everything right. The leaders like Heket, Fraser, Lemay, Gaskin and Tritten, as well as their high priestess Melissa Cheyney know EXACTLY what a deadly birth religion they preach because they have personally all helped kill more than their fair share of perfectly healthy babies. They just don’t care. The Birth to them is more important than your, mine or any baby’s life – even their own ( both Gaskin and Fraser killed their own babies in childbirth by denying them timely medical care).
It terrifies me that women have become so obsessed with the perfect birth ‘experience’ that they fall so far down this rabbit hole. How can they forget that even 60 years ago, mothers and babies were dying in childbirth because they didn’t have access to all the wonderful, life saving technology we have today?
A lot of it as well are these antenatal groups who talk up birth like it’s supposed to be this magical, transformative experience in which your womanly power is at an all-time high…but only if you go unmedicated with no interventions.
I went to a government-funded antenatal class here in NZ. The night we talked about interventions and epidurals, the instructor DEFINITELY instituted some fearmongering against epidurals by getting out all the ‘equipment’ you’ll find yourself hooked up to if you choose an epidural. Like a catheter, an IV line for fluids, fetal monitoring meaning you couldn’t walk around etc etc etc.
She showed us a position that apparently ‘opened up’ the pelvis to assist birth.
On the night we discussed breastfeeding we weren’t even allowed to raise the subject of formula because ALL MUMS CAN BREASTFEED!
And this was from a government funded class. How the hell are women supposed to make an informed decision when the info they receive from what should be ‘trusted’ sources is so inherently biased??
Oh and I’ll also add here that in NZ, you basically HAVE to have a Midwife as your PCP during pregnancy as that’s all the government pays for. If you want an OB-GYN you either need to be high risk or pay out of pocket.
It’s easy to see why women fall for this, because it’s entrenched in our public health systems and thus women are more likely to trust that it’s okay.
My sister had a home birth. Luckily she and the baby were okay, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s the exception rather than the rule. And what’s worse, her midwife encouraged her to do it.
I just…
/shudder/
I gave birth on Thursday, and after months of waddling to the bathroom every hour or two around the clock, the catheter was sweet relief. Being able to be mentally present during my labor, to sleep when I wanted, and to not be utterly exhausted was so worth it. Despite the fact that I couldn’t feel my legs or move them well I still pushed that kid out in eight minutes. Epidurals are AWESOME.
I am TOTALLY having one for the next kid. Because unfortunately I fell for the woo and only had NOS which was pretty crappy cos they took it off me for the worst part anyway so I may as well not have had it.
Congrats! I had the same experience except the catheter always hurts the entire time. I don’t mind because I know that what pain my epidural is covering is way worse.
I don’t remember if I had a cath or not. I imagine I did because of the epidural. At the end the ONLY thing I felt was the peri-anal massage. That f’ing hurt!
Having a baby is transformative.
It doesn’t matter how it happens