The vaginal birth of a dead baby is an evolutionary failure

Failure   text  written  on black  cubes on red  background

Two days ago I wrote about the extraordinary callousness of a group of unassisted birth advocates who brag about “successful” vaginal births despite the fact that the babies died.

The most recent example occurred earlier this week:

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]A woman’s body is designed to produce a live baby, not a vaginal birth.[/pullquote]

…I wanted to tell you ladies that I went into labor NATURALLY ALL BY MYSELF (well after sex that night..) that in itself was awesome bc I have never had that experience before and was starting to doubt my body especially waiting so long! 42 weeks! BUT IT HAPPENED! I labored all through the night and day and PUSHED HIM OUT all 10lb 9oz and 23.5 inches with a 14.5 inch head …

…VAGINAL BIRTH AFTER CESAREAN IS POSSIBLE! UNMEDICATED BIRTH IS POSSIBLE. HOME BIRTHS ARE POSSIBLE. And most importantly OUR BODIES AREN’T BROKEN, THEY WERE DESIGNED TO DO THIS!!! I KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE! lol

The ultimate irony for women who boast about these “successes” is that they are actually spectacular failures. Why? Because evolutionary success is measured by children who live to reproduce, not by how a baby is born. Evolution works on the principle of “survival of the fittest” and the fittest are those who live.

For people so enamoured of what their bodies “were designed to do,” they appear to have missed the incredibly simple, incredibly basic point: their bodies were designed to produce LIVE babies. The unassisted birth advocates preening over “successful” vaginal births are actually spectacular FAILURES. They are so busy exulting over the fact that their bodies aren’t “broken” that they forgot the most important fact; if you “break” the baby’s body, you lose.

Evolution doesn’t care one whit about the process of survival, it only cares about the outcome. Evolution doesn’t care whether a particular animal has black fur or white fur. It rewards the color that offers the best camouflage for the particular environment in which the animal lives. In our current environment, with easy access to technology, evolution rewards those who use that technology to survive. Women who reject lifesaving technology in order to recapitulate birth in nature aren’t winners; they haven’t achieved anything. If their babies die, they are losers.

Evolution doesn’t care that you had a vaginal birth; it doesn’t care that you gave birth without pain medication; it certainly doesn’t care that you had a vaginal birth after a previous C-section. It cares about one and only one thing: whether the baby survives.

Women who let their babies die for lack of obstetric interventions at homebirth or unassisted birth DIDN’T do what “nature intended”; they did the exact opposite. They aren’t successful; they’re failures.

And they’re not responding to natural instincts; they’re defying them. Nearly every female mammal will defend the lives of her offspring to the death. Everyone knows that there is no more dangerous animal than the mother who feels that her brood is threatened.

The woman who consents to a C-section for fetal distress is acting on that primal instinct. She is willing to let herself be cut open if that gives her baby a better chance of survival. The woman who chooses homebirth specifically to recapitulate birth in nature is acting AGAINST that primal instinct. She is more interested in herself and her bragging rights than in the baby’s life. That’s unnatural.

Meg Heket, Ruth Rodley and the other administrators of groups that encourage, support and cheer women to deadly homebirths aren’t merely vile people; they’re losers. Nature isn’t impressed with them; she’s weeping for the loss of innocent lives.