Kristen of Birthing Beautiful Ideas is angry that many people regard her homebirth as selfish:

“Why would you put your baby’s life at risk just for the experience of a home birth?” STOP SAYING THAT!

[A]t no time in my decision-making process did I think that my choice was between risking my baby’s life for “the blissful home birth experience” and guaranteeing a safe outcome for my baby with an okay experience in the hospital…

Here’s the thing: the “putting your baby’s life at risk for the experience” comment–which many home-birthing women and families encounter, either directly or indirectly– fails to grasp the multiplicity of reasons that people might appeal to when choosing home birth.

I’ve got some bad news for you Kristen. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not going to stop saying that, because, whether you like it or not, and whether you admit it to yourself or not, you DID risk your baby’s life for nothing better than your “birth experience.”

Kristen, of course, rolls out all the inane “reasons” for the choice typically cited by homebirth advocates.

I have examined the research on home birth and hospital birth and am convinced of the potential benefits of home birth…

Newsflash: reading books and websites written by laypeople for other people is not research, no matter how much you would like to pretend that it is. If you haven’t read the scientific literature, the actual papers, not the abstracts, not Henci Goer’s summaries, you haven’t done research.

I do think that it is a safe option for my baby and me.

Newsflash: Thinking that homebirth is safe does not make it safe.

I have access to skilled home birth providers whom I trust to care for my baby and me prenatally, during labor, and in the postpartum period.

Newsflash: In the event of a life threatening emergencies, your baby does not need homebirth providers. He or she needs an operating room, an anesthesiologist, and a neonatologist. If your homebirth providers aren’t carrying those things, they are useless in an emergency.

I had a horrendous experience giving birth in the hospital and do not want to repeat that experience. I think that planning a home birth gives me a better chance of not repeating it..

I have a deep-seated fear of the hospital and am nearly paralyzed with terror at the thought of giving birth in the hospital. A home birth is a better choice for me…

Don’t worry. We’re completely clear on the fact that this is all about your experience. You don’t need to reiterate it multiple times.

I want to avoid both the maternal and neonatal complications associated with the high intervention rates at my local hospitals.

And so you are risking the ultimate complication, your baby’s death, to avoid the minor complications that you apparently fear more.

The reasons are unique. They are radically unique, just as unique as each individual person themselves. This is why two people can have the exact same situation and still arrive at different choices based on the uniqueness of their values and preferences.

Newsflash: Your baby isn’t radically unique. He or she will die without appropriate life saving measures in the face of an emergency.

Your homebirth midwives aren’t unique. They are the typical poorly educated, poorly trained hobbyists who wouldn’t be considered midwives in any other country in the industrialized world.

YOU aren’t radically unique. You are the gullible, woefully undereducated woman who thinks reading books for laypeople is “research;” who has probably never read a single scientific paper in its entirety, let alone the breadth of the literature on homebirth, but preen to yourself and others that you are “educated; who has written 10 reasons why you chose homebirth, using I, me, my, more than 20 times with never a single reference to the very real danger of death to your baby.

In other words, you are the typical homebirth advocate, risking her baby’s life for no better reason than your personal experience.

The cornerstone principle of preventive medicine is that it is better to prevent disease than to to treat it after it has developed. That seems to be a non-controversial principle, except, apparently, in the world of infant and child woo. There the typical response to devastating preventable diseases and injuries is to pretend that they won’t happen.

Homebirth advocates like to pretend that life threatening complications don’t occur in childirth; midwifery proponents like to pretend that there is plenty of time to transfer to physician care when life threatening complications do occur; anti-vaccinationists like to pretend that vaccines are unnecessary, and all of them delight in the fantasy that “good nutrition” and a “strong immune system” are magically protective against everything.

It has become highly fashionable among some Western, white, relatively well off women to refuse standard newborn preventive care, whether that is the Hep B vaccine, neonatal ophthalmic ointment, or vitamin K shots. Proponents of this transgressive behavior like to think that it marks them as independent thinkers. It doesn’t; it marks them as ignorant, gullible and willing to take terrible risks with the lives of their children for no better reason that to preen to themselves and others.

It also marks them as wishful thinkers who pretend that their child will never be exposed to hepatitis B, that their partner would never have an affair and become infected with gonorrhea and that their child’s blood will clot in the absence of adequate vitamin K.

As a result, children die agonizing preventable deaths like this poor infant who sustained massive intracranial bleeding because her mother refused the shot that would have prevented it.

According to the Coroner’s Court:

The baby’s … initial neonatal examination was also normal. In accordance with her parents’ wishes and the birthing plan, she did not receive Vitamin K, nor was she vaccinated for Hepatitis B. Information relating to the vitamin K injection was provided to the parents during their first antenatal visit. The information stated the reasons why vitamin K is recommended, namely that it assists the blood to clot and that newborn babies require it to prevent bleeding problems especially in the first few months after birth. The parents submitted a birth plan, which stated their decision not to have vitamin K administered…

The baby was exclusively breastfed (the major risk factor for vitamin K deficiency) and was doing well. Then:

One month after the birth, the mother noticed that the baby had been sleeping a lot and was not feeding as much as usual. She was noted to cry out at times and then settle. She went to sleep that night, but an hour later, she vomited. In the early hours of the next morning, the mother went to change her nappy and she was seen to be limp. The Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) was contacted.

What had happened?

A CT scan … showed widespread subarachnoid haemorrhage and left sided subdural haemorrhage (bleeding on the surface and beneath the dura/lining of the brain). This was causing some effacement of the left ventricle (compression of the cavity within the brain as a result of increased pressure and mass effect). There was also loss of grey/white differentiation of the brain matter, which indicated damage to the brain and widening of the spaces between the skull bones. No fractures were seen. There was haemorrhaging within both eyes, and her pupils were non-reactive.

A blood test called an INR (International Normalised Ratio) was conducted. This test measures the time it takes for blood to clot and compares it to an average, with one being normal and 10 being extremely thin and prone to bleeding. The baby’s measurement was 10.

In other words, the baby had developed hemorrhagic disease of the newborn, the very condition that the vitamin K shot is designed to prevent. As a result, she bled into her head so much and for so long that her brain was compressed and destroyed.

The baby’s condition did not improve overnight or into the next morning. There remained markedly elevated intracranial pressure and her prognosis was considered to be extremely poor. She remained on ventilation over night. Following discussion with her parents, the baby’s life support measures were withdrawn the next morning and she subsequently died.

The baby died a painful, prolonged and entirely senseless death because the person she depended on to protect her, her mother, thought she knew better than the pediatricians for whom vitamin K has been standard prophylaxis for more than 50 years. Why did the mother think she knew better? Because she read it in a book or on a website and it sounded good to her.

Being a parent ought to mean putting a child’s health and brain function before anything else, including the mother’s desire to be transgressive, and even the mother’s distress at her child’s temporary discomfort as a result of an injection. It means taking the advice of experts, not pretending that you are an expert. It means doing whatever you can to prevent the child’s death and disability,not pretending that wishful thinking is a form of preventive care.

Colorado homebirth midwives have a serious problem.

No, I’m not talking about the fact that licensed Colorado homebirth midwives attending planned homebirth have a hideous perinatal death rate, nearly 2.5 times that of the state as a whole (which includes premature babies and high risk deliveries). They apparently don’t consider that a problem at all. To my knowledge, not a single conference, Board Meeting or legislative session has been held to address the hideous death rate.

The problem is that Colorado homebirth midwives are required by law to report the deaths at their hands. At first this wasn’t a problem since no one seemed to read the data or do the necessary calculations. Then I discovered the data.

I first wrote about it back in December 2009 (The horrifying death toll of homebirth in Colorado). I noted at the time that Colorado homebirth midwives were aware of the appalling number of deaths at their hands. In the newsletter of the Colorado Midwives Association, President Karen Robinson reported:

In looking back over the past couple years of statistics, I see that there were 5 perinatal deaths reported each year for 2006 and 2007. This represents a perinatal death rate of 8 per 1000 for those two years, and that is too high for the low-risk population we serve. The state perinatal mortality rate for all births from 2003 to 2007 was 6.4 per 1000.

She then explained why she ignored this huge red flag:

I don’t believe we have a poor perinatal mortality rate, but if solid data shows we do, then I will be at the forefront of the effort to improve our practices and lower the perinatal mortality rate for homebirth in Colorado.

Guess what? The death rate continued to rise. In 2008, 7 babies died. In 2009, 9 babies died. I reported on the rising death rate each year. As far as I can determine, the Colorado homebirth midwives did absolutely nothing. No investigation, no modification of practice standards, no restriction of midwives’ scope of practice, nothing.

Then, the Colorado Midwives, in violation of state law, stopped reporting their death rates. I reported on that, too, and then I obtained the raw data for 2010 and 2011 from someone who had filed a Colorado Open Records Request and found that in calendar year 2010 there were 15 deaths and in calendar year 2011 there were 14 deaths. In those years, the death rate for homebirth were more than double the terrible death rate that had moved Karen Robinson to pledge action were that death rate to continue. But, of course, as far as I can determine, no action was taken at all, and homebirth midwives managed to have their scope of practice expanded slightly.

Colorado homebirth midwives have produced a statistical report this year, and it is a masterpiece of obfuscation. Not only did Colorado homebirth midwives bury an extraordinary number of babies in the past year, they buried them again in an avalanche of extraneous statistics and graphs that are completely nonsensical.

What do we need to know to determine if planned homebirth with a licensed Colorado midwife is safe? We only need one figure: the perinatal death rate. What was the perinatal death rate for the period 10/01/2010 through 09/30/2011 (the period covered in the report)? It doesn’t say. It literally does not mention the single most important safety metric for Colorado homebirth. Not only that, in years past, the number of deaths and the total number of births were reported so that the perinatal death rate could be calculated by simple division. This iteration of the Colorado homebirth midwives buries that information, too.

Instead of reporting that the midwives did 719 deliveries, they presented this:

If you work at it, you can calculate the number of deliveries, as I did, but it is difficult to imagine a less clear way to present the information. Indeed, there is no possible reason to present a graph like this. Who cares how many midwives reported that they did 11 deliveries and how many 12? No one. But if you wanted to make it extremely difficult to calculate the perinatal mortality rate, it would be hard to find a better way to misrepresent the data.

Using a similar graph, I calculated how many transfers the midwives reported: 186. When you add 719 and 186, you get 905.  Using other similar graphs I calculated the number of perinatal deaths as 14. 14 deaths in 905 births means that the perinatal mortality rate during the reporting period was an astounding 15.5! That would be an embarrassingly unacceptable rate for the state as whole, representing as it does a perinatal mortality rate almost 2.5 times the actual Colorado rate of 6.4 for all deliveries including premature babies and all possible complications. For a group of low risk women, it is horrific.

Back in 2007, the perinatal mortality rate that Karen Robinson deplored and refused to believe was 8/1000. Now it is  15.5/1000.

So in addition to being grossly unqualified practitioners, Colorado homebirth midwives are shockingly unethical. They are doing everything in their power to hide the deaths at their hands. Indeed, they are so desperate to keep the information from the women of Colorado, they have buried the death babies twice: once in coffins in the ground, and then again in reports and graphs that hide the relevant information instead of reporting it.

“I could get them to indict a ham sandwich.”

This legal aphorism highlights the immense power of the prosecutor bringing charges in the grand jury.

Though the grand jury was set up to restrain the government from bringing baseless charges, it is highly unusual for a grand jury to refuse to indict whomever the prosecutor chooses. That’s because the grand jury, as opposed to the regular jury that will determine the final verdict, hears only from the prosecutor. The jury, therefore, is only allowed to hear what the prosecutor wants it to hear. When you hear only one side of a story, it is easy to believe it, but things often look very different when you are allowed to hear from the other side.

The prosecutor is free to present whatever evidence he thinks make the strongest case and leave out facts that may weaken his case. The prosecutor is allowed to speak, but the defense is not. The prosecutor controls the entire process; the defense lawyer isn’t even in the room.

In the world of natural childbirth and homebirth advocacy, authors, bloggers and website owners serve as the prosecutors for modern obstetrics. They include people like Henci Goer, Ina May Gaskin and Ricki Lake. They bring indictment after indictment. It’s easy to believe them because they are often articulate and sophisticated in the ways of moving people emotionally.

If they are the prosecutors, who is the jury?

You, dear reader, are the jury. So the question you must ask yourself is this: does the author short circuit the proceedings as in a grand jury? Or does the author allow the other side to present a defense, as in an actual trial?

In a court case, it is easy to know whether the defense has been allowed to present its side. The defense lawyer offers his side immediately after the prosecutor offers his. The defense lawyer makes his plea to the same jury, in the same courtroom, following the same rules. That’s not likely to happen in a book on NCB or a documentary on homebirth, but there is an analogue on the web. On the web, the other side has an opportunity to speak in the comment section. That’s where the defense case can be presented, but only if the owner of the website allows it.

When a website owner deletes comments and blocks commentors, whether the owner is Mothering.com, Lamaze, Henci Goer or Ricki Lake, the owner is muzzling the defense. They want to win and they don’t care to play fair. And just as in the case of the prosecutor who could get the jury to indict a ham sandwich, they can get you, the reader, to believe almost anything about modern obstetrics.

What about the argument, often deployed by Mothering.com, that readers are looking for support not arguments and are free to find arguments elsewhere? Undoubtedly some women want only support, but that is not my impression of most women researching natural childbirth and homebirth. They describe themselves as doing “research” and “educating themselves” and we should take them at their word. Although they may be drawn to one side or the other, most consider themselves fair minded people and believe that they are open to hearing and evaluating both sides.

What about the argument that they could find the other side elsewhere? That’s certainly true, but as in the case of juries, we know that the best decisions are reached when jurors can hear both sides under the same conditions at nearly the same time.

How about the argument that entitites like Lamaze or people like Henci Goer are capable of providing the other side and don’t need a representative of the other side to do so? Would you think it was fair if the prosecutor were allowed to present the defense as well as the prosecution? Of course not. The same thing applies to NCB and homebirth advocacy.

What does it mean when a website or advocate moderates comments, deletes comments and block commentors? It means that they have no interest in letting you make your own decision; they’ve already decided what you should believe. It means they recognize that the defense has very powerful arguments, arguments that they may not be able to counter. It means that they understand that if you were to hear both sides you might be persuaded by the other side. Most importantly, it means they they have rigged the trial, thereby preventing a fair verdict.

When a website or blog bans you or me from commenting, they’ve conceded that our arguments are powerful, and difficult to rebut. In other words, when they ban you or me, it is a compliment. And since I’ve been banned from just about every NCB and homebirth website or blog, I feel very complimented. No one bans commentors unless the fear them, and by that metric, I am very feared indeed in the NCB and homebirth communities, as I should be. The facts, the statistics, and the scientific evidence are on my side.

There’s one way to present both sides that’s even better than an open website or blog and that’s a debate, in person or in print. That’s why I have offered to debate just about every single celebrity NCB and homebirth advocate. A debate would allow women to make up their own minds having heard and analyzed the positions of both sides, just as a jury does. And that’s precisely why professional NCB and homebirth advocates have refused to debate. They don’t want women to hear the other side. If you were the prosecutor, wouldn’t you prefer a venue that gave you so much power that you could convince the jury to indict a ham sandwich? NCB and homebirth advocates are no different.

What readers need to understand is that you are being manipulated when you are prevented from hearing the defense case. You need to ask yourselves a critical question:

Have you reached a rational decision on modern obstetrics, NCB and homebirth, or have you you been convinced to indict the proverbial ham sandwich?

I like to say that when my husband and I got married, he wanted two children and I wanted four, so we compromised … on four.

My husband would tell you that it’s the best decision we ever made. Each has grown into a wonderful person and we have had the joy (and the occasional aggravation) of supervising that process. Four children is a bit unusual in our community and over the years we gotten a lot of comments:

“Oh, four children; I could never do that.”

“Four? How did you manage?”

“I’m impressed that you could raise four children and remain so calm.”

That’s what they said, but I don’t believe for a moment that they really mean what they say. They are not impressed with my husband and me; they could do it if they wanted and they don’t particularly care how many children another couple chose to have.

I’m reminded of that when I hear natural childbirth advocates crowing about their “achievement” and insisting that everyone in the world is either impressed with them or incredulous and dismissive about their choice. They are so desperate for attention, positive or negative, and so relentlessly self-referential, that they cannot see what is right in front of their faces: no one cares whether anyone else had an unmedicated birth.

I was reminded of this reading one of the most recent posts by Donna of Banned From Baby Showers, one of the “birth visionistas” of Birth Boot Camp.

Donna writes, in an offensive post explaining any woman whose birth does not meet Donna’s specifications for birth and breastfeeding cannot become a BBC instructor:

Recently, I had a brief conversation with one of my daughter’s teachers. She saw the “Birth Boot Camp” vinyl on the back of my car and asked what that was all about. I briefly told her and she said, “Wow! You did that without drugs?!” in her sweet Southern drawl. She went on to say, “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who’s done that!”

And:

I’ve had so many women over the years tell me that they thought of me during their labor. “If Donna could do it, so can I!” Husbands cheer their wives on right at the end when she wants to give up, saying, “Donna said it would be like this at the end. You are almost there. We’re going to meet our baby soon!”

Apparently, Donna actually believes this.

She is either so naive, or so desperate for praise, that she thinks people give her personal choice more than one micro-second of interest. The teacher was no more impressed with her pretend “achievement” than anyone who claimed to be impressed with my decision to raise four children. In both cases, the people expressing how “impressed” they were, were not impressed in the least. They had the opportunity to make the same choices and they chose not to because it wasn’t right for them and their families. They are really saying: “I’m impressed that choice worked for you, but it’s the last thing I would ever want to do.”

Ditto for the idea that if “Donna can do it, so can I.” You’d have to be pretty ignorant to be unaware of the fact that ANY woman could have an unmedicated childbirth, most of the mothers who ever existed have already had an unmedicated childbirth, and most of the women laboring around the world each and every day have unmedicated childbirth. When women say, “I could never do that.” they mean “I would never do that; it doesn’t impress me in the least and has absolutely no appeal for me.”

Maybe this is the reason why NCB advocates congregate at websites and message boards that ban anyone who disagrees. They thrive on the illusion that someone, anyone, is impressed with their pretend “achievement” and can’t bear the reality that the overwhelming majority of people couldn’t care less.

Regular readers know that I have written several posts about the 39 week rule. It is supposed to be a ban on elective deliveries before 39 weeks, but has devolved into a ban against any deliveries before 39 weeks, with the predictable consequence of preventable perinatal deaths.

Tamara Bennett believes that the 39 week rule led to the death of her son Jacob. Tamara is mobilizing support to overturn the rule with a Facebook page, We Stand Against the 39 Week Rule; We Love Our Babies and a petition. Here is her guest post:

I would like to earnestly thank you for posting about the 39 week rule. It is a ridiculous ruling that is amassing quite the body count. I am currently fighting this ruling because my son Jacob Deinikus Flores died in utero

Jacob died due to the hospital’s failure to heed my body’s labor at 36 weeks and 5 days (he was already 7 lbs and 5 oz and according to sonography had well developed lungs, doc would have supplemented that with steroid, just to be sure) I was 3 cm dilated and 90% effaced, no major illnesses during the pregnancy (at least none of the ones listed in their constraining list of reasons to induce) other than being advanced maternal age. It was my doctor’s medical opinion to proceed with delivery.

I was admitted to labor and delivery and upon entering the room all of the equipment was being made ready and I was being made ready and we were waiting to hear further from the doctor. He came in and whispered to one of the nurses who look absolutely shocked, and advised me that he was directed to stop the labor and unfortunately he had to follow the hospital policy regarding 39 weeks. I was given procardia in 4 and 6 hour intervals until the labor and contractions subsided. It only took them 4 days to successfully stop all of my natural labor.

I had two incidents prior to this where they stopped the labor and that was at 28 weeks and 33 weeks. I was thankful for that. I was released to home and bedrest until I met the 39 wk mark. They continued the procardia and at first I was taking it every eight hours. I visited the ER department 3 times complaining of contractions and pain, to which they indicated I was ‘not having contractions’ that their little belt measured and sent me home but increased my dosage from every 8 hours to every 6 hours, and at the final ER visit every 4 hours. I never did trust those ‘belts’ but actually, came to find I couldn’t trust the ones putting it on me, honestly i did not feel it was tight enough to measure if I was having contractions or not. I know indeed that I was having contractions.

I also tried to tell them that as the medicine wore off somewhat, the contractions would begin again. I was ignored and constantly reminded of the 39 week rule and the Procardia increased. (Funny, why do they increase the Procardia if I was indeed not having contractions?) I had even timed my contractions that were for the first ER visit 10 minutes apart, 2nd ER visit 7 minutes apart, The third visit was 7 to 9 minutes apart. I had an appointment with my doc after the third visit and I advised him that they had increased my dosages, he decided that he would step me down from it and preferred I cut it back to every six that day and back to every eight hours the next day.

I asked what if the contractions come back, he said let them come back. He told me that this pregnancy probably won’t last throughout the weekend and advised me further to go to the ER when the contractions are 3 to 5 minutes apart as it is harder for them to stop. I did as the doctor recommended and come Sunday morning my contractions started to be 3 to 5 minutes apart the only difference is these contractions were so very painful. (I am not an educated professional but in my humble opinion, I think the contractions were much stronger because my body was fighting to go into labor and so the contractions were much worse as the medicine levels dropped, my body was still in fight mode)

I went and woke my fiance at 3 pm, as we spent a late night up and he went to take a quick nap as we awaited the contractions to come down to the 3 to 5 minute level. I finally reached that level. I was excited but in excruciating pain and I told him, it’s time to go. He got up and rushed around the apartment in the typical male panic that ensues when his woman is announcing such things. I needed to urinate and he walked me into the bathroom and waited as I did my business. I got a contraction so bad it took my breath away and I told him, I feel like I am going to faint. I did. I only remember being awoken by my fiancee and in such a world of pain I couldn’t move, I could taste blood on my lips as I fell over and face planted on the bathroom floor. He says I didn’t tell him that I was going to faint, otherwise he would have set me down on the floor, but somewhere in my brain I told him just that, (its not something we debate anymore).

Sad thing is I landed not only on my face, but my belly as well and I could not walk or move. He called 911 and we waited 25 minutes for the ambulance to show up and another 20 minutes, I showed up in the ER this time writhing and crying in pain asking to lay on my side and they told me no, They placed the monitor on me and there was no heartbeat. Yes, this is all an unfortunate accident due to placenta abruption Jacob suffocated to death in my uterus.

When they did the emergency c-section the doctor told me that Jacob somehow acted as a tamponade and upon lifting his little body under him, there was a liter of my blood. He was born at 37wks and 6 days and was 7lbs and 8.1 oz. I don’t know how well they can diagnose placenta abruption but they blamed it on the fact that I fell on my stomach with quite a bit of force as I almost bit my lip in half (the length of the lip not split it) But that is food for thought. All I can say for certain is I indeed went into labor repeatedly.

But this was all an accident that should have never even happened. Had the hospital just once relaxed their rule just once, I WOULD HAVE A BABY BOY TO ENJOY. All the visits to the hospital ER, if just once they intervened instead of heeding this ruling, I would have my son. The only fortunate thing is that this has happened to the type of person who will fight, and I don’t mean in courtrooms seeking money. I have taken it upon myself to get this ridiculous rule repealed. I came across your page one day doing my constant research of the matter. I even added on my Facebook a group called ‘WE STAND AGAINST THE 39 WEEK RULE; WE LOVE OUR BABIES.’ I am trying to educate as much as I can in regards to this ruling as uneducated as I am and it was such a relief to come across a physician, besides my own, that is against the ruling as well. I have made strides to inform people about this ruling.

I have since started a petition on change.org that will go to the Texas Department of Health, under human rights.(My son had the right to be born, and I had the right to birth him). I have two other children, both born at 38 weeks, I cant help but wonder if they’d be here with me if that rule applied 10 years ago. We can pray this doesn’t happen to another mother to be.

Tara Dukaczewicz generously gave permission to reprint her Facebook comment as a guest post:

Rewind to this time a year and half ago, my baby was 5 months old and I was firmly entrenched in the online natural childbirth community.

My favorite was Birth without Fear. I was researching home birth midwifery for my next baby, becoming “informed” I learned all about how OBs were really just surgeons and interventions were for their own convenience. I learned how prenatal testing was optional and every woman had an innate ability to give birth and that birth was safe. In my head I was doubtful, because my pregnancy was complicated and difficult,and my baby had issues after his birth.

I learned how mothers who had interventions should be mournful and were to be pitied. Their inherent “woman-ness” was stripped from them and they and their babies had become part of the assembly line of hospital birth. How c/sections weren’t births, they were extractions. I began to feel a deep uneasiness as serious pregnancy complications were brushed off as pretend and women were urged to homebirth even with placenta previa and pre-eclampsia. It began to feel wrong to me that these self-styled educators were dispensing medical advice. And I began to raise some cautious objections.

I was surprised and sickened at how these women turned on me, condescension, outright spite, and name calling. Then I noticed it happening everywhere. I remember one thread on the Unnecessarian, a woman verbally flayed for having a c/s. They picked at her like vultures, reducing her to a grovelling mess. If she wasn’t traumatized by her c/s she certainly was after this treatment.

I witnessed the most revolting treatment of a woman who lost her baby to a heart defect, and a mother who lost her baby to the hands of incompetent midwives told she had to own her outcome. She was blasted for posting pictures of her beautiful stillborn son. That face haunts me, a head of dark hair, so much like my own son. I cried for days, holding my boy tightly until he squirmed. It killed me to think how this mama would never hold her baby again.

But still the sickeningly sweet poison continues to flow; mothers are urged by these friendly cult leaders to do things that no one should ever do. But people like me and my friends are silenced and shunned. Their followers talk about how we must hate life and feel sorry for our children because we can’t see the perfection in birth and can’t dismiss the dangers that are so obvious to us. Blogs like Mama birth, The Mom:Informed, Made to birth, and Birth without Fear shame and cajole women into blindly following them like lemmings over the cliff. They appear to be so sweet and positive and out to educate women, but I believe they only want a cult following. And they do not care who pays the price.

They swarm around midwives like flies on carrion, making support pages and donating money for their legal fee and ostracizing the mothers of the babies they have allowed to die. I have been at the center of some ugly business in the last few days that has me questioning whether or not this is really worth it. Maybe I want to give up on the women who have been wooed into the pit. They certainly hate me for my troubles, let them risk their lives and their babies lives.

But at the center of this are the few who are really listening, and don’t know that it’s okay to have doubts about birth. They stay on the fringes, afraid to speak up. And they are coming, slowly, to the surface. I just want to tell you that we are here, and we welcome you, no matter how you birth and no matter how you choose to parent. You don’t have to pass a test or follow a set of criteria to find acceptance.

And to the rest of you, I truly hope you never find out how right we are.