I am angry.

Why? Yet another baby has been placed at risk of significant brain damage and possible death because the clueless homebirth midwives didn’t understand how to diagnose fetal distress.

The story of baby Thaddeus-James is depressingly familiar:

… Our son was born floppy and unresponsive just after noon today. Throughout the birth his heart tones were good for the most part, although there were certain positions he didn’t seem to cope well with. It appears that there was a trauma in the last few moments–perhaps cord related. Full CPR was initiated practically immediately by my two wonderful midwives. He didn’t respond until about 20+ minutes into resuscitation…

And, as we’ve come to expect, the mother believes the midwives, the ones who actually bear responsibility for failing to anticipate this disaster, are just awesome:

His heart rate was checked very frequently, and the last check was 2-3 minutes before birth and still strong and in the normal range. It was with Doppler, so we could all hear it. After that, we lost it for those last few minutes, so that was when the abruption likely occurred. I am now praising God that our placenta stayed attached as long as it did. That He gave me wonderful health care providers who immediately jumped into action and saved my son’s life. For the tray I bought at a bargain store that ended up being used as a firm surface to put him on for the chest compressions. For the emergency responders who didn’t give up on my son and rushed him to safety. For living in a time and place with amazing medical care…

That’s right. We live in a time of amazing medical care, yet homebirth advocates continue to deprive their babies of this care until AFTER they are nearly dead and their brains have been permanently injured.

Why would a baby fall nearly dead into a clueless homebirth midwife’s hands?

The mother insists:

… [T]he most likely cause of the acute trauma that occurred in the last moments of his birth was a placental abruption (premature separation of the placenta).

That, not to put to fine a point on it, is bullshit.

Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that the mother had NO signs of placental abruption. Babies do not go from fine one moment and nearly dead the next. It takes a long time, sometimes hours, for a baby to die of an abruption.

But you know what does cause a baby to have an excellent heartrate and then drop dead or nearly so into the midwife’s hands? A clueless homebirth midwife who thinks that fetal distress inevitably produces a bradycardia (low heart rate).

As I’ve explained in the past, the fetal heartrate monitor provides much more information than listening to the heartrate.

For example, this tracing shows a baby in serious trouble:

Surprised? You might be if you thought that a fetal heart rate tracing supplied the same information as intermittent auscultation (listening) with a doppler. But electronic fetal monitoring provides a wealth of information that cannot be obtained by listening, and that allows for a more comprehensive view of fetal well being.

This is a tracing with limited beat to beat variability and subtle late decelerations.

Notice what you don’t see:

You don’t see a bradycardia, a sustained period of abnormally low heart rate. That’s because bradycardia is often a terminal event. Most babies can tolerate long periods of significant oxygen deprivation before they die, and they may not have any bradycardias until immediately before death. On this tracing, there is never a single moment when the heart rate is outside of the normal range, but the baby is nonetheless suffering from serious oxygen deprivation.

This is almost certainly what is happening in hours before a dead or nearly dead baby drops into a homebirth midwife’s hands. The midwife may be intermittently listening to the baby’s heart rate, but unless she is listening for long enough AND frequently enough AND exactly at the right times AND can distinguish subtle changes in heart rate, she will be blissfully unaware that a baby is dying right in front of her.

Homebirth advocates and their midwives who insist that the baby’s heart rate was “fine” until just before delivery are completely wrong. The baby’s heart rate was not fine; they just couldn’t tell what was happening because they only listened intermittently.

And because they couldn’t tell, the baby pays a hideous price.

Baby Thaddeus-James received state of the art medical care, including cooling his brain to reduce brain damage. He was recently warmed up.

Despite the blessing of getting to hold him 3 times today, there appears to be a significant set-back tonight, as it looks now like Thaddeus-James may be having seizures. We are all very concerned about him. Please pray for him…

Seizures indicate the likelihood of significant brain damage, brain damage that didn’t have to happen and almost certainly would not have happened in a hospital, because:

1. The signs of oxygen deprivation would likely have been diagnosed with electronic fetal monitoring.
2. A C-section or vacuum might have been recommended to prevent further oxygen deprivation.
3. A team of resuscitations experts would have been standing by to perform immediate advanced resuscitation with intubation.
4. An additional therapy could have been initiated sooner, instead of waiting for transfer to the hospital and hospital evaluation, all of which takes precious minutes. During those minutes the baby’s injured brain continues to swell, and brain damage may actually increase over that present at birth.

Thaddeus-James’ mother is right about one thing though. We live in do live in a time and place with amazing medical care. Too bad Thaddeus-James didn’t have immediate access to it because his parents chose homebirth.

I believed that I had plumbed the nadir of reprehensible anti-vax behavior with my recent posts on the lactation consultant who recommends lying to patients about her vaccination status, and who asserted that the recent outbreak of polio in Syrian refugee camps in the result of deliberate infection by UNICEF personnel.

But, alas, I was wrong. Some anti-vax nuts have sunk even lower.

At the cesspit of alt health nonsense known as Mothering.com, Geotrouvetout writes:

I am mostly against vaccination with a few exceptions. I live in MA where it is possible to get an exemption for school admission but I’d think it would be more durable to simply have a fake. I’d love to see examples and get tips.

In my country of origin, I’ve had a doctor signing on for me without actually vaccinating but that will be harder here and I signed another one myself. It was very easy and worked, it’s just a paper booklet. If a stamp is needed, it’s easy to have one made over the internet for cheap…

Is s/he trying to forge vaccination records for school? Actually it’s even worse:

The baby will go to daycare at 3 months and vaccination starts at birth here with Hep B (which we will reject) and 2 months with DTaP, which I may do later if I do it. The issue with the exemption is that it needs to be renewed yearly. Once you have a fake it’s a no worries pass that does not expire. Also should we need to move, some States do not allow exemptions. It would also prevent any fight with the day care and schools that my not be so understanding with having a non vaccinated child in the house.

I guess if you don’t care about increasing your own infant’s risk of death from an easily preventable disease, why would you care about killing other people’s infants?

And who could deny that lying is ever so much easier than taking responsibility and accepting the consequences of telling the truth?

This is right up there with lying about having cancer so you can raise funds from unsuspecting people.

No, I take it back. This is worse. The cancer lie merely deprives the innocent of their money; the vaccination lie can kill their babies.

Fortunately, some members of Mothering.com balk at the idea of lying.

I disagree with what you are doing. What kind of example are you setting for your child to lie and falsify documents? Granted, your child is a baby now, but eventually if you keep needing to turn in vaccination records they’ll figure it out. Are you going to tell your child they are not actually vaccinated when they get older? Or are you going to lie to them as well? What if they tell someone they are not vaccinated? Are you going to teach them to lie and say they have had their vaccinations? Also, it seems like you could have a lawsuit on your hands if it ever comes out that you falsified documents that could potentially put other people’s kids at risk…

Another expressed her reservations more succinctly:

I think faking vaccination records is ill-advised, unethical, and potentially harmful to other people in your community. I think it’s reasonable for people on the “I’m Not Vaccinating” forum to have strong, negative reactions to fraud. It’s “I’m not vaxing”, not “Immoral Weasels – Support Only.”

But then there is this outrage from Taximom5:

The decision to lie to protect one’s child from a high risk of harm is exactly what many Jewish parents in in the 1930’s and 1940’s did; they obtained fraudulent documents identifying their children as Aryan in order to protect them from harm, and sent them to live with Christian families.

Edit: some posters are accusing me of equating vaccinations with genocide. This is not the case. The Jewish parents who sent their children away to live in safety as Christians had no idea that the death camps even existed.

Imagine that. They accused her equating vaccination with genocide when she was merely equating vaccination with wholesale murder. So glad she explained that subtle distinction.

Mothering.com deleted the most strongly worded condemnations because, as Cynthia Mosher explains:

…[T]here have been some responses that were really out of line. I have removed the posting privileges to this thread for a few people because of their posts and will also be issuing them a warning. It is not cool to insult and attack a member, no matter what you think of their opinions or actions.

That’s right. It’s totally cool to lie about your baby’s vaccination status thereby risking the lives of other infants and children, but it is totally uncool to insult a member for doing so.

Who is Geotrouvetout? It is easy to figure out with a minimal amount of sleuthing, given the clues of Massachusetts resident, immigrant, parent of an infant/now toddler and knowing that geotrouvetout is French for geocaching.

I congratulate Geotrouvetout for achieving a lowlife trifecta: stupid, selfish and unethical.

I couldn’t imagine it was possible to think less of the anti-vax brigade, but I was wrong. Thanks, Geotrouvetout for setting me straight!

What is it with natural parenting advocates and lying?

Homebirth advocates recommend lying to your obstetrician about planning a homebirth.

Homebirth midwives advocate lying to their patients about what medications and procedures they administer during labor.

A lactation consultant advises lying to new mothers about her vaccination status.

Now Sarah Pope, the Health Home Economist recommends lying to your pediatrician about feeding your children raw milk.

Sarah, whose nutrition credentials include a BA in economics and a Master’s in government administration (from an Ivy League institution!) has this to say:

You see, it is very risky to ever tell your Pediatrician, or any doctor caring for your child for that matter, that you feed your child raw milk. Whether that child is a baby, toddler, or adolescent, the American Academy of Pediatrics is becoming more and more hostile toward raw milk by the day and you risk having the Pediatrician tattle to Social Services if you choose to feed your baby or child this wonderfully healthy, traditional food that has nourished humans for millenia [sic]…

Can you believe it? Your conventional Pediatrician would rather you feed your baby GMO frankenformula never proven safe for human consumption instead of a homemade, nourishing formula made with raw milk from pastured cows or goats.

According to Sarah:

Pediatricians should be given information about what you do in your home on a need to know basis only.

And apparently they don’t need to know when you are putting your children’s life in danger by feeding them disease laden natural products.

Here’s what those evil folks at the American Academy of Pediatrics had to say about raw milk:

… [C]onsumption of raw milk or milk products has been associated with a fivefold increase in toxoplasmosis among pregnant women; listeriosis associated with high rates of stillbirths, preterm delivery, and neonatal infections, such as sepsis and meningitis6; and E coli O157–associated diarrheal disease and hemolytic-uremic syndrome, primarily among young children. Between 17% and 33% of all cases of invasive disease attributable to Listeria monocytogenes in the United States occur among pregnant women, unborn fetuses, or newborn infants, a 13- to 17-fold increase compared with the general population. Complications include a 20% risk of spontaneous abortion or stillbirth, with two-thirds of infants developing neonatal infection, including pneumonia, sepsis, or meningitis.

Silly pediatricians. Toxoplasmosis, listeria and E. coli O157 are natural. Pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis are natural. What could be harmful about anything natural?

Who would know better than Sarah, a Nutrition Educator and Chapter Leader for the Weston A. Price Foundation, a foundation devoted to the teachings of a dentist from the 1800’s?

Sarah offers this helpful disclaimer:

The information on The Healthy Home Economist ™ is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended to substitute for the advice provided by your doctor or other health care professional. You should not rely upon or follow the programs or techniques or use any of the products and services made available by or through the use of this website for decision making without obtaining the advice of a physician or other health care professional. The nutritional and other information on this website are not intended to be and do not constitute health care or medical advice.

So be sure to ask your pediatrician whether you should lie to him or her before you do.

And who would think that offering recipes for baby “formula” made with raw milk constitutes medical advice?

What could happen if you don’t lie to your pediatrician about feeding your child raw milk (beside the fact that your child could get violently ill, spend days in hideous pain with severe vomiting and diarrhea, and die)?

Consider the recent nightmare of Alorah Gellerson of Brooklin, Maine who made the mistake of telling a doctor about the homemade raw goat milk formula she proudly and carefully made for her healthy, happy, three-month old son Carson.

Social Services quickly same knocking at the door after the doctor reported Alorah and threatened to take Carson away and put him in foster care unless Alorah switched to store bought commercial formula.

Imagine that! Social Services wanted to take Carson away for no better reason that to spare him a painful illness, hospitalization and even death. The nerve of those people.

Why might pediatricians and Social Service personnel be conspiring to prevent you from feeding your children disease laden milk? Sarah doesn’t say.

Why might Sarah Pope, the Healthy Home Economist, be promoting raw milk, which could kill your child?

Sarah does say:

In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog.

Surprise! Sarah links to the products needed to make raw milk “formula.” So she ends up with money if you feed your baby raw milk “formula.” You merely end up with a violently ill or dead child.

Hi. My name is Ima Frawde, CPM. The initials after my name stand for “certified professional mammarist.” I am an expert in normal breasts.

I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of the hegemonic, patriarchal, male medical system that is constantly telling women that their breasts are “broken” and need to be scanned regularly to detect breast cancer. Breasts are designed perfectly.

Are we suppose to believe we’re inferior to squirrels, cows, rabbits and elephants? We have about 5000 species of mammal and we’re encouraged to believe that we’re the only one that needs routine mammograms. How did we managed to get along for thousands of years before mammography? If breast cancer were really that dangerous, we wouldn’t be here as a species.

It’s not a coincidence that my comments sound similar to those made by Ina May Gaskin on Feministing. Ina May is my hero. Everything she says goes double for me (heh, heh, heh, just a little breast humor).

Why should you listen to me? As a CPM (certified professional mammarist), I am an expert in normal breasts. In fact, certified professional mammarists are trained specifically to manage breast health at home. In order to obtain my certification, I had to meet rigorous standards; I was required to submit a portfolio of 20 breasts examined within the home (right and left breasts are each counted separately). Plus I had to observe examination of an additional 20 breasts done by my preceptor. That means I had contact with 20 separate women before I began practicing on my own!

How did routine mammography become so popular? As my friend Ina May says, it’s all the hegemonic, patriarchal medical system “which views women’s bodies as defective designs and allows for profit to be made from women’s fears of their own bodies.”

In fact, it is fear that causes breast cancer. How do we know? Primitive women don’t get breast cancer. Think about it. All those charities in Africa are soliciting money for malnutrition, infant mortality, maternal mortality, and obstetric fistulas. Have you seen even one commercial for an African breast cancer charity? That proves it.

What? You don’t believe that fear causes breast cancer? You mean you deny that there is a mind-body connection?

Once you understand that fear causes breast cancer, you can see why trusting breasts is the best way to ensure good outcomes. Having a routine mammogram in unnecessary when you trust breasts. Mammography has a high false positive rate, and those false positives lead to a cascade of unnecessary interventions like breast ultrasounds and breast biopsies, not to mention undermining women’s faith in their own bodies.

But you shouldn’t think that certified professional mammarists reject technology. Far from it. If we feel a breast mass and it gets bigger despite breast affirmations, cranio-sacral adjustment, blue and black cohosh, garlic and Hibiclens, we refer women to breast cancer specialists. Since breast cancer is very, very rare, particularly in low risk women, we have very low referral rates.

Are we always correct? Unfortunately, no, but some women are just meant to die from breast cancer. They probably would have eventually died in the hospital anyway (it might have been 10 or 20 years later, but the principle holds true).

We’re also working on developing our own technology for identifying early breast cancer. We are creating our own mammography equipment. Even as we speak, several groups of women are currently fabricating mammography machines to our own specifications; they are knitting them from steel wool!

Our machines will have two major advantages over conventional, Western, allopathic mammography machines. First, they won’t involve painfully compressing women’s breasts, and second, they don’t use ANY radiation at all. As soon as the mammography machines are fully knitted, we plan large qualitative studies comparing the experience of having a mammogram with a knitted machine vs. a conventional machine.

You might be wondering why we are bothering with mammography machines at all. In answer, I will paraphrase anthropologist and midwife Melissa Cheyney:

The rituals of home breast care are not simply about assuring personal transformation via the transmission of counter hegemonic–empowering value —although many women certainly described their experiences this way. Home breast care rituals, are also self-consciously political in their intent. As the popular bumper sticker “Mammarists: Changing the World One Breast at a Time” suggests, home breast care is a performative medium for the promotion of social change.

This piece is satire. It first appeared in January 2012.

I can tell you that anti-vaxxers are profoundly ignorant conspiracy theorists, but it is far more powerful to illustrate it with the idiocy spewed from an anti-vaxxer herself.

This comes from the crowd of cretins on the Mothering.com Vaccinations Board. In response to a request for more information about the polio outbreak among children in war-zone in Syria, MaggieLC has this to say:

I don’t know how accurate the reports are, that much paralysis sounds really high! It takes months or a year for the original symptoms and inflammation of Polio to calm and at least a year to know if a child will be paralyzed. (My dad had Polio in the 1940s, absolutely no paralysis, no iron lung, no lasting effects, but was in bed for around 6 months so our family is quite familiar with it.) Of course in the majority of cases, Polio presents as a really bad upper respiratory infection (it’s how my dad’s and everybody elses in the 1930s and 40s started) and never goes beyond a respiratory infection so MANY cases go undiagnosed.

Really? Thousands of paralyzed victims of polio, including President Franklin Roosevelt, would disagree.

Basic ignorance; nothing special there. But then comes the kicker:

Also, these camps are not clean, people are packed in together and human waste is flowing through the streets, AND SO they use Oral Polio Vaccine which is ALIVE and is excreted in the stool for up to 6 months after vaccination! Using LIVE polio vaccine will only INCREASE polio rates in the area because anyone who is exposed to the stool of children who are getting the vaccine are being exposed to LIVE POLIO. Why would they do this? A ploy to “show how dangerous it is not to be vaccinated?” Sounds like the intentional exacerbation of events…

You heard it; UNICEF is deliberately causing polio in Syrian children to demonstrate how dangerous it is not be vaccinated!

Who is this clown, anyway? As it happens, she is the lactation consultant who cheerfully advises lying to her clients about vaccination status. I thought that was the vilest anti-vax garbage that I had ever read, but in just a few weeks MaggieLC has managed to surpass herself with what may be the vilest anti-vax rant ever.

What motivates absurd conspiracy theories like this? Cognitive dissonance. The reality, apparently unacceptable to MaggieLC, is that reduced rates of vaccination have led to a polio outbreak.

The World Health Organization has declared a polio emergency in Syria.

After being free of the crippling disease for more than a decade, Syria 10 confirmed cases of polio in October. Now the outbreak has grown to 17 confirmed cases, the WHO last week. And the virus has spread to four cities, including a war-torn suburb near the capital of Damascus. According to NPR:

The Syrian government has pledged to immunize all Syrian children under age 5. But wartime politics is getting in the way. And the outbreak is expected to grow…

Most cases have occurred in children less than 2 years old, who were born in Syria after the war started and missed their routine vaccinations, he says.

But, but, but MaggieLC “knows” that the fact that polio has nearly disappeared and the polio vaccine had nothing to do with it. How can she reconcile that with what is actually happening? By resorting to inane conspiracy theories, of course:

Read the information. Polio Is mild disease 99 per cent of the time. People with low immunity have been known to GET Polio and die from coming in contact with the feces of pp who have been recently given the oral vaccine.

Do you think biological warfare is not being practiced? …

So there you have it, folks. UNICEF is practicing biological warfare on little Syrian children by giving them an oral vaccine that will deliberately spread the disease, and resulting paralysis, not prevent it.

That’s crazy even in the crazy world of Mothering.com. When others demanded evidence for her vile accusation, MaggieLC had this to say:

Don’t tell me what to do.

BLOCK!

She blocked the questioners so she could pretend they don’t exist.

When you are a vaccine rejectionist reality is such a bummer!

Darcia Narvaez is at it again.

You may remember her as the author of the “Sanctimommy Manifesto,” a wholesale substitution of her personal preferences for actual science. The Notre Dame psychology professor is blithering yet more nonsense about what babies need and in the process falling victim to a paleofantasy of infancy.

Her latest screed, Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Babies, is filled with nonsense from beginning to end.

Narvaez starts with this “insight”:

Have you noticed all the stressed babies? Maybe one in 30 I see has glowing eyes, which I take as a sign of thriving.

Dr. Narvaez, you really need to get out more or get new friends and acquaintances. It is horrifying that you live in a dystopian world where 29 out of 30 babies are stressed out. The rest of us, however, live in the real world with healthy, happy babies who grow into healthy, happy, well adjusted adults.

And what’s with the glowing eyes? Perhaps you have babies confused with kittens and puppies whose retinas do indeed reflect light and appearing to be glowing.

Narvaez is a big fan of paleofantasy. According to Professor Marlene Zuk, author of the book Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet and How We Live explains:

It is striking how fixated on the alleged behavior of our hunting-and-foraging forbearers some educated inhabitants of the developed world have become. Among the most obsessed are those who insist … that “our bodies and minds evolved under a particular set of circumstances, and in changing those circumstances without allowing our bodies time to evolve in response, we have wreaked the havoc that is modern life.” Not only would we be happier and healthier if we lived like “cavemen,” this philosophy dictates, but “we are good at things we had to do back in the Pleistocene … and bad at things we didn’t.”

Indeed, according to Narvaez:

Babies are social mammals with social mammalian needs. Social mammals emerged more than 30 million years ago with intensive parenting (a developmental nest or niche). This is one of the many (extra-genetic) things that evolved other than genes. This developmental nest is required for an individual to develop properly. Intensive parenting practices for babies include years of breastfeeding to develop brain and body systems, nearly constant touch and physical presence of caregivers, responsiveness to needs preventing distress, free play with multi-aged playmates, and soothing perinatal experiences. Each of these has significant effects on physical health.

What a bunch of baloney! Are we supposed to believe that all mammalian offspring have the same needs? Are we supposed to believe that the needs of mammals have not changed from those of prehistoric marsupials? Are we supposed to believe that human babies need the same things as rat pups?

Moreover, adults are also mammals with social mammalian needs and, as far as I know, those needs do not include advice from psychology professors since neither professors nor psychology existed 30 million years ago. Should we therefore conclude that we would be much better off in the absence of professors and psychology?

Just in case you missed the evidence that Narvaez is making it up as she goes along, she helpfully offers this ludicrous observation on our hunter-gatherer ancestors:

They are much wiser, perceptive and virtuous than we humans in the USA today.

The myth of the noble savage!

Narvaez expounds:

Of course, every human community is not perfect but when you provide young children with their basic needs, they are less aggressive and self-centered.

How do we know that? Because ancient peoples were peace loving environmentalists and war did not occur until the 20th Century, right? Wrong! Primates, including humans, can be violent and vicious, engaging in everything from domestic abuse of females with roving eyes, to bloody territorial battles, to actually EATING other primates. Sounds really virtuous, doesn’t it?

Not surprisingly nearly everything that Narvaez writes is the product of her fevered imagination and has no basis in science.

My personal favorite is this bit of nonsense:

Culture does not erase the evolved needs babies have. Babies cannot retract their mammalian needs.

Actually, culture modifies nearly everything. Culture includes houses, central heating, birth balls, baby slings and nursing bras.

Moreover, evolution did not stop 30 million years ago, or even 30 thousand years ago. To claim that contemporary infants are exactly the same as infants 30 million years ago or even 30 thousand years ago is bizarre. Adults are different in many ways than they were 30,000 years ago: they can digest lactose, carry genetic resistance to malaria, and behave quite differently. There’s no reason to imagine that while adults evolved, infants stayed exactly the same.

In fact, infants are not terribly different from Dr. Narvaez herself. Does she live like our ancestors from 30 million years ago? Is she walking on all four limbs, swinging naked in the trees and reproducing endlessly? No, Narvaez walks on two feet, does not climb trees on a regular basis and is childless. Clearly she hasn’t met her own mammalian needs. Should we conclude, therefore, that by wearing clothes, going to college and writing for Psychology Today that Dr. Narvaez is one of those:

… whose health and sociality are compromised (which we can see all over the USA today with epidemics of depression, anxiety, high suicide and drug use rates). Such mis-raised creatures might do all right on achievement tests or IQ measures but they may also be dangerous reptiles whose world revolves around themselves…[?]

Possibly. Fortunately it should be easy to determine:

All we need to know is whether her eyes glow!

Below are the characteristics of two types of pain relief in labor. Guess which one is favored by midwives.

If you guessed “B,” you’d be wrong.

True, it is easily adjustable, non sedating, has no impact on memory or oxygen levels and crosses the placenta in miniscule amounts if at all. But it’s the dreaded epidural and it’s bad, bad, bad.

“A” is, in fact, favored by midwives and used extensively by midwives around the world at home and in the hospital. Indeed, many midwives believe it is perfectly compatible with natural childbirth despite the fact that it is most certainly a drug, marketed by a pharmaceutical company, is difficult to dose effectively, causes sedation and impaired memory, and readily crosses the placenta in large amounts where it sedates the baby.

Shocked? You shouldn’t be. Drug “A” is nitrous oxide and American midwives are clamoring for its use.

A new patient handout prepared by the Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health expounds on the virtues of nitrous.

… Many women in Europe and other countries, such as Canada and Australia, use it to help cope with pain in labor. It is so common that in some countries as many as 8 in 10 women use nitrous oxide to help with labor pain. Women in these countries have been using this method of pain relief in labor safely for many years. Nitrous oxide hasn’t been used as often in the United States, but that is changing.

The handout acknowledges that nitrous produces altered consciousness and distorted memory, but apparently does not consider that a problem. The handout glosses over the impact of nitrous on the baby:

Nitrous oxide is the only pain relief method used for labor that is cleared from your body through your lungs. As soon as you pull the mask away, the effect of breathing the gas is gone within a few breaths. No extra monitoring is needed for you or the baby because you are using nitrous oxide. If you did get too sleepy, a monitor to check your oxygen levels might be placed on your finger. Nitrous oxide is safe for your baby, so if your baby’s heart rate is being checked intermittently (off and on) rather than continuously (all the time) with a fetal monitor, that is still okay…

Midwives are apparently unconcerned that nitrous crosses the placenta easily and in large amounts, producing sedation and altered consciousness in the baby. In fact, it would be quite accurate to state that nitrous “drugs” the baby whereas epidurals do not.

What’s the impact of nitrous on breastfeeding and newborn behavior? That’s not clear because very little research has been undertaken on the impact of nitrous on the newborn.

So by every parameter we can measure, nitrous has far more impact on women and babies than an epidural, yet nitrous is “good” and epidurals are “bad.” What accounts for this paradox?

It’s simple: midwives can administer nitrous, but lack the skills and training to administer epidurals.

All the pious wailing about the effects of epidurals are nothing more than hypocrisy. It really makes no difference to midwives whether women use “drugs” in labor to relieve pain, even if those drugs limit ability to move in labor, alter consciousness, impair memory, decrease oxygen levels, readily cross the placenta and sedate the fetus … just so long as they can administer the drugs.

Allison Dixley, self-proclaimed “alpha parent” offered this charming suggestion on her Facebook page.

Referring to an old newspaper article entitled No excuses for being fat, say Tories, Allison recommends:

Read this article and exchange ‘obesity’ for ‘formula feeding’. No excuses.

I have a better idea. Read the article and exchange ‘fat’ for ‘a sanctimommy.’

Sanctimommies were told today there are “no excuses” for being obnoxious.

Tell sanctimommies that something is “natural” and they are offered the one thing we have to avoid: an excuse for being insufferable.

As it is, women who see more sanctimommies around them may themselves be more likely become sanctimonious. Peer pressure and social norms are powerful influences on behaviour and they are classic excuses.

See, Allison, no excuses for being a sanctimommy!

A few questions for homebirth advocates:

Do you love your baby more than you hate the hospital? Or is avoiding a scary environment worth risking the life of your baby?

Which is more important: whether your baby lives or dies or whether you can brag to your friends about your defiance of medical authority?

Is birth an intimate moment sanctified by sharing it only with friends and not impersonal medical professionals, or is it a narcissism fest yielding professional photos and YouTube videos posted for the perusal of all 7 billion people on the planet?

Do you really want to be attended in labor by a mail order midwife (CPM – certified professional midwife) who likely obtained her “education” from a correspondence course and whose education requirements were recently “strengthened” to mandate a high school diploma?

Do you really think that reading books and websites written by laypeople is “research”?

You tell everyone that you will be quick to transfer to the hospital in an emergency where you trust that the obstetricians can save your babies life, but you don’t trust those same obstetricians to prevent the very emergency that will require their assistance. Does that make any sense?

If homebirth represents less than 1% of all births, but 100% of the income of homebirth midwives, who do you think has a greater financial interest in hiding the truth about homebirth, obstetricians or homebirth midwives?

I’m waiting anxiously for your replies.

Homebirth midwives shed accountability like water off a duck’s back.

Preside over a homebirth death and other midwives will promptly hold a rally for you without ever even bothering to investigate whether you handled the case properly.

Spew utter lies about research that shows an increased risk of death at homebirth and other midwives link to your lies.

Collect data on 28,000+ homebirths and find out that homebirth dramatically increases the risk of perinatal death, and just hide the data. Other homebirth advocates won’t mind.

But this latest technique for avoiding accountability is a new low.

I’m referring to Better Birth of Utah that had this to say in response to a client lawsuit alleging malpractice:

On a couple of occasions, we have discovered too late that a client is mentally ill, and her illness did not allow her to accurately perceive the events of labor…

That’s right. The folks at Better Birth have resurrected the classic sexist trope flung at women for millenia: don’t listen to that woman who is complaining; she’s crazy!

How many women, both poor and deprived or even rich and privileged have been “put away” into asylums because they dared question authority, whether that was the “authority” of their husbands, the Church or the State? Imputing mental illness to women who raise uncomfortable issues or make inconvenient accusations is one of the oldest sexist gambits in the book.

The folks at Better Birth claim that they are committed to accountability:

Our goal is to give every client the very best birth possible. Because we’re human, we don’t always succeed in that goal. When we have fallen short we are incredibly grateful to those clients who have given us the gift of negative feedback. Over the years we have used that precious information to change and improve our practice, our systems, and our facilities. As long as we exist we expect to continue that process and get better and better at serving our clients.

Really? They have a funny way of showing it.

At least they get points for full disclosure. Anyone contemplating choosing Better Birth can’t say they haven’t been warned. If you have a bad outcome or question their care, they will publicly label you as mentally ill.

It’s difficult to imagine anything more immoral or unethical.