“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.

What’s the most important tool of any professional homebirth advocate? It’s the delete button, of course!

At every level of homebirth advocacy, from clowns like The Feminist Breeder, through organizations like Lamaze; from self-proclaimed “experts” in obstetrical research like Henci Goer to people with academic credentials like Darcia Narvaez, PhD, the delete button is integral to maintaining Orwellian control over what people read and think.

I would have thought someone like Darcia Narvaez had at least a smidgen of academic integrity, but I was disappointed. I left a comment in response to her inane post on Psychology Today entitled Jesus Had a Home Birth.

No, not the obvious comment:

“So did Hitler? What’s your point?”

This comment:

This piece is filled with so many half truths, mistruths and lies that no single comment can address them all. Let’s hit the high points:

“In the USA, home birth used to be the way babies came into the world until the 20th century when increasingly hospital births became the norm.”

True, but since the introduction of hospital birth in the US, the neonatal mortality rate has fallen 90% and the maternal mortality rate has fallen 99%! It has fallen so far, so fast, that people who know nothing about obstetrics mistakenly think that childbirth is inherently safe.

“At the same time unfortunately, the USA has the highest infant and maternal mortality rate in the developed world for the perinatal period.”

A lie, based on a misrepresentation of the data. Infant mortality and perinatal mortality are two different things, as Narvaez ought to know. Infant mortality is a measure of pediatric care (deaths from birth to 1 year). According to the WHO, the best measure of obstetric care is perinatal mortality (stillbirths plus deaths to 28 days of life). According to the WHO, the US has one of the LOWEST rates of perinatal mortality in the world.

Morever, as is widely recognized scientists and physicians, direct international comparisons of mortality rates are INVALID because many countries cheat in calculating both infant and neonatal deaths. They cheat by deliberately excluding very premature babies. In other words, they classify the babies who are most likely to die as stillborn (and therefore not included) even when they are born alive. That’s why the WHO insists on looking at perinatal mortality because it makes it impossible to hide infant deaths by pretending they are stillbirths.

“Despite concern over the safety of home births in the USA, several studies reveal that when planned and appropriately overseen, home birth stands on its own merit as a safe and suitable option.”

A lie. There is not a single study of homebirth in the US that shows it to be safe. Not even one. And the largest study that claims to show that homebirth is safe, the Johnson and Davis BMJ 2005 study actually shows that homebirth has a mortality rate triple that of comparable risk hospital birth. The only way that J&D could make homebirth look safe was to compare it to a bunch of out of date papers extending back to 1969.

Even the papers that Narvaez cites from other countries don’t show what she says they show. She appears to be unaware that Patricia Janssen was forced to publicly retract the claims made in her 2002 paper after acknowledging that the death rate in the homebirth group was HIGHER than than in the hospital group.

So in the first three claims of this post, 1 is a misrepresentation and the other 2 are flatly untrue.

Unfortunately, Narvaez appears to be recycling the mistruths and lies that characterize American homebirth advocacy.

Just how dangerous is homebirth in the US?

According to the latest CDC data, PLANNED homebirth with a non-nurse midwife has a neonatal death rate more than 600% HIGHER than comparable risk hospital birth.

In fact, homebirth is so dangerous that the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA), the group that represents homebirth midwives, is HIDING their own death rates. They have assembled a database of 27,000 homebirths and have publicly bragged about the C-section rates, the intervention rates and the transfer rates, but they absolutely refuse to disclose how many of those 27,000 babies died.

Even MANA knows that homebirth has an appalling death rate; they just don’t want you to find out.

It was posted, deleted, returned and ultimately permanently deleted nearly 12 hours after it was first received.

Why do professional homebirth advocates reflexively reach for the delete button, and, if available, the ban button, when confronted with dissent? I suspect there are three reasons:

1. It is vital for their advocacy (and I suspect for their fragile self-esteem) to create a space that doesn’t simply reinforce their beliefs, but makes it look like no one believes anything else. Dissent simply cannot be tolerated.

2. They are incapable of addressing the criticism.

Most professional homebirth advocates are aware at a certain level that they don’t have science on their side. They readily vomit up bibliography salad, but they don’t analyze (or, in many cases even read) the citations they offer. For example, Darcia Narvaez, who presumably should know enough to check, was completely unaware that the conclusion of one of her citations was publicly retracted by its lead author who acknowledged that her claim about the safety of homebirth was untenable because the data in the paper itself showed deaths in the homebirth group, and none in the hospital group.

Narvaez could have acknowledged her mistake and corrected it, but that would have required two things she apparently cannot tolerate: actual research into the topic she’s babbling about and intellectual honesty.

3. They are afraid of letting their readers think for themselves.

If they had even a fraction of confidence in their own claims and/or a modicum of respect for the fact that their readers are intellectually capable of drawing their own conclusions, they wouldn’t merely let dissent stand, they would welcome it. By defending their claims against those launched by critics, they could strengthen their case that homebirth is safe. But they are exquisitely aware that they lack the knowledge base and the intellectual ability to defend the safety of homebirth. Most importantly, they are well aware that the dissenters are often right and they are wrong.

What should women conclude from the fact that professional homebirth advocates have a totalitarian approach to dissent?

They should understand that, as in the case of totalitarian governments, efforts to remove dissent and create the image that dissent never existed are tools to force or trick people into beliefs that could never be defended in an intellectually honest way. Deleting and banning reflect the desperation felt by those trying to hold onto power that was gained by lying to people in the first place. Most importantly, women (and men) should understand that professional homebirth advocates are terrified of letting people think for themselves. Who knows what might happen if they treated women like intellectually capable human beings instead of like sheep?

In the dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell introduced the idea that vocabulary has the power to control thought. In 1984, the government, in an effort to control citizens and force them into submission, perverts the meaning of common words and phrases to promote approved views and stamp out unapproved views. The classic example of this effort is the following quote:

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

This type of language manipulation is also known as “doublespeak,” which Wikipedia defines as:

… [L]anguage that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., “downsizing” for layoffs, “servicing the target” for bombing, making the truth less unpleasant, without denying its nature. It may also be deployed as intentional ambiguity, or reversal of meaning (for example, naming a state of war “peace”). In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth, producing a communication bypass.

Natural childbirth advocacy relies to a large extent on doublespeak in its ongoing efforts to wrest legitimacy from modern obstetrics.

This reliance begins with its very name. The philosophy of “natural childbirth” has nothing to do with childbirth in nature. Indeed its creation was launched on an outright lie, the claim that “primitive” women did not feel pain in childbirth. The accoutrements of contemporary natural childbirth advocacy have nothing to do with nature either. Not only was were their no childbirth classes, nutrition counseling and birth affirmations in nature, there were also no bathtubs, birthing balls or hypnosis tapes. There’s precious little about natural childbirth that is natural.

The pattern of doublespeak has numerous analogues cheerfully bandied about by natural childbirth advocates.

For example:

1. Variation of normal actually means abnormal. Natural childbirth claims to concern itself exclusively with low risk, uncomplicated vaginal deliveries. Unfortunately, many births are complicated by minor, major or even life threatening abnormalities. That’s why childbirth has always been — in every time, place and culture, including our own — a leading cause of death of young women and the leading cause of death for babies.

Not to worry, though. Natural childbirth advocates have come up with a way to ignore that reality. They have simply labeled abnormal and high risk situations as “variations of normal.” For example, instead of acknowledging that breech, twins, VBAC and postdates — all of which are known to increase the risk of death for babies and mothers — are high risk, they simply pretend they are “variations” of low risk.

2. Evidence based means based on no evidence at all. Natural childbirth advocates are fond of describing natural childbirth as “evidenced based” and excoriating modern obstetrics as not based on scientific evidence. Let’s leave aside for the moment that most natural childbirth advocates have never read a scientific paper and wouldn’t understand it even if they did, it is indisputable that almost every practice exclusive to natural childbirth is based on no evidence whatsoever.

Consider the “best practices” recommended by Lamaze:

Let labor begin on its own: There is no scientific evidence that a spontaneous labor is better or safer for babies. Indeed, there is copious scientific evidence that the risk of stillbirth begins increasing before 38 weeks and rises steadily with each day that passes. That risk must, of course, be balanced against any risks of induction to the mother, but, even so, it is factually false to claim that spontaneous labor is safer. Indeed, as the rate of induction has risen in the US, the rate of late stillbirth has fallen dramatically.

Walk, move around and change positions throughout labor: There’s no scientific evidence that moving around or changing positions has any impact on labor, let alone a beneficial impact. According to the Cochrane review on position in labor, “There were no differences between groups for other outcomes including length of the second stage of labour, mode of delivery, or other outcomes related to the wellbeing of mothers and babies.”

Avoid interventions that are not medically necessary: In other words, refuse an epidural; yet there is no scientific evidence that childbirth without pain relief is better, safer, healthier or superior in any way to childbirth with pain relief.

Indeed, every single practice exclusive to natural childbirth advocacy was instituted before it was ever tested in clinical practice and, to this day, most of it is unsupported by scientific evidence.

3. Baby friendly and mother friendly means “bears no relationship to what the majority of women and babies need or want, but enhances the self-esteem of advocates.” From harassing women to breastfeed, to removing well baby nurseries, to grossly overstating risks of epidurals and grossly overstating benefits of refusing interventions, most practices promoted as either baby friendly or mother friendly confer little or no benefit and are the opposite of what women choose when their choices are taken into account.

Then there are the euphemisms:

4. Vocalized means screaming in agony.

5. Primal means screaming in agony.

6. Sensations means agony.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Natural childbirth advocacy is devoted to and relies on doublespeak for a great deal of its appeal. It sells itself as natural, but bears no relationship to childbirth in nature. It insists it is appropriate for only low risk birth, but then renames high risk situations as variations of normal. It claims to be based on scientific evidence, but generally has no scientific support at all. It claims to be baby and mother friendly, but very few women would choose to follow its recommendations without being shamed into it and there is no evidence that it is beneficial for babies. And the sheer number of euphemisms for agonizing pain make it very clear that there is considerable effort devoted to lying about the pain of childbirth.

I’ll leave you with a final quote from 1984:

Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Natural childbirth advocacy is a form of orthodoxy that deliberately subverts language in an effort to conceal the reality of childbirth and promote a philosophy whose primary goal appears to be enhancing the self-esteem of its advocates at the expense of the majority of mothers and babies.

Last week we heard from a cardiologist who related her experience of being made to suffer in an effort to promote breastfeeding. But how about babies? Aren’t they suffering, too?

It’s ironic when you think about it. Many of the same people who refuse infant eye ointment because the baby might be distressed by blurry vision, who refuse neonatal vitamin K because the injection will hurt the baby for a brief moment, think nothing of letting a baby (yours or theirs) scream for hours in hunger in the face of inadequate breast milk supply.

The promotion of breastfeeding invariably involves discussion of the benefits to babies of breastmilk but no one seems to care about the babies who suffer in an attempt to force them to breastfeed even when the breastfeeding relationship is not working.

Hunger is probably the most elemental of infant drives and, as anyone who has seen an infant scream from hunger would probably agree, is experienced by the baby as suffering. For most mothers, myself included, the sound of their own infant crying is piercing in its intensity and distress. I remember being surprised by this when my first child was born. I had spent my entire professional life surrounded by crying babies and it had never bothered me, yet I found my son’s crying unbearable and always rushed to determine what was wrong and fix it in any way possible. I cannot imagine letting any of my infants cry in hunger for any length of time without feeding them. Indeed I recoil when I read about the infant care manuals of the early 20th Century that advised mothers to feed the baby on a schedule designed for maternal convenience instead of infant needs.

So why do lactivists think it okay to let babies scream for hours at a time because of desperate, all consuming hunger? Why do they advise women whose babies aren’t getting enough milk in the first few days to ignore that crying in an effort to promote breastfeeding? Why do they view supplementation in the first view days as an evil so great that it is preferable to force babies to endure distress?

Why do lactivists think it is okay to ignore an infant who is not gaining weight because of a maternal milk supply that does not match that infants needs? Why do they denigrate women who find their baby soothed and content after a bottle of formula, and chastise them that they should have let the baby scream instead?

Why do lactivists who have children who try to wean before their mothers have planned to stop breastfeeding counsel each other to starve the baby into submission? Why do they tell each other to offer no other source of nourishment until the baby is forced to give up his or her drive for independence and bow to the mother’s will to continue breastfeeding in order to survive?

Why do people who promote attachment parenting, which is supposed to be about meeting infant needs, to ignore their most elemental need, the need for adequate nutrition?

What’s the difference between the pediatricians of the early 20th Century who promoted feeding on schedule because of its supposed long term benefits and contemporary lactivists who ignore infant hunger because of the very small long term benefits that may or may not really exist?

It seems to me that one of the biggest ironies of all is lactivists who promote forced breastfeeding as “baby-friendly.” We already know that “baby friendly” hospital policies are definitely not mother friendly, but I suspect that such policies aren’t even baby friendly.

How could anything that ignores infant suffering be considered baby friendly?