This piece has received more comments than any other I have written, 1000+ and counting. It first appeared 2 years ago, but rarely a week goes by without someone asserting one or more of the following in the comments sections. Clearly, some people need a review.

It seems like every day a new visitor parachutes in to this blog and attempts to “educate” me. Inevitably, the visitor finds that almost everything she says is false. Indeed, almost everything she thinks she “knows” is false. So to spare these visitors embarrassment, and to reach those who are attempting to “educate” me on other blogs, I have compiled the following list. Here’s what you should not say to me, and why you should not say it.

1. The US does very poorly on infant mortality.

Infant mortality is the WRONG statistic. It is a measure of pediatric care. That’s because infant mortality is deaths from birth to one year of age. It includes accidents, sudden infant death syndrome, and childhood diseases.

The correct statistic for measuring obstetric care (according to the World Health Organization) is perinatal mortality. Perinatal mortality is death from 28 weeks of pregnancy to 28 days of life. Therefore it includes late stillbirths and deaths during labor.

The US has one of the lowest rates of perinatal mortality in the world.

2. The Netherlands, which places the greatest reliance on midwives, has low mortality rates.

No, the Netherlands has, and has had for some years, one of the HIGHEST perinatal mortality rate in Western Europe. It also has a high and rising rate of maternal mortality. The Dutch government is deeply concerned about these high mortality rates and a variety of studies are underway to investigate.

A study published in the BMJ is early November 2010 revealed and astounding finding. The perinatal mortality rate for low risk women cared for by midwives is higher than the perinatal mortality rate for high risk women care for by obstetricians!

3. Obstetricians are surgeons.

I never understand how anyone has the nerve to say this to me. I AM an obstetrician. No one knows better than I what obstetricians are or are not. I went to college. I went to medical school. I spent four years in obstetric training. I delivered thousands of babies. I have cared for thousands of gyn patients. That some doula who is a high school graduate thinks that she can possibly know more than I about the nature of obstetricians defies belief.

Obstetricians do surgery as part of their practice. That does not make them surgeons. If it did, ophthalmologists and dermatologists would be surgeons too, since they do surgery as a routine part of caring for their patients. Is anyone seriously suggesting that you cannot go to an ophthalmologist for an eye exam because he or she will recommend unnecessary surgery?

4. Homebirth is safe.

No, all the existing scientific evidence and all national statistics indicate that homebirth triples the rate of neonatal death. Even studies that claim to show that homebirth is as safe as hospital birth, like the Johnson and Daviss BMJ 2005 study, ACTUALLY show that homebirth with a CPM has triple the rate of neonatal mortality of comparable risk women who delivered in the hospital in the same year.

The Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) is well aware that homebirth is dangerous. That’s why they are hiding their own mortality rates. They spent almost a decade collecting information on more than 18,000 CPM attended homebirths, announcing at intervals that they would use the data to show that homebirth is safe. So why haven’t any of us seen it?

The data is publicly available, but ONLY to those who can prove they will use the data for the “advancement” of midwifery. MANA is quite up front about the fact that they will not let anyone else know what they have learned. Obviously, if homebirth had been anywhere near as safe as hospital birth, they would be trumpeting it from the mountain top. It does not take a rocket scientist to suspect that their data shows that homebirth dramatically increases the risk of neonatal death.

5. Homebirth midwives are experts in normal birth.

This one always makes me laugh. Experts in normal birth? That’s like a meteorologist who claims to be an expert in good weather.

I guess they’re trying to make a virtue of necessity. Homebirth midwives know virtually nothing about the prevention, diagnosis and management of pregnancy complications. That’s a problem when you consider that the only reason you need a birth attendant is to prevent, diagnose and manage complications. You don’t need any expertise to catch the baby and make sure it doesn’t hit the floor. Ask any taxi drive; he’ll tell you.

6. Childbirth is safe.

No, childbirth is INHERENTLY dangerous. In every time, place and culture, it is one of the leading causes of death of young women. And the day of birth is the most dangerous day in the entire 18 years of childhood.

Why does childbirth seem so safe? Because of modern obstetrics. Modern obstetrics has lowered the neonatal mortality rate 90% and the maternal mortality rate 99% over the past 100 years. What has the contribution of midwifery been to lowering those mortality rates? Zero? They’ve invented nothing, discovered nothing and tested nothing that has had any impact on perinatal or maternal mortality.

7. Childbirth used to be dangerous but that is only because sanitation was poor and women were poorly nourished.

No, the great advances of sanitation occurred in the 1800’s and the early years of the 1900’s. Not surprisingly, this had a big impact on deaths from infectious causes. However, rates of perinatal and maternal mortality did not begin to drop appreciably since the late 1930’s and the discovery of antibiotics. In the intervening years, easier access to C-sections, epidural anesthesia, newer and better antibiotics, blood banking, and neonatology led to dramatically lower mortality rates.

8. C-section increases the risk of maternal and neonatal death.

No, women who die in pregnancy are most commonly women with serious pre-existing medical illness (heart disease, kidney disease) or serious pregnancy complications (pre-eclampsia). C-sections are often done in an effort to save the lives of these women. Sometimes it is not enough. The C-section is what is known as a “confounding factor.” Both the C-section and the death can be traced back to the mother’s health status; the C-section did not cause the death.

MacDorman and colleagues have attempted to show that C-sections for “no indicated risk” increase the neonatal death rate. Their papers have been roundly criticized because they used birth certificates, not hospital record. Unrelated investigations of birth certificates have shown that, while they are highly reliable for data like weight and Apgar scores, they are highly unreliable for risk factors. Indeed, unrelated studies have shown that up to 50% of women who have serious medical illnesses like heart disease, have those risk factors missing from the birth certificate.

9. Induction harms babies.

No, induction lowers perinatal mortality. The yearly CDC data on births shows that as the induction rate has risen, the rate of late stillbirth has dropped by 29% and the neonatal death rate has not increased.

10. If childbirth were dangerous, we wouldn’t be here.

This represents a profound lack of knowledge about evolution as well as a profound lack of knowledge about childbirth. Evolution does not lead to perfection. Evolution is the result of the survival of the fittest, not the survival of everyone. Human reproduction, like all animal reproduction, has a massive amount of wastage. Every woman was born with millions of ova that will never be used. Every man produces billions of sperm that will never fertilize an ovum. Even when a pregnancy is established, the miscarriage rate is 20%. That’s right. One in five pregnancies dies and is expelled and yet we are still here. Human reproduction is perfectly compatible with a natural neonatal death rate of approximately 7% and a natural maternal death rate of approximately 1%.

11. US maternal mortality is rising.

Despite a rather histrionic political report from Amnesty International making that claim, US maternal mortality is not rising and has even dropped in both of the past two years. Why does it look like it has risen? Because the standard death certificate has been revised twice in the past two decades in order to more accurately capture maternal deaths. The new death certificate has revealed maternal deaths which otherwise would not have been counted. It is not clear that maternal deaths have increased; it’s merely that reporting of those deaths has improved.

12. Women are designed to give birth.

Women are not “designed”: they have evolved and evolution involves trade offs. Babies with big heads tend to be more neurologically mature, so having a big neonatal head has evolutionary advantages. A small maternal pelvis makes it easier for a woman to walk and run, providing her with an evolutionary advantage. Those two advantages are often incompatible. The woman with a small pelvis may have been able to survive by outrunning wild animals, but when it came time to give birth, she was more likely to die because that small pelvis could not accommodate a large neonatal head.

***

The above statements have two things in common. First, they are wrong. Second, they are passed back and forth between natural childbirth advocates who “teach” each other they are true. That’s why it is impossible to become “educated” by reading natural childbirth books and websites. Most of their information is flat out false, and they are entirely insulated from scientific evidence. Natural childbirth advocates make up their “facts” as they go along. They don’t read the scientific literature. They don’t interact with science professionals. Indeed, professional natural childbirth advocates take special care to never appear in any venue whether they might be questioned by doctors or scientists. They know they’d be laughed out of the room. That’s okay with them as long as there is a large pool of gullible women out there who will believe them and buy their products.

It is important that those who are parachuting in to “educate” me understand that they literally have no idea what they are talking about. Most of what they think they “know” is factually false. And they demonstrate that every time they write one or more of those twelve statements.

Although Henci Goer’s new book, Optimal Care in Childbirth, suffers from serious deficiencies, it does have one important virtue.

I’ve often written that Henci Goer is one of the few (perhaps the only) professional childbirth advocates who actually reads and understands the scientific literature. She may cherry pick the evidence and she may try to justify ignoring scientific evidence that does not support her worldview, but she does not make up evidence nor does she make up theories that have no scientific evidence to support them.

That’s why the book implicitly rejects the nonsense spouted by Ina May Gaskin, Barbara Harper (waterbirth), Debra Pascali-Bonnaro (orgasmic birth) and other NCB and homebirth celebrities, by ignoring it altogether. Gaskin, Harper, Pascali-Bonnaro don’t even make it into the book. The only professional natural childbirth advocates who are mentioned are those with advanced degrees in midwifery, science or statistics (with the exception of Goer herself, who lacks such a degree).

It’s pretty remarkable. Ina May Gaskin, lauded within the NCB community, doesn’t even rate a mention in Goer’s book. That’s because almost everything that comes from Ina May’s mouth or pen is nonsense, unsupported by scientific evidence of any kind.

Goer doesn’t discuss the “Sphincter Law” because she knows that Ina May simply made it up and it has no basis in scientific evidence. She doesn’t talk about birth among animals, the fear-pain-tension cycle, the belief that postdates does not increase risk, etc., because none of it is true. Goer does not mention The Farm, let alone Ina May’s unsubstantiated claims about its low mortality rate. In fact, Goer doesn’t even mention the Gaskin maneuver for shoulder dystocia, which Ina May expropriated from South American lay midwives and named after herself in a striking display of cultural imperialism.

There’s nothing about waterbirth in Goer’s book. Goer doesn’t say that babies can’t inhale the water of the birth pool because they can. All those claims from Barbara Harper about the dive reflex, prostaglandins and hypotonic solutions aren’t in Goer’s book because they aren’t true; Harper just made them up.

Orgasmic birth? You’ve got to be kidding! It’s not in the book because it doesn’t exist.

Breech is a variation of normal? Not according to Goer.

Spinning babies, moxibustion and other techniques to encourage a breech baby to turn? Not in the book because none of them have any scientific support.

Postdates inductions? Goer says that inductions are indicated at 42 weeks and beyond.

Certified professional midwives? Their existence is mentioned but Goer makes no claims about the adequacy of their training or the safety of their practice.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. Just about everything out of the mouths or pens of CPMs and other lay advocates of NCB and homebirth is nothing but fabrications and lies, and therefore is not included in the book.

This is not surprising when you consider that Goer, although a biological essentialist, is not an anti-rationalist. If written about this before (Who hijacked childbirth?):

… The difference between biological essentialists and feminist anti-rationalists is primarily in their view of rationalism. Among the true biological essentialists are Henci Goer and Amy Romano. The biolgical essentialists are represented by organizations like Lamaze and the American College of Nurse Midwives (ACNM). They worship the “natural” on the assumption that biology determines what is best for all women. Nonetheless, they believe that science is non-gendered, valuable and the standard by which claims about childbirth should be judged. They freely quote scientific papers and insist that their views of childbirth are “evidence based” even when they are not. They value empirical knowledge and advanced education.

The non-rationalists reject science as male, and unfairly regarded as authoritative merely because it is male. To the extent that science supports their beliefs, they are willing to brandish scientific papers as “proof,” but explicitly reject rationalism when it does not comport with their personal beliefs, feelings and opinions. They do not value empirical knowledge and reject rigorous education.

So I have a question of NCB and homebirth advocates:

If Henci Goer implicitly rejects the nonsense of Ina May Gaskin, waterbirth and orgasmic birth, why do any of you believe it?

I first wrote about the problem last year. Promoting normal birth is killing mothers and babies:

Gill Edwards, a leading clinical negligence solicitor with the firm Pannone, is in no doubt why these fatal mistakes continue.

‘Too often, we see a desire for autonomy, sometimes verging on arrogance, on the part of some midwives,’ she says.

‘It leads them to ignore National Midwifery Council rules that require them to call on the skills of other health professionals whenever something happens which is outside their sphere of practice…’

‘Some of our worst cases occur because the drive to achieve a “normal” delivery clouds the judgment of midwives about when to call in specialist help from an obstetrician, or for a paediatrician to be present at the birth to assist with resuscitation when there are signs of foetal distress during labour,’ says Ms Edwards.

The result is an unimaginable toll in deaths and injuries of mothers and babies. A new report from the NHS Litigation Authority makes it clear that there is a massive financial toll as well.

Senior staff and consultants must be available on the labour wards 24 hours a day in order to supervise junior doctors and midwives and reduce mistakes, said the report from the NHS Litgiation Authority…

The 5.5 million babies born in England between 1 April 2000 to 31 March 2010, resulted in 5,087 maternity claims, involving payouts of £3.1bn, including legal fees…

The most frequent mistakes cited in claims involved management of labour including failure to recognise the baby was in distress from fetal heart monitoring equipment or delay in acting; caesarean section including mistakes and delays and cerebral palsy, where the baby is starved of oxygen at birth and sustains brain damage, often requiring life-long care.

Other claims related to missing abnormalities on antenatal scans, drug errors, maternal deaths, damage to the mother, shoulder injuries to the baby, womb rupture and stillbirth.

The report said: “Unfortunately, many of the same errors are still being repeated.”

Confronted with the fact that midwives’ relentless promotion of “normal birth” is injuring and killing babies and costing the National Health Service billions of pounds in medical negligence claims each year, Royal College of Midwives head Cathy Warwick responds by … promoting “normal birth.”

Warwick’s response is bizarre, as the video below demonstrates. It’s like a Monty Python sketch and if it weren’t so serious, it would be quite amusing.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/BWASqt94V2w&w=400&h=300]

 

It is precisely the attitude expressed by Warwick in the video that is responsible for the staggering toll in preventable deaths, injuries and financial compensation.

The most important thing anyone needs to know about promoting normal birth is this:

Promoting normal birth is always and only about promoting midwives.

“Normal birth” is a way to sanitize what is really nothing more than midwifery marketing. Insisting that women hire midwives because midwives want employment isn’t particularly persuasive. Insisting that women hire midwives because only they can provide them with a “normal” birth (who wants an abnormal birth?) sounds a lot better.

It’s time to put an end to this lunacy. Women and babies are dying preventable deaths because midwives are more concerned with market share than with patient safety. Promoting “normal birth” is fundamentally unethical.  An ethical medical professional recommends whatever is safest for the patient, not whatever is most beneficial for the provider.

 

The Motherlode column in The New York Times has performed a public service by highlighting a relatively common problem that receives little attention: severe perineal tears, a known complication of vaginal birth.

Ashley Nelson describes her experience:

… In addition to the tear, doctors would later find a rectovaginal fistula, wherein a passage forms between the rectum and vagina. Symptoms of this are nightmarish: fecal matter through the vagina, flatus incontinence, pain. The condition is often attributed to prolonged labors, forceps and previously unrecognized tears.

As if this weren’t bad enough, Nelson has had to endure the misinformed advice and speculation of women who insist that her injuries could have easily been prevented:

… Coverage of birth injuries are often buried under studies about the escalating rates of C-sections and the “too posh to push” women fueling them, as well as more “progressive” reports suggesting that if only women relaxed better, oiled better, breathed better, all births would be just grand…

The topic is also too politicized. Like arguments against birth control and abortion, discussions of childbirth frequently sideline any real medical issues in favor of portraying women as too busy, selfish and privileged to “choose” the “right” path, in this case a vaginal birth…

As if to prove her point, midwifery supporters rushed in with the exact misinformation that Nelson decried.

A large number of commenters insisted that midwives have a lower incidence of severe tears (there is little to no high quality scientific evidence to support this claim), that upright position prevents tears (false; it actually increases the risk of tears) and that “stress” causes tears (false).

There are studies that show that midwives have lower rates of severe perineal tears often include confounders. Operative vaginal delivery is a major confounder and only obstetricians perform operative vaginal deliveries. Median episiotomy is also a confounder and in older studies obstetricians have higher rates of median episiotomies. This difference has almost entirely disappeared. Interestingly, one factor that has been shown to dramatically reduce the risk of severe perineal tears is mediolateral episiotomy (episiotomy extending to the side, not up and down). Mediolateral episiotomies tend to be more painful when healing so there has been a reduction in their use, but they are extremely effective in preventing severe perineal tears.

I explained the nature of perineal tears in a post that appeared earlier this year entitled Vaginal tears and emphasized the need for prompt, skilled repair of 3rd and 4 degree tears in order to prevent long term serious complications like urinary and bowel incontinence.

According to the scientific literature, the risk of severe perineal tears is associated with characteristics of the baby, the mother, and the delivery method. These factors are just what common sense would suggest:

There is a GREATER risk of severe perineal tears with:

1. bigger babies
2. OP (occiput posterior) position of the baby’s head, which leads to a bigger presenting diameter
3. shoulder dystocia.
4. operative vaginal delivery (particularly forceps).
5. among certain ethnic groups.
6. median episiotomy, BUT a reduced risk of tears with mediolateral episiotomy.
7. first vaginal deliveries.

There are factors that may reduce the risk of severe perineal tears including epidural anesthesia, which leads to a more controlled delivery. There are studies that suggest that perineal support and warm compresses reduce the risk of severe perineal tears but the evidence is not high quality (Cochrane Review: Perineal techniques during the second stage of labour for reducing perineal trauma.)

Upright position in labor INCREASES the risk of severe perineal tears and blood loss.

It is important that we bring this serious complication of vaginal delivery to public attention, but it is equally important that women receive ACCURATE information about the risk factors, not wishful thinking on the part of midwifery supporters.

As Nelson herself indicated, the misinformation that “if only women relaxed better, oiled better, breathed better, all births would be just grand” contributed to her sense of isolation. Nonetheless midwifery proponents rushed in to tell her that if she had just relaxed better, oiled better, breathed better, etc. her birth would have been just grand. That’s one way to validate Nelson’s story, but I daresay not the one she was hoping for.

I’ve been getting lots of emails about People Magazine’s article on Kimberly Van Der Beek’s homebirth.

Kimberly is the wife of sitcom star James Van Der Beek. Facing a C-section for a breech baby, Kimberly met with Dr. Stuart Fischbein, “an angel in the birthing world,” who ultimately presided over the breech homebirth of her son.

My correspondents wanted to know why an MD would preside over a breech homebirth. I don’t know for sure, but it could be because Dr. Fischbein is a convicted sexual predator who lost his hospital privileges.

The offense was described by the Ventura County Star:

His patient, identified in Medical Board records as S.K., was 14 years younger than he and earning her doctorate degree in psychology. She came to Fischbein’s office in Century City with her fiancee. They wanted to have a baby.

… He performed surgery … to remove a mass in her uterus and called her “sweet pea” in the recovery room. He sat at her bedside for long intimate talks, testifying in a hearing he viewed her as not just a patient, but as a woman…

S.K. said Fischbein told her he would be a better father than her fiancee. He persuaded her to leave him.

They talked about the ethics of doctor-patient relationships. She said he told her he dated “bushels” of patients. Fischbein denied the comment or any other relationship with a patient.

She said he advised her not to have sex for four to six weeks after surgery. Fischbein said in court he didn’t remember the discussion.

Five days after she was released from the hospital and eight days after surgery, he called and asked to visit her at her home in Los Angeles. They had sex then and again two days later at Fischbein’s home.

He testified it was consensual. She said she viewed him as a doctor who had performed a surgery that was going to enable her to have a baby. He had become a hero who seemed almost “godlike.” And he was interested in her.

“I would have done anything he would have told me to do,” said the woman, who is suing Fischbein. “I look back with my hindsight and with my mind today and say, How could I have done this?'”

As a result, the California Board of Medicine placed him on probation for 7 years. The Board recently voted to continue the probation, expressing astonishment that Dr.Fischbein was attempting to produce a movie entitled Bedside Man to tell “his side” of the story.

In an effort to promote “Bedside Man” for financial investment to make a full length movie, the trailer was made accessible over the internet. One hospital where Petitioner was affiliated found out about it and contacted Petitioner’s psychotherapist… From her letter detailing the events, it appears that [she] was readily able to see the impropriety of the project while Petitioner had not. She told him that the project “did not represent him as a man who had made a terrible error in judgment.” [The psychotherapist] persuaded Petitioner that the project was an error and for the trailer to be removed from the internet. Petitioner has done so.

The Board did not terminate the probation, writing:

[He] views probation as punishment and an inconvenience… Although he no doubt has encountered difficulties practicing while on probation, he still tends to overstate those difficulties. He has openly chaffed at the requirement that he have a third party chaperone during interactions with female patients. It is clear that once off probation, the chaperone requirement would quickly disappear from his practice as the lessons learned from these events fade and the inconvenience grows…

The report concludes:

More alarming was Petitioner’s participation in the movie script and trailer. This activity shows that Petitioner still harbors bad feelings about what happened to him, suggesting that he does not fully believe he engaged in misconduct… Such a state of mind does not bode well for the proposition of removing Petitioner completely from the Board’s probationary oversight. In all, these events demonstrate sufficient concern over the course of Petitioner’s rehabilitation as to indicate that continuing probation with all terms should continue in order to protect the public…

How “educated” about homebirth was Ms. Van Deer Beek if she didn’t know her own provider is a convicted sexual predator?

And why are homebirth advocates lauding him?

As usual, Gina Crossly-Corcoran, The Feminist Breeder, captures the utter cluelessness of homebirth advocates:

I spent a dinner with the doctor who assisted her, Dr. Stuart Fischbein, OB/GYN, and wish we could clone him a thousand times. THIS is how you support women and healthy birth!

How charming. He’s a sexual predator and she wants to clone him a thousand times. I suspect it would be more accurate to say this is WHY Dr. Fischbein is promoting the grossly irresponsible practice of breech homebirth. How else is the guy going to make any money?

What’s Ricki Lake’s excuse for featuring a convicted sexual predator on her talk show.

Why is the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada (SOGC) supporting a conference on breech birth where a convicted sexual predator is one of the featured speakers.

I’d love to hear their explanations. I guess it adds new meaning to the expression “with women.”

Sexual exploitation of a patient is probably the most egregious violation of professional conduct that any obstetrician-gynecologist can commit. I am appalled that homebirth advocates are lauding a man who is a convicted sexual predator, one who doesn’t even acknowledge the gravity of his offense. Ricki Lake, the SOGC and everyone else should sever ties with this man immediately or explain to the rest of us why they are promoting the career of a man who has committed a hideous violation of a woman’s trust.

OMG, Mamas, I am so traumatized by my latest hearth experience. I was planning to go entirely natural at home and then everything was ruined by the firemen.

The story of this trauma begins with my last hearth experience. I was so uneducated that I believed all the fear mongering around fire in our society. I built my first fire in a fireplace, induced it with chemical saturated matches, and sped it up by artificial means (a Duraflame block). My husband thought that I should be grateful for a warm and pretty fire, but I felt completely violated. Where was the wildness, the raw, primeval power of fire? Where was the spirituality that our foremothers associated with this precious miracle?

This time I vowed things would be different. I educated myself by reading books and websites about natural fires. Human beings have been using fires since before the beginning of recorded history. They spent countless nights sheltering in the warm glow of fires built at the mouths of caves, safe in the knowledge that the sacred fire would scare off predators and illuminate dozens of intimate sexual acts occurring simultaneously among the many members of the tribe.

I learned that fear mongering about fire is vast conspiracy created by those who stand to profit from denying the safety of the fire experience … like Big Extinguisher and the brick manufacturers who create the bricks that line fireplaces. And let’s not forget firemen. They make 100% of their income by convincing people that fires are dangerous and ought to be put out. If fires are so unsafe, how could the human race have survived millions of people sitting around millions of fires for millions of years? If fire were dangerous, we wouldn’t be here.

I planned a completely natural home bonfire. I decided that I would not be forced into managing fire by building my fire in a hearth. No, if my ancestors could build fires in caves, then I could build one in my living room. I used only all natural materials; no matches for me. I waited until I spotted a small brush fire near my neighborhood, ran out with the candle I dipped by hand (I crocheted the wick from hemp) and capture the sacred natural fire. The I piled the branches and kindling high in a kiddie pool in my living room and trusted fire.

My husband and I caressed each other in the glow of our totally natural bonfire. Sure, it was painful when my eyebrows got singed, but I was empowered by that pain.

Unfortunately, our bonfire was one of the exceedingly rare, entirely unpredictable times that fire did a bit of damage to the structures around it. Yes, it is true that the drapes did go up in the conflagration, the whole second story of our house burned off and the neighbor’s house caught fire. Complications do sometimes occur, and that’s why I was prepared. I immediately dialed 911 to summon the fire department and that was when all hell broke loose.

Instead of respecting the sacred nature of our hearth experience, the firemen charged in and immediately started using technology. Sure, they saved the rest of the house (the second floor was a total loss) and the other houses in the neighborhood, but they used far more water than necessary and cut the parts of our house that were still standing with axes. It will be along time until we can remove the scars from the walls. And don’t get me started on the water damage inflicted on the drapes that had survived the flames.

I have been deeply traumatized that our house was violated by total strangers.

I still trust fire, though, and will prove it.

As soon as I recover from my third degree burns I plan to build an even bigger all natural fire in the living room of our homeless shelter.