Twitter is the latest venue for the battle against the sanctimommies of natural childbirth advocacy.
British TV host Kirstie Allsopp is angry:
[She] has launched a scathing attack on natural childbirth experts, accusing them of ‘stigmatising’ women who have Caesareans.
The TV presenter – whose two sons were delivered by C-section – claimed that she and thousands of other mothers were being made to feel a ‘failure’. She criticised the National Childbirth Trust for being ‘reckless’ in not providing enough information about the procedure in their antenatal classes, which are attended by 100,000 couples every year.
Ms. Allsopp appealed to her Twitter followers:
[She] then asked her 95,000 Twitter followers: ‘Anyone been on an NCT course recently? Was there any info/discussion on what happens in the event of you needing a C-section?’
Hundreds responded, many of them agreeing that they had been given minimal information. One new mother had apparently been banned from the class held after the birth because she had needed a Caesarean.
Her husband wrote: ‘After C-section my wife and I were the only couple not invited back to NCT group to tell expecting couples about it.’
Allsopp is fed up with the obnoxious attitude of professional natural childbirth advocates:
They seem to be saying if they had been in our position they would have managed somehow, despite all the medical advice, to give birth naturally,’ she said.
‘There are very few organisations that get away with suggesting you should ignore medical advice, but the NCT does.’
Brenda Phipps, president of the National Childbirth Trust (who has only 536 followers), rushed to inadvertently confirm Allsopps claims.
First, she offered the feeble excuse that the NCT did not cover C-sections in their childbirth classes, because it’s difficult ‘fitting everything in.’ But if Ms. Phipps and the NCT have chosen to ignore C-sections, they should have own their decision and not make absurd excuses.
Then Phipps, like all professional NCB advocates, could not resist being obnoxious. She claimed that NCT ignores C-sections in their classes in order to help women avoid them. When Allsopp pointed out that knowledge is more helpful than ignorance, Phipps joked that watching a car crash might constitute knowledge for avoiding a car crash but no one would want to do that.
Thereafter Phipps slips into the truly ridiculous:
imagining what you don’t want makes it more likely
followed by:
say to a child don’t spill that and it will
Make up your mind Ms. Phipps. Does the NCT fail to provide information about C-section because there isn’t enough time? Or does it deliberately refuse to provide information about C-section on the astoundingly inane theory that thinking about a C-section will cause a woman to have one?
One thing is crystal clear, though. The NCT stigmatizes C-sections just as Allsopp claims. Phipps presumes that vaginal delivery is always superior to C-section, that C-section is an “accident” to be avoided at all costs, and that merely mentioning it could cause the dread event to come to pass.
Allsopp has had enough:
… [I]t makes me want to cry that some women don’t have the information they need at such an important time. It has to stop.
