The pace of homebirth deaths appears to be accelerating. When I first started the predecessor of this blog back in 2006, I heard about a few homebirth deaths a year and wrote about every death I heard about. Gradually the pace picked up to one or more a month. Earlier this year I acknowledged that there are so many homebirth deaths that I can no longer keep up with them. As recently as last month I reported on multiple homebirth deaths that took place in the space of 6 weeks (Latest homebirth harvest of death).
Now I’m horrified to report 5 6 7 homebirth deaths in the past WEEK! [Edited after readers of this post shared information about two additional deaths. See below.]And those are only the confirmed homebirth deaths; there may have been more. There were additional cases of injury as well.[pullquote align=”right” color=”#333333″]If 7 dead babies in one week is not enough to convince you homebirth is dangerous, I don’t know what is.[/pullquote]
Why the dramatic acceleration in homebirth deaths?
I suspect part of the increase may reflect the reported increase in homebirths. I am hoping, however, that the dramatic increase in deaths in partly a reflection of the fact that as this blog has become more popular, and as other homebirth safety groups have sprung up, I’m simply receiving more reports than I have received in the past.
In the past WEEK:
DEATHS
1. July 23 Baby Boy C.
Born in a CPM attended birth center. Birth announcement removed from the birth center’s page. Cause of death unknown.
2. July 24 Baby Boy C.
Everyone… Please pray for my friend L…she just delivered her first baby boy this morning and he started having trouble breathing…. they did CPR on him while waiting for the paramedics…. got baby to BGH and airflighted him to SHM NICU…. He’s struggling to survive… his body keeps overheating and he’s had 2 seizures.
Later that day:
PLEASE PRAY RIGHT NOW… He is fighting for his life…. on a cooling pad (bc his body keeps overheating which is causing seizures) and he is on a breathing machine but taking a breath here and there on his own…as well as being “hooked up” to many other things…
July 26th:
Baby C. has an MRI test to medically confirm any brain stem activity but it takes 48-72 hrs for him to go thru the warming and cooling process…. His heart is very strong but that seems to be the only part of his body working on its own…
July 29th (after warming completed)
Last night they received the MRI test results from their doctor. The MRI test confirmed with the other test results… This is very devastating and so very sad and we ask for you to pray for their Comfort…
Baby C. went home to be with Jesus at 11:30 last night.
3. July 25/26 Baby Boy
Unassisted pregnancy, unassisted birth after a previous premature birth at 30 weeks.
A friend:
Our best friend and his girlfriend lost their baby boy during home birth last night. This was their second child. With her first her water broke 10 weeks early and their daughter was a premie. This pregnancy had gone without event but also without any prenatal care. It is her belief that pregnancy is natural and requires no additional monitoring if everything goes well. This is not his belief, but he wasn’t able to convince her and decided to support her choice ultimately.
I do not know any more details at this time…
Another friend:
Prayer warriors, I’m upset by God’s tactics today and it’s really throwing me off. Maybe I just need to share this with you…
Our friends abruptly lost their infant son during labor and delivery this weekend. There are no words you can say when a parent must face the loss of a child. My most eloquent scripture and our entire ability to love seems utterly meaningless, right now. Their hearts have been on mine without wander today.
Our friend who lost her son, she made pregnancy her job. She did countless hours of research into understanding every facet of her job as a mother. I have watched her nurse a preemie to bounding health, their first daughter. She was born for this job, being a mother, and she’s GREAT at it. Why is she asked to shoulder this?
4. July 26 Baby Girl E.
Attempted unassisted homebirth. Stalled at 9 cm. Mother’s friend crowd sourced advice on Facebook. Ultimately transferred to the hospital with a live baby. Baby appears to have died during further labor.
5. July 27/28 Baby gender unknown
Grand multip attempting HBAC. She had had multiple previous successful VBACs. Transferred for abruption. Mother developed eclampsia with seizures. No fetal heartbeat on admission to the hospital. Emergency repeat C-section for a baby that appeared to have been dead for at least an hour.
6. July 26 Baby Girl A
Born at home before noon after what appears to have been an HBAC. Baby immediately transferred to the hospital “due to complications of labor.” Baby died before midnight.
The mother details the first time she was able to see the baby after her hospital transfer:
An eternity passed before I was able to see her, or at least that is how it felt. She had so many wires and tubes and pokes and pricks. I was able to touch her forehead and her hand. We were told she had a cooling cap on her head to cool down her brain. We were told to hope and pray for a seizure, because then we were know there was a least a little brain activity. This was the most absurd thing I have ever been told. I remember being so angry at the doctors for telling me to hope for such a horrible thing, but then it sank in how bad this really was. My daughter had NO brain activity, none. She had machines breathing for her, she would never do that on her own. She wasn’t clotting. She was anemic, acidotic and brain dead.
7. July 30 Baby Boy M
Today we delivered our M. He wasn’t breathing and never responded despite all attempts by us or the medical team after transfer. We lost him officially at 3:30…
In addition:
There are two other babies born at home/birth center who are currently fighting for their lives (one with group B strep pneumonia, another baby with a severe brain injury).
If 5 6 7 dead babies in one week is not enough to convince women that homebirth is extraordinarily dangerous, I don’t know what is.
The death isn’t about the location of the birth- it’s about the training and equipment the attendant has. If you count unassisted births, of course it’s going to be high. Unassisted births are too unsafe for me. Any study that lumps them in with responsible births with a trained and experienced birth attendant who is trained in and has the equipment for neonatal recussitation is going to show too high numbers. It’s high time people started differentiating between the type of home birth- homes don’t kill babies.
Also because home birth has such small numbers, a fluke week can make it look much worse than it is. What bothers me is that hospital birth isn’t treated the same way. A baby can die as the direct result of having a hospital birth when they would have been fine at home (death as a result of an unnecessary c-section due to failure to progress because of a too-early unnecessary induction, contracting a hospital-borne infection as my daughter did [but fortunately she didn’t die]) and no one blames it on the location of the birth. Until people start doing GOOD studies, you won’t know for sure. The good studies I’ve seen (where they study trained birth attendants, low risk moms, etc) show home birth is as safe or safer.
There are plenty of good studies. All show that US homebirth has 3-9X higher rate of death than comparable risk hospital birth.
I’m always up for reading good science (peer-reviewed journals, please, where I can read the full text) about home birth with trained midwives, especially seeing how they define trained midwives and what the study criteria are (how are low-risk mothers defined, etc). The anecdotal nature of your website is somewhat off-putting. A doctor usually doesn’t use so much anecdotal evidence. What is your reasoning for using anecdotal evidence if there are so many good studies? Anyway if you would like to provide links, I will read the studies.
So we are all still waiting on that count for hospital birth deaths from last week… Lmk when you have it.
It’s not the count that matters, it is the RATE. And there are very few preventable deaths of full term healthy babies at the hospitals. When it does happen on those rare occasions there is a full investigation.
I estimated that there are about 770-800 homebirths a week. That would make the rate of preventable deaths that we know about 6 (excluding the last one) in 800, which is 1 in 133.
Would you accept that chance?
Probably around 30. The hospital birth death rate in 2013 (last year I could check) was 0.4 per thousand. There are 4 million hospital births per year, so to divide that by 52 to get the weekly number, than apply .4 per thousand.
MANA’s own surveys showed a death rate of 2.06 per thousand. 4.75 per thousand for HBAC. 22.5 per thousand for breech.
Think about that. The midwives’ own data shows homebirth AT MINIMUM makes your baby more than 4 times as likely to DIE. And that’s only if your baby isn’t breech or if you have no prior cesareans.
4 000 000 births per year.
40 000 homebirths per year.
If babies were in hospitals dying at the same rate that they died during last week in homebirth, we would have 800 babies dead in hospitals instead of 30 in a week. Lmk when Ariel and her ilk, if ever, manage to grasp that math.
I can’t argue with logic like that. Myself, I encourage everyone to drink and drive. Seriously, just look up how many sober people get in car accidents every _day_!
What happened to Monica and her baby is a double tragedy. Even if his death was inevitable regardless of location, Monica was denied the opportunity to make informed choices about her care and his.
If she had had adequate prenatal care, the chances are very high that she would have known about the seriousness of his condition and could have decided on what kind of care, if any, she wanted him to have. Instead, it sounds like he got futile attempts at resus, which were likely quite unpleasant if he was alive during the attempts. Even if he was (mercifully) dead before he even arrived at the hospital, Monica got an agonizing period of uncertainty before finding out that her baby could not survive.
Monica and her family got the worst of all worlds.
But wait….three of those babies were born in the hospital so they weren’t home birth deaths they were hospital deaths…..(dripping with sarcasm) that’s the way many home birth statistics are reported, I mean think about it, zero percent of home births result in c-sections because c-sections are only done in the hospital….right???
There’s probably more than 7 dead from a hospital birth too… This really is not the best place to be speaking out like this… you will aggravate a LOT of women. And this is coming from a mother with 3 hospital births BY CHOICE. Women deserve the right to birth their children where they wish…
Everyone deserves the medical care they need, and the right to reject medical care they don’t want. Both accepting and rejecting care for yourself and your children should be based on the best information.
People who advocate strongly for homebirth fail to mention the risks, including dramatically increased risk of death or damage to baby, mother or both.
Choice isn’t choice when full information is not made available.
Huh? Why isn’t this a good place to be discussing this? Have you never read this blog? Most of what this blog covers is about this exact thing!!!!!
And where do you think we should be discussing it instead? Babies. Are. Dying.
That they have the “right” to do it does not mean they have the right to be free from criticism. It’s risky behavior, and babies are dying as a result.
I thought that was a bizarre comment, too.
I agree. This is absolutely not the best place to be talking about this. That would be at the state and national level among homebirth midwifery and advocacy groups.
“There’s probably more than 7 dead from a hospital birth too”
Well, there’s like 4 000 000 births a year, and only 40 000 of those are homebirths, so there’s that..
Women deserve the right to give birth where they wish, but I also think they have the right to accurate information about the risks and benefits of their choices. They also deserve competent practitioners with oversight and accountability.
No one denies that errors occur in the hospital. The difference is in how different practitioners approach error and error reduction (quality improvement.) Physicians and professional nursing orgs. spend a great deal of energy looking at how to improve practice. Not only are professional orgs doing it, but the government and individual organizations are constantly looking at quality improvement. Millions of research dollars are spent yearly on it. In the U.S., homebirth midwifery is largely exempt from any of it. They apparently have no interest in it, other than to publish papers that attempt to deny any problems exist. Al you have to do is look at the websites for the organizations representing OB/Gyns and homebirth midwives to figure this out. Compare the volume of clinical resources on ACOG’s website to MANA’s. Do a pubmed search on any topic related to childbirth health and safety and compare how much is done by physicians vs. midwives.
If you’ve read this blog before, you probably know that Dr. Tuteur doesn’t stay silent just to avoid aggravating people. I’m not sure I understand what you mean about this not being the best place to speak out about this–it seems like the perfect place to me.
Seems to me that the number of homebirth deaths is not rising (maybe there are more in number, but not in proportion to the growing rate of homebirth)- but what is definitely rising is social media. In the last 10 years it has gone from something people checked and engaged with one a day or every few days to something people are glued to, get news from, share news on, etc. I imagine that every time there is a death it goes on Facebook and then that gets forwarded, etc. I had a friend from college lose a baby recently (in a hospital birth)- never would have known about it without Facebook as we don’t keep up in the ‘real world’.
I am sorry for your friends loss.
Why do you parade mother’s grief for your own political agenda? Disgusting.
Why do you continue to be the cause of grief to these mothers to further your own ego?
Oh? Whose grief have I caused? *waiting on the edge of my seat* >.<
I love having you here. Though I’d enjoy it more if you could come up with some more original lines.
Your logical fallacies are showing.
Your immorality is showing
Nuh-uhhh! No you! No you! Lol!
Says the poster who started it.
It’s all lols to you, isn’t it?
I am sure the grieving mother are proud to have such a champion as you, who lol away at the topic and keeps making everything about midwives even when it is about babies dying.
Notice how you are the only one LOLing. Our frustration and passion about preventing the deaths of newborns must be so funny.
Oh maybe all the women who may have been able to get some closure if not for your ridiculous “Sisters in Chains” movement circling the wagons and stonewalling efforts to hold midwives responsible for their negligence.
I don’t know if you have a baby’s death on your hands, but you have blood on your hands enabling these women to find sanctuary from their woefully egotistical actions that any other profession wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. And likely would be outraged such a person represents their profession.
Funding for bonds for arrested midwives so they face no consequences is the one closest to me.
I have more standards in my job as a hospital registrar than you do in your practice.
All I see here is a hap hazard list of grieving mothers. I have no clue what this has to do with Sisters in Chains. All I see are unassisted mothers these days… maybe the good doctor is out of midwives to bash?
It’s not a haphazard list. And it’s not a list of mothers. It is a list of babies who have tragically died as a result of homebirth, including UC. Dr. Amy is one of the few who actually consider the babies.
Katie is unconcerned with the babies, who she sees as a by-product of the business she is in, stringing along pregnant women for fun and profit.
If she’s so sensitive, then why can’t she get these mothers’ permission and facts instead of stalking their Facebook posts?
I post very few things in Facebook. Only things that I would not mind my boss or my grandmother seeing. If someone takes one of those posts and talks about it online… It is absolutely fine for me. In any case I have very strict privacy controls so my posts do not appear somewhere they might be seen by someone that should not see them. If you really do not want something appearing somewhere you do not control you should probably not post it to begin with, not post it on a group but only on your wall and have strict privacy controls.
You may notice that the post used by doctor Amy was posted to the mother’s friends only on her private wall. Sadly, some person she trusted screen captured it and Dr. Amy thought this would excellent to share with the world, contrary to the mother’s wishes. Facebook is also a very quick way to share news with your friends and family that is too exhausting to share one by one when you’re grieving.
So yes, it seems that it is better what I do: strict privacy AND only post things that I do not mind my boss and my grandmother reading.
The day there are no more birth hobbyist midwives to expose will be a good day.
The day there are less basement keyboard warriors who have no life will be a good day.
Where exactly do you fall with regard to that categorization? Since you ARE here and commenting.
‘Fewer’, Katie, not ‘less’. Between that and ‘hap hazard’ you sound like a moron.
That’s all you see? Really? You are really one heartless asshole, I have to say.
Oh get the fuck over yourself.
Maybe it’s not about you. In fact, that Dr Amy includes unassisted births as examples of the dangers of home birth shows that it’s not about bashing midwives, it’s about babies dying.
But no, it’s all about you and the poor, persecuted sisters. Fuck the babies, let them die. Just so you can cry about how how Dr Amy is meen to midwives.
Here it is-‘it’s too sad, we can’t talk about it, let’s just sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened.’ Next you’ll be parroting some other line borrowed from the NRA playbook-how about ‘homebirth midwives don’t kill babies, women who don’t trust childbirth enough kill babies’. It would be amusing if it wasn’t so serious.
And the horror! An agenda that leads to pregnant women being able to make informed decisions about the care they want during childbirth, and therefore themselves and their children being safer! What a shocking suggestion.
Yep. That is exactly what I have said… nowhere. Lol
Katie, I invite you to examine the words you have chosen to use to express your unhappiness with this website. “Parade” is a loaded term. I would describe what goes on here as exposing or publicizing the untold stories of homebirth losses/ disasters for the benefit of parents seeking the truth to counteract all the celebrity propaganda supporting homebirth.
Then perhaps ask mothers for permission to use their stories with correct information? SMH.
Nice that you begin to understand the nuances of informed consent. When you start informing pregnant women about the true risks of homebirth with one of your death and disability dealing sidekicks, will be the time for anyone to start taking lectures from you on the topic.
Oh and tell us again about the fine distinction between a convicted felon and a convicted felon with a vacated sentence, that did me so much good last time.
Gavin Michael’s mother gave permission and provided correct information. SMH indeed.
I think Kate’s head is addled enough without her shaking it any more.
Collectivism serves no one but the bigot.
“Collectivism serves no one but the bigot.”
Says the quack who, after getting a felony conviction, created a whole organization to hide behind.
Yup. I’m totally hiding, “yugaya.” >.<
You gonna try and intimidate me by doxxing like you did last time to others?
Since last time when she was posting here turned out was right about the time when people who testified against here were being interviewed for TV, I’m guessing Katie is here doing CYA damage control attempt again.
The only thing left is to see which of these babies she helped kill.
Who was on TV? I’m really interested. That’s new. Link?
Here’s a link for you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj_k5yraEGY&feature=youtu.be
Uhhh… those people never testified against me. You are either confused or delusional.
I never said that it was the link you asked for. I said here’s a link FOR YOU.
I have no intention of continuing to speak with you while you have not a single word to spare for their grief.
Right. So your initial assertion stands unsupported.
I grieve for every mother who loses a child. I don’t pick one family I’ve never met and make them a political pawn for my own agenda while smacking another grieving mother in the face by publicly parading her private FB post against her wishes. The hypocrisy!
“I don’t pick one family and make them a political pawn for my own agenda”
Says the hypocrite who picked one out of eight homebirth deaths in a week to crusade for.
I’m outta here, Katie is the best parody rebuttal of her own lies.
Of course you don’t pick families whose babies have died to serve your agenda. That’s because families whose babies were killed by home birth do not SERVE your agenda–they show that your agenda is hideously dangerous.
Sorry… please do inform me about the informed consent I give my clients. Please post a link to ANYTHING I give my clients? And WTH does any of that have to do with unassisted moms?
Save your apologies for someone who imagines you are sincere. And I thought you were only seeing unassisted mothers these days? So who are these ‘clients’ of which you speak?
Do try to keep up with your own stories.
I think you must be confusing yourself with attempting to keep track of the details of so many people you’ve never met. Sad.
I do not see any details here that could possibly identify them. If any of them has a problem with their story appearing here they could write to Dr. Tuteur and ask for it to be removed. In any case, those appear to be quoted from online pages. If I want something to be private I would never ever post it on the internet.
You may notice that the post used by doctor Amy was posted to the mother’s friends only on her private wall. Sadly, some person she trusted screen captured it and Dr. Amy thought this would excellent to share with the world, contrary to the mother’s wishes. Facebook is also a very quick way to share news with your friends and family that is too exhausting to share one by one when you’re grieving.
Ask Dr. Amy to remove her exploitation? I for one hope she NEVER EVEN SEES THIS. How incredibly triggering.
Boring psychopath is boring. Go away, you repulsive bint.
Maybe that “person she trusted” is disturbed by what has happened to her friend, and doesn’t want anyone else to have to go through it?
Do you accuse that trusted friend of having a political agenda, too?
Triggering? You want to bring out triggering?!
You know I had to walk away from this post in order not to sling every insult in the English language I know and then a few I know in Japanese Chinese, Klingon, and Huttese.
You want to talk about triggering? Fine. Let’s talk about triggering.
How triggering is it for the mothers who lost children in home birth or have gravely injured children when you read your head? When you try to bury their children again to protect your “Sisters” and not only that but try to assinate the character of one of the few allies they have? Or is the first person account blog “Hurt by Home birth” a collection of lies as well?
How triggering is it for those here who did go through with a home birth and were sexually abused during the process (exhomebirther since you seem to insist on naming names when it suits you), denied transfers, lied to, and some held against their will by midwives and have you come in telling what they experienced is all falsehoods?
How triggering is it for people like kq and myself to see the shadow of their abusers appear in yourself to attempt to lie and gaslight their way out their wrong doings? To see another narcissist do what they do best and make the world revolve around them and we can’t do a damn thing about it because they’re already under your spell. When she had to be physically removed from her situation and I had to be coaxed back slowly once away from their lies like a scared stray. We had different abusers but their methods were the same. We see them in you. How many others here were abused by a narcissist like yourself?
That’s why I had to step away. Because you trigger me something fierce. But thanks to a lot of therapy and a lot of unconditional forgiveness from my parents, the ones I hurt most while I was my abuser’s thrall, I can talk about it now. I can look at you and know who you are.
This post isn’t about you. Several posts in response to you haven’t been about you. Yet you assume they are. Anyone who isn’t so self involved would know saying “here’s a YouTube link for you” doesn’t mean it’s about you.
But in KatieWorld, everything is about you.
You say you care about these dead children but I have yet to see one word of grief from you regarding them. Just about the poor reputation of midwives and some lip service of how the mothers must be sad to have their names here. Which was just a tool for you to talk about the important topic in your mind. You and your God complex regarding childbirth.
A woman here shared that she had a miscarriage. I don’t see you posting your condolences. Another shared that her friend had a stillborn child at 27 weeks. Oh look, no post there either. You just care -so- much about others don’t you?
MY clients. MY practice. What have -I- done. -I- didn’t kill those children. MY feelings are being attacked. What about ME? That video wasn’t about ME.
I don’t think I’ve seen someone turn a topic dead children to be about themselves so quickly. Oh wait yes I have. They were a narcissist too.
You will twist logic any way you can to be the hero. When that doesn’t work you try to put the blame on someone else to be the victim. How the hell can you play victim when you defend people who let children die and villainize the REAL victims. The mothers with empty arms or a child that will never run, talk, or even live on their own. If they live that long.
You trigger me. I see my abuser every time you try to make this about yourself and how hurt you are. I start wanting to scream “That’s not what happened!” in a panic all other again. I remember sitting in a kitchen chair after a two hour long session of constant gaslighting until I finally broke. I broke so completely I wanted to kill myself but all I could do was sit in a chair in a near catatonic state unable to move my limbs to end it. Hating myself for years because of what I did after that to survive. Still wondering if what I did will be thrown in my face by her because I can’t permanently escape my abuser. She’s unfortunately family.
How many women were broken like I was to the point that their bodies wouldn’t obey their commands? Isn’t that your goal? Break them until they’re incapable of action? How convenient it must be for you that they’re already halfway there with the devastation of losing a child. I can see how a few well placed words or sentences bring these families down to where they don’t have the will to fight anymore.
Yet I can’t see how any well human being could be so unrepentantly unfeeling to turn a time of mourning into an emotional chess game. How many moves to break this woman so she’ll leave midwives alone?
You are sick. Get help before you lead someone to commit suicide from your gaslighting. Not that you’ll care. Some women just weren’t meant to live?
Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with midwifery.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Clicking the up arrow seems totally inadequate. Thank you for your heartfelt, thoughtful, magnificent post.
I truly hope you find healing. You are obviously very troubled.
“You are obviously very troubled.”
Said like an abuser. Thanks for playing.
We need to attract a better class of homebirth apologist, the bingo thing is just getting way too easy.
Take your concern trolling elsewhere. You’re not sincere in the least and I’m not going to start questioning my mental health because a known gaslighter implied I am “troubled.”
It’s very telling that of all the comments made since your last stop here, this is the ONE you comment on.
Given that you have clearly learned nothing despite being convicted of a felony, you are the one who is clearly troubled.
You’re really a sick, unpleasant person. If it wasn’t obvious before, you’ve confirmed it by whipping out that false therapy-speak in the most bitchy way possible.
I’d just like to add whatDelphiniumFalcon left out:
“tlhIH quvHa’ tera’ wembogh be’ nuch ‘up mInDu’wIj HoS neH ghe’or!”
PREACH
I do have to say, though, I didn’t put all the pieces of my abuse together until I read your blog. It was on a much smaller scale and not nearly as life threatening, but the tactics were so completely familiar.
I didn’t realize the abuse I had endured had a name. I also didn’t realize I wasn’t entirely off the mark after recovery when I called her web of victims “The Cult of Grandma.”
Those two straight hours I mentioned was just my breaking point. She’d been working on me for two and a half months previous. That’s just when she pulled out all the stops. I went to live with her and my grandpa because I need to be at a new school after having a mental breakdown at my current one. None of us knew she’d use that time to try to turn me against my parents because she’s always hated my dad and wanted to use me to get even. My first day of my new school I came home to her crying and saying I couldn’t live there anymore. She convinced me I had torn the family apart when I moved in, I was a selfish home wrecker, if I went to live with my newly wed cousin I’d just wreck their home too. But…but maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe someone else was pulling my strings. Maybe my mom?
I was seventeen and was facing basically being homeless because she’d convinced me even my parents were fed up with me and would take me back. I would have agreed the sky was purple polkadots if she said so. I didn’t talk to my parents for a year.
It’s been ten years since I was finally able to escape after being out of her sphere of influence by living in a college dorm. It still feels like it happened to someone else. I still felt guilt over things I said.
I don’t remember how it happened but I followed a link that went to your Crazy Train blog section. And I found the missing piece to finally letting go of the last of my guilt.
I don’t know you but I thank you for writing about what happened even though it must have been like turning yourself inside out emotionally. I was finally able to understand what had happened to me. I wasnt stupid for falling into her web. She was a person I should have been able to trust and she knew it. And she used it to inflict what she felt was justified revenge against my dad and to punish my mom.
I know I’m rambling on but it’s nice to know someone gets it. Someone who had it so much worse and still managed to escape and be functional again.
You gave me the missing piece I needed to finally feel whole again. I see what happened and I can stop it from happening again. And I can help my mom who endured the same kind of abuse for decades start to realize she’s not a failure of a daughter. Just her mom’s favorite victim. Now she can recover and let go of her guilt too.
I really mean it when I say I can’t thank you enough for being brave enough to talk about what happened when so many people were against you.
Edit: Also, sleep deprivation is one hell of a reality warper. Get someone deprived enough and they won’t know up from down any more… Keep them in that state and constant crisis mode and you have the abuser’s favorite combo. Too tired, too stressed, and too afraid to think outside the abuser’s box.
<3
I am glad my blog helped, and glad you got free and got perspective! There are so many shades of narcissistic abuse (more than fifty even!) But once you spot it in your life…
Seems like Katie is unaware of how the internet works.
This is pretty commonly the case for these folks.
Why would she? Are you going to tell her about it? Unless she is a regular ready of this blog, there is no reason she would see it. It’s not like anyone here, including Dr Amy, is posting on her facebook page. And if she is in such a “triggerable” state, it’s not like she will be googling to find out what people are saying about her.
Unless, of course, one of her so-called “friends” tells her about it.
I’ve always wondered about that. How does that happen? How do you tell someone to go look at what others are saying about you? “Hey, grieving Mama. You should go over to this website and see all the bad things people you don’t know are saying about you.”
In that case, who is responsible for the trigger? The person who posts on their personal blog, or the one who tells her to read it?
Wait. Katie, please explain this to me: You’re mad at someone for reporting the death of an infant to the world (with the goal of preventing other babies from dying), and NOT mad at the midwife who encouraged bad decisions and performed incompetent actions that CAUSED the baby to die?
On what planet does that make sense or reflect any solid ethical values at all?
Oh? There was a midwife? Fascinating how much you know about people you’ve never met.
Are you the same expert on internet law that you are on criminal law, oh felon?
Which one of the midwives in question is a glorified member of your killing Sister in Chains cult?
Why don’t you provide us with “correct information”, since you apparently have some knowledge the rest of us don’t…
Are you saying that 6 or 7 babies DIDN’T die due to complications arising from homebirths gone wrong last week? What the hell ARE you saying?
You know what I shake my head at? Gross negligence manslaughter.
Katie McCall – who spent 200+ comments last time she was here explaining the difference between a convicted felon and a felon with a vacated sentence like hers, and who among those 200+ comments had not a single word to spare for the grief of Gavin Michael’s mom, the mom of the baby killed by her friend Christy Collins – is here to protect a mother’s grief?
Go away you human filth.
I missed that whole thing. Why is she a felon?
Here : http://www.skepticalob.com/2015/01/the-wacky-world-of-dr-sarah-buckley-author-of-the-childbirth-connection-report.html
and here: http://www.skepticalob.com/2015/01/katie-jenkins-mccall-poster-child-for-the-brutal-callousness-of-homebirth-midwives.html
To protect other mothers and babies.
It’s a political agenda to want babies not to die during childbirth?
Katie,
You only show up when you feel you need to defend yourself or someone close to you. Which one it it this time?
No. I just have a life and don’t sit at a computer all day every day.
LOL! Of course not! As she continues to comment….
Yet in the time when normal Americans are asleep, here your are. All night long.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I prefer sleep over internet keyboarding 100% of the time. Or eating over warriors. Or playing with the dog. Or sex. Definitely not going to turn that down for internet warrioring.
Yet you’re online often enough. Incidentally, developments in technology mean one doesn’t have to be sitting at a computer all day to access the internet. You may be familiar with smartphones and the like? Allowing people to Facebook whilst going about their daily business.
A drunk driver killed a couple and their toddler in my city yesterday. This is horrible for the family of course, people are grieving. So according to you, we should just ignore those deaths and not talk about them and the danger of drunk driving?
Whenever someone die, it is important to talk about it, figure out what happened and how it could have been prevented to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
That also applies to homebirth.
You don’t do that by trolling and screen capturing and using private posts from the grieving parents’ Facebook wall or INTENTIONALLY misrepresenting what happened. How would that ever serve anyone? Especially if the purpose was to “figure out what happened.”
The motives in this are not altruistic. They are evil.
First of all: She’s not trolling. reporting on someone’s death is not trolling.
2nd: If you don’t want people on the internet to talk about you, you don’t post it on the internet.
This blog is public. If any of those grieving parents wants to add something or correct something that was reported in the wrong way, they are free to contact Dr. Tuteur at any time to make the corrections. She will gladly do it.
But you can’t just make the death go away. Even if the family does not want to talk about it. A death occured, it must be accounted for. So, until the midwives actively do something about them, Dr. Tuteur will keep talking about them.
Now midwives are responsible for unassisted birth? Does that make OBs responsible for homebirths? Holy logic batman! All I hear are chants of “Burn the witch!” >.<
“All I hear are chants of “Burn the witch!” ”
Sure, because analyzing the root causes of preventable neonate deaths is the exact same as superstitious fervor in the Middle Ages. OK then.
Not all of the birth reported this week were ‘unassisted’. At least one of them was actually in a birth center.
My point is: A baby died in a homebirth. No matter if there was a midwife or if it was unassisted. The reason why those babies died has to be investigated.
Midwives are one of the main advocate of homebirth, (and also by extension, unassisted birth, even if you don’t want to admit it) therefore widwives should be the first one to demands answers for those babies death.
If midwives also do not want any part of the responsibility of unassisted birth, than they should loudly proclaim themselves against it.
You know, this is just typical homebirth advocate fodder. All you hear are chants of “Burn the witch” (let’s victimize the midwives), while the people with HEARTS, BRAINS, and a sense of HUMANITY hear “let’s keep women and babies safe, and prevent more homebirth deaths and injuries.” The true victims in this are not midwives, Katie. Quit trying to erase all of the dead babies. The REAL victims here are the mothers who have subscribed to homebirth rhetoric, and the babies who have suffered, died, or have been left with lifelong disabilities. If all your ears are hearing is “Burn the witch”, I know a few good audiologists you could see, because you are not hearing the real message here.
That has nothing to do with what’s actually being said, and everything to do with the filters through which you listen.
Perfectly said, momofone.
You don’t understand how the internet works, do you?
1) It’s not “trolling.” If she were posting disingenuous messages on someone else’s blog/facebook page/etc, with the express intent of getting a rise out of them, that would be trolling. However, this is HER blog, and there is no reason to think that she is anything but serious about babies dying. So it’s not trolling, nor even close. You don’t know what you are talking about.
2) But a more important issue is, what are these “private posts from…Facebook” to which you refer? Facebook posts are public, so if the public can see them, they aren’t private. Now, there is a private setting on Facebook, and you can have private groups, but in order for Dr Amy to access them, she must be part of the group. If you are giving Dr Amy access to your private group, it’s not all that much private. And even if she were accessing it using a pseudonym, it means that you are granting access pretty freely.
I am part of a private group on Facebook. I know everyone in it. If I were to start letting everyone who wants to join be part of the group, I would make no assumptions that it would still be “private.” You can’t assume that a group made up of anonymous strangers is private.
3) If she is wrong in anything that she has said, we always welcome others to come an correct the record. For example, there is a claim that one of the babies had extensive “congenital defects.” Although I personally take this claim with a grain of salt (you can’t even handle the correct usage of the word “trolling,” why should I think you are using “congenital defects” properly?), we can discuss the situation even granting that it is true (it doesn’t help – congenital defects are not necessarily a death sentence IN A HOSPITAL)
Please explain how the screenshots were “INTENTIONALLY misrepresenting what happened.” Now is your chance, Katie! Please clear the air for all of us! What DID, in fact, happen? Please clarify it, since you seem to possess inside information on the specifics of these deaths. Oh wait…the screenshots themselves did a fine job of capturing what happened.
You know what? If your ilk is just going to spout memes instead of engaged in a logic argument, I’m just going to post this every time you ODST your way in here. Need to use the Halo term because parachuting is too gentle of a what for what you do. You also tend to be the vanguard of your little club of midwives.
Yet you seem to show up at random when there’s dead babies involved and no names are named. Let me help you understand this post better.
Sadly, the mothers’ grief in the majority of the deaths mentioned here were most likely very preventable, if the births took place in the hospital to begin with. Dr. Amy’s “disgusting” agenda is to save lives, and to prevent more women from experiencing this horrendous grief. If you begrudge her that, than you are truly the disgusting party. It’s inarguable, really.
As opposed to hiding a mother’s grief and gaslighting and telling her she can’t be that upset as it’s just a little “hickup”?
project much? Your entire web presence is about covering up negligence from midwives which also smears loss parents and their version of events.
They would not be grieving if they had known the truth about the dangers of homebirth and the appalling statistics that people like you hide and cover up for your own personal agenda. People like you are disgusting for hiding the truth and encouraging pregnant women to make ill-informed and down right bad decisions about their prenatal care and births. Parading biased and false information around to vulnerable and gullible people caused them to believe that they were well informed and educated about pregnancy and birth. Now their babies are dead and disgusting people like you are to blame.
Because a baby with gross anomalies would always survive in a hospital. >.<
Not always, but it has a much better chance. Do you disagree with that?
Also, did the mother know her baby had multiple congenital anomalies? If not, why not – did she refuse ultrasounds? If she did know, then why was she laboring at home instead of in a hospital with a fully equipped NICU?
They might and might not. But regardless, “they might live in a hospital” is a lot better than “they won’t at home.”
No not always, but she would have known her baby had gross anomalies if she had proper prenatal care and she could have made better decisions about the care and treatment of her baby. The gross anomaly could have been treated to extend said newborns life, so they could recieve proper treatment. Homebirth with a CPM has been proven over and over with each tragic death to be inherently dangerous. Babies are dying because of this so called CPM credential and people like you who think you are educated and experienced enough to deliver babies. Only Certified Nurse Midwives and Obstetricians should be performing prenatal care and attending births. You are a danger to women, babies and society as a whole because you’re spreading false information and representing yourself to be a real midwife. You should be ashamed of yourself for promoting propaganda that maims and kills innocent babies. Your comment is callous and ridiculous as no real health care professional would ever say something so heartless.
I don’t have a way to like your post more than once so please accept this meme as a representation of what I would do if I could like more than one.
So now CPMs are to blame for unassisted births. Lol. Pretty powerful lot.
They contribute to the dangerous practice of HOMEbirth. Everyone of these cases happened because somebody read something written or said by a person claiming to be educated enough to give advice on pregnancy and birth, just like you. Then this person goes on to believe that they can safely deliver their baby with a person like you. Many babies have literally died because of births that have taken place when the circumstances and situation should have been attended by someone who can actually save their lives. A CPM masquerading as a medical professional is what makes me LOL, because all they can do is give you oxygen and call 911 while mother bleeds out and baby is dying with no hope of an actual resuscitation. Definitely not LOL, because BABIES are dying. Most of these babies would have lived if they were born in a hospital with real medical professionals.
I tell everyone I know not to wear a seatbelt, because duuuh, people die in car accidents when they’re wearing seatbelts!
I have seen Dr A concede to stories that the baby had anomalies. These are a small portion of the stories, of all the normal babies have died at home. I have seen anomalies like congenital diaphragmatic hernias, TE fistulas, AV canals, and micronathia that survive in the hospital that would otherwise die at home. Give it up Sister in Chains. Your rebuttal above is lame and addresses only a few stories that are already conceded to. Have any answers for all the other babies that have died? You pathetic charlatan.
OT, but what is up with birthing centers sending moms and babies home soon after birth? I know of two who went home about 5 hours after delivery. One was sent home in the middle of the night to make room for the next laboring mom. Couldn’t this lead to postpartum complications not being caught or treated on time? For some reason I expected something like at least a 12 hour stay. Obviously, I expected too much.
It’s considered a benefit of giving birth there, since “birth isn’t a disease”. The birth centers I have know also use the birthing rooms as their offices so they have to get everyone out as fast as possible so they can make sure there is a minimum of “vocalizing” during clinic hours.
It certainly could lead to complications—I had a pph 8 or 9 hours postpartum. I was in the hospital, so it was dealt with quickly and professionally. I narrowly avoided a transfusion and was anemic for a while after, but had I been at home, I certainly could have bled out before help could get to me.
And of course there could be issues with the baby—how many new parents would recognize respiratory distress signs? I doubt I would.
I wouldn’t. Frankly, newborn babies, especially if you haven’t spent much time with them, make a lot of really WEIRD noises. DD would lie in the bassinet next to me, apparently spending all night grunting, twitching, making weird squeaky sounds–and all while asleep! Every time she did, I’d about have a heart attack thinking SHE’S DYING OF SIDS. (Yes, I had PP anxiety, in case you couldn’t tell.)
I will say I had the common sense to yank her off the boob the one time she latched on face-down and started to turn blue, but personally I’d like to have someone around who would notice something distress-wise before the kid turns blue. Reason #357 why I stay in the hospital as long as possible afterwards…
I know of a baby who stopped breathing around 24 hrs after his birth at a birthing center. He’s severely compromised, on a ventilator and feeding tube. He is blind and deaf. I think his 2nd birthday is coming up. I don’t know the family that well but I wonder if there was HIE from the “natural” birth that was missed when the parents went home so soon.
“what is up with birthing centers sending moms and babies home soon after birth? I know of two who went home about 5 hours after delivery”
This is particularly interesting as we have a federal law mandating insurance coverage for a 48-hr postpartum hospital stay for vaginal birth (96 hrs for c-section).
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/final-maternity-length-of-stay-rules-published.aspx
Apparently, your insurance company cannot send you home right after birth, but your un- or underinsured midwives can.
Wasn’t there a big to-do about “drive-through deliveries” about 10 years ago? When I was in nursing school, I learned my state actually has laws about how soon a woman can be discharged from the hospital after birth (48 hours for a vaginal birth, 72 for a cesarean). Do those laws not apply to birthing centers?
Birthing centers aren’t inpatient settings so the laws probably don’t apply. And I remember the “drive through deliveries” thing too. Odd how the NCB movement seems to have made that a positive.
NCB? So many acronyms on this site
NCB is ‘natural childbirth’
Insurance must cover a certain length of stay, but a physician/provider can discharge a patient earlier if they desire it.
Drive-through delivery just makes me think of that viral recent birth in a car video. I stayed about 36 hours in the hospital after my delivery. I could have checked out at 24 but that would have been about midnight.
I do know that canadian hospitals and patients under OB’s usually aim for 24 hours. It is all considered perfect if mom is stable and baby has pooped and peed.
look at the comments of the past SkOb post re: newborn baby Olive. IIRC the us state in which baby was born has a rule that freestanding birth centers must discharge patients within a certain # of hours
That’s probably due to a longer stay falling under either the definition of either nursing care (which they probably aren’t licensed to provide) or a hotel stay.
IOW, if you aren’t laboring, you aren’t allowed to be at the center because it isn’t a hospital, nursing care facility or hotel.
I have no problem with a birthing center providing care for a longer stay if they did it properly.
Yep, I went home five hours pp after my first baby, born in a freestanding birth center. It’s a selling point for those who are attracted to birth centers because they don’t like the idea of hospitals. We were incredibly lucky that we didn’t have any bad outcomes, other than a first degree tear that an actual hospital fixed a few days later when I went there for mastitis. I do thank whatever gods may be for this site, though, which I found early in my second pregnancy. I went full-on maternal request 39th week induction with epidural, 48 hour stay, baby slept in the nursery and supplemented with formula, and it was GREAT. I even had fun ignoring the awful advice from the lac consultant – she’d be so confused that my baby won’t even take a bottle or pacifier now. Don’t even get me started on the amazing difference in pp recovery after the hospital birth. Or, you know, how cool it was to be able to push easily and efficiently because I felt pressure, but no pain.
Anyhow, I’m proof that people can change when presented with new, better information. But a few years ago, when I was naive and gullible, 5 hours sounded like fun.
That’s interesting, I know the UK tends to send women home pretty soon after a NVD. I don’t know if there’s a standard amount of time but it can be as little as 3 hours I think. Obviously if there are any complications or reasons for not sending a woman home that soon then they stay, and I believe if it’s the middle of the night then they are offered a bed as it would be unreasonable to send them home that late/early in the morning.
Obviously with postnatal care being undertaken at home, and women being seen the day they arrive home or the day after things aren’t often missed, the baby is evaluated by a paediatrician or midwife trained to perform a newborn examination and the mother is also assessed prior to discharge. Things like a well contracted uterus, feeding established, full observations on mum and baby etc…are all done. I don’t necessarily see the benefit in keeping well women in hospital, especially as beds are often in short supply. However if the postnatal care isn’t there, and the skills of the staff aren’t at a level of actually being able to assess women and babies as ‘well’ then they need to stay in for observation.
I went home (at the middle of the night) in a couple of hours after being discharged from Canadian hospital. Canadian midwifes do visit their patients at home and this is why it is possible if you go with one. But I was also wandering if this leads to more adverse outcomes even with qualifyed health care providers.
Ladies, a bunch of people are parachuting on Dr. Amy’s site at this time, I think a lot of you are in a different time zone and are currently not seeing this. They are ridiculously immature and attacking Dr. T with the normal non logic. They actually used “Correlation does not equal causation” to her. hahahaha. Just wanted to make sure you guys check it out. Because it’s going crazy.
Facebook page that is.
They’re a delight aren’t they.
Funny how they go to all the trouble of being ‘clean’ while pregnant then use all that foul language in their real life-their poor kids are going to grow up entirely unable to function in decent society if they talk at home like they use memes on facebook.
It’s pretty sad actually.
They are firing off the tropes as fast as they can and there’s almost no discussion.
It is.
However, they aren’t making a very positive display of themselves-perhaps someone on the fence reading will wonder whether people who are as abusive and foul mouthed as this lot, when discussing a literally deadly serious issue, are the kind of people it’s worth taking advice from.
Interesting none of them are here. Are they avoiding giving this site the hits it would get if they came here to rumble?
Well, Dr. Amy, your article has reached the inner sanctum of the HBAC/FBAC Facebook group run by Meg Heket, and some of the members were questioning whether their plans to HBAC were actually safe. Here’s admin Ruth Rodley performing damage control.
Let her come here and tell me directly.
“There may have been a few deaths”? A real medical professional would NEVER say something so callous and dismissive.
Ruth was capable of making safe decisions about her own children’s deliveries — she had them all in the hospital. Now she spends her time convincing other women to risk their babies’ lives at HBAC or Freebirth.
Pathological addiction to natural childbirth ideology – worst kind of birth junkies around, willingly pushing women into risking lives.
Ruth Rodley with that comment qualifies to be one of the most fucked up psychopathic individuals I ever came across.
Wow. That’s, well, pathological…
One of the things about NCB is how people are more willing to listen to someone that says things that they want to hear over people that might actually have the knowledge to help them and keep their kids safe. Any nutter’s advice will do, as long as it’s “said nicely” and says “everything’s OK”..
I love that “there may have been a few deaths” is her attempt at damage control. If that’s damage control for you, just how WRONG must you be?
It’s like Mayor Larry Vaughn in Jaws calling the shark “a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers.”
There may have been a few deaths. No biggie. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!!!!!
A dead baby is “a little hickup”? I’ve never seen Dr. Tuteur post about, say, a home birth where the birthing pool sprung a leak or the towels all ended up bloody or the MP3 player failed. That’s the sort of thing I’d call a little hickup. Someone dying, I’d call that a disaster.
I have posted some of the articles on FB Canadian local moms group. Nedless to say they were met with a lot of resistance. I was warned several times by admins and encouraged to stop the discussion while being accused of aggression …
It was also assumed that I’m questioning home birth safety because I’m a healthcare professional and therefore biased …
There is so much anger here in these comments, and it would be easy for the natural childbirth community to interpret it as insensitivity and “the man” or those of us brainwashed by “The Institution” speaking.
If you are reading this and that is what you’re thinking, then THIS is what I would like you to know: These dead babies are at peace now, but I cry for those parents will never, ever recover. In spite of what they may try to tell themselves, in the dead of night they will lie quietly in bed a desperately try to re-write history with the sheer will of their desire to hold their living child, “I would seek care earlier, I would see somebody different, I would call and ambulance…” That longing may recede with time, but will never go away.
As an Ob, I see constantly the result of perinatal loss, and it is like no other, for families and clinicians, and I would do anything to minimize it.
A friend of mine went through years of medical and emotional hell to conceive a child. After PPROM and a week on hospital bedrest, her very wanted, very closely monitored son was stillborn at 27 weeks. She’s devastated.
How much worse must it be for a woman who thought delivering at home was the right thing to do? I wonder if these homebirth loss moms will ever forgive themselves.
Of all the HB loss moms I know, I can’t think of any that ever forgive themselves. And, sadly, I know several IRL.
I doubt it. The cognitive dissonance is too great, so they stick with the more comfortable belief (“I am innocent”).
God, I am SO SO sorry for your friend. I have a friend who went through something similar (infertility and then loss of a micopreemie). I wish I could give your friend a hug or do anything at all to help.
Not all die, though. Some live through serious complications only to live a life of severe disability. They are paying for their parents’ selfishness and stupidity.
Clarification for baby E ( number )
“Mother’s friend crowd sourced advice on Facebook.”
The information they were after was how to stay home and not transfer wrapped in reassurances of their echo chamber unassisted childbirth group. The murder by social media crowd that was cheering this death in real time had this to say in response to being asked for “Ideas?” on what to do when labour is stalled at 9 cm for hours:
– She may need to try standing some.
– Try lunges and hip swaying and stuff.
– The body should go into fetal ejection mode when it’s ready.
– Rebozo Sifting technique on spinningbabies.
– Rebozo, abdominal lift and tuck.
– Forward leaning inversion if she can do it.
– Or she can just ride it out and enjoy the calm during this phase.
– Labor on the toilet?
– Maybe try a different position.
– Miles circuit?
– Not a big deal at all. Keep it up!
– She just needs to work with gravity, relax and visualize baby moving down.
– Toilet, squatting, or stand with one foot propped on a stool or something.
– Sometimes an anterior lip of cervix is the culprit.
– Walk.
– Enjoy the break before the big moment.
– Dim or no lights.
– Rest and be thankful.
– Patience. As long as mom and baby are well there is no rush.
Baby E. was stillborn after this mom eventually transfered to hospital but hours later.
I am aghast. What a bunch of idiots!
Hint: if you are having a homebirth, and your labour is stalled at 9cm for several hours, and your midwife or a doula or your facebook group is suggesting any of the above, please do your child a favour and call 911 instead.
TYIA.
What people will do to feel special at the expense of others is unbelievable
What a fucking bitch. I’ll leave compassion to better people than me. I’ll just say again: this mother was a fucking bitch.
Seconded.
Even SpinningBabies – which seems whacky to me – is pretty clear that Rebozo shouldn’t be done on a 9cm dilated woman.
The Miles circuit looks hellish to me and I’m not pregnant or in labor. I’m pretty sure the open knee chest position would cause some or all of the ligaments in/around my hips to tear into little ribbons, but that might be the CP talking. Actually, their only good advice is to not let your lunging knee pass your ankle; OFC, they blame it on “closing the pelvis” rather than ripping knee ligaments.
Did anyone say go to the hospital? And are they now blaming the hospital?
No. Not a single person said go to hospital. You get banned for saying go to hospital in that group. Hell you get banned for saying women should seek prenatal care in that group.
I’m waiting for the spin to start. Followed by the double down and then the silent treatment. Moms and midwives will be warned to stop posting any details, even their grief at a loss.
They’ll still need to raise money for their medical expenses, though.
Already happened – birth announcements deleted, *concerned* friends reminding everyone to not share any details, illegal midwives claiming to have attended births as doulas.
I think both hazing and othering is at play. Hazing to prove yourself and get into the group, and if you don’t follow all the rules, all the way up to the death of your baby, you are “othered” out of the group. After that, you can accept the death as “meant to be” or be othered that way.
Would make an interesting yet tragic dissertation…
Oh god. I suppose I should be gentle and understanding and… I cannot. What the fuck UCers? Bloody hypocrites, there’s nothing natural about the internet you use to receive the pearls of wisdom you kill your babies with… Grieving mothers you might be but you’re fucking fools as well. I bet you use every other perk of first world but you refuse the most basic one for your babies?
Meanwhile a friend of mine is at the hospital. She’s nearing her 9th month. They stopped her contractions and she’s put on systems right now. When she rises, Miss Missy tries to escape. But I am not too worried *crossing fingers* The baby is fine for her GA and just in a few days, Month 9 arrives. Thank God for the hospital that monitor them and let us know they’re both fine and Miss Missy is just eager to get out. Of course, her mom won’t go around singing praises to birth and blindly trusting Mother Nature. I know all will be fine and yet I worry a little.
“keeps trying to escape” for some reason makes me giggle just a little. Good luck to them
That’s how I describe it to her. We both know it isn’t quite as merry but well, it isn’t as if something depends on her. She just didn’t eat enough kale, I guess. So, keeps trying to escape it is.
Teehee! DD was the opposite: she was perfectly comfortable where she was, thankyouverymuch, she went to the trouble of flipping transverse at 38 weeks to stay in there, and then when the CS happened, amused the OB no end by swimming away from him while he tried to pull her out, then quite obviously cussed him out the second her face was clear of fluid and the like. 😀
I love how babies’ personalities come through even pre/during birth. Best of luck to Little Miss Impatience!
I had a good laugh over your DD’s prenatal antics!
Frankly, I think Miss Missy is bored. She cannot hold her own head up (does she even have the space for that?) and she sure as hell cannot reason out that by throwing tantrums and making the dash for freedom, she makes the matter worse, forcing her mom to keep lying in bed, so nothing interesing can happen out of belly to amuse her.
OT: My SIL had an examination today. It’s a boy! And he’s a little big for his GA. I am not quite sure what happened – she was celebrating the good news that he was totally fine with a huge sandwich AND she managed to keep it down – but they moved her due date 3 days back for some reason I didn’t quite catch through the sandwich.
Her mom is in for a big surprise. She says they’re of those who deliver a few days after term. That was before the Intruder entered the picture, though. Three days back! That makes the beginning of February. If things keep going on like this, perhaps we’ll be welcoming a New Year baby?
I hope your friend and her baby have a good outcome.
I had my first baby about two months ago. As the nurse was starting my iv she asked about my birth plan. I told her my plan was to have a healthy baby and they should do whatever it takes to make sure baby and I came through okay. The nurse got a relieved look on her face, then smiled and said “Thank you. Now I know it’s going to go well.” I guess the patients with the complicated plans always run into trouble!
Birth plans confuse me. Like seriously. This is an event that can go from zero to “oh fuck” in two seconds. How can you plan for that?
My birth plan is “Have a healthy baby and walk out of here alive and well. Do what you have to do.”
My birth plan for next time is: 1. Epidural ASAP, 2. I would rather have a C-section than forceps/vaccuum, 3. If I can’t get to the nursery to breastfeed, then give the baby a goddamned bottle because if you don’t then I will kill the nurse on duty. But that’s assuming my birth plan for next time isn’t just “Section me at 38 weeks, please.”
I had a list of birth preferences—one for C section, one for VB. Things like: I want my husband there, I would like an epidural, I’d like to try breastfeeding the babies when possible…things like that. And the Csection list was first, because that was the most likely outcome.
My birth plan was 5 lines: husband, pain meds, photos ASAP, walking epidural if possible, and 1 item I forget. I got two items: photos and the pain meds.
I suppose you’re right. Clinging to every comma of the birth plan and refusing small interventions until the only saving grace is a crash C-section does mean trouble!
My husband also has this to say:
Wasn’t it more dangerous for a woman to give birth than it was for a man to go to war once upon a time?
I only ask because once you know that you realize the true horror of birth plans. For no plan survives the battlefield!
In 1920 rural China, I know, male lifespan was longer than that for women, because of birth. Of course, it was 25 for men and 24 for women, so no one lived long.
Don’t more little boys and boy babies die (without all these evil interventions) than little girls and girl babies, which might level it out?
Mom had no episiotomy, no IV and no epidural. According to Dr.Neel Shah: That is SUCCESS!!!! Money saved.
https://twitter.com/neel_shah
I don’t have a thought to spare on that asshole and his idiot claims right now. I’ve watched this catastrophic week in homebirth unfold and with more deaths being brought to light thanks to this post I’m in a really foul mood right now.
what is the direct link to the tweet? Twitter confuses me…
A friend of mine just delivered a stillborn son at 27 weeks. She fought like a warrior in the hospital with every intervention but they couldn’t save the baby. I’m sure she’ll second guess her every action in retrospect but unlike these mothers she’ll know she used every intervention possible to keep her baby alive. It’s a very sad day.
I’m so very sorry for your friend’s loss.
Incredibly sorry for your friend’s loss.
Tragic outcome but as you say, at least she can know that she gave it her absolute best shot, as did the medical team.
I am so sorry for your friend’s loss.
I am so sorry for your friend’s loss. Please let her know she has our condolences.
I’m so sorry for your friend’s loss.
Thank you everyone. My friend is getting incredibly kind and compassionate care as she recovers from her delivery. The hospital gave her a memory box with hand and footprints, a photo, a candle and a certificate with the baby’s and parents’ names. There is also a sign on the door to inform the staff that she’s a bereavement mom. Oh those awful hospitals, right?
I am so sorry for her loss.
what is wrong with these people????? is “total control” worth your baby’s DEATH??? this is insanity! it is a huge risk to do this whole ridiculous UNASSISTED stuff! sorry but i feel very bad for the babies, the medical teams that have to deal with yet ANOTHER baby that has been put on the altar of NATURAL CHILDBIRTH by their own mothers! WAKE UP! THIS IS NOT SAFE ! IT WILL NEVER BE SAFE! “BIRTH IS AS SAFE AS LIFE GETS'” MY ASS!!!!!!
Well, birth is sort of “as safe as life gets”. Of course, in my life I have regulated agriculture, vaccines, seat belts, food banks, antibiotics, police, firefighters, EMTs, savings accounts, animal control, electricity, smoke alarms, baby monitors, etc. Obstetric care is just an extension of all the other ways I make my life safer.
when you say “natural childbirth”, what are you referring to?
That shitfucked ideological lie how natural, completely unmedicated, without any interventions childbirth is the ideal women and care providers should try to achieve.
the unwillingness to have a competent provider (OB, CNM) and deciding to do everything without ANY interventions. which means hiring an incompetent, uneducated CPM or worse, doing it unassisted.
“hiring an incompetent, uneducated CPM or worse, doing it unassisted.”
Actually it’s not clear that doing a UC really is any worse than having a CPM, which should scare the hell out of anybody with half a brain.
You’d think without the whispering in the ears from the incompetent uneducated CPM the parents might lose their nerve and go and get some help.
…because someone unassisted is more likely to go to the hospital or call 911 if things look bad. And they can’t be held hostage by their midwife – that happens too.
…WTF. I don’t know how anyone can continue to defend the status quo of homebirth in this country. This just…needs to stop. These babies deserve better.
Let’s make sure they’re not forgotten.
Every work day I dread seeing a pathology report come across my desk for a placenta and see that the baby didn’t make it. We have separate codes for babies born in the hospital and ones born outside so it’s easy to tell at a glance. And certain names big in the home birth community here jump out at you.
We have a large home birth community in my area. I’m just glad I don’t work in the ER anymore. I’d probably have to take a personal day after seeing some of the home births gone bad that arrive by ambulance. We were lucky until rather recently not to have had one in a quite a while.
I can’t believe this, but someone just informed me of a 7th death.
No way. This is a baby mass murder. Keep fighting dr Tuteur, you are saving babies from the same fate by knocking some sense into their mothers.
Why is there no outrage? Why isn’t this all over the big media outlets? How can these “midwives” be allowed to torture babies to death and walk away with impunity to deceive the next mother? Is society really so indifferent?
“He wasn’t breathing and never responded despite all attempts by us or the medical team after transfer”
It may sound rude, but it’s the medical team my heart is breaking for. Getting a dead little baby they could have saved had mom just gone to the hospital in the first place, trying to save him anyway.
My heart always breaks for the EMTs and medical team. Emergency medicine and OB work is hard enough as is; seeing deaths that could have been prevented by basic medical care that was avoided for the sake of bragging rights is sickening.
In the last year, I’ve heard of two babies who died in hospitals after their moms refused CS after CFM showed a very, very distressed baby. In both cases, they got the vaginal birth they wanted – but a dead baby. That kind of situation messes the hospital staff up. Both women had drank the woo so deeply that they really believed that the babies would be born healthy – in spite of teams – TEAMS – of medical professionals explaining, pleading and begging to allow them to save the baby through a CS.
And then it was too late. The baby’s heart beat was gone and the moms still hadn’t wanted a CS.
Meanwhile, my niece had a healthy baby last night. I don’t know details, and won’t ask, but she was planning to try a vbacs in a hospital if things were right, but the baby was a week early I think and weighed 9-7, so I am guessing it was a second c-section.
I saw a picture-he was wearing a hat
Congrats!
Congrats to you and your niece!
Congratulations to her!
A hat? Write the poor little blighter off now, then. Ruined forever.
Really – might as well feed Diet Coke from a bottle.
Sincerely – congrats to the whole family!
YEs I’ve seen those posts on the internet ‘Get that hat off the baby, it will make his brain too hot!’. smh
Carla Hartley is the biggest crusader against hatting, if you read her posts on that it’s like reading a parody really: https://www.facebook.com/carla.hartley/posts/10203769394409813
But Carla Hartley is not just one of the biggest buffoons with internet access, she also happens to be a distinguished quack homebirth midwife who even has her own “established” midwifery school.
‘the hat impedes the UNmoulding of the head’ WTF??
Well if it was heavy grade tinfoil…
They must be confusing knitted woolen hats with metal Viking helmets. Easy to do.
‘distinguished quack’ love it.
I thought the hat interfered with bonding, due to it suppressing the “birthy smells.”
Congrats!
Congratulations! Glad he arrived safely and healthily.
Congratulations!!!!
My husband is a paramedic and just last week got called to a home birth gone wrong. The mother was 42 weeks pregnant and the baby was born covered in meconium. When my husband got there, the midwife was doing CPR and the baby was unresponsive. The paramedic wanted to take over and intubate but the midwife kept getting in the way. They ended up having to yell at her to get out of the way.
After they put the baby in the ambulance, they wanted to take the mother and once again the midwife got in the way and said “maybe she doesn’t want to go to the hospital”. Needless to say, she did want to go and be with her baby. I’m not sure if my husband got an update on the baby’s condition but I will ask him.
If that midwife is licensed, she needs to be reported to her regulatory body.
I’d have seriously considered slugging her.
I’d have yelled at her. I can’t punch to save my life, but I can blister your ears if I need to.
I thought yelling went without saying.
The trouble with punching her is then she needs care as well-and would probably be extremely vocal about getting it.
Remind her that she doesn’t need any interventions, her body will heal naturally.
Yeah, because they have such a great record of enforcing consequences.
Doesn’t matter-if it’s an available option, do it. Things have a way of popping up months and years after the event-if they aren’t reported they are lost to the system, now and in the future when the system might be different/better.
Yes, it’s something at least.
If you report them in OREGON, they will end up on a website that my me can check. Same in TX IIRC, but the Oregon site is Bette, super user friendly, simple.
So report, just expect nothing to be done.
Your husband is very professional. If one of those fake midwives stood in my way during a newborn resuscitation I’d probably punch her in the face.
I’d punch her and use a whole lot of profanity. Yup.
That’s so sad and scary.
I read this to my husband and asked him how he would handle this, and how would he be tempted to handled it. He would be tempted to use lots if foul language and threats of great bodily harm. What he would really do is calmly ask the mother if she wanted to go to the hospital. If she said yes, then he would (also calmly) ask the so called midwife to get out of his way. If she kept interfering as he was trying to load the patient he would call for police backup. No one can legally interfere with his care of a patient who has given him consent. The part about trying to keep him from getting to the baby? He says that’s when you just shove her out of the way.
Meanwhile, St. Mary’s Medical Center has ceased doing elective pediatric heart surgeries and is facing a CMS investigation because 9 babies have died in the past four years. It’s been heavily reported in the media. Where’s the systematic investigation and the media scrutiny of the monthly cases of otherwise healthy babies dying in homebirth?
What is an elective pediatric heart surgery?
One that’s not emergent. CNN reported that the hospital was advised last year by an “expert review panel” to stop doing the surgeries, but didn’t. Hence, the CMS investigation. It’s certainly a sad story, and perhaps demonstrates the terrible tragedies that happen with slow oversight and low transparency. Imagine how much worse things would be with no oversight or transparency.
Oh, like with C-section. Just because it’s elective doesn’t mean it isn’t a very good idea. Now I understand the story, and also feeling heartsick for those poor babies.
Just added a quote from the 6th mother.
Could you please give links to these reports? I am in an ongoing discussion with a few people who still believe that the risk:benefit ratio for home birth is acceptable. I don’t know what will convince them otherwise. One of them is a primigravid psychiatrist, the other makes a living counseling women who have experienced birth trauma. Thank you.
Some of them are screenshots from private Facebook groups you can’t publicly click on. I think Dr. Amy is trying to protect the families’ privacy as much as possible.
I always remember how Gavin Micahell’s family stumbled onto this blog when they were trying to find more information about the midwife that killed him. I’ve met moms whose birth stories I know because I’ve read the coroner reports for their babies. I’ll do my best to name and shame all midwives involved because that is the only way to stop them from hurting another family.
None of these deaths or injuries have been reported in any media. These families are grieving now and I think dr Tuteur did the right thing by excluding any personal information for the time being.
You can email me and I will share off boards about the ones I know more about.
A number of these were gleaned from social media.
Netiquette demands that unless something is explicitly made public, it is treated as private. One of the deaths has an e-donation site set up. That counts as public.
This post aggregates a solid body of data on the danger of HB in the US:
http://www.skepticalob.com/2014/10/why-do-so-many-babies-die-at-american-homebirth.html
honestmidwife.com could be very helpful.
I am crying onto the head of my scheduled 39-week repeat C-section infant as I read this. So very not worth it.
”Emergency repeat C-section for a baby that appeared to have been dead for at least an hour.” Reading this sentence made me burst into tears.
Fetal monitoring is SO important.
My heart hurts from these stories that didn’t have to happen.
This is where I get mad at people moaning about unnecessary interventions. You don’t know that they were unnecessary until after the fact. And perhaps they should be considered necessary because things could have been worse.
I just edited the post because a reader sent me information about the SIXTH death this past week. I think the word for a death rate like this is “carnage.”
There’s also a second brain injury I’ve just heard about.
There was another home birth death that occurred just yesterday (7/30). It was a healthy pregnancy and went full term (40 weeks), but the baby was born not breathing (I believe he had the cord wrapped around his neck), and was pronounced dead after an hour of CPR. This is just so so tragic.
Particularly when you consider that there are only about 40,000 home births a year in the US, or 769 per week. So we’re looking at almost a 1% DEATH RATE this week.
There’s also a number of unassisted-birth mothers that are post-dates, “leaking fluid,” “exhausted,” being cheered on to continue their walking lunges and tinctures. Some of them have fallen off the map over the past week. I don’t understand the mentality, to have “total control” over their birth experience, risking total control over their baby’s funeral…
Yeah, there are a few unassisted births after multiple cesareans that are 42+ weeks, one with ruptured membranes, who are not really updating anymore.
Well, since a hospital birth is evidently a failure, even if the babies were born in hospitals and doing fine (despite the mothers doing their best to kill them), the mothers would probably be too ashamed to admit that.
That’s what I’m hoping.
Amazing how the HB crowd has been able to turn “I have a healthy baby!” into something to be ashamed of and not share all over.
Quote this forever.
The one mother Dr Amy is referring to with the baby with the brain injury — she was attempting a UBAC. Posted a picture saying she thought her water broke…it was dark green/brown. Hours later she said she was gushing blood with each contraction…not until the next morning did she go to the hospital.
She says that although she failed (failed to UBAC), she feels empowered by her birth choices. No word yet on whether the baby feels empowered by the spinal tap it had this morning.
Wow. How could she even think that things were normal, or going along ok?! Even the crazy ncb sites would suggest getting help under those conditions, no? I guess she was just one of those that’s “homebirth at all costs, even the cost of the baby’s life.”
Because the other members of these UC birth groups reassured her that it was normal. It was her mucous plug, or something.
That’s just crazy. It’s almost like the other women are actually trying to kill babies.
Some of them (not saying these mothers in particular, I don’t know) are mentally ill or have a drug problem. But the leaders actually know what happens and they encourage them along anyway.
I was about to say that this woman probably needs psychiatric care. You cannot become that out of touch with reality (blood gushing from her vagina !) if you don’t have serious issues.
No. See, to try and kill a baby, you have to be self-aware enough and educated enough to know what is safe and what is dangerous.
This is the uneducated leading the uneducated. The babies are either lucky enough to survive or dead.
Admittedly, though I have a kid, I’ve never seen a mucus plug; DD was born via CS at 39 weeks because she decided that All The Cool Babies Go Transverse or something at about that time. That having been said, I find it a good rule of thumb that if any of my mucus secretions are, and I quote, “green and brown,” that I’d like a doctor involved at that point, thankyouverymuch.
Spinal tap?
That’s bad. Looking for infection…
Ugh when will this stop?! Those poor babies.
this really just sickens me. really? it is not a mystery that the babies just die all of a sudden. if they are not being properly monitored, then this is not surprising. no matter how much research you do, you still do not know what you do not know. so much for being “educated” about birth. birth is natural, and death is also natural. when will these people ever learn? you sacrifice your children for an ideology. blaming god is the easy way out. this is not god’s will. god gave us doctors to intervene so that death does not occur. nature kills indiscriminately. you owe your child the best efforts to keep them safe, and that entails giving them the best medical care you can find. not hiring fake midwives or attempting unassisted pregnancy/childbirth. really just sickens me.
I guess I’m just jaded, but I have very little sympathy for these parents that risked the life of their unborn baby for their damn ‘birth experience’. Research my ass. More like… “Looked up stuff until I came upon information that I agreed with and ignored the rest.”
When the hell are first world women going to get it through their heads that birth is NOT safe and never has been??
Traditionally, commenters here have shied away from blaming the parents, because we felt they had been lied to by midwives (and I know many such) but I’m re-evaluating that policy as far as my own attitudes go. I’m sorry, but there is plenty of warning available now, and waaaay too many UCers. The UCer who was bleeding with every contraction and still waited? She’s a sad candidate for mention in the Darwin Awards—-except it’s her poor baby she killed, not herself. Just pathetic.
I know one HB fanatic in my circle of acquaintances. Her midwife allegedly has been involved in 3,000 births over 10 years, but I don’t think that math works outside of a hospital setting.
She’s been wrong about Common Core (there is no health CC – and so there is no reason to think Planned Parenthood was involved), legalizing same-sex marriages (legal for over 1 month in my state; still waiting for the “riots and breakdown of society”),and Gardasil (One paper that found 3 ovarian failures within a year of getting the vaccine that’s never been cited by anyone – and I’m not a doctor, but two of the three teens didn’t sound like they had a particularly robust menstrual cycle established – does not actually mean the vaccine causes infertility) within the last YEAR.
Her ongoing response to all of these – and a few dumber ones that I’ve forgotten – “Well, I’m not the kind of person who gets mislead easily.”
She literally can’t conceptualize that she’s horrible at self-education.
This tends to soften my criticism of the mothers because the combination of “gullible as hell” and “I don’t need education” leaves no mental room for reflection or…well…much real thought processes.
“Well, I’m not the kind of person who gets mislead easily.”
Read: “My mind is made up, don’t confuse me with the facts.”
Sounds like a classic case of Dunning-Kruger effect.
I still have some sympathy for them. They made bad choices based on bad information, maybe based on some difficult past experiences, and unlike the lucky people who make bad choices and don’t have a bad outcome, they had the bad outcome. And they have to live with it. People are generally terrible at evaluating their own ignorance, especially when surrounded by others who will cheer them on. The internet exacerbates this. The UCer who was bleeding had a comment section telling her it was normal and “dilation” and just one or two people cautiously saying “purists hate on, but that concerns me”…..
It’s the same line of thinking as ‘we can’t talk about gun control after a mass shooting, because we’re all too sad and angry, and it was unavoidable anyway’. And then time passes, the next catastrophe rears its head, and it never gets talked about.
I don’t agree that respectful outlining of the known facts is ever inappropriate. Like they say over the way ‘a statement of fact cannot be insolent’.
Responsibility, not blame, is the key to thinking this through, in my view. Who was taking responsibility? The parents usually think it’s the midwife, who is very keen on being in charge until it all goes wrong, when she disappears into the wall. In that case I’d pursue that person by fair means and foul until she stopped doing what she was doing. Dr T is doing more than her fair share in that space.
I have no sympathy or patience with anyone who chooses an unattended birth at home. Losing a baby is a hell of a price to pay, and no doubt some of those people wish they were dead as well or instead. Which is an entirely reasonable response to having orchestrated and presided over such a disaster. Should they be prosecuted-absolutely not. The choice to refuse all medical care was their’s to make.
It actually *is* really hard to find good info. This site exists, but, it’s far from the first one you find. I am a regular on this site, and I’m not invested in woo in ANY WAY (“Give me my epidural” is the start and end of my birth plan) and I still could not find any online information to help ease my husband’s fears about my doctor-recommended planned “voluntary” induction. (There was no medical reason, I was just a good candidate, two days from due date, two centimeters dilated, and tired of being pregnant.) I tried to look some stuff up to show him it was perfectly safe, and there was nothing online but woo.
(And, as it turns out, my water broke just after I had a pelvic when I checked into the hospital, and I gave birth three hours later, so I guess it was time.)
“Childbirth education” is completely dominated by woo. It can take some real digging to get at “non-woo” information, which often requires reading articles published in the medical journals. Most folks aren’t up to it, not because they’re dumb, but they’re busy and have no reason to believe that the easily accessible information is wrong.
I think this is a huge point. When you google something and find there’s a 97% consensus about what you should do in a given situation, or what’s risky, you tend to take that at face value. It usually works, especially if you don’t google loaded terms. Heck, even googling “risks benefits vaccines” gives you good information first. Compounding the problem, there are licensed professionals (I never knew until I found this site that the CPM license is essentially meaningless and I don’t think most people know either) saying the same thing, and the woo has even infiltrated some hospitals (see the baby-friendly hospital initiative and the UK’s push for “normal birth”).
So you wind up with a woman who sees epidurals are bad, cascade of interventions, birth is as safe as life gets, and she thinks, “if it’s so safe, I don’t need to be at a hospital. In fact, I don’t even need to pay a midwife thousands of dollars when all she does is catch the baby.”
I particularly like the part where she says: ‘It is her belief that pregnancy is natural and requires no additional monitoring if everything goes well.’
How do you know that everything is going well if you don’t do any monitoring?
You know what else is natural? Cancer.
That’s actually my answer whenever someone talks to me about the benefits of natural things.
I tend to say, “Consider the kangaroo.”
90% of Joeys don’t make it, but the kangaroo population is thriving. That’s natural. It’s a gross misunderstanding of how natural selection works if you think that nature makes everything work perfectly.
OUCH… I wondered how practical it is for what’s basically a fetus to leave the actual womb so quickly, then finish gestating in mom’s pouch. Guess the answer is “it isn’t.”
They also have this cool adaptation which allows the mum to put a fertilised egg into suspended animation while a neonate is growing to maturity in her pouch. They’re basically constantly pregnant once they hit sexual maturity which helps counter-act the high mortality rate.
They do quite often fail to make the journey from the vagina to the pouch. Also, mother kangaroos that are being chased are totally cool with scooping the joey out of the pouch and throwing it away if it is impeding their escape. Furthermore, when a drought hits and the mother faces a decrease in food supply, she has no compunction about throwing the joey out of the pouch to die.
Or the hyena. Perfectly designed to give birth peacefully and naturally through the clitoris, 40% of cubs from a first litter successfully come earthside instead of naturally suffocating.
The only thing more natural than cancer is dying before you’re old enough to get it.
Since when are biological facts a matter of belief, rather than, well, fact?
I mean, I can “believe” ’til the cows come home that I should be able to eat a pound or so of chocolate per day, never exercise, and still lose weight, but I’m still not going to see a positive (negative?) change in my weight unless I knock off the chocolate and start walking, am I?
“Why is she being asked to shoulder this?” She asked for that outcome by being an idiot and putting her baby at risk. How can anyone imagine in their wildest dreams that reading about birth on the internet is equivalent to being an OB?
That’s exactly what I was thinking.
I hope the boyfriend dumps her and gets custody of their daughter. I mean, my god, she killed his son. I can’t think of a better reason to leave someone.
“Why is she being asked to shoulder this?”
It’s a burden she begged for, nature merely complied.
Spoiled brat thinks the rules don’t apply to her, that she should do as she pleases and Father will fix it so there are no negative outcomes.
When you read about how terrible OBs are and think your first birth was horrible and traumatic (a 30 week preemie) and find a group of people who will tell you how birth is natural and mothers who are in tune with their bodies will know what to do….and that OBs don’t understand ANYTHING and constantly interfere….
You might not understand that your first pregnancy and birth put you at high risk of preterm labor in this pregnancy and that the only thing standing between you reliving your first birth is a sharp, proactive OB or MFM.
What horrifies me are all of the unassisted home births. That means no one there except the mother and father, right? Having given birth three times, I just don’t even understand why anyone would want to do that. (Of course, I also don’t understand not wanting to be at a hospital….)
Sometimes they have a doula there.
That is just a glorified friend. They have no real experience.
A *paid* friend. I think that’s the main difference.
Sometimes they do have midwives, but it’s illegal to practice as a homebirth midwife in their state so they call it unassisted. (This is what my friends are doing any day now in my state.) Unfortunately, that also lets the midwife off scot free in legal scenarios. Even if they don’t have a midwife, they usually have lots of other people around for support.
What is going on? I know/know of probably a dozen people who homebirth, and through 2014, everyone had a fine outcome. This year, I’ve heard of one post-dates stillbirth, one transfer after TWO DAYS of labor, and one NICU admission. Now another primagravida friend is at least a week overdue for a planned homebirth and just waiting…
Social media lets the sham CPMs get more business and spread more of the good stories. Bad outcomes are deleted and won’t be heard about on most birth groups.
Is that two days of active labour, or two days of ‘labour’ like latent stage?
You don’t find out the answer to that question until you go to the hospital and they see what state the mother and baby is in.
Sometimes it’s truly miserable prodromal labor and everything is fine except for maternal exhaustion.
Sometimes it’s true labor, the membranes have ruptured and baby is in distress.
You don’t know.
And the scary thing about this, is that neither do the mothers or midwives. They don’t know either…and women actually put trust in what they don’t know. It’s completely mindless…and then women and babies die. It’s hideous.
Yeh, true, it’s hard to not respond with the backdrop of trained midwives who are able to go out and check on a woman to assess progress and discuss options.
The fake midwives are getting more reckless and there is more of them out there than ever before. – as the market is narrowing down because there has been a major shift in how freely natural childbirth lies are allowed to be spread, they are all resorting to taking on even more high risk clients in order to keep the same profits. More risks ignored results in more frequent injuries and deaths.
The unassisted childbirth side is growing because if “trust birth” is enough, you might as well save the money on doing it yourself instead of paying anyone.
And all of these deaths are more visible than before because of social media.
Your friends got lucky, that’s all. The overall death rate is still very low, meaning most of the time home birth will go just fine. The problem is, when we’re talking about life and death, most of the time isn’t good enough. We don’t accept death rates this high for FDA-approved drugs, or seatbelts, or carseats. The natural-at-all-costs crowd would be all over the place crowing about death rates this high for a vaccine.
And that shows exactly the flawed mentality of the homebirth movement. You heard of a dozen homebirth? That’s an insignificant number, you’ve seen nothing of the reality of childbirth.
Birth death and complications are counted by x/1000 births.
When you’ll have seen a few thousands births, than maybe your personal experiences will be worth something.
I have probably that many people in my social circle who have driven drunk at one time or another. Numbers-wise, I wouldn’t expect any to have had a bad outcome. It still doesn’t make it something to condone. It still doesn’t make it safe. It still doesn’t make it a completely avoidable tragedy when someone _does_ die.
And I would expect a movement that extolled the empowering aspects of drunk driving and called it safer than sober driving, to increase both the incidence of drunk driving and the degree of risk people take on doing it, therefore increasing the negative outcomes.
OT, but my dear darling husband of five years went out with friends last night and when he returned home at 11 pm I discovered that he was both too drunk to stand straight, had vomited all over our couch, and had driven home from the bar against the wishes of his friends.
I am literally shaking with rage and I have to figure out what to tell him tonight when I get home. He thinks drunk driving is nbd because he is a good driver who has never gotten into an accident. Any words of wisdom?
Well for a start I’d be making sure he was the one to clean the sick off the couch.
And paying for it to be properly deep-cleaned out of the money he’d usually use for such shenanigans.
He is a full time student, which means his little night of fun was sponsored by money we don’t have. I had a nice dinner planned for the two of us to celebrate him being done with finals, so I guess that is not happening now to make up the difference.
That part is non-negotiable. I got him cleaned up last night when he was trying to use his razor as a toothbrush and that took up my last reserves of good wife.
You can tell him about the girl who never met her grandfather because of drunk driving.
Two drunk guys walked away unscathed. My grandfather didn’t walk away at all.
Hours later he was dead. The guys that hit him probably thought they were fantastic drivers too.
But one broken down car on the side of the highway and too much alcohol and one thing led to another. Drunk driver crashed into the back end of the car my grandfather was standing in front of with the hood up trying to fix. He got thrown tens of feet, I don’t remember the exact distance.
From the descriptions of what was explained to me (“damaged the vessels around his heart and the doctors couldn’t fix it”) and the type of trauma he sustained, my suspicion is that he suffered an aortic dissection. Not exactly a fun way to go.
I don’t know much about the guys that hit him. But I imagine the image of an older guy being launched by the impact of your car into his probably doesn’t easily leave you even if you never learn anything about him. Then finding out he died.
Even if he’s not worried about himself, could he live with an image like that? Even worse, what if it was a kid who got launched like that? Then if he finds out they didn’t die instantly and instead died slowly from their injuries?
I can tell where my DH (or at least his smart phone) is via looking at his Google+ profile. In my case, this is useful to figure out whether he’s heading home from bowling and I should wait up, or whether he’s still playing and I should turn in. In yours, it could be a tool for alerting the cops that they should pull his car over and test his sobriety.
That was my first thought – of course, then you’re setting him up for a DUI arrest, which is expensive and can be life-changing. Still, not as life-changing as hitting someone…
You can tell him about Crystal, a woman who will not be at our class reunion.
She was a nice young lady who had graduated from HS with honors and was driving home one night after work. She was sober.
A drunk driver hit her car from behind at a light and pushed her car into oncoming traffic. She survived….well, parts of her brain did for a while…but her parents took the advice of the neurologists and took her off of life support.
She was 19.
If she were alive today, she’d be 33 – probably married, with children and a career. Instead, she’s in a cemetery.
The drunk driver – well, he had no injuries, but DD + pictures of a dead teenage girl means that he’s still in prison and will be for a long time.
Tell him to get sober or get out? Sorry, it’s not going to get better, I fear. That’s addict behavior.
Sigh, that’s a tough one. I’m sorry you’re having to deal with it. 🙁
Many many many years ago, one of the local car clubs did an ‘alco-slalom’ – they basically set up an autocross course, gave the participants two test runs, then had them start drinking. A shot, a run. A shot, a run. People who were still blowing under the limit were substantially impaired, knocking cones down like crazy – but they didn’t realize they were doing it. Video of oneself driving when one thinks one is doing fine, seeing how badly one’s judgment is – I think that’s quite a sobering (ha) experience. Dunno how doable it would be liability-wise these days…
“He thinks drunk driving is nbd because he is a good driver”
Heh. My husband was a professional driver in his pre-settled-down days (as in, slid cars for manufacturers and commercials for a living) and taught at the Skip Barber school and the Bridgestone winter driving school, and definitely doesn’t think he’s too good to get in an accident if he were drunk. The big thing alcohol does is affect your judgment, which is the cornerstone of proactively safe driving. Fortunately for me, he doesn’t really like alcohol and rarely drinks, so usually I have a DD, and we chill out/take BART if he does decide to…
I wonder if you can recruit your husband’s friends? From what you said, they seem inclined to help in the first place…
“Lose” his car keys and tell him you have no idea where they are. Ask him if he remembered what he did with them.
When he gives up or you have pity on him, ask him to recall as much as possible of the night. Point out that if he can’t remember shit, he could have struck a pedestrian on the side of the road and not have a clue.
It’s easy to find news stories of drivers who killed people accidentally. The most recent one here was a driver who struck another car, pushing it into a crosswalk where it injured one person and killed another.
Drunk drivers always think they are fantastic drivers that are going to beat the odds.
I hope he loses his license (if that’s what happens where you live?). Any police friends that you can ask for advice or dob him in so he gets caught?
You may want to consider going to an Al-Anon meeting. This behavior is concerning and it’s good to get a reality check from other people who are dealing with loved ones abusing alcohol.
This is absolutely terrible and heart breaking. If any of these mothers would like to talk with others – please feel free to contact me personally or join my Facebook page – Homebirth Loss and Trauma Support. These babies matter – we will not bury them twice.
https://www.facebook.com/homebirthlossandtraumasupport
Well that one friend (Baby boy, July 25/26)pointed out that the boyfriend was not comfortable with a homebirth, yet he went along with it. I don’t know how the mother feels now, but learning this lesson the hard way is just awful. The only good thing would be if she has friends who lean homebirth-wise, and maybe this will convince them that its a bad idea.
There’s a whole lot of God’s Will That The Baby Died going on in those quotes. I’m not sure anyone will be convinced of anything.
Yet, God is probably looking down on this and shaking his head thinking: I gave you doctors, prenatal care, hospitals and specialized medicine, what more do you want?
I wish I could upvote this a thousand times.
Ugh. True—do you really think she can’t understand how a baby could just die, even though there was no prenatal care and no birth attendant (qualified or otherwise), and that “god did it” or just that its easier to blame god than your grieving friend?
It takes a huge amount of courage to admit that you were wrong and that your decisions may have directly caused your baby to die, and then live with that knowledge and guilt for the rest of your life. Something like this can totally destroy you forever.
Taking the ‘God’s will’ way out is only natural.
Oh sure, but what about the friend? It wasn’t the mom blaming god (that we know of), it was her friend. Since the friend was a step removed from the situation, even if she never says it out loud, hopefully she can see that the mother made some huge mistakes here and there are tangible reasons why this baby died.
Maybe it’s different when you directly cause your child’s death. I know when we lost our oldest to an accident we couldn’t predict, control, or avoid, I still blamed myself. I felt I somehow should have known and changed the course of events, even though that would require impossible psychic powers.
I am sorry for your loss. Maybe you are onto something here….I think self-blame is part of the grieving process, but if you KNOW that you could have done something differently that would have changed the outcome, that’s very difficult to accept.
I am so very sorry for your loss; I can only imagine the pain you went through. I hope you’ve found some peace.
The only way I can make sense of it is that the “prayer warrior” friend is more religious than the parents. I don’t think someone talking so much about God in such an evangelical-Christian way would have not one but two out-of-wedlock babies with their boyfriend.
cough Bristol Palin cough
Or she’s just a decent human being trying to express her shock without announcing publicly that her friend just killed her own baby.
Yeah, I’ve often wondered what I should say if – please, not when – one of the crunchy NCB birth goddess FB friends of mine loses a baby.
As Super GDZ points out the obvious “My friend probably just killed her baby trying for a UC delivery” comes off as callous even though it’s true.
It just seems… the best route in the immediate aftermath is sympathy, which doesn’t require blaming god or anyone else. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
I mean, if you take that middle bit out of the god stuff at the beginning and end, it seems like the right tone, to me.
“Our friends lost their infant son during labor and delivery this weekend. There are no words you can say when a parent must face the loss of a child.”
Wouldn’t shock me. People frequently leave out inconvenient parts of their own religion.
I am what people would call super religious and conservative and even I don’t think that was God’s will. His will was for them to use their damn heads and intelligence to make good choices which would be to go to the hospital and use the science that is being used today. That is like saying it is God’s will that you get killed drunk driving or using drugs. Normally, you would use the God’s will line when you there is absolutely nothing that you can do. When my brother died in his sleep, I would say it would be appropriate to say it was God’s will. There was absolutely no warning and nothing we could have done.
Hear, hear. From my likewise religious conservative perspective, you do the best you can with what you have to offer for those in your care.
God forbid I ever lose a baby, but if I do, I want to be able to look Him in the eye at the end of my life and, when asked, “Did you do your best to take care of the children I entrusted to you?” answer “Yes, I did,” not “Well, not really, but it’s Your fault for not magically fixing everything for me so I didn’t have to make an effort!”
Exactly.
There isn’t a religion where God’s word is “Don’t bother with reasonable precautions”.
That poor boyfriend. I bet he blames himself too. There is no way he could have made her go to the hospital. I wonder if their relationship will last with this between them.
This is terrible, just for clarity, are 1 and 2 two different babies who just happen to both be Baby Boy C?
Yes, two boys in two different states.
Thank you 🙂
Yes, different first names.
I hope this is one of those posts that the members of the loss parents families or their friends see that prompts them to question the lies of fake midwives who are responsible for several of these tragedies and contact you.
The only way to stop this from happening is to name and shame the killers involved and to press on with ACOG stance on minimum standard of education and training for all midwives in USA.
And this is why you need to do what you do, Dr. A. And why I can completely forgive all the snark. Because these babies matter. They deserve truth, in whatever way will get their story told and hopefully prevent future tragedy.
I can’t get over the thought of those babies _suffocating_ in utero. It’s horrifying. No wonder C-sections are more common at hospital birth. “We’re seeing a strange trace – it might be nothing, or it might be that your baby is struggling to breathe and dying.” Who’s going to just ‘wait and see’ on hearing that? The HBers just would rather just not know – and then the baby somehow, mysteriously, isn’t alive. Horrifying.
The term they like to use is “born sleeping”.
No cause, no blame, no need to do anything but take a few pictures and say “born sleeping”.
*This* times one thousand. Please keep fighting the good fight Dr. Tuteur.