Childbirth is not performance art.
That basic fact seems to have escaped natural childbirth advocates who are under the mistaken impression that their babies’ births are about their own egos.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]If you want to heal, get a therapist; don’t risk your baby’s life in a do over for nearly killing your previous baby.[/pullquote]
How do natural childbirth advocates express their overweening self-absorption? Let me count the ways.
1. Forcing a baby to remain attached to the placenta until it rots off.
No, I’m not making that up. A bunch of natural childbirth advocates made that up as part of the ugly one-upsmanship that is so beloved of natural childbirth advocates. They call it lotus birth because the lump of dead meat that is the placenta reminds them of a flower.
Adele Allen writes I Kept My Baby Attached To Her Umbilical Cord For 6 Days:
Just over five years ago, I gave birth to my first child and opted not to cut the cord—and, subsequently, the attached placenta—and allow it to fall away naturally. Cord non-severance is otherwise referred to as a lotus birth, a process that felt so instinctual to me that nine months ago I also chose to birth my second baby in the same way…
So instinctual that the practice occurs nowhere else in nature. So instinctual that it was invented in 1974 by Western, white, well off natural childbirth advocates who were looking for yet another form of childbirth competition.
Didn’t the placenta stink like the rotting organ meat that it is?
To keep the placenta smelling pleasant, we sprinkled it with a coating of rock salt and rose petals before wrapping in muslin cloths which were changed every few days. For easy transport, the placenta was then placed into a hand-held cool bag which kept everything clean and aerated.
Just like in nature … NOT!
What is the ostensible benefit of deliberately risking a deadly infection of the baby.
In an article written for the July/August 2005 issue of (what else?) Mothering Magazine, professional natural childbirth advocate Dr. Sarah Buckley, describes the lotus birth of her son Jacob:
… Placental symbolism is everywhere in our culture, from the handbags that we carry—holding our money, datebooks, and other items of survival—to the soft toys that we cram into our babies’ cribs. Some believe that much of our culture’s discontent and our urge to accumulate possessions—including all of the aforementioned—come from the traumatic loss of our first possession: our placenta. And each year we honor our placenta by lighting candles on our birthday cake—in Latin, the word placenta means “flat cake.”
Jacob’s placenta has been his conduit, passing life from my body to his. Now this placenta—his womb-twin, his primal anchor—has gone back to the earth. Seven years after his birth, Jacob tells me “your placenta is like your heart;’ and I realize that he received more than physical nourishment through his placenta. Along with the oxygen, nutrients, hormones, and all the other placental gifts, Jacob also received my love, which was equally his sustenance in my womb, transmitted subtly but vitally by this amazing organ—the placenta.
Really? REALLY?
2. Forcing everyone to watch your birth video.
Laura Leu wants you to know Why I showed my birth video to everyone I knew (and some I didn’t). Why? Because she’s a narcissist who needs to bolster her own ego by preening over her birth performance.
… People tended to watch it with an open mouth and darting eyes, while mumbling “oh my God” repeatedly. There was also plenty of gasping, squealing and gagging. I felt comfort in their anguish, pride in their amazement. I found the reactions so satisfying, I even started filming some of them. When I played it for my squeamish best friend, who was seven months pregnant with her first child, I captured her hilariously horrified reaction and posted it online. (The video is so amusing, it has since been licensed and recently appeared on the TV show World’s Funniest. Go ahead, Google “Pregnant Woman Reacts to Childbirth Video.”)
So amusing … NOT!
A lot of people have chosen not to watch my birth video, including a former boss, an ex-boyfriend and my own father. And I understand their resistance… But for me, the graphic physical part is not only easy to share, it’s necessary.
What I found difficult to express are some of the deeper human emotions I felt when becoming a mother. I’m much more comfortable showing someone my body expelling a human than I am talking about the intense and all-consuming love that tore through me in the seconds that followed.
“I felt,” “I am talking,” “I found the reactions so satisfying.” ME, ME, ME!
But the worst example of natural childbirth narcissism by far is this:
3. Forcing a baby to endure a dangerous labor to “heal” his mother from the labor that nearly killed her older child.
Joni Edelman, in a truly ugly display of petulance and egotism, wants you to know My Labor And Birth Didn’t Go As Planned — And No, I’m Not ‘Over’ It.
Joni planned the homebirth of her dreams to make up for the shoulder dystocia that nearly killed her toddler at her previous homebirth. The fact that she was at great risk for having another shoulder dystocia and killing this baby apparently did not factor into Joni’s plans.
Alas, another big baby and this time a stalled labor requiring transfer to the hospital. Joni was inconsolable:
This is the point in the story where I will say, I sobbed putting on a dress. I sobbed through packing my bag. I sobbed through hugging my kids goodbye. I sobbed the entire 25-minute drive to the hospital.
I got to the hospital and sobbed through intake, through the donning of a hospital gown, through the insertion of an IV.
I was lucky to have a group of care professionals who were fighting for me to have a natural birth, but I sobbed anyway. I was lucky to have a midwife who could have whisked me off to the OR, but instead, sat at the side of my bed for seven MORE hours to help my stubborn, egg-headed son to get his act together — but I sobbed anyway.
I was lucky that my body responded to the small amount of pitocin I needed to convince my uterus that it was supposed to be getting a baby out. I sobbed anyway.
I was lucky I didn’t have a c-section. I was lucky he was born, healthy and huge at 10+ pounds, from just two hefty pushes.
I was lucky.
I sobbed anyway.
Why?
His birth was supposed to be peaceful, swimming into the world in our kitchen, surrounded by his family, welcomed with cake and champagne. He was supposed to come out easily and heal me from the trauma of my previous labor and dystocia. His birth was supposed to be a lot of things that it was not.
I do not want to hear, “Well, you’re lucky he’s healthy,” ever.
His birth was supposed to heal you? Heal YOU??
No parent should ever look to a child, let alone a helpless infant, to heal her. Planning a risky homebirth to heal yourself is like having a baby to heal your failing marriage. It is selfish, monstrously unfair to the child and doomed to failure. Children are people, not accessories to decorate your life and make you feel better about yourself.
If you want to heal, get a therapist; don’t risk your baby’s life in a do over for nearly killing your previous baby.
Childbirth is about one thing and one thing only: it’s about having a baby.
If you think it’s about you and your ego, your opportunity to preen, to force your birth video on others, your opportunity to heal, you are most emphatically doing it wrong!
Off track a wee bit but I would like to say thank goodness for obstetric care and good midwifery support. Our family has a new family member brought safely into the world following a very rare complication. We have brought home a healthy 5lb 15 oz 36 weeks.
Congratulations!
Why does so much of the writing on this blog read like Fox News?
I’ve seen first hand how people pressure women into having medication, try to humilitate them at parties, ask all sorts of inappropriate questions or just get downright insulting (“are you an idiot?”, “you’re a scientist – what happened to you?”, etc.). Alternatively, people will start talking about the immense pain, the desperation they felt, and how much better things were when they got narcotics, or other drugs, in an attempt to scare the crap out of her.
All while you’re sipping your wine, eating cheese. I saw it happen to my wife, and I saw it with other women I barely knew. It’s strange, as if suddenly these folks got super concerned about the health of the women and baby, even though she’ll be in a hospital. And if you get carte blanche to say damn near anything to a pregnant woman. I don’t get it.
But then, the rage doesn’t stop there. After kids are born, there are a bunch of folks who are excited to be enraged at mothers for a whole host of other infractions, many of which are opposites (too much time with the kids/not enough time with the kids, too nurturing / too tough, too focused on herself / too focused on the kids).
All I can say is: it can really suck to be an expectant mother in the wrong part of the country.
I hope you cultivated an icy stare and repeated the words “why do you ask?” And “thank you for your concern”. I hope you encouraged your wife to do the same.
Mild in comparison, but I just got an email birth announcement – sent by proud dad/husband – bragging that this was his wife’s second all natural delivery.
Yeah, I have such a hard time with these. I think of it like religion. I can congratulate someone on their Bar Mitzvah or First Holy Communion without believing in the importance of the rite myself. My friend put so much stock in her natural VBAC. As she put herself in the care of experienced CNMs at a hospital who I knew would give her decent medical care, I wished her the best in getting what she wanted, and was honestly glad when she did.
Ha, I mentioned the one I got the other week – where the husband bragged about how his wife had managed to have a ‘natural birth’ – and saw a week later on FB that it had been more than a week overdue. And she has a PhD in biology. WTF does the Bay Area do to people?
Finally followed some of the links and one thing that struck me about the “everyone must watch my birth video” story: If everything in the story is accurate as described, the author did, in fact, have a fairly easy, relatively quick birth. She also chose to have it unmedicated. And despite its relative ease, those 5 hours of pain and 13 minutes of even worse pain while pushing were traumatic. A normal easy, fast birth is still painful and traumatic.
So, why are we coercing women into refusing pain relief again? What purpose does it serve besides traumatizing them and secondarily traumatizing people that they then coerce into watching their birth videos to help them process the trauma?
I was extremely traumatized by my first birth. Nothing I had read, none of the classes I had attended, no one that I had talked to had prepared me for the excruciating pain of an occiput posterior presentation (except my best friend’s mom, who, when I had just discovered I was pregnant and I asked her if labour was really as bad as they said, just replied mysteriously, “No, it’s worse.”). Unfortunately, well-meaning friends had given me Dr Bradley’s book to read and I went into it thinking if I could just relax enough then there would be no pain. It was a nightmare of agony where I would have preferred death to facing the next contraction. The Demerol that I finally broke down and accepted didn’t touch the pain. I should have had an epidural but I bravely soldiered on. I spent 3 more births recovering from that trauma by seeking the perfect NCB experience. It. never. happened. Each one was traumatic in a different way. All were OP babies. Blah.
I’ve seen a couple of mentions of “sunny side up” babies and the horrible pain associated with laboring and birthing them.
I, too, had an occiput posterior presentation, however I had multiple types of pain relief including an epidural. For me, my son’s birth was uncomfortable but absolutely NOT horrifically painful.
I’m able to look back on it without trauma, grateful he was born healthy and that, rather than feeling drained by the experience, I felt ready to get out of their and be a mom.
I had an OP baby too, and labour sucked – it felt like my sacrum was going to split open. I wasn’t able to get an epidural until I was 8cm dilated, and even though I still had pain in the right side of my stomach after that, I didn’t care because it took away that horrible sacral pressure. Pushing felt good as it took away the remaining abdominal pain, and the delivery part was painless. I found the cramps with breastfeeding in the first few days to be really disconcerting as it reminded me of the pain I had just been through. If I didn’t have the epidural I think I would still be traumatised by the whole experience.
Yes! The after pains were awful too. My back ached horribly. A few years ago I had, unknown to me, a gallbladder attack. I writhed and sweated and moaned through the pain, with counterpressure from hubby on my back. I was transported instantly back into my labour experiences. And instead of getting to the ER for morphine or whatever they give you for gallbladder attacks, I STAYED HOME AND ENDURED THE AGONY AGAIN. I.am.so.stupid.
For me there was only one thing more painful than the OP delivery, and that’s the horrific pain right before you pass out during a severe anaphylaxis reaction. That’s one of the reasons I’m so horrified by the NCB movement. I know what it feels like to be deprived of oxygen for long periods of time. There are no words to describe how I feel about a cult that actually encourages mothers to subject their babies to such torture.
I’m so glad for you. I was so steeped in woo that I thought “NEXT TIME will be the magical experience I keep reading about” …only to face the same torture again and again and again. I wish this blog had been around then. Or someone would have slapped the silliness out of me. But I surrounded myself with the echo chamber and refused to hear reason.
You have my heartfelt sympathy for the suffering you endured. I wish someone you trusted could have convinced you to try a different way.
To be fair, I did not have to withstand the tremendous pressure mothers have received the last 10 years or so. NCB was definitely something women did, but I had never had any interest in it. I knew childbirth would hurt, and I knew I was going to want whatever pain relief they could give me. None of my friends at the time were having babies (I had mine later in life, age 37).
I think much of my knowledge came from hearing birth stories from my mother, grandmothers, cousins, and aunts – to a one, they talked about the pain of it, but that “afterward you forget about it”.
I’m very curious about how you came to believe that childbirth could be painless? I understand if you don’t want to answer, and I will respect that if you don’t. I know it is difficult for some of us who were only aware of the woo but not “in” it to really understand but I would like to try. Everything I was taught about having babies indicated that it was very very painful, and it never occurred to me that it could be painless – even with plenty of painkiller and an epidural, it was still uncomfortable. How were you able to convince yourself that it was possible to be drug- and pain-free?
That is a good question, and I have been thinking about why I fell into the woo so hard that I stayed there for 30 years. It wasn’t until less than 2 years ago that I woke up. I was in the midst of deciding to train as a lay midwife when I came across this blog. The awakening process was painful (hence my name CKH) but relatively quick once I started reading the homebirth loss stories here and accounts of gross midwifery negligence and blindness of birthing couples.
I was young when pregnant the first time (20) and very impressionable. It was an unplanned and highly traumatic pregnancy both physically and emotionally. There was major life change that occurred during it. An older woman friend who was my mentor in other areas loaned me several of her 70s era NCB books. One of them was Dr Bradley’s book on Husband-Coached Childbirth. He made a theological explanation of pain in childbirth that I’d not heard before – that God never intended it to be painful and that the current translation/understanding of the Genesis passage was wrong.
So, as a naive young woman, and as a Christian, I WANTED this to be true, so I accepted his teaching that childbirth could be a much simpler deal than Western medicine had made it, without much critical thought. I was grasping at straws, and at anything that could make the coming ordeal more managable both emotionally and physically.
As I wrote before, the birth was OP and extremely painful. I had told the nurses that I was going to “go natural”. So, as a result I did not get much being offered in the way of pain relief, even though when the first contractions hit after my water was broken, I was on the floor puking with the pain. They came fast and furious and I did end up begging for something and took some Demerol, which didn’t touch the pain but caused me to fall asleep in between contractions and then wake in agony. it wasn’t long before I was in a fog of excrucitating pain, just waiting to die. I lost touch with reality and was unaware of my surroundings. It was only a 6 hour labour and in the end I delivered a 10 lb baby and received a huge episiotomy that took 6 months to heal properly and some rather nasty hemmorhoids to boot.
Oh, Dr. Bradley, how wrong you were!
I was extremely traumatized and my way to cope with it was to believe that it was someone’s fault (the doctor, the nurses, the hospital, the Demerol, me for not being relaxed enough, my husband for not being supportive enough) and that there was something I could do next time to ensure that I never had to go through that hell again. And my new breastfeeding support group was full of NCB homebirthers who encouraged that line of thinking and sealed my entrance into the cult.
At least, that’s what I’ve figured out so far about what happened . 😉
Thank you for sharing your (very painful) story. It makes sense with all the upheaval and uncertainty that was going on, coupled with being so young, that you would very much want to believe that childbirth could be painless. Coming from a woman you trusted, as well as coming from a religious-faith perspective that you also trusted, it isn’t that surprising that you were able to be convinced.
I’m glad you were able to even allow yourself to see NCB from a different perspective even 2 years ago. Many never do, as it can be too painful.
As someone who sees both sides of this, you’re uniquely situated to be able to help the women in your life to avoid some of the suffering you went through when they’re ready to have children.
Thank you again for sharing, I found your story fascinating.
Similar thing happened to me, except I did want an epidural and was denied one. It was horrific to the extent that my next birth, a crash section, was genuinely a mentally healing experience in comparison.
Can I ask what reason was given for denying you one? Are you in the UK?
Yes!
I was left for two and a half hours while asking for one, after PROM, during which time I managed to go from 2cm to 9cm. A midwife was with me almost constantly throughout this period, for the record. The anaesthetist wasn’t called, I don’t know why, but when he eventually did turn up he made it extremely clear he’d only been beeped a couple of minutes earlier. I should make it very clear that I enjoyed some brilliant midwife care during both pregnancies and births, but this was not it. The subsequent ventouse, two nights in hospital instead of one and possibly linked severe SPD in the next pregnancy cost the NHS a great deal more than an epidural would have done.
Awful story, and I can well imagine it happening in any hospital in my country (midwife in prenatal class was proudly telling how she managed to delay epidural for a woman’s 3rd birth until it was too late). Actually, reliable epidurals are available only in capital city (i.e., serving less than half of population) because regional hospitals have only one or two anesthetists and they don’t offer epidurals as a service because they may be unavailable (surgeries are always priority). So they are coercing women into “natural birth” by telling how bad epidurals are just because they can’t offer them.
I had already planned that the moment I’d have to have any intervention (like pitocin) that would render me unavailable to move around (or baby would be OP), I will get epidural (and husband was on board that he has to insist if midwife is trying to mess around).
I understand if epidurals aren’t available due to resource constraints- awful, but that’s the reality of a lot of the world. You can’t have what’s not there. It’s harder to comprehend when they are available but deliberately not given.
Honestly, in the NHS, my advice to women who are sure they want an epidural is “ask early, ask often and don’t just ask for an epidural, ask them to bleep the anaesthetist. If they leave the room to do so, have your birth partner accompany them to the phone to ensure it happens”.
Your story is not unusual. Midwives deciding that women are “doing really well” and “don’t really need” an epidural, so they delay calling an anesthetist until it is too late.
This is much more likely to happen if you have some language about wanting a natural birth in a birth plan, because they’ll feel justified in giving you what you “really” wanted.
In my case I have no idea what it was, because I was clearly not doing really well. I was lying flat on my back failing to stay still enough for foetal monitoring. Not a great surprise as I was in transition. The midwife concerned was no longer with the trust by the time I got round to complaining. Maybe she was just useless.
You’re right though, I insisted on an anaesthetic consult for the next birth and they were all ready for a very early epidural. In the end the EMCS sorted all that out! But making a fuss is what’s needed. I wish I’d told them first time round that I’m a lawyer too.
I’m so sorry for how you were treated. There is nothing even remotely OK about that.
Thanks. They did subsequently say sorry and ask for my permission to use my example in training about the impact of poor practice and communication, which meant a lot and which I was happy to agree to. They were also fantastic second time round, although that may be because that birth went very wrong and the NHS, in my experience, tends to do well in emergencies.
I feel your pain! There are no words to describe it, are there? I’m glad second time was a better birth.
I can think of a few words…
I don’t get it. And how effective it was – I was convinced that I wanted to have a medication-free birth if I could. Not so convinced that the moment the pain became unbearable I didn’t insist on and get an epidural, but it would have been less stressful to just plan to get it right from the start.
Well, one specific thing that scared me was that I was told I’d be paralyzed from the waist down and unable to change positions for the entire labor. And the hospital did insist on a catheter, and I hate that. I did want to be able to move around (though in the end I wasn’t allowed to anyway because there is no remote monitoring for twins).
I had an “easy” birth–unmedicated, vaginal, I had almost zero tearing, recovery (aside from breastfeeding) was easier than getting over a cold. Less than a week after, my SIL (who is a nurse) was worried about me sitting on a hard kitchen chair, and I couldn’t figure out why that would be a problem or issue. Obviously I have no Birth Trauma.
However. Labor was the most traumatic experience of my life. It was precipitous, so that part was scary, but my God, the pain. And the feeling of being at the mercy of nature?? Was. Horrifying. And nothing bad happened!
I feel like childbirth is one of those areas where you’re better served by hearing things about how painful and scary it can be, becuase then you have a *chance* of being happily surprised if it wasn’t as bad as you thought. And if it IS that bad, at least you were somewhat prepared for it.
I had an TWO “easy” vaginal births. Inducted labors, epidurals, in and out in a matter of a couple of hours, less than 25 minutes of pushing with number one, and 15 with #2. Nice work if you can get it.
So…. What’s so magical about the six days after birth that will suddenly make the loss of the placenta gentle? I just don’t understand how six days more with something supposedly so vital makes a difference. I wouldn’t expect any difference between a child who lost something actually important (a limb or a parent, for example) on the day of their birth versus one who lost the same important thing at six days of age.
Exactly. Once the kid is born, the placenta becomes irrelevant – waste matter even. Because it’s done its job and is no longer needed. Every other mammalian species bites/claws through the umbilical cord to remove it and the afterbirth from their offspring.
Carting it around in rose petals and muslin and whatever is NOT natural, it is disgusting.
I looked briefly at the first one because I’d never seen one in person before, I have zero memory of the second — all eyes on the baby. FWIW, as the hospital went “baby friendly” before the arrival of #2, they did ask me what I wanted to do with it. “Toss it.” I said.
I mean, you can argue that eating it is natural – bitches will do that.
But carrying it around? Ummm….nope.
Because then they’re emotionally ready to let go of their precious first possession and their spirit has said goodbye to the womb peacefully.
(Can I roll my eyes loudly enough?)
WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER MY EYES ROLLING
This is part of what I don’t understand about lotus birth: it takes so long for the cord to fall off.
I always used to tell my patients to just leave it alone. Don’t put raw honey or golden seal powder or anything else on it. Soap and water was sufficient with a bit of blow dry (on low setting) to dry the skin folds a bit.
Cords almost always fell off on their own in about 3 days.
Yet, the lotus and NCB people do all kinds of stuff to the cord to “help it heal and keep it from getting infected”, yet it takes longer for the cord to fall off.
Apparently it is a japanese tradition to keep the bit of the cord that falls off the baby in a little box.
Or maybe my Australian friend’s japanese inlaws were just messing with her.
Either way, there’s nowt as queer as folk.
I’m very seriously considering pursuing obstetrics (probably 50/50 split between OB/Gyn and Family. I’ve got a year and a half to decide before residency apps.) I find childbearing absolutely fascinating, to the point that I’m seriously considering making it my life’s work.
And I still don’t want to see my friends’ or family members’ birth videos. No. There are parts of you I just don’t want to see before we sit down to supper, thanks much. What the hell is wrong with that woman that she’d force people to watch her kid’s birth? Just no.
People don’t even want to hear you talk about it, let alone watch it.
OT but thought some people might be interested to know that Ezekiel Stephan’s parents were convicted yesterday. (Short story – dad is VP of natural supplements company, toddler gets viral meningitis, parents treat with garlic and echinacea, toddler dies. Anti-vax too, of course.)
Excellent. About time.
He had bacterial meningitis. I just cannot get over the poor dear child and the suffering he must have endured as his parents treated him with hot peppers and horseradish as he slowly died.
You’re right, it was the nurse who was a family friend who guessed that it was viral meningitis, but it was bacterial. thanks for the correction.
The nurse was also their home-birth attendant. It’s completely biased of me, but I suspect she is also woo-prone.
According to a report I read, she had zero prenatal care.
How she felt she was qualified to tell the difference baffles me. My husband got viral meningitis this year, but emergency services/hospital assumed it could be either (and treated for both) until they could get a definitive diagnosis.
My husband was in terrible pain. It was hard to watch. My eyes are tearing up as I think of a child going through that pain and more.
If anyone else is following this story the father has released a ‘dear jury’ letter on FB that prefaces content he has shared from another FB poster accusing modern medicine of killing more people prematurely than disease. No lie, I have screen caps.
I just looked. In that post he shares a post from someone else including such statements as “We live inside a death cult where medicine and government lead the slaughter” and (understatement of the year?) “A child died here and that is unfortunate …”
Yes, modern medicine is a death cult carrying out a “eugenic attack” against children, no less.
After going down the rabbit hole a bit on this, it looks like Ezekiel’s parents are claiming that he died because the ambulance that attended when he stopped breathing was not properly equipped to establish an airway in a toddler, and thus Ezekiel died due to loss of oxygen on his way to the hospital (medical misadventure), not anything to do with them.
There’s all kinds of science-y sounding stuff to back up their claim on their blog.
https://stand4truth.ca/today-in-court-tuesday-april-19-2016/
Oh yes and the 10 minutes he wasn’t breathing whilst they were driving around to try and meet the ambulance made no difference at all
Of course not. It was only when he got into the hands of the mainstream medical system that he got worse and died. It was the EMT’s and doctor’s fault, obviously. Because, see how useless it all is? If it were good and useful, Ezekiel would be alive today. Modern medicine is not good for anything, especially diagnosing and treating a bacterial infection of the meninges. Hot peppers, EO’s, and chiropractic treatment were what was called for, clearly. /sarcasm
Even if it’s true the ambulance was ill-equipped, he had been sick for 2 1/2 weeks with symptoms including difficulty breathing, “unusual lethargy,” abnormal movements, no appetite and refusing fluids. I would take my toddler to the doctor for any ONE of these symptoms that continued more than 24 hours and if there was a combination of them I would take him to the ER. If an emergency was mishandled that is bad and there should be an investigation into that, but these parents could have prevented the situation from becoming an emergency in the first place (and this is the argument the prosecution made). Any sensible parent would have. Sorry but I have no sympathy for them.
Hell, I just dragged me *teenager* to the doctor for “unusual lethargy” and pain. He protested loudly, but I dragged him anyway.
Take a moment to consider the wickedness involved in spending almost 3 weeks watching a small child getting sicker and sicker, and doing nothing definitive until the second time they stop breathing, and then sitting down with advisers and cooking up that story.
Someone they were responsible for died. If one of my children had died of illness I’d still be wondering what I could have done better/differently/sooner. Not this lot.
Don’t know how it works in Canada, but in the U.S. that would be a very bad idea before sentencing.
In cases like that, you almost wish the judge had the discretion to not only sentence the convicted, but to throw the morons supporting them in jail for a month, too, for being a menace to society.
I said this also in the Denny Hastert case. This is a guy who is known to have sexually abused a bunch of teenagers, but can’t be prosecuted because of a statute of limitations. He has been convicted of other corruption stuff, and friends are all writing letters with crap like, “He’s a good, Christian man.”
No, he’s not. He’s actually a very bad man, and has a track record of doing very bad things to others. If you still contend he is a “good man” despite all that has come out about him, then you have a very warped view of good and bad. I don’t trust to have you running free in society.
Interestingly, 1/3 of the supporters retracted their letters when the judge informed them that they would be made public (as part of the trial record). So they were all ready to vouch for his character, but unwilling to let anyone know they would vouch for his character.
Terrible death for that poor child.
Canada seems to have some challenges going on in this area: there have been court orders allowing aboriginal families to take children for cancer treatment unrelated to traditional medicine, at the expense of those children having medical treatement with a good chance of success. My understanding is that non-aboriginal families would not have success seeking similar orders.
This family seems to have a connection with a major peddlar of ‘alternative’ medicine products. I’m sure they thought they were doing the right thing by him.
I hope they go to prison. There is a standard in a civilised society, and they failed to meet it. I sincerely hope the Court is not distracted, in sentencing, by notions that they have ‘suffered enough’. If they continue to defend their treatment choices, I trust their other children will be moved to a place of more safety.
I am aware of one case as you describe, but the girl was 14 (or thereabouts) and considered pretty much capable to decide to refuse conventional treatment, which it is a capable adult’s right to do (although she was not an adult, hence the court order). Our courts have a deplorable history when it comes to dealing with First Nations people, but I don’t think the test is any different when it comes to court intervention relating to minors and medical issues. Balancing the parents’ rights with the child’s and, when it comes to vaccines, the rights of everyone, is a tricky business.
There were two girls (Makayla and JJ) from the same First Nation in the same situation. Makayla, the most publicly visible one as the other’s identity was protected, was 11, not 14, refusing chemotherapy because she saw Jesus who told her to, and she has since died. JJ eventually did return to actual treatment and is, so far as I know, doing well.
Thanks Puffin, I was just heading off to refresh my memory. Sad Makayla died, and I hope JJ continues to do well.
An 11 year old was judged mature enough to make this decision? WTF?
Thanks for this.
I’m from Australia, and like Canada we have had our challenges in the treatment of aboriginal people.
Here it is likely a court, if asked, will order vaccination unless there is a medical reason-not an ideological or religious one-to not do so. The government has made some family payments contingent upon up to date vaccination status.
Ezekiel was in a terrible situation, with no one to intervene on his behalf. I really do hope, regardless of sentencing, that if his parents don’t agree to some different responses to illness in future, their other children are taken to an environment where their medical needs can be properly met.
No, they have not suffered enough.
Actually I think they should both be infected with meningitis and denied real medical care until they’re right on the brink of death, then brought back so they can live with the knowledge of exactly what they did to their innocent, defenseless little boy.
This is why we don’t let Evil Beatrice out of her cage very often.
Bacterial meningitis is pretty deadly even with prompt medical care, so I don’t think you can count on delaying treatment and bringing them back in any shape to appreciate the lesson. And yeah, evil TCAMN kind of thinks evil Beatrice has a point.
But they’d know their punishment would be surviving, so would they really be that scared?
Evil Who? would probably send them to do some good in the world, in a place where no vaccines and no proper medical care actually bites. Let them see how life without a safety net looks.
The point is so that they can live with the guilt of knowing exactly the kind of pain they put their little boy through. Frankly, that’s probably a fate worse than death.
Yeah,….but we need to leave their knowledge intact for that to work.
I hadn’t heard the bit about the dad being the VP of a supplement company. Is there any way to close the company, which has now provably killed at least one person?
IIRC not only was he a VP, but his father started the business. The family has been steeped in woo from the jump.
Health Canada has gone after them in court previously for making false claims about their natural remedies. There’s some indication that he believes being prosecuted for Ezekiel’s death is part of a larger conspiracy that is tied to the earlier court case.
In a way, yes. The goal of the previous cases was to try to get them to desist before they friggin kill someone.
Then they friggin killed someone. You damn straight the prosecutions would be tied together.
“We told you to stop, dumb ass, and you didn’t listen.”
To be fair, whatever nonsense the company was selling didn’t kill Ezekiel, his parents’ wanton failure to seek basic medical attention did.
I suppose you could make the argument that the ideology that the company sold killed Ezekiel.
You could, and you wouldn’t be wrong.
I just feel it’s really important to strip away the distractions here, includng that the father was a director of the company.
They, as parents, made a series of choices that led to the death of the child. Doesn’t mean the others involved shouldn’t be pursued. If in future people only seek care to protect their own miserable skins, then the child involved will have some chance.
They failed to seek medical attention because they thought they were giving it to him already. They annoyed the poor child while he was dying with garlic and hot peppers and all manner of completely useless naturopathic “treatments” that only made his last hours worse. Maybe they would have gotten actual medical care for him if they hadn’t had the false promise of naturopathy in front of them.
Maybe.
I always wonder why, if medical care is so bad and useless, they bother with it at all. Desperation? Wanting to share the blame around?
Surely can’t be because they expect it to do anything.
If he had survived, you can bet they would be claiming it was despite any medical care he had, not because of it.
I often wonder the same thing. I also think the same thing about the NCB/CPM/homebirth crowd. If they are so damn adamant about refusing medical assistance/monitoring/treatment for their pregnancy and “healing homebirth”, why do they then wind up running to the very people they have been badmouthing when things go awry?
My evil, vindictive side would very much like to refuse these people treatment if and when they show up to the hospital. For whatever reason: no insurance, no medical records, “you’ve been *treating* this yourself at home using garlic, hot peppers, poultices, apple cider vinegar, homeopathy (magic water!), crystals and positive thinking?!?! Remove yourself from this ER NOW! You’ve made this bed, it’s time to lie in it. Because if you think we are not qualified to treat you for a minor problem, why, oh why would you suddenly trust us now to bail your miserable asses out of a disaster of epic proportions?
You screw around with home remedies for ages, then want us (modern medicine) to swoop in and rescue you from your colossally bad judgement? Um, no. Sorry. You signed your son’s death warrant when you saw him getting worse and worse, but refused to do anything constructive about it. Take yourselves off home and grieve for your dead son (or not, as you choose) and whine about how meeeeen everybody is being. You get no sympathy/empathy from me.
This is why I’m not a doctor. This is also why I don’t let my evil, vindictive side out to play too often.
My wife was reading an anecdote from an oncologist the other day, about some patient that was going on and on with all the alternative treatments she wanted to do in conjunction with her chemo, and how could she incorporate them. He told her honestly that he recommended against any of them, because they are not effective and they have the potential to interfere with the actual treatment. She responded with “of course that’s what you’d say.”
When he asked why she wanted to do them, she got all snotty and condescending, saying that they heal “naturally, and from the inside.” As if he were a 2 year old that she had to explain it to.
He put up with it. But I told my wife, this is why I’m not a doctor. Because if I were and some patient would say that, I’d be “Get out. You clearly don’t value my opinion, and so I don’t want to waste your time with it. You think you know better, you go do it and leave me out of it.”
It takes all I had to keep my mouth shut when my SIL got better after chemo and then said it had to be because of the turmeric and dietary changes, because it just couldn’t better from putting to chemicals in her body. I kept my mouth shut because she did continue chemo, thankfully.
The dude who did all that curcumin research that folk had problems replicating had his papers retracted due to ‘questionable data integrity.’ Just to put the All-Healing Anti-Inflammatory Tumeric in perspective…
http://retractionwatch.com/2016/02/22/journal-retracts-7-papers-by-md-anderson-researcher-long-under-investigation/
There is someone in my local community asking for recommendations for an OB, but only one who will let her have as natural a birth as she wants. She wants an epidural (so has ruled out homebirth) but says she doesn’t want pitocin, an episiotomy or a c-section “unless a life is on the line”. But isn’t it always that way when you are talking about childbirth? And how dare she presume to know better when those things are appropriate, isn’t that what she is choosing an OB for?
Exactly. If you know better, you clearly don’t need the OB.
It might help her to remember that CS are sometimes done not because a life is on the line, but because the baby’s brain function is on the line. Does she want a live but brain damaged child??
Also, isn’t there some research indicating that in some cases, pitocin can help avoid CS by bringing about a vaginal birth that wasn’t happening without a little help?
It sounds to me like she’s not presuming to know better, she just has swallowed the Kool-Aid that told her many OBs try to push interventions for no reason. So she just needs an OB who communicates well and is willing to do a bit of hand-holding.
The goal of medicine is to prevent emergencies, and not just react to them.
True, a lot of modern medicine is preventative: vaccines, cancer screening, prenatal screening, dietary guidelines. Sadly, the nature worshippers are not cool with those either.
So THIS is why I have an obsession with handbags…I’m actually just desperately missing the placenta that nourished me for 9 months! I think my medical insurance should start paying for my handbags as I need them for psychological reasons. I’m only trying to fill the emptiness in my heart!
Super OT, but I know there are some medical professionals here. Can anyone point me to some helpful site for bandaging finger wounds? I sliced the tip of my finger off with the veg. peeler about 2 hours ago and it’s still oozing. It is not a deep wound, and there’s nothing to stitch together. I don’t want to call a sitter to watch my kids and pay $50 at an Urgent Care center that will take an hour each way to get to for this. I’m not at risk of bleeding out, but I can’t figure out how to get a bandage to keep some pressure on so I can go about my business.
http://www.ncemi.org/cse/cse1012.htm
Try this.
If you can, get to a pharmacy and get some finger bandages, the kind like a little tube that you roll on like a sock, twist and double over. They work well to hold dressings in place.
Thank you, that looks like it might work.
My bandage was still somewhat awkward. Tomorrow when the nanny gets here I will buy some finger bandages. Kitchens, man.
Though I suppose if I had been breastfed I wouldn’t be so clumsy, eh? 😉
I meant to say the bandage was awkward, but the bleeding stopped, yay!
I suggest something like this on top of the finger sock: http://www.amazon.com/Band-Aid-Water-Block-Transparent-Bandages/dp/B0010WPOHG/ref=sr_1_3_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1461816641&sr=8-3&keywords=waterproof+bandaids
It *will* take quite a while to come off on its own, but on the bright side, it will take quite a while to come off on its own. :p I used them when I started a rather intense (for me) walking program and developed blisters on my feet. Regular bandaids would roll up and slide off my toes, but these would stay on for 3+ days of sweaty feet and corresponding friction.
If the local pharmacies carry it, I will try it. Sounds like I could shower with it on, which would be helpful. Thanks!
Yes, I should have added that. Living as I do in a near-tropical climate, twice-daily showers are kind of de rigeur if I don’t want to gross out everyone around me post-workout. 😉 I would generally still need to peel the bandaid off after those three days, more from a check-the-blister-see-how-it’s-healing thing than anything else. Good luck!
I still have two in diapers, so the more important thing for me right now is handwashing – and it’s even more important with an open wound. But I did find some fingertip bandages that say they are waterproof, as well as some tubular gauze with finger cots.
The weird thing is how little pain I have.
Super glue.
There are no edges to the wound to close, unfortunately. I peel the tip of my finger right off.
“…When I played it for my squeamish best friend, who was seven months pregnant with her first child, I captured her hilariously horrified reaction and posted it online. … ” — Is it wrong that I’m now totally focused on finding out if they are still BFFs?
I’m guessing no, especially since she is now cashing in on her friend’s “hilarious” reaction on America’s Funniest or whatever.
On the other hand, her friend could be one of those “Oooh, I’m on TV!!!” types. :
I’ve tried several times to write something, but I just feel bad for being mean.
All I can say is that I hope these women eventually lead happy, fulfilled lives and that they raise their children to be more resilient and selfless than they were.
I hope their children grow up to be warm, kind, intelligent people who learn from their parents’ mistakes without being harmed by them.
I hope they do, but I also think some of them may end up being like the kids my daughter gives Major Side-eye too at college. Let’s see, your mom helping you move into your apartment and maybe helping with the cost of groceries, sure. Your mom/dad being there when you call because you are lonely/homesick, you need to know how to go about getting dental care/new glasses/etc Sure, negotiating insure stuff needs help the first time out.
Your mom going in to yell at the advisor because your did not get the classes you wanted(Not a freshman) because you waited too late to register…NO. Your mom going in or calling to berate the professor because you got bad grades, for turning in assignments late /incomplete…NO. When do they think their kids need to deal with life?
Oh sure, just like nature. Who hasn’t seen a dolphin dragging around a salted-and-flowered placenta? Oh, wait….
Oh, if I only had a nickel for every time I…oh, you’re right.
“Now this placenta—his womb-twin…”
You know what a real womb-twin is? AN ACTUAL FREAKING TWIN. Let’s say it all together now, people: “The placenta is not a person.”
Next thing you know she’ll be advocating for “placental rights.”
No, no, twins are womb-triplets or womb-quadruplets. Each placenta gets equal standing with the child(ren).
I AM NOT GIVING THE PLACENTAS NAMES AND CHRISTIAN BURIALS.
Ok, but if your children grow up materialistic and unhappy don’t say she didn’t warn you.
*eyes fill dramatically with tears*
Will you at least baptize the placentas?
Snort. I haven’t even baptized my kids!
Would you consider having them for a snack instead? It’d be a shame to let them go to waste.
I’d imagine you’re supposed to do some sort of appropriative, culturally insensitive mish mash of what you imagine Hinduism, Buddhism and Indigenous spirituality to be (indigenous people all being the same).
I was a little sad that the placenta was whisked away before I got the chance to examine it. But then I’m the kind of person who is absolutely fascinated with pimple popping. I was more traumatized that I didn’t get to keep the cyst my GP cut out of my shoulder a few years back. No, the forgotten placenta didn’t require therapy. The cyst almost did. Damn it. I still want that cyst back.
Not too long ago some sort of cyst/old pimple that had been on my chin for months finally exploded. It came out in a solid roll; think about squeezing ground meat through a sausage maker. Anyway, I thought it was so exciting that I took pictures and posted in on another site where there’s a thread dedicated to sharing gross things. It was awesome.
We have a local placental burial ground. In Islam, the body is regarded as the gift of Allah and all bodily tissues must be treated respectfully as ultimately, the tissue belongs to Allah. We don’t have too many Muslims in my area, but we’ve had a few who asked for their placenta to be given back to them . I don’t think it’s consecrated ground though , as far as I know it’s somebody’s garden.
That gives a whole new dimension of disgusting to eating a placenta or encapsulating one.
When I was 4-5, I saw a cow eating her afterbirth. I think as a consequence the idea of placenta encapsulation didn’t really bother me, and it sort of (??) made sense.
THEN I found out (probably here) that the placenta’s DNA is the same as the baby’s–so then I was like, ok, yeah no.
However, the (hospital, CNM) midwives I saw had an open house, and one of them said she did encapsulation. One of the dads had NEVER heard about it, so he started asking why do you encapsulate it, etc–took him a looooong time to figure out that you swallow it. His horrified face was so funny…
I think I’ve told this story before, but when my husband’s family’s farm only had 40 cows 50 years ago, a cow ate the placenta then proceeded to choke to death. This story still lives on in infamy around the farm, so one of the first thing I was taught to do around cows was to wrestle placentas away from cows that were trying to eat them.
My favorite time was when my parents were visiting the farm. My mom grew up in the country, but not on a farm and my Dad grew up in Detroit. I was showing off the cows proudly when I saw a cow snatch an afterbirth off the floor. I dove into the pen swearing profusely while the cow caught the placenta in her mouth and started running around the pen like a dog with a toy. I eventually got the placenta away from the cow and turned back to see my parents laughing so hard they were crying.
Um, I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to choke on anything natural, and the obvious solution is to make a cow placenta smoothie.
(OMG, I think I’m going to make myself ill.)
ROTFL.
Please don’t tell the cows about placenta smoothies. We already have a few that whine because they don’t get enough sugar donuts and use that as an excuse to snatch snacks out of unsuspecting farm workers’ hands. Plus, some cows will want hay flavored smoothies while others want corn flavored….it’s just a huge hassle.
And no stickers for them either, if I remember correctly. Poor cows.
And cow placentas are cool….cotyledons and all. Wonder what the NCB/CPM types would think if you could somehow exchange a human placenta for a chunk of a cow’s, complete with cotyledons. I wonder what their take on it would be? Would they notice it was not from a human or would they wonder aloud about the odd placental structure? Maybe post pics of it on Facebook for crowdsourcing ideas on what it is? Try and get it named after them, as they were the first ones to “discover and document” this strange placenta?
You could alternate the cow smoothies, MWF would be hay flavored, TThSat would be corn flavored and Sunday could be a mixture of hay and corn, or something exotic, like silage or sweet feed flavored.
I so wish there was video! I am sitting at my desk giggling…
When I hear some of my colleagues extolling the virtues of eating human placenta I would love to be that small child in the story The Emperor’s New Clothes and state loudly “that’s cannibalism!”
Because it is.
But it’s a variation of cannibalism where you eat part of yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cs5O0PEnYs
“Don’t jerk me a round, Norm. It’s a simple question. A baby could answer it.”
I LOVE this character. He makes me laugh hysterically, no matter how many times I see him…I can’t clearly explain why 🙂
Having grown up listening to Harry Caray, it works for me.
Once in high school in my computer programming class, I wrote a bit that was based on Harry Caray and Steve Stone.
CUBS WIN! CUBS WIN!
Yeah, i”ve wondered if the lotus birth people think my boys’ placenta was a womb-triplet, or if they are psychologically damaged by having to share their first possession.
I shed tears reading this for the big brother I never got to meet thanks to a shoulder dystocia. Nothing has ever truly healed my mother’s hideous raw grief, or the fatal damage to my parent’s marriage, or (obviously, to a much lesser extent) my own guilt and grief at getting the life he should have had. Bloody woman doesn’t know what it’s like to need to be healed.
My husband actually did take pics during both of my CSections. I actually think they’re really cool. I like seeing my babies half in and half out of me, making their assisted debut. BUT, we don’t go flaunting those pics. I am saving them for the day I really need to gross my daughters out or remind them why they need to do chores “because I had a CS for you!” Just kidding…kind of… But seriously, even when I was making a photo book of my daughters first year for the grandparents for Christmas, I told hubby, “Let’s leave out the bloody ones.”
My dad recorded my mom’s c-section of my sister. She went through a phase as a toddler where she watched it at least once a day.
I can see a little kid being interested in watching that, as long as it’s not too bloody/screamy. (I tend to be very disturbed by screaming/the idea that people are in pain, so count me out.) My kids are endlessly fascinated by stories of how they would kick me from the inside, what happened on the day they were born, etc.
I am under no illusions, however, that anyone outside of our little family would be at all interested in seeing/hearing about such things. I mean, unless you are an OBGYN/midwife in training…and even then, labor and birth stories must get pretty old after a while. 🙂
Yeah, if people want to see a baby being born, there is the internet. I myself, along with my husband, have watched some birth videos, to wrap our minds around the idea that this is what would be happening. But as unsqueamish as I am, I would not want to see a friends or family member’s vaginal birth. I also didn’t have any desire to have my own labor recorded in anyway. The clothed pics before and after little one’s arrival were unflattering enough!
There was no screaming during the planned c-section fortunately. It was just my mom’s belly, a neat little cut, and then out came my sister. A little bit bloody and gutsy, but I come from a long line of nurses and hospital employees so not much grosses us out.
I had friend that let her young children watched their birth videos. The births were unmediated and she had told me before she had screamed quiet a bit. When I asked her about that she said “Oh, I made copy with classical music playing so they couldn’t hear that!”.
I wish I had been able to get those pics of my section. But they for sure would not have gone on Facebook.
My husband recorded my c-section. It was very cool to watch. Almost made up for his failure to shout “RELEASE THE KRAKEN” as she emerged, limbs first, from my bloody abdomen.
*ALMOST*
I was mad. Like, “You had *one job*'”
Obviously, I should have gotten a doula.
A doula could have protected the sacred birth Em Cee-ing!
My birth was ruined. I guess, I’ll have to have another healing c-section. How to make sure that the next one is breech though?
Have you gone to spinning babies?
Just do the opposite of whatever they do?
Lie in the most comfy position possible and avoid all exercise. I recommend a bag something gluten filled on the side. And maybe some mountain dew. For the baby.
None of this would have happened if I had just been taught to “trust c-sections”.
Slouch on the sofa 24 hours a day but definitely don’t lie on your left side since that fixes *all* positioning problems. If you can get up easily from the couch, you’re doing it wrong. And definitely no long walks. No positive thoughts about baby. Just ignore the fact that you’re pregnant with him/her at all or actively think about how much of a PITA all those night feedings will be; anything to make sure your fetus feels your negative energy blocking his/her peaceful birth And eat lots of potato chips and ice cream.
That sounds like all of my pregnancies.
Wonder what the birth affirmation would sound like for that?
Be the elder god you know you can be…
Doulas would be worth it if they did stuff like that.
Liam Neeson might be free.
I’m holding out for Samuel L. Jackson or Chris Helmsworth.
“LET’S GET THIS MUTHA-F*GGIN’ BABY OUT YOUR MUTHA-F*GGIN’ BODY, B*T*H!”
I am sick and tired of these MF placenta pieces in this MF uterus!
So after a crunchy type goes brb blow job to get things going, a few minutes later from around the corner do we hear “Oh man, I shot Marilyn in the face!”
I would pay whatever Liam Neeson’s going rate is to watch him go full-blown “Taken” on an obnoxious lactation consultant or postpartum nurse. Can’t be much more than some of the local doulas charge…
What a shame he didn’t do his only job. That would’ve been truly awesome.
This will totally be my birth plan if I have another one.
I don’t know that it quite makes up for it…I think he should bring you your choice of chocolate, wine, exotic coffee, or other treats, do the laundry, and clean the house while you watch netflix. It’s the least he can do, under the circumstances.
You realize it’s going to be so easy to explain how they were born–”you came through the escape hatch”.
My friend had the births of both her kids filmed, she used it later to explain where babies come from. The videos and pictures are not for anyone to see, just her kids and husband.
When my third baby was born via c-section I had *just* convinced my then 5yo that babies *don’t* come out through your abdomen. Imagine his look of betrayal when he came to visit me in the hospital.
My baby was sunny side up and I too had CS. The doctor told us afterwards that when she opened me up, our daughter’s eyes were wide open, blinking, and curious as she looked straight at the doctor. My husband and I wished we could have gotten that photo too.
i wonder if that kinda freaks out newbie docs and nurses the first time they see it
During my second CS, my daughter bit the doctor as he was pulling her out, hard enough to make him yelp.
Hmm could it possibly be that poor Jacob in #1 ascribes so much meaning to his placenta because his mother wouldn’t shut the hell up about it for seven years?!?!
Reminds me of those stories of grade school children rattling off antivax talking points to a pediatrician/teacher/random person in the supermarket. They have no idea what they are really saying, they just know they hear it from their parents all the time and it makes them happy when they repeat it.
It makes me think of that bit in Santaland Diaries when the mom coaches the kid into asking Santa for no more animal testing.
Because that’ll show up under the tree Christmas morning…
God, I ran that once in an indoor play area. There was a 10 year old there who got chatty and suddenly started spouting off about toxic vaccines.
I saw something once about a 6 yo preacher kid. He was going on about the evils of evolution. It was the standard Bs.
Like this 6 yo knows the first thing about evolution
I have not been yet privy to those delights.
I probably shouldn’t ask but I’m going to anyway – just where are these stories?
I usually find them second hand, screenshotted and posted to places like “Antivax Wall of Shame” and such.
Ah, fair enough.
I guess I should probably Trawl natural news/HHE and the like (through donotlink.com of course) if I’m that inclined to … well…concussion, I suppose..head, meet keyboard.
UGH, that Dr. Sarah Buckley! I knew I recognized her special brand of psuedo-sacred horse shit. She also said the following in the same article:
“My older children have blessed me with stories of their experiences in pregnancy and birth, and have been unanimously in favour of not cutting the cord, especially Emma who remembered the unpleasant feeling of having her cord cut (after it had stopped pulsating), which she describes as being “painful in my heart”. Zoe, at five years of age, described being attached to a “love-heart thing” in my womb and told me “When I was born, the cord went off the love-heart thing and onto there [her placenta] and then I came out.” Perhaps she remembers her placenta in utero as the source of nourishment and love.’
Dr. Amy’s original post is here http://www.skepticalob.com/2015/01/the-wacky-world-of-dr-sarah-buckley-author-of-the-childbirth-connection-report.html
Oh FFS. It’s “Heaven is for Real,” but with placentas.
My son tells me things like “Mommy, I pooped you!” all the time. It’s not magic child-wisdom philosophy. It’s just how language acquisition and basic child development work.
My 5 yo’s friend tells him things like his parents were married at McDonald’s. Note: they weren’t.
And in talking about what they want to be when they grow up, one wanted to be a dolphin.
Aren’t 5 year olds so wise?
[FWIW, my son went with his standard answer: a librarian]
I’d like to be a dolphin librarian when I grow up but I may have to step up my game on brain transplantation for that to be feasible.
That’s cute.
I yelled “OH SHIT” in the middle of church the first day we moved into a new congregation. Because Grandma had a bad habit of letting out a blue streak while babysitting with jackass, damn, and shit being her favorites.
My sister had a problem saying “ship” so every time we passed the river with the barges coming in there was yelling of “SHIT! SHIT! Look mommy, a shit!”
Kids repeat stupid shit. Sometimes literally in our cases.
Or should I believe that my sister’s imaginary friend really did die after falling into a waterfall trying to save animals and that my sister was so heart broken but so proud that she was so brave?
“Kids repeat stupid shit.”
Long ago I spent an eternity stuck in a 100° drive thru line with foot traffic all around and my darling, cherub-faced two year old bellowing non-stop out the open windows of our non-air-conditioned car at the unmoving line in front of us … “MOVE IT ASSHOLES! MOVE IT, MOVE IT, MOVE IT!” … in the voice of Satan.
Confession: In my earlier life I was, possibly, a wee bit impatient when bringing up the rear of the line at just-turned-green traffic lights.
I distinctly recall a certain three year old yelling “It’s the long skinny pedal on the right, fucker! Find it!”
I may also have a bit of a potty mouth behind the wheel.
Finally having an air conditioned car has mostly tamed my impatience (and foul mouth) about the *necessary* wait-times associated with driving. My most frequently traveled route still brings out the nastiest piece of me though. Every mile has a side street idiot running their stop sign to jump in front of me before getting all conscientious and driving 10 miles under the speed limit for the next half a mile to their turn off.
It’s good that impressionable little vocabularies are no longer being built in my backseat. Some growling variation of “It’s the long skinny pedal on the right, fucker! Find it!” plays as my ride-home-after-work soundtrack almost every day.
That kid is going to go far in life!
When my younger brother was a toddler he had difficulty saying the word truck. Instead it would be “fire fuck”. Also he had issues with dump….that one turned into “dumb fuck” needless to say us older kids took full advantage of it.
I find it an AMAZING co-incidence that the children of someone who advocates lotus birth would have children who are “spontaneously”sad about their cords being cut.
The rest of us have children who don’t remember the cord being cut and don’t know, or care, that the placenta exists.
When we were expecting my son, my daughter got a bit fixated on the idea that we were choosing his birthday, and worried that he wouldn’t want to be a Tuesday’s child and would decide to come earlier.
This, of course, was because I had told her we had chosen for her to be born on a Friday, and she’d learnt the poem at school, and decided that being “loving and giving” was the best, and thought that anything else was a poor second.
I’m not going to interpret that as her having strong feelings about “babies not being library books” or “allowing babies to choose their own birthdays” based on “other ways of knowing”.
This.
My daughter saw a picture of herself with the cord and placenta still attached (taken by one of the nurses; my sinus-infected husband wasn’t allowed in the OR) and was like, “What is that THING?!?”
Totes unprompted, I’m sure.
Purely coincidence that my son has never had a single rapturous memory about the placenta I’ve never mentioned to him even once.
There aren’t enough eyerolls for this one!
I don’t know where to begin with this nonsense from Buckley, the most basic is addressing the cord being painful when cut. There are no nerves in the placenta or cord-I’ve seen maybe 10000 of the damn things under my microscope and they don’t have nerves, so how do they feel pain? In fact, if I did find nerves in it I would be writing it up for publication as a case of placental teratoma.
Placentas are amazing, incredible structures and there is still a lot we don’t understand about how they operate. On the other hand, if your placenta goes wrong, it can kill -she’s talking about it as though it’s sentient, it’s a lump of gristle you stupid woman! It’s not even meat, it’s all tubes and blood vessels and blood and stringy bits.
sounds tasty. blech
I was mad at my son’s placenta for sleeping on the job and giving him IUGR. After scaring me for half the pregnancy, I didn’t want to see the damn thing.
Small child parrots what parents say shocker.
Possibly a pic of her child…
Joni – I appear to be an only child, but I actually have five older siblings that I never got to meet. Three were lost right around 20 weeks and two were full term stillbirths. So you can just shut your fat trap and go to Hell, because you have two healthy babies. My mother and father barely got one child, and the pair of us almost didn’t make it through my birth. Luckily I was born healthy, though my mother still suffers from issues pertaining to a difficult and life-threatening labor and birth.
I have one sister born before me at 21 weeks, and a brother born after me at 23 weeks. Neither survived. My mom was able to carry one child to 36 weeks with a specialized cerclage after me. She was born c-section. I know it wasn’t my personal pregnancy/birth experience, but it really puts things into perspective for you. My sister and I consider ourselves miracles of some sort, as do my parents. Even with my own pregnancy, I couldn’t breathe a sigh of relief until my son got here, even though I didn’t inherit an incompetent cervix.
We are having to adopt because I am terrified of the same thing happening to me. My husband and I discussed trying to have a baby and I had a complete breakdown. I went to three therapists and nothing assuaged my fears. We are now pending for a 10 year old girl through foster care, and I couldn’t be happier.
Congratulations! 10 year olds are the best!
Congrats!
That’s awesome! Agree with AirPlant: 10 is a fun age. Congrats!
I wanted to go with OMG YOUR GOING TO BE A MOM!!!!!!! but I was trying to be chill… 🙂
I’m only upvoting you because I’m assuming you’ll induce lactation before she arrives. Otherwise, I shall be taking it right back again.
Seriously though, congratulations.
We lost a daughter at 32 weeks (group B strep meningitis) and twins at 26 weeks (prematurity and cerebral hemorrhage); I had two healthy daughters, near full term, with the aid of new therapies to stop labor; had a miscarriage at 12 weeks, then a healthy son, again, thanks to medical advances. My oldest daughter has decided NEVER to attempt having children. She said “Mom, I would just die if anything like that happened to me!”.
So, I totally don’t understand it when women like the woman listed in the article consider a healthy baby to not be enough to make up for not having the birth “experience” of their dreams. Having a baby is ……..because you want a baby. Climbing Mt Everest, or sky diving, is because you want an “experience”. People mystify me.
Congratulations and best wishes on the adoption of your daughter!
I should have 6 kids. 8 if you count the two ectopic pregnancies. My twins should be 18 years old but they were born at 18 weeks. I should have a child that just turned 15 but he was born at 16 weeks. I got pregnant pretty much yearly (the babies that made it are currently 16,14, and 13, though they’re all within two months of their next birthdays), and none of them went to term. The last one almost killed us both. These people absolutely infuriate me.
I wonder if #3 makes her son give _her_ a gift every year on his birthday…
It’s the least the stubborn little egg head can do.
I wonder if he ever got his act together. Probably not, probably still living at home, mooching off the ‘rents…
“Some believe that much of our culture’s discontent and our urge to accumulate possessions…come from the traumatic loss of our first possession: our placenta.:
And some believe that monkeys might fly out of my butt. That doesn’t make it true.
Huh. For the most part, I have an urge to purge possessions. I guess I didn’t want my placenta?
I’m a purger too, as far as “stuff” goes. I’ve moved too many times to have a lot of stuff weighing me down.
This clearly means that you were not fully bonded to your placenta and are therefore incapable of forming attachments to other things.
I don’t know, you might have it backwards. My daughter had a small placenta and was therefore somewhat calorie-restricted in the womb. This means that she may be epigenetically primed to hoard calories now, because her body adjusted to scarcity. That’s what a neonatologist told me, anyway.
Someone’s going to come with a theory about large/adequate placentas and small/inadequate placentas and how they determine whether we are hoarders or purgers by nature.
People will be getting those double-strollers just to carry the placenta around with them to show it off.
No not a stroller – strollers are evil (see yesterdays comment section). It would have to be a baby wearing device with two compartments.
They make twin baby carriers, but they might not be crunchy enough.
Then there would be the whole discussion about if you put the kid or the placenta against your chest
Maybe your placenta was an asshole.
“God, I’m so happy I got that placenta off. It was the least considerate womb-twin ever. It kept putting the blood supply back in the fridge with just a sip left…”
mine kept serving me blood at 98.6 degrees when I wanted it to be 99.9 degrees, so glad to get rid of that incompetent thing! (for the record my placenta was clingy and tried to kill my mom so good riddance to it)
You know that girl who discovers sex some time in her early twenties and feels to make her ability to have pleasurable sex her dominant personality trait? I feel like that girl turns into the woman who feels the need to host non-consensual viewings of her birth video.
OMG…
MILEY CYRUS is EXACTLY the sort of person who would livetweet her birth and put the video on YouTube!
Just give it a few years. But I don’t think she’s very crunchy and mystical.
You’re welcome. <3
I get it too, and I can understand having a traumatic experience even if both you and the baby get out okay. But having experienced a loss myself (miscarried at 10 weeks… baby would be about 20 months now) my only concern with the pregnancy that did "take" was a healthy baby, no matter what I had to do to get there.
Exactly!
I literally had zero desire to do that with my first. It’s funny, people suggested it and I looked at them weird. I have lots of photos my hubby took while I was in recovery and that was fine by me (I ended up with a csection and at that time, 2006, cameras were not allowed in the operating theatre).
I think I am missing the “oh I need to record my birth” gene. I’ve never ever had the desire to have it filmed even with my eldest.
I don’t know what would be worse; having my son’s birth filmed so I could watch it again or watching myself be born. I mean, I wasn’t freaked out when he came out because I had some idea what to expect, but the umbilical cord looked totally gross. It was all twisted and looked like a rancid noodle. I don’t need to see that again.
I have a picture of my first daughter on my chest right after she was born with the umbilical cord still attached and it grosses me out. I do like the picture though because it shows how tired I was that I did not even look at my baby in the beginning. My kids first pictures are now on the scale and the second is normally in my arms swaddled. I do not want a lick of blood on them when we take pictures.
Me too! When I was still assuming I’d have a vaginal birth, I told my husband that absolutely NO WAY was he allowed to film. Also told him that he had to stand up near my head, not down on the business end.
I’m very nearly full-term at the moment, and have told hubs in no uncertain terms that he is to stay by my top half upon pain of death. The CNMs and nurses can deal with the business down there. I’m reluctant for them even seeing it, but I suppose SOMEone needs to be down there to catch the little guy….
i’m of the same opinion, although its moot in my honey’s case. (He’s blind.)
I felt the same way before the birth of my newborn but by the time I was pushing I didn’t care anymore which is good because there were a ton of people in the room and the way. Plus he would have actively had to work to not see anything since he was helping me push. He was excited to see her come out at the time too, which I don’t think he anticipated feeling.
I’ll add my anecdotal agreement to @disqus_SiO5UHMWr1:disqus. Once I was in the thick of it, I no longer even thought about who was seeing my probably-less-than-appealing lady parts. The health care people were, of course, professionals who’d seen it all a million times, and my partner – who had been adamant about not even being in the ROOM – was right there holding my legs and cheering me on to push.
So, best-laid plans and all that, but once you’re on that whole labor-and-giving-birth ride, it seems to go right out the window.
Same thing happened with me. By the end, all modesty was well out the window, and my only priority was to get that baby out!
Me as well. Never had any interest in it WHAT-so-evah.
We do have pics of afterward, of course, holding the baby. But even those – I really only show them to my son because he’s really the only one interested lol.
Me too, I didn’t even wanted to watch one for educational purposes – pictures were disturbing enough (that head looks BIG!). We have some rather low quality pictures taken by husband during labor (one with EFM on me and one with EFM monitor display, also husband trying to sleep on a yoga ball) and immediately after birth; I put the very first one in baby’s album though my nipples are very uncovered there – but this picture brings back memories of what a magical moment that was. My brother bought a big ass DSLR before niece was born and took pictures left and right, but we were on the mindset that husband is there for support, not an attempt of creating entire album of boring and unflattering labor pictures.
Yeah, I’m the same. I was there, I don’t need to see it from another angle.
It is a bit of a shame that I didn’t get any pictures of me and my son together immediately after the birth, but there was a good reason for that – my husband was much too worried about the PPH I was having to even think about taking photos (and then I fell asleep during skin to skin). I actually hate the pictures of myself in the week or so post partum – I’m scarily pale.
I look back on photos of me after having my older daughter and my PPH and I am shocked at how pale I look. Now I understand why my husband strongly encouraged me not to refuse the blood transfusion I got. Of course, all the convincing I really needed was just to try to stand up and walk around.
I know I post a lot of videos, but again, this is what I always think of when I heard about delivery videos:
https://youtu.be/l_skfxgyX_k?t=37s
That and how I nearly puked watching The Miracle of Life in middle school science class.
Ditto to that. In fact I didn’t even want the pregnancy documented. We have thousands of pictures of our now toddler and only one of me pregnant. A time marked by anxiety, vomiting, constipation, hemorrhoids, and insomnia just weren’t memories I wanted to keepsake.
Joni – yes you are lucky your baby is healthy. Be grateful.
Signed a mom who is grieving a child who should now be almost 17 months.
So sorry for your loss.
I get birth disappointment, but there needs to be a time where you say “it didn’t heal me, but my baby is healthy so let’s focus on that”.
Yes. I can understand being excited that your next birth was better but not to get pregnant for the sake of that experience.
Oh, I’m so sorry.
I’m so sorry you have to be the one to out it in perspective for Joni.
Life really changes after you’ve delivered a 7.5lb beautiful but dead baby (mine was actually in the “no one’s fault” category, she died in utero at 37w1d).
I can’t even imagine.
So I was wondering if I was being too hard on her. Then I learned this happened 4 years ago. 4 years!! Okay, I wish she can find some peace with this though, 4 years is a long time to have resentment for 1 day where your (healthy) child was born.
Sigh…
I’m so sorry.
“He was supposed to come out easily and heal me from the trauma of my previous labor and dystocia.”
I may throw up.
Babies shouldn’t have jobs. For fuck’s sake. Can you imagine growing up, knowing not only that your *purpose in life* was to make Mommy feel better, but that you had *failed at it* before you were even born? I am weeping for this poor child.
Children are not responsible for the emotional well-being of adults. They do not owe their parents a debt. Childhood is not all ponies and rainbows, but growing up is hard enough without being saddled with the burden of catering to the emotional needs of narcissist parents.
You know, I have to tell myself more frequently than I feel good admitting that you can’t expect a child to be grateful. Like I think it is a big part of human nature to think that when you pour time and love and effort into another human they will be thankful and glad and give you emotional validation for your sacrifice, but that is not an expectation that anyone can place on a child.
.
It is a toxic part of me when I get mad at a kid for not appreciating the dinner that I made and I know that and am trying to work through it, but to have no shame in blaming your baby for how he was born? That is some screwed up bullshit right there.
I feel like the first time you can start halfway expecting your kids to be grateful is when they become parents themselves.
My mom put up with so much crap from me, and I never really told her “thanks for everything you did and putting up with me” until I got married and got a stepson in the mix. Having a baby of my own now just intensifies it all.
If my mom were alive, I think I would be spending a lot of time apologizing for everything I did as a kid. Come to that, I could spend a lot more time apologizing to my dad while he’s still around.
Yeah, and the difference is that you recognize that your need doesn’t equate to your child’s responsibility. You are being a mature, empathetic person by reflecting on your feelings; this other person, by contrast, is a gaping maw of narcissism and need.
One afternoon with two children and a nasty round of stomach flu taught me all that I needed to know about the capacity of a child to support your emotional needs in times of trial. I don’t even know how someone can actually have a toddler and think that a child owes them anything in the way of support.
You had ONE job, neonate!!
I got thrown out of a birth trauma group because l thought that telling (and blaming) a 3/4/5 year old about their “traumatic” birth was psychological abuse. My son’s arrival was in many ways the worse day of my life but that’s my problem not his and once they convinced me he was actually my baby, I’ve worked hard at ensuring he never knows how ill I was at first. What do I know though, said group’s parting shot was that reliving being raped during childbirth is nothing compared to “birth” rape.
I would absolutely view that as abusive. And I just can’t even with the women who call a traumatic birth experience “birth rape” – stop, you are so wrong you’re not even in the same zip code as wrong.
I’ve tried that argument many times. Never works though. For me its intent.
Pretty sure the Doctors who retrieved my son hd roughly one goal…neither of us dying. They wanted us both to live. They didn’t take pleasure from my pain, they apologised for the bruises and perhaps mostly importantly they asked permission.
My rapist on the other hand…i think I can safely say he couldn’t have cared less whether I died. He wanted to hurt me, to see the fear in my eyes when I couldn’t breathe. He never said sorry and I wouldn’t have believed him if he had.
These things lie at opposite ends of the spectrum.
…
I’m going to try to be civil instead of ending up frothing in angrish at that parting shot of theirs and say that some people should be given a time out from the internet. Often. With sensitivity training before they get it back.
I imagine they are trying to validate their interpretation of what happened and therefore what happened to them has to be worse than what happened to you.
What annoys me the most is that someone I know from said group who screamed “birth” rape because a Doctor called her whiny and “bullied” her into a section got counselling in 3 weeks flat, it took me 7 months from diagnosis, 9 from birth. Same NHS trust but apparently its done on need…
I’m going with “frothing in anguish.” JFC.
I have no words. Well, no words generally accepted in polite company, anyway.
I am sorry you had such a group of idiots around you!
In a sick and twisted fashion, it was “healing”. A measure of how far I’ve come because at the start, I would been really hurt…now I’m almost amused at their vitriol. Plus I was never going to stay somewhere long term where women think its okay to never give your child a birthday party because its too traumatic for you.
I don’t intend hiding that he was born by c section and should I have a girl at some point or if he goes and gets someone pregnant, I’d try and be frank about PnD and the fact that my husband’s family all seem to be born with 85-95 percentile heads but blaming my child, absolutely not. He’s not even on the list.
In a very small way, I can understand why it was healing. For me, my moment of “wow, I’ve come a long way” was being able to read something about how women of my religion shouldn’t have C-sections because *deliberately manipulated teaching that has no basis in reality*, and being able to say “huh, isn’t that utterly idiotic on so many levels” rather than get really upset for days that someone said that.
Never give your kid a birthday party…? Dude. That’s just ridiculous. At some point, it simply isn’t about you. Are they also going to insist that their adult children never celebrate their birthdays?
Good on you for planning on being honest about your PND. I’ll be having that talk with DD if she ever has kids, and I’ve already probably talked the ears off of my immediate circle about it–but it’s not something that comes up much in general, and it really, REALLY needs to be talked about more, so I refuse to feel too embarrassed for having done so.
Oh. Dear. God. “I’m sorry, honey, but mommy’s too traumatized to give you a party.” People do that?
That’s horrifying.
I stumbled upon this homebirth story of twins:
http://www.spunoutpost.blogspot.de/2010/11/natural-birthing-of-twins.html
After the birth of the first twin the contractions stopped and the second one wouldn’t come out. So what to do? Nothing of course!
The midwife then went “on a research trip”, and what did she find out?
“We were all gobsmacked when Lisa reported that she’d found a statistic
about the average amount of days between twins being born as 47 days…..”
and
“She’d also bounced what was happening off some trusted advisors, and they
all agreed that while I was healthy, and the baby inside was healthy,
there was no ‘normal’ time for twins to be born. In fact, in the days
before hospital births became the norm, it was not uncommon at all for
twins to be born days or even weeks apart.”
” We all agreed that we were part of 2 separate births, and all was totally normal and fine.”
I can’t even…
That…. isn’t normal. Like even a little bit.
What’s the betting that it’s something like ‘2 weeks’ being late Sun night/early Mon Morning and that being interpreted as ’14 days’.
And March/April is clearly 1st March and 30th April – not 30th April and 1st March.
And years apart from Dec 31st/Jan 1st twin births?
My friend, welcome to the wild and wacky world of Lisa Barrett. She has presideded over the deaths of no fewer than five babies. The Australian government, I believe, has actually banned her from providing services of any description to pregnant/laboring women, or even, I believe, being in the room when a birth is taking place. Rumor has it she does it anyway.
WTF did I just read? If she hadn’t included pictures, I’m not sure I would have believed this was real.
If you ever doubted that aliens walk among us, I invite you to read that.
“me and Currawong went into the back room and I gave him a blow job, because as midwives have known for a very long time, there’s an agent in sperm that brings on labour. Hence the advice since time immemorial to have sex to bring on birth. In fact, this sperm trick is so potent, that Picotin, which they give you in hospitals to induce labour, contains pig sperm for the very same reason. ”
Whaaa?
“And here’s the weird thing. Lisa hadn’t been able to work out why the first umbilical cord of Max’s had kept pumping blood, and had gone to a serious amount of effort to ensure it was kept clamped. And the reason why was that there was only one placenta. Non identical twins are meant to have separate placenta’s, and if they do join up, you can see where they’ve merged. No fusion line or connection of two separate placenta’s was evident, it was just one enormous placenta with two umbilical cords and a membrane between the two boys. And had kept pumping through Max’s detached cord”
Yeah, that’s not dangerous at all…
SMH
I read that and just shook my head. Yeah, there are prostaglandins in semen, which can help soften the cervix and maybe stimulate labor. But they don’t help when taken orally. And there is NONE in pitocin.
I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of giving someone a blowjob in between the birth of twins even entering my mind.
Rule 34 – it’s somebody’s fetish.
Granted, I’m not a guy, but as I understand it, they tend to be rather–ahem–protective of that area. Didn’t the prospect of a contraction and the possible associated teeth-clamping even cross his mind? I mean, I get that sex=awesome (don’t have to be a guy to figure that out!) but, erm…
I know. You’d think that if they really felt sperm ingestion was a necessity, after she’d just huffed a baby out he could have the decency to do the hard work himself and simply present her with his penis at the appropriate moment.
This made me laugh so hard, envisioning his…turgid member…presented on a purple velvet pillow at the “moment of truth” OH MERCY!!
Shivers down the spine, it sends.
Well, there was a couple with twin homebirth and they had PIV sex between both twins exactly for this reason (most probably, I read it somewhere here on SOB). To their credit, it’s much more plausible to get some labor-augmenting-effect than swallowing sperm, yet the yikes factor is multiplied by ten.
“Hey mom! …ow… I’m trying to… ow… come out, but… ow… someone keeps poking me in the… ow… head!!”
There’s a joke about couple who have sex while woman is pregnant and once baby is born he immediately jumps to his father and starts poking his forehead with a finger: “See what it’s like? See what it’s like?!”
I’m sure Curawong wasn’t about to argue.
No. No. Trust me, dear, when I say that of the two paragraphs above, the umbilical cord business was NOT, I emphasize NOT, “the weird thing.”
It’s not the weird thing but good lord, to deliver mono/di twins at home?? Two days apart?? That’s scary.
No arguments there at all! (And needless to say, the “dear” was directed at the article’s author, not at you. 🙂 )
Okay. 47 days between twins’ birth. I can’t even…how does your head get twisted up enough to believe a whopper like that? Even an ounce of common sense, or, oh say, I don’t know, *walking around alive on planet Earth for any amount of time at all* should set off alarm bells in your brain that “47 days” can’t possibly be true.
Superfetation is a thing but I don’t know how you get ‘average’ at all.
“In fact, in the days before hospital births became the norm, it was not uncommon at all for twins to be born days or even weeks apart.”
I had to quick check my family tree on Ancestry, as my great-grandfather was a twin and, being born over 100 years ago, he was most likely born at home. And he and his twin brother were born the same day.
I’m sure there were a number of twins who were born days apart, but I highly doubt it’s as common as they’re saying. And even in those cases, it was because they had no other options, not because it was necessarily the best choice for the mother or second twin.
Trick question – how common was it for twins to be born _alive_ that far apart?
oh, pfftt. Alive – like that matters!
I believe Jacob and Esau – the first twin birth I am aware of being recorded in history – came so close together that Jacob didn’t even think Esau should be considered first-born. If they had been 40 days and 40 night apart, think how different the Book of Genesis might have been!
No idea, but I do know that my brother was a fraternal triplet and the girls were identical. Mom miscarried the girls months before my brother was born.
And how much of it was a midnight-divide being a ‘cute family story’ for years to come?
As soon as I saw Lisa Barrett’s name, I braced for a dead baby.
So did she swallow the semen, or apply it?
If 47 days was the average, I’d like to know what the maximum was! And how mom managed to get around with a newborn and a second lying in. And how many of those moms and second babies died in the second childbirth from infection and then how many first twins died because the food source just died.
If midwives are supposed to be experts on normal birth, then shouldn’t she have known what was normal for twins before accepting the job?
That lotus birth lady thinks that babies scream in pain when the umbilical cord is cut. Are there even any nerves in the umbilical cord?
Heh, I kind of liked the lady who made everyone watch her birth video. There’s something kind of subversive about that – it actually flies in the face of the “birth is so beautiful” ethos.
They thought they were watching outtakes from one of the Alien movies, most likely.
I never even watched our wedding video, and I don’t know of anyone who ever did. Then it got destroyed in a flood. No loss.
“for seven MORE hours to help my stubborn, egg-headed son to get his act together…”
His act together??!?!?
HIS ACT TOGETHER??
What the ever-loving F*CK is this nonsense?
That baby is a person, not an accessory.
What the hell is wrong with these people??
She seems to be clueless that those 24 hours at home + 7 in the hospital created the egg-shaped head her son needed to come out vaginally……
Isn’t it the uterus and vagina that does the expelling? I thought the baby was just along for the ride, does it actually physically do anything during the birth?
It gets to have its head used as a battering ram so there is that…
And since he was ‘egg-headed’, I guess that means he made mommy open wider than she wanted. Had I known her, I might have given the baby one of those ‘I tore mommy a new one’ T-shirts.
I just threw up in my mouth a little.
It’s a real thing!
http://www.tshirthell.com/funny-shirts/i-tore-mommy-a-new-one/
American Dad, Francine trying to guilt Steve:
F: “I’ll just go rub some lotion on my C-section scar.”
S: “I thought Hayley was the C-section baby!”
F: “Oh, that’s right, you just tore me from the V to the A.”
I just don’t get their logic. Before they are born, it’s 100% all about what the woman wants. It’s okay to let your baby die if you don’t want to stray from your birth plan. But once the baby is here, you better exclusively breastfeed, lest you screw their pH and their gut microbiome, you better breastfeed into toddlerhood and beyond because some women in some countries maybe do, you better wear them 24/7 & co-sleep because cribs and playards will make them hurt meanies who think women should be supported whether they decided to breastfeed, formula feed, or combo feed. Once they’re here, you aren’t allowed a break to even go pee! But before that, it’s all about YOU, YOU, YOU.
I get it. For these psychopaths, NOTHING is ever about the baby. The child is merely an extension of their ugly selves. Exclusive breastfeeding and not vaccinating and baby wearing are all ways to prove how much better they are than their friends. The baby’s needs do not actually matter at all, despite what they say. That’s why an anti-vaxxer will let her babies almost die of whooping cough rather than seek medical attention. That’s why these people hate their autistic kids so much- the child is a visible, everyday reminder of their “failure” as a mother. They may pay lip-service to caring about their babies’ welfare, but it is always, always about them and their revolting egos.
Well put
I agree with MissKate, even after they are born, it’s still about YOU, YOU, YOU.
It’s about who can be the bigger martyr, and go farther to be a better parent than everyone else. The kids are a prop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IfzRf1DtxQ
“I do not want to hear, “Well, you’re lucky he’s healthy,” ever.”
Fine, I’ll go with “He’s really unlucky he has such a self-absorbed mom who was talking smack about him even before he was born.”
I’m sorry he has a mom who is still hung up on his perfectly uneventful birth not happening in a tub in the kitchen FOUR YEARS after the fact.
Ew, I missed the “in the kitchen” part first read.
That is weird, isn’t it? Don’t most homebirthers want to give birth in their bedroom or living room? The kitchen just seems like an odd place to do so. Sure, kitchens can be homey and comforting, but I would think other rooms in the house fit that bill better.
I’m just thinking, something along the lines of 90% of women poop during labor and I was no exception. But hey, it was in the labor room, on a disposable chuck and the nurse cleaned me up. Wasn’t in the kitchen where I was making chocolate cake and chicken noodle soup and the poop wasn’t floating around with me in the kitchen tub.
“It didn’t start out as chocolate cake…”
The better to start cooking up the placenta right away.
See, this is why I can’t imagine wanting a home birth. I only have 1 dog and 1 cat, yet the pet hair, it is EVERYWHERE. The last thing I’d want to do when I’m 40 weeks pregnant is have to clean the friggin’ house to baby-birthing standards…
Dirt is natural…
I think another challenge will be cleaning the post-baby-birth to house standards.
“How did it get on the ceiling?!”
“Wait, is it _under_ the refrigerator?”
“Does anyone know how to get meconium stains out of tile grout?”
I once spilled a pot of chicken soup in the kitchen. Found remnants several years later when a friend was repairing the door.
YES^^^
At least it isn’t over carpet?
Who wants to be born in a kitchen anyway? If I had to have a homebirth for some reason (let’s say Apocalypse) the kitchen is definitely not the place I’d pick.
“Apocalypse” is a really great reason for a Marvel fan to give birth in a movie theater, maybe, but not a kitchen 🙂
“the Apocalypse,” then, if you prefer. I was trying to get through this whole thread and back to work in a reasonable amount of time. 😉
I’m infertile. When I see a woman whining about how horrible it was that she had a healthy, happy little boy in a safe situation, I can’t help but get angry. It hits hard right now because it’s Passover, which is such a child-centered holiday and there were no children at my seders.
I’m really sorry. Having struggled with repeat miscarriage I felt the same way whenever I would hear people complain that their doctor “insisted” they have a C-section and “played the dead baby card”. Gee, what a horrible person(/snark) their doctor must be to not want them to have a dead or damaged baby if it’s possible to avoid that!
I’m so sorry. I’ve never experienced what you have, but I know after having my child die, these comments anger me as well.
Wow, the crazy… It’s almost overwhelming.
I’m so glad I got pregnant both times because I *wanted a child,* not because I wanted a birth. Sheesh.
Brava!
Your phrasing puts me in mind of my first impression of my brother’s ex on the occasion of their wedding (her third): “Into weddings; not interested in marriage.” I made book at the reception on how long it would last.
d_G help the kids of these narcissist mothers.
Why do so many women think that their baby’s birth is about them? Were their birthdays about their mothers?
I’m all for the mother controlling that which is within her control during birth. Bus ffs, this is YOUR CHILD’S birth. It’s not a spa visit.
1. You do you and all, your parenting choices are yours and yours alone… but if you want to completely gross me out, just mention “lotus birth”. That or eating the placenta. YUCK. I never even saw my placenta after my daughter was born and have absolutely no regrets there.
2. I also didn’t film my birth (or even take pictures of the whole birthing process) because even I don’t want to see that. Why on earth would I think other people would want to, too? The way she’s describing the reactions of horror and disgust from the people who watch her video, almost with a sense of glee, is just so off-putting. If you’re that into horror films, just watch a legitimate one, or film one yourself. But for the love of god, don’t force anyone to watch it if they don’t want to.
3. “I was lucky he was born, healthy and huge…” followed by “I do not want to hear, ‘Well, you’re lucky he’s healthy,’ ever…” YOU JUST SAID IT YOURSELF, YOU MASSIVE HYPOCRITE.
Seriously whining about the fact that you couldn’t birth your child at home with champagne is pretty much the definition of a first-world problem. Millions of women throughout the world, and ALL mothers from earlier times before good medical help even existed, would give anything to have the help that you sobbed your way through. What an entitled jackass. Glad her baby is okay.
“whining about the fact that you couldn’t birth your child at home with champagne is pretty much the definition of a first-world problem.”
Yes to this!
“Don’t give a child a job before they’re even here.”
“”I do not want to hear, ‘Well, you’re lucky he’s healthy,’ ever…” YOU JUST SAID IT YOURSELF, YOU MASSIVE HYPOCRITE.”
Ok, so the original sentence is: “I was lucky he was born, healthy and huge at 10+ pounds, from just two hefty pushes.”
Depending on how you read that sentence, maybe she isn’t saying she’s lucky he “was born healthy”, but that she was lucky he “was born” (healthy)…that is, that he came out the vagina with just 2 pushes and not by CS (because I can definitely see her as being of the “if you had a CS, you didn’t give birth” camp).
This is why therapy exists. To heal you, and to help you heal yourself.
More people would be better served using it.
There’s a hundred things wrong with these women, but I think what I most love is the last one’s claim that your unborn son needed to ‘get his act together’ while describing him in negative terms (stubborn, egg-headed). It honestly sounds like she resents her baby for not sliding out like poop through a goose.
I also note that she had an ‘intervention’ to ‘convince her uterus’ to do something that these people think women’s bodies automatically know how to do. I really feel sorry for her son – when she looks at him, she probably thinks ‘You stole my healing birth from me’ and not ‘I love you.’
As for the Lotus birth freaks, I just can’t imagine. Besides, aren’t you supposed to eat it? How can you do that if you wait until it rots off? Just for fun, I told people I fed the pacenta to my doggie so he’d feel like he was part of the birth. The looks I got from that were so much fun!
My sis-in-law asked me how she should introduce our farm dog to the new baby. I gave the standard spiel about bringing blankets with his scent home from the hospital followed by monitored sniffing of the baby.
Telling her to feed the placenta to the dog is SUCH a better idea! I’m supposed to see her tomorrow. *chuckles maniacally*
I have a hunch my dogs would LOOOOVE placenta. Of course, they LOOOOVE horse poop…
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II was given an ‘X’ rating by the MPAA back in 1986 because of suggestions of cannibalism. But the placenta-eaters actually celebrate the act.
Nothing like giving her dog a taste for human flesh!
Do lotus birth loons get into fights with placenta eating loons?
If placenta doesn’t show up on an episode of Chopped soon, I’m going to write in.
“What is this muslin wrapped thing in the basket…looks like…couldn’t be…. Hmm…add sriracha?”
I just want to hear the judges doing their slightly-snooty description of it. “What a joy to be working with placenta! But it’s very important to clean all of the blood vessels out. And it’s very easy to overcook it, when it gets rubbery.”
“His birth was supposed to be peaceful, swimming into the world in our kitchen, surrounded by his family, welcomed with cake and champagne. He was supposed to come out easily and heal me from the trauma of my previous labor and dystocia. His birth was supposed to be a lot of things that it was not.”
Wait….what the fuck?
Near as I can tell, the person causing all of the disappointment wasn’t the baby; it was his lunatic mother. His birth was peaceful enough. He had at least some of his family surrounding him. I’m assuming the cake and champagne was for the family so they could bring that to the hospital and chow down after the birth. The kid was born at the hospital after two pushes so I’m not sure what more the author needed to be healed from the trauma.
In other words, Mom is having a crying hissy fit because the baby wasn’t born in a pool in their kitchen. Not so deep when you take away the flowery language, is it?
Yep, the poor kid can’t get it right literally from the moment he’s born (actually even before that). Pressure and expectations, much?
“In other words, Mom is having a crying hissy fit because the baby wasn’t born in a pool in their kitchen.”
This. So much this. Honestly, what I took away from the article is that she apparently has childbirth confused with an a la carte menu, and she’s throwing a tantrum because they brought her potatoes au gratin instead of the cheese soufflé. What a spoiled brat.
Funny thing about my hospital – you were allowed to bring food in. You want to welcome your baby with cake and champagne, you totally can.
Heck, you could even put the baby in a tub of water on the floor of your kitchen when you get home! Since that’s all she’s missing, you’ve got the magic birth she wanted.
I’m stuck on her 7 year old saying the placenta is like your heart. I don’t think my 8 year old knows or even cares what a placenta is. Sigh, I guess that’s because I didn’t keep him attached to it longer than it was physically needed. You know what? I’m cool with that. I can’t imagine the kind of reaction he’d get from his classmates or little league teammates if he started talking about placentas.
Also, it’s more like a lung. So they are wrong. The fetal heart is a heart.
I’m sure the kid is just parroting crap that his crazy mother has said.
100% this. He hears a lot of placenta talk around the house.
It reminds me of a picture were the child has a birthing doll and was helping the doll give birth by supporting the perineum. My children do not need to know any of that unless they bring it up to you. I get obsessed about stuff too but I don’t go on and on to my children about how non vaccinators and home birthers are crazy.
O_o
Worst doll ever…..
Planning a risky homebirth to heal yourself is like having a baby to heal your failing marriage…. If you want to heal, get a therapist
MASSIVE STANDING OVATION
That’s so important. It boggles my mind that anyone thinks otherwise.
I felt comfort in their anguish, pride in their amazement.
Um, what? You felt comfort in causing others anguish? That is not a healthy attitude.
I also thought it was unkind of her to badger her 7-months-pregnant friend into watching it.
I also wonder whether she had her friend’s permission to show it online. I mean, maybe she did and all is well, but if she ignored her friend’s distress at watching the video, there’s a strong chance she also didn’t ask her permission before sharing it.
I’m trying to imagine myself asking any of my former bosses, ex-boyfriends and/or my father and father-in-law to watch my birthing video.
I don’t see myself asking them to do that. Ever.
Any of you remember the 2 Girls 1 Cup reaction video craze way back when?
That immediately came to mind when she started talking about her glee. Combined with a bit of exhibitionist.
Edit: My friend’s husband that introduced me to the original phenomenon also didn’t show it to his boss.
“Don’t hate the player; hate the game.”
While it’s hard to ignore, and impossible to dismiss, the thought process and actions of this woman – FUCK the industry that did this to her.