Women Willing To Accept “Natural Birth Risk”

A study done in the UK shows that women are more likely to accept risks to have a “natural birth” (I think ‘natural’ means ‘vaginal’ in this case, not ‘drug free’) than their care providers are. When women are given the power to make an informed choice about their births, they are willing to take risks to avoid a cesarean section.

To be fair, this wasn’t a very broad study. However, the majority of the women chose to take the risks and go for the “natural” birth. With attitudes like that, it is hard to imagine why the cesarean rates are so high. I feel it must have something to do with the care provider’s influence or sway over the woman while she is in labor.

Click here to read the article.

End of Pregnancy Zen

I’m sitting here, nearly 41 weeks pregnant with my 8th baby. I’m getting asked a lot about how I feel, what my practitioners are thinking about when the baby will decide to be born, what I’m doing to encourage things along, etc. I know that this type of discussion typically further frustrates most women who are overdue, but I try to take it in stride.

First of all, I realize that I have a pattern. I don’t have babies before my due date, not even my twins. My longest pregnancy was born at 42 weeks exactly. If you throw out the twins and the two pregnancies where I feel like we had interventions that may have brought the babies early, I have a 9 day, 12 day and 14 day pregnancy. (Hey there has to be some statistical benefit to having all these kids when it comes to defining my personal due date.) So feel like this weekend is the most likely the time my baby will decide to be born.

But my goal is to be calm. Zen. Not in a rush. Why no rush, I’m asked? I mean seriously, right now people care about me and how I feel, after the baby, not so much so. Once the baby is here, I’ll still be up at night, but the difference is that I won’t be able to go back to sleep when I return from the bathroom. While I know that the end of pregnancy is rough, but early postpartum is rougher.
So I’ll sit here, patiently waiting. Enjoying my last few days of pregnancy. I’ll nap and snack. I’ll take baths in middle of the day. And I’ll continue to dream about the day my baby decides it’s birth day…

If you want to hear the good news, you can sign up for the Twitter Feed announcing Baby Ocho’s birth.

The Birth Survey: The Talk of The Blogosphere

If you search Google –> Blogs, and type in “The Birth Survey”, the first seven pages are filled with blog entries about The Birth Survey. After reading many of these entries, it seems that most women are very pleased with the survey. A few have commented on how detailed and extensive the questions were. Many express excitement at having a resource that will help them and others to find providers or facilities that will match up with their own desires. All of these bloggers are encouraging their readers to take the survey. I’m very happy to see that the blogosphere has embraced The Birth Survey. Many are showing a lot of enthusiasm for the project and I think they will help to make it a success!

So, if you haven’t taken The Birth Survey yet, what are you waiting for? If you have taken it, then do as many others are and help spread the word!

Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About!

The Birth Survey Goes Live!
http://www.thebirthsurvey.com/

So what is the Birth Survey? It’s a great way to share YOUR experience in a way to help other mothers.
You can take the Survey or you can read consumer information on hospitals, birth centers and care providers in your area.

Most importantly, you can learn what your hospital’s intervention rates are. Interventions? What are those? Well, if you visit the site you can find out what IS an intervention? Which are tracked by your hospital or state? And what those rates really are. This gives you the chance to be the educated consumer and choose care providers or hospitals that most closely match your own desires for birth or to help encourage better care in your community!

So go on over and check out the new site!

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder After Childbirth

There has been a great deal of awareness about Postpartum Depression in recent years, but not so with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after childbirth. The reason for this is likely that people believed this to be a very rare disorder. Only three years ago, after my son was born and I began to experience symptoms of this disorder, there was barely any information available about it online or elsewhere. The rate of occurrence was reported to be between 1.5 and 5.9%. There were only two websites at that time that focused on this issue, both of which were from other countries.

There is a new survey out that suggests that PTSD after childbirth occurs quite a bit more frequently then previously thought. The survey is called New Mothers Speak Out and was a follow up survey to the Childbirth Collective’s Listening To Mothers II survey. The survey found that 9% of the 900 women screened met all of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, and 18% showed some signs of it.

This new data indicates that many more women are suffering from PTSD, or symptoms of trauma after childbirth then previously thought. It is not clear why there is a discrepancy in figures, if it is because the women are not seeking treatment, or they are being misdiagnosed. Either way, it is very good that this issue is being brought to people’s attention.

One of the main risk factors for PTSD is having negative interactions with care providers and staff during your birth experience, and feeling not in control of your labor or birth. When women, birth care providers, and staff are aware of these risk factors, adjustments can be made that may help prevent PTSD or symptoms of trauma from occurring. Women may decide to choose providers or birth settings where they feel they will have more control over their experience and will be respected. Care providers and staff should be aware of how their treatment affects women and strive to allow her to be in control of her own experience and to respect her wishes and individuality. It is also shown that a large amount of medical interventions can be a big risk factor for experiencing PTSD after childbirth. Both women and care providers should be aware of this and try not to use interventions that are not necessary. Another risk factor is previous trauma, which can be screened for before a woman gives birth. If previous trauma is an issue it may be helpful for the care provider and the woman to strategize on how to work with this issue during labor and birth. Debriefing shortly after a birth that was perceived as traumatic by the mother can also be very helpful for some women and this should be an option for women who find themselves experiencing symptoms of trauma.

The Wall Street Journal just ran an article about this issue entitled Birth Trauma: Stress Disorder Afflicts Moms. There is a very interesting accompanying podcast found here.

Today, there are more resources available for PTSD after childbirth then there was three years ago when I was searching for information. There is a growing awareness of the issue and this will hopefully help to prevent it from occurring in the majority of cases. In the cases where there are true emergency situations, an awareness and the subsequent adjustments in treatment of the mother and her baby can hopefully help to minimize the trauma that the woman might experience.

Celebrity Homebirthing

When I read stories like this one about musician, actress Charlotte Church, my faith in the media is somewhat renewed. There are positive influences for young women pertaining to birth, though in America in particular, those good influences are too few and far between. But there is hope.

I remembered hearing about Celebrity Baby Blog. Their year in review for celebrity homebirths received several positive, encouraging comments. What’s more, these celeb-moms have a great influence over their legions of fans and even for trends of the season. In 2008, Laila Ali anticipates a home birth along with Charlotte Church, and other homebirthers are speaking out, like Maria Bello, from the latest Mummy movie.

But birthing isn’t a fad; our survival depends upon it. Natural births, home- and waterbirths, all births in which families realize their options and responsibilities give us that much more positive influence on the world around us. The work we do as birth activists is ultimately to awaken others to the importance of positive birthing, mother- and baby-friendly care, education and empowerment.

“Birth is the epicenter of women’s power,” says Ani DiFranco, which says much coming from such a feminist icon. Nearly all mothers are superheroes, and we have the power to do amazing things, even if we’re not super stars. How many have you awakened lately?

Semantics?

Okay, so when my oldest was a baby, she was sick one day. She didn’t want to wake up for long and preferred to sleep. Being unable to talk to me, I had no clue what was wrong and she had a slight fever. So I called the pediatrician.

They asked me what was wrong and I said that she had a fever and was “lethargic.” “Bring her right in!” they told me. And I did, but only to get chewed out by the pediatrician that this was NOT an emergency. I was a bit stunned. I didn’t think it was an emergency, I didn’t act like it was an emergency, his staff did. Apparently, my use of the word lethargic was not up to their standards. It was a bad case of a lay person (me), misusing medical terminology. I’ve never forgotten that day.

Flash forward to today. One of my pet peeves is the misuse of the words “emergency cesarean.” It sounds scary and frightening - as it should. But it’s often way over used.

In my mind the definition of an emergency cesarean is a scenario that gets the baby out in relatively few minutes (as in under 30, if not fewer), potentially using general anesthesia, maybe even a classical incision.

However, most people seem to use the term emergency cesarean interchangeably with “unscheduled cesarean.” This means that during the course of labor or perhaps even at a prenatal visit, it was determined that the baby was better out than in or wasn’t coming out via the vagina and surgery was a must.

Sometimes this takes place within an hour or two, depending on schedules, but more often than not it can be multiple hours. So during labor, let’s say that you have a failed vacuum extraction attempt. Now the next step would be a c-section. This doesn’t make it an emergency, just unscheduled and run out of options. You might wait if the OR is full or wait for anesthesia or even a second surgeon.

I don’t think people are trying to dramatize their births, but it certainly is less scary to say that someone had an unscheduled cesarean in labor than an emergency cesarean.

“Doula” in Entertainment Weekly!

In the August 8th, 2008 issue of Entertainment Weekly, a weekly entertainment magazine that talks about popular books, TV shows, and movies, doulas are mentioned. There is a small piece each week called “The Shaw Report” that is written by Jessica Shaw. It is a chart with three columns across and three rows down. The things that are listed fit into categories called “In”, “Five Minutes Ago”, and “Out”. The row that mentions doulas says that “Massage School” is “Out”, “Yoga Seminars” are “Five Minutes Ago”, and “Doula Training” is “In”.

I thought this was rather significant as there is no supplementary text, no explanation of the word “doula”. It just puts it out there as if we all know what it is. This is not a parenting magazine either, this is a popular entertainment magazine. “The Shaw Report” generally refers to things rich people or celebrities are into, and out of. I’m thrilled that the word “doula” no longer has to be followed up with a definition or explanation, and even more thrilled that “Doula Training” is “IN“!

Is Natural Childbirth Dead?

I’ll admit that this is a question, I’ve been asking for years. I mean, if natural childbirth isn’t dead then where did it go? I hear from women in my classes and practice all the time, that despite having the medical science behind them, they find that they have to fight hard, too hard, to have a birth that is even semi-intervention free.
I heard a nurse the other day ask on another forum, why did women come to the hospital if they didn’t want the interventions offered, like the monitors, epidurals and cesareans. But let’s really look at this… If a mom says she doesn’t want this and the hospital tells her to stay home to have her baby - can she actually get adequate care by a trained attendant? The answer is no, not even if she wanted, which all women do not want.
Why can’t a woman want to go to the hospital to have her baby, a place where she may feel the safest and yet not be given the chance to pick and choose which interventions she wants or doesn’t want? I mean, isn’t that the basis of consumerism, in absence of medical problems?
So in keeping with this line of thought, I really enjoyed Jennifer Jordan’s blog post on women fighting to get back to a natural birth. Think of everything you’ve read about here at Birth Activist - the people attacking home births, those who want to force you to have procedures you don’t want, women who aren’t “allowed” to choose a vaginal birth… if a woman has a right to select a medical intervention without medical need, why can’t a woman who doesn’t have that medical need be free to make the opposite choice? Read and respond to comments at Jennifer’s post to see the views of many women.