birth activist

After our local BirthNetwork's community activist meeting, I got to wondering what was out there on the web in the way of birth advocacy. The Journal of Perinatal Education provides endless amounts of support for normal birth and evidence-based care, and of course there's CIMS advocating mother- and baby-friendly care.

Then I happened upon Birthing the Future, a Colorado-based 501(c)3 working on birth advocacy and education, headed up by Suzanne Arms.

In the "Take Action" part of the site, there's a list of 52 actions you can do to advocate birth, to "make every birth better for everyone," and other links to follow. 52! And these are things the average person can do. There's work to be done here, folks. May we all be busy!

Not only has the rising caesarean rate been a concern to those devoted to mother-friendly maternity care, but now a correlation is more publicly being made between caesareans and premature births. An article on MSNBC, "C-sections May Be Behind Rise of Preemie Births" suggests that arbitrarily picking a date for delivery may indeed lead to the rising number in premature births.

From the article: "Premature babies are at greater risk for a number of medical and developmental problems such as troubled breathing, bleeding in the brain, birth defects and death. Premature birth is defined as delivery before the 37th week of pregnancy, rather than the typical 40 weeks."

Due dates are estimations based on generalized numbers and cycles. Unless a mother goes into labor naturally, there is really no one hundred percent accurate way to tell when a baby should be born. Exceptions would be for complications, of course, which according to the World Health Organization should be less than ten percent -- more accurately around four percent.

"There was an increase of 60,000 (between 1996-2004) who were pre-term, and 92 percent of them were by Caesarean section," cites Dr. Alan Fleischman, medical director and senior vice president of the March of Dimes infant health advocacy group. He is particularly concerned about the number of unnecessary cesareans.

Between mothers recovering from major abdominal surgery and infants in critical health condition, our health providers should be concerned as well.

In The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, the author strives to show people how "to start 'positive' epidemics of their own." That's exactly what we want to do.

We, as birth activists, are a gathering storm. Our growing numbers of individuals and groups striving for better prenatal/postpartum care and better births ascertain that the time is coming when the consumer's voice will be heard.

With a clear focus on mother-friendly maternity care and a passionate, positive energy for it, there's nothing to stand in our way for making our goal a reality, except maybe doubt, fear and anger.

With our eyes looking forward, we'll encourage each other when we go astray and make mother-friendly maternity care a social and medical epidemic. Keep up the good work!