Distortion of Natural Birth

I was so happy to follow up on Ashley’s Midwife Vs. Medwife post because I really feel as though this will be a little piggy back on the subject. Last night I tuned into ABC’s hit series Private Practice, and during the episode I seriously started to wonder why I continue to watch the show that makes my blood boil.

But what really ate at me was they way they portrayed a mother who was working towards a natural birth. Which made me think about the way that the public views the natural birth community, as well as women who simply want a natural birth for themselves.

They treated this woman in the episode like the butt of all the jokes in the episode until the emotionally charged climax of her birth viewed by perfect strangers that would have been a major HIPAA Violation.  The episode shows this woman with a multi-page birth plan, grinding on the door frame of the birth suite trying to squat to help her labor, joking about how she had been in labor for 3+ days, all of which as a mother who has labored naturally, I found offensive.  The character was essentially the comedy of the episode.

It made me think about the perception the American public is going to get from this message, as well as their views on women who do choose to give birth naturally. Do they think we are all just a bunch of hippies that bite on sticks until we drop a baby out in the middle of a meadow while singing show tunes?  Come on!

The problem is shows like this.
The problem is the myths about who has natural births.
The problem is typical stereotypes.

Where do we start?
How do we start to re-educate and properly educate the public so they don’t think all moms who want to have a natural birth aren’t ding bats like this character was?

I really hope that shows like this, and Grey’s Anatomy, and other medical drama’s take the time to fix the American stereotype of birthing naturally. Women from all walks of life do it!

Just on a side note, the character who was attending this woman’s birth “Dell” a “student midwife” came off as a Student OB/GYN if anything. He had no type of midwife qualities in him what so ever and I think that is another huge slap to the natural birth community. He at best was a “medwife” if that!

Epidurals vs. Unmedicated

I was talking to someone today who was trying to decide if an epidural was right for her in her upcoming labor.  She was well read and still had some concerns on the topic.  But in part of our correspondence she said something that made me realize that she felt it was the epidural or do nothing.  We had a long talk about how women who choose to go without an epidural don’t just sit there writhing in pain until the baby suddenly falls out - they prepare and actively participate.

I explained that if she had any intention of going without an epidural, even a slim chance, that she should find a childbirth class that was designed for women who did NOT want an epidural.  Then she would be prepared, but that if she changed her mind and wanted an epidural she could always have one.  I told her that there were many things that women do to cope with pain in labor including:

• positioning
• movement
• massage
• relaxation
• encouragement
• water
• heat
• cold
• TENS

What would you have told her?

Why Our Women are Afraid of Birth

Deliver Me

It is Tuesday, at 10pm while I settle in after getting my little ones to bed. I flip through the channels and settle on discovery healthy which is a personal favorite of mine, but it really has only recently become a favorite because of shows like I didn’t know I was pregnant. It fascinates me that women could make it though a full term pregnancy and not know they were pregnant, but that is just me, and the experiences that I had with my children is what makes me wonder how the heck women could not know they were pregnant.  But that is completely besides my point today.
So as I watch this show, I am noticing a trend. High risk, high risk, high risk, previous cesarean section, scheduled cesarean section, high risk, healthy first time mother, scheduled cesarean, high risk. Well I mean, that is how it is in Los Angeles right?  You would think so!  But apparently because only these crazy, scary, uncommon births make something called ratings, that is all they are going to feature on TV. Because in reality, no one wants to watch a natural birth or a home birth because no one is running around with a scalpel screaming about the emergency that childbirth is. Nor is the mother screaming for her epidural because she just cant deal with the pain of the 3 hours of labor so far.
But what we should be thinking about most importantly is the message this is sending. What is this teaching first time mothers or even young women that may not be planning on having children soon but will some day?  It is teaching them how scary, dangerous, and medical birth is supposed to be. But is that really how birth is? Of course not. Anyone who has taken the time to read the studies, and just not follow what mainstream society thinks is the right way to handle pregnancy will know that birth is not scary or dangerous or a huge emergency. While it can be in some cases, in most cases it can and will be beautiful when just left alone.

When a woman becomes pregnant today, if they do not already have an Obstetrician they have been seeing for well women care since 16, or whatever age their parent decided it was the right them for them, what is the first thing that they do? They ask around their circle of female friends for the best Doctor out there because isn’t that what we all want? We want the one who is the BMW of pre natal care. Little do women know that they are really going to end up with the 1990 Dodge Dynasty when they take this route because hands off is better.
But because our society has told us this is the way things should be, they run off like lemmings right off the cliff of medical interventions landing in the valley of cesarean sections.

Maybe if the television channels like Discovery health followed a dozen home births or even aired The Business of Being Born they could get a popular, and controversial other side to what they are constantly airing. Maybe it will boost their ratings even more, maybe not?  But what it will do is give the other side of the whole issue. Let’s get Marsden Wagner to do a half hour special on Birth in The United States and see how many women run off to the midwives.  Instead they air these disgustingly inaccurate “Freebirthing” shows. They find the one idiot who is going to make women who choose unassisted birth look like a bunch of uneducated yokels.  Which is exactly what they did with their special on Unassisted birth.

I guess in the end, like anything else the television airs, it is biased and we shouldn’t expect much different.

No Intervention Necessary: Woman Has Surprise HBAC

This surprise out-of-hospital birth story focused on the toddler-as-midwife angle. Just as interesting, however, was the fact that this woman avoided surgery. She was scheduled for her fourth cesarean on December 6, 2009.

Congratulations to the family.

Two-year-old Jeremiha Taylor doesn’t have to ask his mother where babies come from — he helped deliver his little brother at the foot of his family’s living room couch.

“He’s my little hero,” Jeremiha’s mom, Bobbye Favazza, 27, of Olive Branch, said Tuesday. “It was like he knew what to do.”

Favazza gave birth to a 7-pound, 4-ounce baby boy, Kamron Taylor, on Friday morning. Firefighters arrived moments later to cut the umbilical cord.

Greg Mynatt, an emergency services supervisor with the city, said the 911 call about Favazza was probably the third this year about a woman in labor, but usually the mother makes it to the hospital before delivery.

Even rarer is a child assisting with delivery. Mynatt did not recall it ever happening here.

“This would probably be the first,” he said.

Jeremiha can count to five, feed himself and go to the potty himself. He communicates in short sentences.

Of course, nothing about his brief childhood had prepared him to assist in delivering a baby, but Favazza said that of her four children, Jeremiha is the bold one, the one who “will try anything.”

Favazza had made proper plans. Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto was expecting her — on Dec. 6, for her fourth caesarian section — not on Friday the 13th.

Looking back, Favazza realized she was in labor all through the night before the birth, but she did not realize it at the time. The discomfort was minor compared to the labor pains she remembered before giving birth to her sons, ages 2 and 3, and daughter, 5.

On Friday morning, Favazza complained to her mother, Leigh Favazza, about the pain, but neither woman believed delivery was imminent.

Leigh Favazza considered taking the day off from her sales job if indeed her daughter was going to give birth, but first she had to get her granddaughter, Keely Taylor, settled at school.

Leigh Favazza left the house to take the 5-year-old to the bus stop at the end of Maury Drive, then she headed for Olive Branch Elementary School to drop off snacks for her granddaughter’s classroom. While en route, Bobbye Favazza called.

“Mom, I’m having the baby,” Bobbye Favazza said.

Leigh Favazza hung up and called 911. It was 8:26 a.m. She was frantic. Her daughter was alone in the house with a 2-year-old, a 3-year-old, a bull mastiff and a poodle and her water had just broken.

Bobbye Favazza’s oldest son, 3-year-old Jamison Taylor, had awakened to discover his mother bleeding and in pain.

“He sat on the couch right here and cried,” Bobbye Favazza said. “He was terrified. He’s my emotional one.”

The 2-year-old was calm.

“I laid on the couch and he went and got a towel,” Bobbye Favazza said. “He grabbed a towel on his own.

“It happened so fast. My water broke and the baby came two to three minutes later. I just pushed and he caught him.”

Bobbye Favazza said she held her baby, still attached to her by the cord, as she walked a few feet to unlock the front door for emergency personnel. They cut the cord.

Jeremiha, quizzed about the birth of his brother, can point to the spot at the end of the couch where Kamron Taylor was born.

“Over there,” he said.

“Sometimes these things happen, especially to mothers who’ve had multiple births,” said Mynatt, the city’s emergency services supervisor. “The time gets less and less with each delivery.”

Mother and son were discharged from Baptist-DeSoto. Neither suffered any complications.

“I’ve had three,” said Leigh Favazza, the proud grandmother, “and I can’t imagine having any of them like this.”

Bring a Loved One, Friend, or Doula for Continuous Support

When discussion of doula care surfaces on the Internet, it is always surprising how many commenters dismiss continuous labor support by a trained professional as unscientific fluff. Couples who hire a doula are sometimes labeled as selfish, out for “the experience” and elitist.

When a person believes that a pregnant woman (who is not planning a cesarean) checks into a hospital in labor to have a medical procedure performed on her, the idea of labor support seems superfluous. You wouldn’t bring a doula to heart surgery, the naysayers grumble. However, hospital birth should be an opportunity to allow a physiological process to take place in a location in which skilled professionals are readily available to intervene immediately if necessary. A primary goal of maternity care should be determining exactly what is optimal in supporting this physiological process, then ensuring that women in institutional settings have access to whatever best supports the normal process of birth.

Until the 1970’s, most American women labored alone, separated from her loved ones. Advocates, vocal consumers, obstetricians like Robert Bradley and childbirth educators fought hard for the right to labor with a partner. In Birth as an American Rite of Passage, Robbie Davis-Floyd wrote, “Hospitals tolerance of fathers’ presence increased as it was discovered that when fathers are educated and prepared for birth, the support they provide the laboring woman enables her to cope with her labor in more socially acceptable ways (breathing instead of screaming, for example), thus helping her and making it easier for hospital personnel to cope with her.”

While the normalization of epidural anesthesia has filled the role of allowing hospital staff to cope with laboring women, often multiple laboring women at one time, many women would still prefer to optimize support of the physiological process of birth and are not given the chance to do so in hospitals or are discouraged from hiring a doula by those who claim that birth is best left to science.

Fortunately, everyone wins with continuous labor support, the efficacy of which is supported by scientific evidence. According to Childbirth Connection, women who received continuous support were less likely than women who did not to:

• have regional analgesia
• have any analgesia/anesthesia
• give birth with vacuum extraction or forceps
• give birth by cesarean
• report dissatisfaction or a negative rating of their experience.

Here are just a handful of links that detail the evidence supporting continuous support of laboring women. And, really, is support of laboring women something that needs scientific evidence to justify its normalization?

Cochrane Review on Effects of Continuous Labor Support (Childbirth Connection)

Best Evidence: Labor Support (Childbirth Connection)

Healthy Birth Practice #3: Bring a Loved One, Friend, or Doula for Continuous Support (Lamaze)

A Doula at Your Birth (VBAC.com)

CAPPA Position Paper: Evidence-based Labor Doula Care (pdf)

OBs denying doula access: Where’s the SCIENCE!!!1!? (Hoyden About Town)

Why Did I Move During Labor?

I never knew the importance of moving around during labor until I was actually in labor with my second child. With my first I was strapped to a bed, a fetal monitor, and pitocin, so I never really had the option of moving around.

My second time around I realized why it was so important. When I would have a contraction, if I moved, rocked, walked, it would help the pain. Sitting in one spot, tensing up, screaming, or clenching onto something all made the contraction itself a million times worse. As my labor progressed, I realized this. Which helped me to “ride the wave” which is how I looked at getting over my contractions. I pictured them as a giant wave that I must surf over in order to get closer to my baby. As the time went on, and boy what a long labor I had, I realized the more movement the less pain.

The modern form of maternity care, which keeps women in one position, place, or hooked up to machines is what is causing the fear of pain in society today. Because woman’s friends, and family members are routinely going through this kind of system, it is becoming the tell tale so much more.

Until there is a change in how hospitals deal with birth, women are going to continue to think birth is the end of the world because they are not being allowed to move or be active while in labor, when in the end, it does way more good, than it does harm.

Chiropractic Care during Pregnancy

One thing a lot of women do not know is the importance of having a balanced pelvis during labor. Which is why as a birth advocate I feel strongly about Chiropractic care during pregnancy. Not only does it help you live a healthier life, but it also helps you to get your baby into the optimal position for birth.

Many women question me when I bring this subject up, asking how someone who has a big belly is able to lay down and really get adjusted properly. During pregnancy, many Chiropractors will steer clear of adjusting the spine itself, and stick to the pelvis, neck, and round ligaments in something known as The Webster Technique.

The Webster Technique was founded by Dr. Larry Webster, also the founder of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association, as a safe method to restore proper balance and function to the pelvis for pregnant mothers. The Webster Technique has also been proven to have a high success rate in preventing breech presentations.

Sacral misalignment causes the tightening and torsion of specific pelvic muscles and ligaments. ?It is these tense muscles and ligaments and their constraining effect on the uterus which prevents the baby from comfortably assuming the best possible position for birth. The Webster Technique is defined as a specific chiropractic analysis and adjustment that reduces interference to the nerve system and facilitates biomechanical balance in pelvic structures, muscles and ligaments. This has been shown to reduce the effects of intrauterine constraint, allowing the baby to get into the best possible position for birth.

The above is taken from the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association Website explaining further the Webster Technique and how it works.

Why do I wholeheartedly believe in Chiropractic care as well as The Webster Technique?? My own personal experiences, which all started in June of 2008 when a woman came to my monthly ICAN meeting with a breech baby, frantic because she was planning a home birth in the month of August, and if her baby did not turn into a head down position, optimal for birth, she would have no option but to be admitted into the hospital and have a cesarean delivery, which for her was a nightmare situation. In our area, there are no known providers who will deliver a breech baby of any type.
Thankfully for this mother, our guest speaker for the month was a local Chiropractor, Dr. Jason Jenkin’s who has since become an amazing mentor and friend in my life. He spoke about The Webster Technique, and this woman started seeing him immediately in hopes of this method helping to turn her baby into the optimal position for her to have a successful home birth.
I nervously and skeptically kept track on her care through e-mails, phone calls, and facebook chats. And then her baby turned. Nice, head down, and ready for his peaceful birth at home!

Shortly after this, mom went into labor on a beautiful summer day, and little boy was born into his own mothers arms, in the water, in a beautiful home birth. When she e-mailed me about her birth, I sat and cried while I read, and became a firm believer in something I have known to be “Chiropractic Miracles”.

Since that time, this specific Chiropractic office has had several success stories with pregnancy related care, including my own Chiropractic care during my second pregnancy. Including adjustments the day I went into labor, as well as the next day after my son was born.

As one of my steps in helping to have a great birth, and avoid a cesarean section in a society where 1/3 of births are by surgery, I highly suggest Chiropractic care!

Reducing Infant Mortality

Please watch this video and then spread the word about how to reduce infant mortality. Click here to visit the website and get help with writing to your legislator, or sending them this video.

Reducing Infant Mortality from Debby Takikawas on Vimeo.

New Spanish Commercial for Flex Brand Beds Features Actual Birth

American mattress advertisements typically feature a thin, white woman reclining on the bed in her pajamas.

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European advertisements tend to be more progressive and inclusive, such as this recent non-heteronormative French mattress advertisement.

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In this Spanish commercial produced by the firm Sra. Rushmore which was released today, the typical American mattress demo of trying to upset a glass of wine with a bowling ball pales in comparison as a subject to newborn Waira, who was born at home on the advertised product– a Flex mattress.

The slogan of this new ad campaign by Spanish company, Flex, is “Tu cama, el lugar m?s importante del mundo,” or “Your bed, the most important place in the world.” This commercial spotlights the home birth of Waira, daughter of Carolina and Nicholas Umpierrez of Barcelona, Spain. In the advertisement, they claim that their bed is special to them because it is where there son was born and they would like for their daughter to be born in the same bed.

Hat tip: ZGZ- Pro Parto Natural

Posted by Jill

Things You Shouldn’t Say to a Pregnant Woman

I saw this post today by Melissa, she was talking about things she doesn’t like to hear from women who are planning a natural childbirth. She really hit the nail on the head with her description of college graduation:

“Would you tell someone that you?re going to ?try? to graduate from high school or that you ARE going to graduate in four years? It?s going to take a lot of time and hard work, but you ARE going to graduate in four years, there is no doubt. What if someone actually asked you, ?Oh, are you going to try to graduate?? You?d be furious because it implies that you are likely to fail.”

I really like this analogy.? I often try to convey this to women both in class, clients and just people I meet.? My simple statement of “Have a little faith…” hopefully makes the difference sometimes. So remember, stand up with your fellow sisters and give them support!