Editorial Note: I love women and I want you to live. I personally think that good hospitals are the best place to deliver babies (and that the onus is on hospitals to be better places to give birth, a lot of these women are coming off really shitty hospital experiences), but if you do decide to give birth at home, which is 100% your choice, please hire a skilled attendant. In the US, that’s ideally a certified nurse-midwife, and please consider waiting until you’ve had an uncomplicated vaginal delivery in a hospital first. You can bleed out from a postpartum hemorrhage faster than you can imagine. And, PRETTY PLEASE, do not opt for an unassisted childbirth because you’ve risked out of your midwifery practice. That is a terrible idea. Be safe.
*
1. no this is not true, this is completely untrue, get the damn Rhogam shot:
2. go to the hospital now (she eventually did, she’s alive):
3. this one is not really scary other than this does not seem like someone who possesses the correct mindset to give birth without a medical professional:
4. a midwife you read a midwife you read said it was BASICALLY A 100% CURE FOR HEMORRHAGE it is not please do not do this and also that first part is not great:
5. if you had complications with BOTH your previous births and required assistance from your attendants AND YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF BLEEDING sweeeeeeet jesus please do not try this by yourself:
6. (faints)
7. OKAY okay guys if your water breaks do not put even your own clean fingers in your vagina and that is also way too many days and i do not know what the hell your alkaline diet is supposed to do to magically ward off infection from having your water broken for six days:
8. you cannot tell if your baby’s lungs are mature via intuition, and 34 weeks is definitely premature and you need to go to the hospital do not listen to this woman’s advice:
9. NOPE:
10. what kind of race to the bottom is this:
11. oh of course they don’t vaccinate:
12. WHY would you be surprised that it might be complicated to walk into a government office with an ELEVEN MONTH OLD BABY with no paperwork and get a birth certificate when you could have just jacked said baby from a stroller at the mall:
13. ….
14. (taps mic) gestational diabetes exists:
15. oh well then please do not get worried:
16. Okay. Literally every WORD of this is terrifying, this is something you need to go to the ER about way sooner than ten days after delivery, but it is also terrifying to think that some percentage of the women asking the horrifying questions and/or receiving the terrible advice I have highlighted in this post have made the decision to give birth unassisted because they cannot afford to go to the hospital, they cannot afford the couple grand it will cost for a homebirth midwife (often out-of-pocket), this is them making what seems like the only possible decision for their families.
That is not most of them, most of them are ideologically driven, and will tell you so, but as a nation, we should not have anyone asking a forum of self-educated mega-hippies what herbs they can take when they’re afraid they’ve retained placenta and can’t afford to go to the hospital to get checked out. And, to be fair, even this forum of self-educated mega-hippies told this woman it was time to go to the ER, money be damned, and she did.
Tags: moms, parenting, perfidy and wretched villainy, please do not die, you can be a hippie without being reckless
omg
omg
omg
I’m going to have nightmares now
“so we’re going to dump about 2 cups of blood-coloured liquid into the water so we can judge how much blood I lose” LET’S COUNT ALL THE MANY MANY THINGS THAT ARE WRONG WITH THIS STATEMENT
Also I would be really horrified if you didn’t require any documentation to register a baby’s birth. “What, this kid? Oh, he’s mine. He’s, oh, he looks like he’s about eight months old, you think? Let’s call him eight months old. Name? How does ‘John’ sound? Great, thanks for registering me!” and waltz out with a birth certificate like you were ordering a sandwich.
When my mother went into labour with me, she decided there was no point freaking out and going to the hospital too early only to end up spending hours in a bed being bored out of her mind (which had happened with my older brother). So she stayed put, did some housework, and then took a leisurely bus ride to the hospital. When she got there the nurses were like “What the HELL, you should have been here HOURS AGO, what is your deal!”
That was my idea of an ~extreme birth story~ before I read this post. O_O
I remember reading once that Marie Antoinette’s mother, Maria Theresa of Austria, once got a rotten tooth pulled by her dentist while she was in labour, because she felt it was very efficient to be in pain and get it over with for two things at once. I feel like she would appreciate your mom’s decision.
Maria Theresa’s pragmatism and efficiency have made her my new personal heroine.
This is basically how a lot of pet dentistry is done (“your cat needs bladder surgery, so we may as well yank out some of his teeth while he’s doped up!”) so seems legit for humans too.
That seems entirely reasonable.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah I mean I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies but aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
(this is even scarier because I don’t really know what 3/4 of the acronyms mean and even Mallory’s handy translation chart isn’t helping)
+1000 for GWTW quote
Yeah is there a place we can go for some definitions?
LADIES, YOUR INTUITION IS RIGHT ABOUT DUDES WHO ARE STUPID, NOT ABOUT WHETHER YOUR CHILD’S LUNGS ARE FULLY FORMED.
The day before my scheduled C-section I went into the hospital for an amnio to make sure the baby’s lungs were fully developed. I can assure you that I had no intuition whatsoever about her lungs before that, not even a handy-dandy dream involving the Deity.
I was half convinced for several months that I was carrying a table lamp or something rather than a human fetus. But maybe my diet is not alkaline enough to hone my intuition properly.
Have you birthed said fetus/table lamp yet? Can’t know if your intuition is right until something actually pops out of you!
Oh yes, nigh on seven months ago. Most days we’re pretty sure she’s human, though sometimes pterodactyl seems more likely.
Yeah, and can I just say, I hate how the custom is to stick “d” for “dear” before every family member? It’s so perfunctory, doesn’t even sound like you mean it.
Is it for “dear” or for “darling”? I always thought “darling,” but I’m not sure “dear” is any better.
Try translating it as “dirtbag”.
I am immediately adopting this, and it’s already made me look forward to my weekly Babycenter board hate-read.
I wonder whether they leave it off when peeved?
The DWIL (Dealing with In-laws) board at Babycenter Nicole linked to a while back puts in a u…so “DuH” (for “Dumb Husband”). Looooots of DuHs there, but a few DHs. Sadly they don’t have similar modifiers for in-law acronyms.
“damn”
“dadgum”
oh, ew, is that what “dh” stands for?
this was terrifying when it was being discussed on Twitter and it is EVEN MORE TERRIFYING NOW and I can’t look away, what is it with me and crazy birth people
Let’s both get hysterectomies and never think about this again.
I’m in.
BRB going to make my “Hey Ladies”-style email signature “has anyone ever treated this with herbs.”
Hippie Hey Ladies needs to happen.
I could write this. I lived in Ashland, Oregon for five years.
Really enjoyed the reflexive invocation of “the culture” re: biting the cord. That technocratic artificial Paleolithic culture.
“My only hope is that, thousands of years in the future, when women have access to greater knowledge and technology that makes this process less horrifyingly painful and dangerous, they definitely DON’T take advantage of it” –Paleolithic women during childbirth, for sure
Luckily, there is a reliable worldwide network of technology that I can use to ask these filthy strangers how to gnaw through my own organs.
I can’t even express how infuriating this dewy-eyed glorification of the past is. “Our great-great-great-grandmothers gave birth at home with only the neighbour’s wife there to help, and it was totally fine, and they were out in the field the next day, helping to bring in the harvest with the baby strapped to their back in a shawl!” EXCEPT FOR ALL THE TIMES WHEN THEY DIED OF THINGS THAT ARE TOTALLY PREVENTABLE TODAY??
In one of LMM’s diaries she complains about how one of the women in her village made some snide comments about her insisting on a trained nurse being present for her third birth because “We all manage to give birth just fine without medical staff there, are you too good to suffer with the rest of us or something?” and LMM was like “MY LAST BABY DIED, YOU BET YOUR ASS I HAD A NURSE THE NEXT TIME.” She knew what was up!
The way I figure it, my ancestors suffered and toiled for millennia so I could live a life spent mostly in climate controlled rooms, watching movies on a computer from the comfort of a memory-foam-and-jersey-sheet nest, and I will continue to make them proud by purchasing a robot butler the second they become available.
Right? I am trying to imagine how my great-grandmother, who buried 8 of her children, would react if she were around to hear about people choosing not to vaccinate their kids or to chew herbs (or their own placenta, whatever’s around) instead of seeking medical treatment.
Along with all our ancestors, I can only imagine that women in developing countries, who would surely love to have better access to medical care, would read these entries with a resounding WTF.
Once I had a guy explain to me (in a non-US country with shockingly high maternal mortality, where a doctor friend once delivered a baby to a CONCUSSED WOMAN WHO FELL ON HER HEAD WHILE TRYING TO HIKE FOUR HOURS DOWN A MOUNTAIN FROM HER VILLAGE TO THE NEAREST HEALTH CENTER WHILE IN LABOR OH MY GOD she was fine and the baby was fine and they are still fine but OH MY GOD) that you never meet anyone from the old days who died in childbirth.
I just stared at him.
i live in Indonesia, and when i first moved here i saw a lady stitching her little son’s head up by the side of a dusty road with just a needle and thread (that probably wasn’t new). His wailing was like nothing i’ve ever heard before. i feel sick just remembering it. a shot of local anesthetic or some painkillers would’ve worked a miracle, i think. And his mother’s face while she tried to keep him still and treat his cut was absolutely heartbreaking.
A student at my last school got hit by a car and left on the roadside. Like, people stopped for her, but no one can afford hospital bills and or could bear to be financially responsible for taking her in. So they waited for her parents, during peak traffic to take her. She died right there, 200m away from a great hospital and right next to a police station. Good medical care is definitely available here, but it’s certainly not accessible. Public health clinics are open from 10-2, weekdays only. That mum stitching her little boy had no choice – it was past 2, and a private clinic would’ve cost 2 weeks’ minimum wage.
You are 100% correct and I am adopting this statement as my own personal motto.
I just bought a robot vacuum and I firmly believe that every ancestor I’ve ever had would be ENDLESSLY proud of me for doing so, and would quite honestly have chastised me if they knew I was able to buy a robot vacuum and then did not.
My robot vacuum is named Gladys, after my grandmother, mother of nine hospital-born babies who were not raised Catholic because when the doctor said they might need to choose between the baby and the mother the priest said they had to save the baby’s life, my grandpa turned right around and said, The baby can’t help raise the other five kids.
If Grandma Gladys could have had a robot vacuum, you bet your ass she would have had a whole fleet of ’em.
DAMN STRAIGHT. Love to your grandma, your grandpa, and your robo-vacuum.
On a somewhat related note: I felt guilty about making a cake out of a packet recently instead of starting from scratch since many of the women in our family were great bakers. And then remembered my great-great grandmother who raised seventeen children (fifteen surviving) in a two room house, and thought ‘she’d probably love being able to make food in a matter of minutes’ which made me feel less guilty.
Dude, my GRANDmother gave birth to eight children and it was damned unusual even then to have eight kids and have none of them die, but you know what? SHE WAS A TRAINED GODDAMN NURSE AND SHE SURROUNDED HERSELF WITH MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS. She didn’t make it to the hospital in time for her last one, but she certainly went afterward and made sure everything was okay.
Christ, even our great-great-grandmothers had midwives. Or at least someone in the damn village who had attended all the births of all the children and knew some shit. This is insane.
My great-grandfather’s first wife died in childbirth and they couldn’t keep the baby because there was no one to take care of him while everyone was working on the farm, so he got sent away to live with relatives in Buffalo and lost contact with his dad + siblings entirely from that point on. BUT I’M SURE HE WAS REALLY GRATEFUL THAT HIS DEAD MOM GAVE BIRTH THE GRANOLA WAY.
My mom’s mom died in childbirth and my grandfather freaked out and was like HOW CAN I DEAL WITH THIS BABY THAT JUST MURDERED MY WIFE so he sent her to live with her grandparents but then when she was 10 he was like “I don’t like you guys, I’m going to send her to live with my brother across the country instead” and that’s how she ended up meeting my dad. And 50+ years later they’re still happily married. So uh, I guess all’s well that ends well? But yeah, obviously everyone in that situation would have given their eyeteeth to get my grandmother some quality medical care, but they were farmers who’d just gotten their land collectivized by the Communists and didn’t have money for doctors.
All I can think of is Aunt Sissy from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” Hospital births FTW.
Whenever my Dad and his sister got colds as kids (this was in the ’50s) his great aunt (who grew up in the 1890s-1900’s) complain to my grandmother that ‘you never saw children with so many colds in MY day’ to which my grandmother would reply ‘that’s because they usually got ill and died the same day instead of recovering’
they literally did this in coneheads DO NOT USE THE MOVIE CONEHEADS AS A BIRTHING GUIDE PEOPLE
Curse “The Man” for making us use tools, like some kind of higher-order primates! (shakes fist)
Personally, I blame Big Monolith.
Ooonononononoononononoonoooo.
Oh my goodness. I didn’t even know that unassisted childbirth was even something people even ran through their minds as an option. Nope nope! Number 2 filled me with so much horror. Argh!
*hugs kid, shivers*
“I love women and I want you to live.” This is a good way to open any editorial note, really.
I am daily grateful that I have chosen to remain barren but GOOD CHRIST I am even more grateful today. Considering forwarding this to my very pregnant friend but that would be mean.
Scene: a gunshot victim is bleeding out on the ground
Victim: I’m dying! Call 911!
#6: Just tell yourself not to bleed!
If you just gave the victim a piece of placenta to lick they’d be fine obviously.
Or just, “hold it in your mouth.”
Does it have to be your own placenta, I’m not up on the latest science of the cosmic orgone blood-reversing placenta energies
I’d suggest a study to test this out but I don’t think I’d get it past the ethics panel and in any case I somehow suspect that people who think eating placentas can stop bleeding would not actually believe my results.
(I can’t figure out why people think that eating a placenta would stop bleeding. Maybe it is so gross your entire body just contracts with the horror.)
When a piece falls out of you that thing is just super tasty, it’s a science fact
The reason it falls out of you in the first place is that it’s ripe for eating!
Well great now I’m gonna get that image when the childfree people start going on about crotchfruit
This might actually improve that diatribe
Why, I drank a glass of menstrual blood just the other day.
We’re just ahead of the wave on the next big superfoods fad is all, people in this soulless post-cold-war society have forgotten the vital importance of preserving and recycling your precious bodily fluids.
Why, the youth can’t even correctly set the filters on their stillsuits!
Me too. I thought that was the whole point of Diva Cups.
I feel like they think somehow that eating the placenta and breastfeeding at the same time will do something to their hormones so that they stop bleeding? Like, somehow connected to breastfeeding women not getting their period? You gotta love the twisted logic!
I think it’s a medieval Theory of Sames thing: this is where the uterine blood lives, so chewing on it will control uterine blood.
Because “this plant is shaped like a liver, therefore it’s good for your liver” is a marvelous approach to medicine.
Quick! Grab the herbs…. …. … .. . . dead.. Oh I guess I’ll just keep these for the next one.
I am now going to suggest that all Soldiers carry freeze dried placenta on them before any deployment- we can save a lot of lives! Bwahaha, it is such a ridiculous notion!
*High-pitched horrified screaming*
I don’t know what I’m angrier about: The unfortunate advent of hippies + the internet, or the shitty, shitty state of America’s health care system.
That’s basically the same thought I had: I can’t figure out if it’s more upsetting that some people HAVE to roll this way, or that other people CHOOSE to.
It is kind of sad to see the ones who don’t want to go to a hospital but can’t afford the out-of-pocket for a certified nurse-midwife, so they go with nothing. I do think there’s a case to be made for insurance to cover midwifery care more frequently (even as I think JUST GO TO THE DAMN HOSPITAL, IT’S BETTER THAN BLEEDING TO DEATH).
Personally, I’m pretty pissed off at the people who could absolutely afford quality medical care, but choose to endanger their own lives and the lives of their children by refusing to use that care.
In some states, pregnant women can get Medicaid even if they don’t normally qualify, and there is health insurance that they can get that will cover the pregnancy, delivery, and at least the first few months of post-natal care. Unfortunately, that’s apparently not true of all states.
“Chew on a piece, hold a piece in your mouth, or something”
…To stop…uterine hemorrhaging…? Who was this “midwife,” Dr. Spaceman?
“Why is that baby covered in goop???”
“Now, full disclosure: most of my experience is putting babies IN women.”
“Everything’s fine, I just administered an epidural. Now would you like one too?”
“EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS DISGUSTING.”
“It’s 2012 and we still don’t have a cure for a woman’s mouth.”
“or something” is my favorite part.
“Yeah, you know you got to…to use it. For the purpose, in a way. Somehow? It might be a suppository, I forget exactly.”
I think the rationale behind that is that the hormones present in the placenta will help to tone the uterus. So it’s not completely bonkers, but if you haven’t just given birth while stranded in the wilderness there are obviously better options.
And if you have just given birth in the wilderness, you eat the placenta anyway to avoid attracting predators, obv.
nope nope nope nope can’t hear you wrapping myself protectively around my carefully-tested scientifically investigated medications and treatments with known risks and benefits and just noping my way off into the sunset here.
“no pricks on my little baby’s feet” that is upsetting! yes! but so is your wonderful sweet child developing permanent brain damage because they’ve got phenylketonuria or maple syrup urine disease or congential hypothyroidism and they weren’t treated before the damage was already done. Nope, nope, NOPE.
Exactly. I am all for incorporating traditional wisdom into childbirth where it is borne out scientifically (e.g. when birth started happening in hospitals more often maternal death rates actually went up b/c doctors didn’t wash their hands even though midwives told them to). I am all for trying to let your body do its thing and only doing medically necessary interventions (as opposed to those that give the doctor more control and convenience). You’ve had an uncomplicated pregnancy and you want to give birth at home with a trained and experienced attendant? Go for it! You live somewhere remote and want to make sure you know what you need to do to deliver unassisted should you not be able to to get to medical care (or have them get to you)? That sounds really smart!
You want to forgo all medical assistance before, during and after labor and not let your child see a doctor until they are a year old (or, like one of the posters in one of those threads, only take them to the chiropractor for adjustments, but not to a regular pediatrician)? Nope nope nope. It is one thing to empower women during labor, and encourage them to listen to their bodies, it is another to forget that childbirth, while a natural process, can also be a supremely difficult one. Women die. Babies die. They don’t have to. I’d rather deal with an asshole doctor than die.
Yes, yes, THIS. BRAVO. Thank you, I’m just going to bookmark this and come back to it over and over again, because you said it /perfectly/. I am for whatever gives you more agency and control over YOUR body, even if I don’t always agree with it, but when you’re hurting others (via, say, not vaccinating) or behaving just totally recklessly? Why. WHY.
Somehow people managed to forget that death is also a natural process, that doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
Wait wait wait wait. Maple syrup urine disease? Is that a thing? I am afraid of what google will show me.
It is a thing- and don’t worry, the Google info is pretty innocuous for once. It’s a metabolic disorder like phenylketonuria (PKU) where the body can’t process certain amino acids properly and they build up in the blood, causing all kinds of nasty stuff (seizures, neurological decline, coma, & ultimately death if not treated). Fortunately- like PKU and many other metabolic disorders- if you catch it at birth you can immediately get the kid onto a special diet and monitor their condition and they’ll have a very good chance at growing up pretty healthy.
That was an incredibly intelligent and articulate comment but now that I know it exists I’m just going to imagine children peeing maple syrup and being shipped off to Canada.
For a more charming and whimsical note: some babies are misdiagnosed with maple syrup urine disease because their mothers ate a large curry shortly before the birth, because ingesting fenugreek also causes bodily fluids to smell of maple syrup.
Amazing!
Every time I hear a factoid like this I get this really elaborate prank plan forming in my head. And then I remember that a) that would be mean, and b) that would be a whole lot of work. I suppose I’ll have to save them to use in fiction instead.
Fascinating- I did not know that! Learned something new today! (mmm, curry and maple syrup.)
Maple syrup urine disease is actually called that because the urine smells sweet, like maple syrup.
I’m sure that I was unhappy about getting shots in my little baby feet, and then in my little toddler arms. I am, however, happier to have never gotten measles, or developed serious medical issues from a vitamin K deficiency. And I’ve completely forgotten the early shots!
I will say this about that last one: it’s something to keep in the back of my head the next time I read a sanitized historical record about a woman dying several days after giving birth.
My BFF has done one doula and one total freebirth. She lives in the woods. She is the most mega of megahippies. She still worked with the midwives and ambulance crew to work out where they would come if shit went south and although she refused ultrasound she still used her access to medical services, e.g. blood tests for GD. Hedging your bets that way is free here and you don’t have to make financial decisions when you’re hemorrhaging to death. I know a lot of the stuff in these screenshots is loopy ideology but I just don’t believe it would be framed like this (i.e. so desperately) if care for women wasn’t such a fucking racket in the States.
Also…I’m gonna take this liberal attitude and run with it….education, like, actual education in Biology and whatnot delivered by schools that are free to go to and that folk can’t opt out of their taxes to fund, is essential for public health. There is vanishingly little critical thought being deployed here, and YOU CAN TEACH THAT SHIT.
Can we create a Kickstarter to fund an ambulance outside everyone of these people’s houses? Because, NO.
Jessica Valenti! Hello and I’m glad you’re writing for the Guardian, I have to say that here because I can’t go btl over there.
Well thanks! I’m glad to be writing there too 🙂
Love your articles!
I can’t even read half of these because I feel my anxiety and blood pressure skyrocket with each word.
anxiety and blood pressure
i hear there are herbs for that
Just hold a piece a placenta in your mouth.
…or something
alprazolam and lisinopril are herbs, right?
you know what’s awesome? ACE inhibitors- which are used to treat high blood pressure- are actually derived from pit viper venom. So all you have to do is get bitten by a snake regularly. Like our Paleolithic ancestors did!
Just tell your blood pressure to chill out. That’s how internal bleeding works–you tell it to stop and it stops.
I just need to be firmer when I speak to my heart and tell it to stop pumping so hard. Silly me.
Seriously I feel all lightheaded like I’m going to faint reading these… so much haemorrhaging… all the fluids… blood everywhere… <puts head between knees>
I have been waiting for this collection since Nicole first tweeted about it and it has exceeded my wildest expectations. That moment yOU FEEL YOUR BABY’S LUNGS ARE MATURE
SOMEWHERE DEEP IN THE RECESSES OF EVERY PREGNANT PERSON’S BRAIN, AN OVEN TIMER GOES OFF
“AH YES,” OUR PRODIGAL MOTHER MUTTERS TO NO ONE. “THE LUNGS. THEY ARE READY”
“WAIT…..WAIT NO. JUST GAS.”
It’s actually a little button that pops out when they’re ready. Like a turkey.
That’s what it means when your bellybutton goes from an innie to an outie – the lungs are ready. Happened for me on a conference call. Walked out the door, went home, filled my birthing tub, and waited for that sweet sweet placenta snack. Delish.
I believe sexuality is for the most part fluid as a creek in the woods but nope, never having sex with a man again.
I once saw one person on one of those boards who had some kind of complicated childbirth — twins plus something else? multiple somethings but a single child? — and everyone in her family and life was against a homebirth because it was supremely dangerous, so her plan was to rent a cabin in the mountains in February alone so that she would be snowed in and unable to go to a hospital.
WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK.
Oh, man, these ladies bring up some great points. I think I’ll mention a few at our M&M since we’ve had so many postpartum hemorrhages lately. We could probably just start chopping off placenta like it’s an especially undercooked brisket and shoving it in women’s mouths!
Jesus Christ. I mean, I’m training in a pretty relaxed hospital with direct integration of midwives in labor management, but every single one of these made me want to cry/barf. Women die, y’all.
Ditto. Our hospital is *extremely* into enabling women’s birth plans. Full stop. Midwives? Fine. Waterbirth? Fine. But we also have MFM and NICU for a reason.
I have never given birth nor do I ever talk to people about giving birth so I do not understand 98% of the jargon and acronyms detailed here but even I in my great ignorance know that haemorrhaging and stabbing pains magic painkiller placentas are bad bad bad
TWO CUPS OF BLOOD OR BLOOD-COLOURED WATER DUMPED IN YOUR BIRTHING POOL WHAT
WHERE WERE YOU GOING TO GET TWO CUPS OF BLOOD
DO I WANT TO KNOW
I’m envisioning them in the kitchen with the dropper of food colouring. “Does that look like blood to you? No? Add some more. Does that look like blood?”
maybe it’ll be like that scene in gone girl
Oh god that was exactly where my brain went initially
WHERE INDEED
You can totally buy blood from butchers, or so vampire-related media has led me to believe.
According to my former sculpture lecturer, you can also buy semen there! Fun facts.
“I would think you wouldn’t feel very good” if you were bleeding out — this is especially terrifying because it’s 100% the opposite of true.
You’re absolutely right, Ethyl. Last month, a doctor nicked a vein during a procedure I was having. I lost 3 pints of blood (that’s a fourth of my blood!), and I didn’t feel a thing. I never even got lightheaded or looked pale.
TIL!
I’m the daughter of a hippie-dippy midwife and a big fan of home birth and HELL NO WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE, UNASSISTED????
Yeah, for real — I find the idea of home birth not unappealing, and I know people who have had lovely experiences with home birth (with a midwife or a doula or someone else who knows wtf they’re doing standing by), but even if I decide to experience the miracle of life in my living room I still want a midwife and a set-in-stone plan for what happens if something goes wrong, you know?
(Plus if the nice ladies whose job it is to shepherd women through childbirth outside of a hospital go “HAHA NO GO TO THE HOSPITAL” I’m gonna… go to the hospital, because good lord. Good lord.)
I can’t even understand the leap that they make from homebirth with midwife to unassisted when I plumb the deepest depths of my hippie-ness. Like, the idea of continuing an ancient tradition of getting help from women who have delivered hundreds of babies in a non-medical environment? Beautiful and awesome and I want to do that. The ancient tradition of just winging it and hoping for the best? Not a thing.
Yeah, bingo. I’m on the crunchy side too and though I wouldn’t go with homebirth myself, I know some smart people who have and I see their reasons. (I went with a birth center, which is really only an intermediate step up.) But like never in human history have women just gone, ‘nah, I got this.’ Even if your village midwife couldn’t stop a postpartum hemorrhage or prevent an infection in 1592 or whatever, you still called her because she at least had some experience!
Maybe the original commenters got human women mixed up with giraffes. I mean, it’s an understandable mistake.
Yep. I’m pretty hippie-ish sometimes and I can totally see the point of home birth and one of our close family friends ended up doing an unassisted home birth by accident and she loved it (her other births had taken forever so she figured she still had time before she had to leave for the hospital but baby decided otherwise) but some of these ladies are taking it wayyy too far.
Myself and my three siblings were all delivered at home by the same midwife who is a good friend of the family but the idea of my mom delivering all of us unassisted is just NO. I’m imagining my mom’s reaction to the idea right now and I’m pretty sure she would just have a look of horror on her face.
Relieved to see there are other folks who are a fan of the home birth. Like, I will absolutely get all my check-ups and make sure nothing is wrong beforehand, and if something goes south I will be very near a hospital and have no objections getting my ass in there, but hospitals WIG me out, and I’ve worked with a lot of lawyers in the past, which has let me know pretty much every horrible thing a doctor has ever done in the name of “efficiency,” and that scares the hell out of me. I’d rather a midwife-nurse in my own home for my own sanity’s sake, but if I need more medical care than she can provide? To the hospital we hie.
Totally. I feel like the debate on this becomes very “Science is perfect and will make birth easy and painless!” vs. “Science is terrible and ruins everything!” and that’s bad for everyone. Some people seem to think that a planned C-section and painkillers will mean everything will be easy and safe and painless and there will be no negative side effects of any of that, and others seem to think that there’s no need for medical knowledge at all. There needs to be a lot more balance, respect for individual choices and FACTS injected into both sides.
Sorry, this isn’t the time for the “pox on both their houses” argument. The maternal mortality rate in the US has declined over 95% in the last century. That adds up to over 20,000 women a year who do not die because of childbirth complications. Modern medical science achieved this. Those are the facts.
Women should not give up the benefits of a hospital birth because hospitals “wig” them out, nor because they have heard horror stories from a malpractice lawyer. There are plenty of horror stories about midwives and home births as well. Relying on anecdotes that you heard from a biased source is not a sound basis for decisionmaking.
The truth is that most doctors, just like most midwives, are conscientious professionals who are dedicated to their patients. The difference between them is that if something goes horribly wrong, the doctor is prepared to diagnose and treat it immediately. The midwife must send the patient to a hospital at this point, delaying treatment at what may be a critical time for the mother and baby.
That thing you did where you equated having a home birth with rejecting medicine and science? That’s the thing I’m talking about. The decline in maternal mortality is due to a lot of wonderful advances, but there is not convincing evidence that birth in a hospital is inherently safer than at home if you’re low-risk. But I really don’t need to respond any further to a condescending lecture from someone who doesn’t even seem to be aware that midwives also do births in hospitals.
I agree entirely with paddlepickle, and I elsewhere in here shared my own midwife story – we had a midwife assisted hospital birth, no doctor. We had planned for a home birth but the midwife invoked plan B and moved us to a hospital, hours and hours in advance, because being a medical professional she was able to call a low-risk factor that was still a risk factor.
A 2009 study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that “The rate of deaths was about two per 1,000 for planned home births involving midwives as well as deliveries in hospitals involving either midwives or doctors.” To make that clear: the death rate was exactly the same at home or in a hospital.
Further, home births were less likely than hospital births to have:
■0.41 times less likely to suffer third- or fourth-degree perineal tears.
■0.62 times less likely to have postpartum hemorrhage
So those a definitely pluses.
Yes but in the US death rates at home are 3-5x higher for low risk women, and these are from MANA’s own stats. Until all the fake midwives go away and let the real professionals work, stats are gonna stay that bad. And the high risk ones are just fucking awful.
Hang on, number 13 waited THREE YEARS to get her kid a birth certificate or any other kind of ID? What happens when they take the kid to the doctor because surely you need some kind of baby ID, has this child never seen a doctor oh god I gotta lie down
A doctor? Oh, you mean a CULTURE NEEDLE-MONSTER? Yeah, we don’t do that. We do things by instinct.
The doctor’s just gonna try to give her shots and blood tests, no need for that.
I didn’t get mine for several years, my friend didn’t get hers till she needed ID for a driver’s. However, in our province, you are still registered, I guess, and you get a health card right away. It’s just that you don’t have the actual certificate. I have no idea how the province deals with home births here because thank god we do not have to pay out of pocket for baby-having so most people just go to the hospital.
Home births get registered by the midwife.
Unassisted homebirths — no clue. I really really hope people aren’t doing unassisted homebirths when baby-having is covered all around..
There has to be something, if only for the one woman per year who makes it into the news for not getting to the hospital on time. Even then there is usually a Ridiculously Photogenic officer or EMS who shows up at the scene.
Definitely never seen a doctor.
I had to petition a judge at the age of 16 for a birth certificate because my parents were such living-off-the-grid hippies. But even my mother had a midwife to assist with the birth. Just saying.
You don’t need any sort of baby ID to do anything except travel internationally, or claim the child on your tax returns. You can just show up at the Dr and get any old baby immunized! Maybe consider borrowing some neighbor kids and getting them stuck, if you live in one of the scary places where people have decided to cure measles with breastmilk.
(Fun fact: I didn’t have a birth certificate til I was eight or so, and a SSN became necessary to deduct a child on your taxes.)
My mother used to work at a super hippie college and she regularly had kids (always named something like Zenith or Star) who didn’t have any documents until they needed a passport for study abroad. Which is very broadminded of the school, but also try tracking down the lay midwife at your parents’ commune twenty-one years later. (But they still HAD a midwife! Even Zenith and Star!)
tiny screams
GREAT BIG SCREAMS
But sometimes God has to remind in a dream about having extremely premature babies you in case you were not paying attention or too busy wondering what 2 cups of blood would look like in your birth pool.
I spent the whole article clutching my head in horror, except during #3 when I clutched my bellybutton instead, for fear she was going to come through the computer screen and somehow return to the moment of my birth and bite my umbilical cord with a force that would ricochet through time.
Thank you. It’s been a while since anything made me laugh as hard as this did.
just actually lol-ed at work. tried to play it off as a cough, probably not very convincing.
I just really wonder if that woman has any experience with umbilical cords. They are like the toughest piece of wet old shoe leather beef jerky and would probably take a considerable amount of time to chew through.
I, I know how to figure out how long that would take – I’ll just ask a bear BECAUSE THEY DO THAT KIND OF SHIT.
I am kind of squeamish generally and I made it through like 1.5 of these and simply cannot proceed
:: does the ‘I had a c-section and it was great because I’m alive and so is my kid and it makes people uncomfortable when I bring it up at appropriate moments in conversation but fuck all of that’ dance ::
Can I clasp hands and join you?
*joins in*
(Two, even.)
Can there be another ring in the dance for those of us who would have died at birth without medical intervention? My sister and I both have C-sections to thank for our lives (sis born at 32 weeks and spent a long time in the hospital after birth).
OH MY GOD
So I genuinely don’t understand the desire to give birth at home. I mean, I get that some people just really hate hospitals, but I would think the benefits of “my house is more comfortable and I can control the temperature/mood/environment” would be outweighed by the anxiety of “oh god WHAT IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG?” At least, this would be the case for me. Like, I would feel MORE relaxed in a hospital, knowing that there are medical professionals readily available and I will not have to decide for myself whether or not I’m losing the right amount of blood or whatever.
Right?? Like, “oh well I can listen to my whale sounds on iTunes and turn on that one relaxing bayberry candle in my living room I like” is far less important, in my mind, than, you know, not dying.
Stress and ability to relax are not exactly unimportant in labour progressing, though!
It’s not just about your comfort, though being able to relax is decently important. It’s about not being capable, during childbirth, of advocating for your own care, and if you don’t know the doctors working with you, that can be a big issue. There are doctors who default to a c-section because it’s easier for them. There are nurses who will automatically circumsize your son because it’s standard procedure. There are doctors who will happily cut into your vagina to make it just a little bit bigger and get this baby out faster. There are a lot of terrible things done to women in the name of efficiency during childbirth, and since you’re in labor, you’re not going to question them. If the doctor says it’s necessary, it must be necessary. A lot of women are much more damaged than they need to be after childbirth because the doctor has already been on his feet for twelve hours and wants to go home.
Oh yeah, a lot of hospitals aren’t ideal birthing conditions and there is a very real chance of being treated like a procreating piece of meat vs an actual human being, which is why it’s so important for there to be better education regarding childbirth and pregnancy to give women tools for asserting themselves and knowing what’s best for their own body. I’m more just anti-“this opposite way MUST be better and I’ll never set foot in a hospital because all doctors are quacks and women have been doing it this way for thousands of years etc etc” – like, there does need to be a balance between respect for a woman and the natural process of childbirth AND how much modern medicine has made the process safer for both women and their children
Totally with you there. I don’t believe medicine is bunk – I’m all for my vaccinations, and if there’s anything even a little sketchy about my ultrasound you better believe I’m embracing modern medicine. If you have a healthy pregnancy, a home birth with a midwife-nurse is a perfectly safe option – but in an emergency situation, by all means, do whatever you gotta do, doctors.
I do actually trust doctors, even unethical ones who roll their eyes when a birth takes “too long,” to do whatever they can to save my life and my baby’s life. Doctors are big on fighting off death, and if my life’s on the line, I do trust them to do their best. I don’t particularly trust them to cool their heels while a woman gets through a 22-hour labor, because the stats show that a lot of doctors can’t be buggered to wait for the birth process. They like to get in there and DO things. And if things need to be done, awesome, but if things don’t need to be done? Get your itchy fingers off my vagina.
That may be the culture at some hospitals, but you are painting in pretty broad strokes. There are thousands of hospitals in the U.S. and I don’t even know how many freestanding birth centers. We live a capitalist society, so shop around. Have your birth plan in writing in case you aren’t in a condition to speak up when the time comes. And yeah, sometimes you have to accept that you can’t control everything all the time. Shit happens; either you move on or you make yourself crazy living in the past.
I have a really hard time with “that [medical professional] shouldn’t be allowed to tell me what to do!” because it puts you on the same road that leads to anti-vaxx, climate denial and creationism.
Medical professionals AREN’T allowed to tell you what to do, though. Consent is a real thing!
But you have to be with it enough to understand what’s being done, and object to something you don’t like! My doctor (or the on-call dr from my dr’s practice) spent my whole pushing time yanking on my vagina – I literally could not form any words to tell him to stop. My husband didn’t realize it was happening. Not a huge deal in the scheme of things, but not something I consented to.
Yeah, my midwife performed a stretch and sweep when I was in labour the other week without getting consent. Not OK at all! But that’s bad medical practice: medical professionals should not be performing procedures without getting consent unless it’s an emergency and the patient’s unable to communicate. “She didn’t tell me not to” is not a defence!
It’s not a defense, but it is what happens in hospitals as near as I can figure. Unless you have someone constantly advocating for you, you are going to get standard treatment, whether that’s the best thing for you, whether you actually consent to it, or not.
My partner was there and I was still with it, but she literally told me as she was doing it! I would have consented if she’d asked, but I would have asked her to wait a second so I could breathe in and out and relax my muscles. It was specifically not consenting me that I’m angry about.
This is something that really freaks me out, tbh: in any other circumstances, someone putting their WHOLE HAND UP MY VAGINA when I didn’t want them to would be, uh, not a NBD situation. But because there’s a baby involved and they’re a medical professional suddenly it’s a tricky gray area.
… and women not being able to consent /not consent during childbirth leads to the scandal of symphysiotomies in Ireland.
My information about the unethical things doctors can and will do when a woman is in labor comes from years of working with a professional law firm, writing about such cases. There have been entire hospitals who fall prey to this kind of culture, and often women are unaware that such a culture exists until after the fact. I’m not suggesting that your average person knows better than a medical professional – I am suggesting that there are quite a lot of medical professionals who are heavily influenced, either by their peers or by the corporation that owns the hospital, to make medical decisions in the name of efficiency or cost-effectiveness rather than in the best interests of the patient.
I’m not willing to write off an unnecessary C-section that a doctor performs because he can’t be bothered waiting for a birth to proceed along a perfectly healthy course as “shit happens.” I’m also not an anti-vaxxer, and I never said anything like “a medical professional shouldn’t be allowed to tell me what to do.” I AM saying that medical professionals frequently, particularly in cases of childbirth, will act in accordance with what is most convenient for them and for the hospital, rather than what is least damaging to me, my person, and my baby.
there are quite a lot of medical professionals who are heavily influenced, either by their peers or by the corporation that owns the hospital, to make medical decisions in the name of efficiency or cost-effectiveness rather than in the best interests of the patient.
That’s our extremely shitty healthcare system at work. Don’t hate the player; hate the game. The incentives are all in the wrong places. “Best interests” according to whom, after all?
“I’m not willing to write off an unnecessary C-section that a doctor performs because he can’t be bothered waiting for a birth to proceed along a perfectly healthy course as “shit happens.” “
I get that. You sue the pants off them if you have grounds. You leave bad yelp reviews. You tell everyone you know to avoid that doctor or that facility. But that the end of the day, whether you are a stainless-steel science lover or a patchouli-reeking earth mother, you have to stop letting things in the past have power over you. There is no going back. So either you move on or (metaphorically) bleed forever. That’s what I mean by “shit happens.”
I don’t hate the player. But I’m not going to trust him to make the right decision when he’s playing a game that incentivizes him to do otherwise.
You’re also projecting quite a lot. I am not discussing something that has happened “in the past.” I am discussing something that is an active and continual problem in our health care system NOW. So if I am going to have a baby NOW, I am going to look at the problems that exist NOW and do my best to avoid those problems.
You’re acting like we should all just roll the dice and take what comes, and that is ridiculous. We have the ability to assess risk factors and make informed choices, and that is all I am advocating. Your precious “shit happens” philosophy is fine and dandy if we’re talking about fretting over whether parking is available at the restaurant. It’s not fine when we’re talking about my health or my children’s health. You try to make the best choices using the information you have available. If that doesn’t work, then we can practice letting it go. Letting go in advance is absurd. “Go ahead, walk across the street without looking! If someone hits you, you can sue them!” No. Fuck that. I’m looking first.
I feel like you and I are talking past each other, and I apologize if I am coming off unclear.
I do advocate for making informed choices, whatever they may be. But no matter what choice a person makes, there is always the potential for bad decisions and tragedy. that’s when you need to let go. No way I would ever go into this thing blindly hoping for the best! 🙂
While I appreciate that you have this experience, you also have a bit of negative confirmation bias. You saw the worst of the worst because people didn’t come to you and try to sue when their experience was positive.
I have it the other way because my dad was an OBGYN and I worked with him in his office (and at the hospital when the patient asked for me) for many years. So I have seen the best there is to offer. He would induce labor if a patient asked and it would not harm the baby, but never did to make his vacation plans (or to come to any of my piano recitals, damn it!). And I don’t think the two hospitals he worked at had a culture like the ones you speak of. But there certainly were doctors who sucked and he didn’t like. Ones who would be quicker on the epi and would ‘take an extra stitch’ if the husband asked for it. Something my dad thought was disgusting and when asked often tried to embarrass the man asking. But overall I saw overwhelmingly happy women and their partners delivering babies that my dad helped bring into the world. Always a privilege for me to be a part of. No one was taking shortcuts or ignoring what these women wanted. And the few times I can think of that the nurse might have been slow to respond to what our patient would want, I was there to get what they needed if I could so even then, all was well and the women were happy.
I’m just saying you and I each have a bias and we should remember that when commenting. It’s nice to have all the experience and knowledge, but it’s important to think about where it came from. I can admit that I saw all the good stuff and so I have a real Pollyanna view of the whole ‘having a baby at a hospital’ experience. I am absolutely looking on the bright side too much. But you saw the absolute worst, by your own admission. So you are looking on the worst side. I just think that’s something to think about.
Shopping around is not really an option for very many people outside of the largest cities. Once you factor in insurance requirements, you may only have one or two hospitals to pick from, both of which might have the same shitty situations. And a birthplan doesn’t mean anything. If the doctor doesn’t feel like following it, he simply doesn’t.
When my mom was giving birth to me (sloooooooowly) she stayed at the hospital overnight, and at one point she noticed the resident preparing to inject something into her IV.
“Excuse me,” she said, “what is that?”
“Oh, just something to get things moving!”
Fortunately my mom is a lawyer and felt up to putting the “OH HELL NO” beatdown on that guy, and she gave birth to me on her own schedule, without being injected with anything against her will. But had she not woken up, or had she not felt okay with telling him to fuck off- it could have been different.
this is really great! i would love to read more stories like your mom’s, rather than the unfortunate ones above!
Here: What if something goes right? http://rixarixa.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-if-some…
AAAAAAAAA
AAAAAA
AAAA
Yes, it’s easier to believe in some massive conspiracy, than just be an informed patient
Oh no. Here comes the circumcision and doctors are evil brigade
I understand wanting to give birth at home. In many circumstances it actually is associated with better outcomes. (As usual my main base of knowledge is a century out of date–hospital births were significantly more dangerous than home births then because of infection + no antibiotics–but it seems to be true still: eg http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27421…. But home birth =/= this “all by my self!” little red hen kind of terror going on here! The better outcomes involve trained assistance!
This is not about homebirth, which with trained midwives (CPM or CNM in the US) has good outcomes. This is about freebirthing or unassisted birthing, which has no trained attendants. Midwives are trained to recognize situations that could become dangerous, and transfer women to medical care as needed.
Not true not true not true. Home birth in the US has far worse outcomes for low and especially high risk women cause those idiot hippy wives won’t risk out a premip with GD, breech twins. Nope.
Whatever fraction of this comes from hospital or doctor phobia and not unacceptable hippie aesthetics, I actually understand completely and feel a lot of sympathy for. Doctors/hospitals are one of those awful things where the more insider details you know about how they work and how they run and how they think, the scarier it is. It’s like cops — actually really a lot like cops. I don’t know if you’ve ever had one of those horrible horrible doctor interactions where you talk and they can’t hear you, and either you start crying and they completely disengage in contempt or you don’t start crying and they completely disengage in disbelief that your problem is real, but if you have, or if you can imagine it: imagine that happening when you are completely and humiliatingly physically incapacitated and getting up and walking out is literally impossible, you are completely at the mercy of these awful, awful strangers with the absolute power of life and death over you. oh I am bothering myself just describing it, thank god I’m not having children.
Of course the alternative isn’t better and the worst case scenario in both home and hospital is death. & I am completely anti-unassisted-birth for anyone I desire to live and prosper. but I completely understand the urge.
Plus a lot of hospital practice is not NEARLY as evidence-based as you’d think it ought to be. I gave birth two weeks ago (typing ine-handed) and transferred from one hospital to another during my ante-natal care because we moved house. Hospital the first had me down as low-risk midwife-led care because I had no high-risk factors. Hospital the second put me under consultant-led care and wanted to induce me at 40 weeks because it’s an IVF pregnancy, and I COULD NOT get them to give evidence for why they wanted to induce that wasn’t shared by the hospital 40 miles away.
In the end, I was induced at 40+6 cos my waters broke, and ended up having a forceps delivery. I was happy with all the care I got in hospital, and yay medical science. But hospital policy and pathways are often not quite as clear cut evidence-based as you’d think.
Home birth in a jurisdiction that has licensed and properly-trained midwives is actually quite safe. Like, in Ontario, midwives are all fully-certified (with a midwivery degree), and there’s at least two midwives in attendance on home births.
Like, you should still be within transfer distance of a hospital in case things go wrong, but, for low-risk women, home births can be a really positive experience. (Major benefit — you don’t have to worry about getting to the hospital).
But … if I was in a place where midwives weren’t properly trained, I would never do a home birth. And would never ever ever do a voluntarily unassisted birth.
A recent UK survey found that hospital births had a 0.5% risk of an adverse outcome, and a home birth had a 0.9% risk for a first-time mother, but that for women who had had a safe previous labour with no complications, a planned home birth was safer. (Bear in mind that a planned home birth in the UK will be attended by one or two qualified midwifed, it’s not free birthing or anything.)
I mean, it might be “obvious” that giving birth in hospital would be safer, but medical science is all about getting ah from what seems “obvious” and actually looking at the evidence!
I have really appreciated your contributions to this thread, and I’d like to congratulate you on your new baby! Congratulations!
Aw, thank you! It is all very fresh in my mind at the moment!
Also, wouldn’t you have to clean it up? Or well, someone would have to clean it up. I don’t want blood and new baby goop all over my floor.
Go ahead and birth on the back deck – the racoons will take care of cleanup. It’ll bring your baby closer to nature!
Nah, your sister will come over and clean up the whole house, the baby-excreting area of which will l not be perceptibly ickier than your bathroom due to the fact that your baby’s father hasn’t cleaned the bathroom since your 3rd trimester made it impossilbe for you to reach the floor. as long as your mama had the foresight to provide you with that sister, you’re set.
I adopted my child because my sister, who had her baby at home, and is a CNM-FNP, and was attended by same, told me what an episiotomy is. Blleaaargh.
I’m not having babies with anyone who thinks I have to be the one to clean the bathroom floor all the time
Over here, the midwives will tell you what protective stuff to get (puppy training pads, it turns out) and then clear up and dispose of any hazardous waste.
Yes! I’ve been reading through these comments thinking, “Am I the only person who really didn’t want a home birth because of the mess?” I mean, I’ve done it both hospital ways — OB/meds and midwife/no meds — and the second was way better, but probably not just because of the midwife/no meds, but because of things like the baby’s presentation, knowing what the fuck I was doing that time, etc. But still — massive amounts of mess everywhere, and I didn’t poop or hemorrhage, so.
I’ve had three homebirths; the midwives clean up for you, change the sheets, and do laundry while you take a shower afterwards.
A woman I know of cooked dinner for her midwife after her home birth. I would have thought that having a baby was a really good excuse to get takeaway.
We were going to do a homebirth, but we knew the hospital was a possibility so we had our bag packed. The midwife called it at a certain point – too many hours since my gf’s water breaking and active labour hadn’t begun, so we had to go to the hospital to be induced. She said she’d meet us there in two hours, so we had time to quadruple check the bag, have something to eat (I also had a stiff drink) before calling a cab.
So yeah, a home birth in a city where hospitals are quick taxi rides, with a professional midwife and socialized health care, is a totally feasible thing to be your plan A. Your midwife will make sure you’re ready for hospital as plan B.
Hey, snap! This is exactly what happened to me two weeks ago!
Didn’t pack nearly enough nappies.
There is SO MUCH cat hair in my house. I can’t imagine giving birth there!
The second I’m more than 5 months pregnant, I would like to move into the hospital. I can totally sleep in the waiting room, and I’m sure I can make myself useful by doing some light sweeping or something. I understand how places can give you the creeps and you don’t want to be there, but to me a hospital is not one of those places. Please take care of me oh medical ones. 😉
I briefly toyed with the idea of doing a homebirth (with a qualified midwife!) for my last birth. I’d had three uncomplicated vaginal deliveries, I live less than ten minutes away from two major medical centers and a very good children’s hospital, and I like being home quite a bit. The thing that actually really decided against it for me was the clean up. A lot of blood and bodily fluids are involved in a birth. It looks a bit like a murder scene. I did not relish the idea of having a stain on my floor that I could point to and tell guests, “That where Baby F was born!” (I for completely real had a Bradley birth coach in my first pregnancy who had a stain on her basement rug where one of her kids was born. No thank you.)
Does the midwife do the cleanup? Is it the father’s penance for knocking you up? Do you hire a crime-scene clean-up crew? This has always been a mystery to me.
Dear god why did I read this
the impression I get here is that unassisted childbirth is for women who think that going off to starve and hallucinate in an abandoned schoolbus in the wilds of Alaska after trying and failing to catch rabbits with your teeth is for weaklings. like, women who read Into the Wild and thought to themselves “TOO MUCH SOUND PLANNING, TOO LITTLE LEFT TO CHANCE!” I would not do it myself but I respect it. cause it’s dumb.
then again I was brought into the world by the sterile scalpel-wielding hands of a doctor who asked my mom could we schedule the section for a Friday so he could have his uninterrupted long weekend and she said sure, so I am predisposed to favor modern convenience and technology. you know, like a weak excuse for a woman who finds it agreeable to keep as many cups of her blood inside her body as possible.
#6: These people are going to die.
Literally every WORD of this is terrifying, this is something you need to go to the ER about way sooner than ten days after delivery, but it is also terrifying to think that some percentage of the women asking the horrifying questions and/or receiving the terrible advice I have highlighted in this post have made the decision to give birth unassisted because they cannot afford to go to the hospital, they cannot afford the couple grand it will cost for a homebirth midwife (often out-of-pocket), this is them making what seems like the only possible decision for their families.
I remember seeing something terrifying on a community for Americans who had moved/were thinking of moving to the UK, and Brits who were doing the opposite. An American woman who had recently moved to the UK was posting for advice on what medical options were available to her, as she had really bad asthma and couldn’t breathe. “Go to the nearest GP surgery! You can register, and it’ll be free.” “Well, I don’t think I can walk there without being unable to breathe.” “CALL AN AMBULANCE.” “I can’t afford an ambulance. Normally my mother just posts inhalers to me from the US.” People kindly and firmly explained to her that ambulances (and, indeed, the vast majority of medical care) were free, and that she needed to call one immediately. I find that mindset – not seeking treatment because you’re scared of the price – so scary.
How does paying huge amounts to give birth even work? I mean, you also have to pay for contraception and abortion in the US, and there are other barriers in place in some areas, so people are going to get pregnant, sometimes not when planned (so they might not have the money for the birth), and end up going through with the pregnancy. Once people are pregnant, doesn’t the state have a responsibility to help them have the baby safely, rather than pay huge amounts of money to do so? It really seems to privilege the rich. (Yes, this is a hugely naive comment. I come from the land of the NHS, the idea of paying for healthcare is alien and scary.)
Nah, you’re just not supposed to have sex. Can’t afford the baby, guess you can’t afford the sex.
But I also get the impression that there’s a caveat of “unless a man really, really wants it”. Am I right about that?
Absolutely. If the man really, really wants it, then it is your duty as a patriotic woman to spread ’em and then contend with the shaming later.
Haaaaah, I have a job and get paid money and have health insurance and I have still seriously considered trying my luck with public transit or hitchhiking or something instead of calling an ambulance while actively dying due to a severe allergy. I once took a maybe 5-block ambulance ride and paid a little over $950 for the pleasure — they hardly even did anything, I totally would have been fine in a cab! Probably!
This was actually supposed to be a flippant funny comment about American hypocrisy regarding women and motherhood, but clearly it didn’t really work out. Healthcare here is really terrifying, and I have actual nightmares about getting hit by a car or something and waking up in an MRI tube and getting stuck with a giant bill for a procedure I couldn’t consent to.
Ambulances are expensive and terrifying. I am sorry you had to deal with that.
I wasn’t actively dying at the time, but I did drive myself to the ER once after I dislocated my jaw. They had valet parking and I was all “UNH UNH GRUNT” and thrusting the keys at the guy. They filled me so full of muscle relaxants to get the thing back in place that I couldn’t drive myself home. And I had “good” insurance!
I have a job and get paid money and have health insurance, which I use to cover my husband as well, who temporarily does not have a job or get paid money, and I discovered yesterday that our insurance costs for next year are going up 100%, and that’s for the cheapest plan we’re being offered. So next year I will have the terrible insurance I hate having now but with the added privilege of paying twice as much for it. (I do however have the option to get vision coverage this year so I came home and told my husband to get ready for new glasses, as I am going to force him to get the most expensive ones covered.)
The point of this was that of the three plans we were offered, there was the terrible one I have, which I’m calling The Ayn Rand Plan (due to language explaining that by not covering anything, the plan encouraged consumers to make wiser medical decisions and shop around for treatment), a middle option that was ooookaaaaay but not much better, and then a Fancy Option that included, among other things, no deductible, tiny copays, and FREE AMBULANCES. I fantasized for a little bit about the next time I have an anaphylactic reaction to All Food being able to snap my fingers and gurgle, “Hither, Ambulance Boy.” Unfortunately, that plan would have cost a significant percentage of our income.
Same in the Pinky household.
Affordable Care Act, my left asscheek.
The ACA mandated my friend get coverage, which she was able to afford for less than 6 months and then had to drop. If she’d started paying in the fall instead of spring, she’d at least have been covered when it was useful to her.
I don’t know why Dems thought the ACA would somehow be easier to pass than a single-payer system like EVERY OTHER REASONABLE NATION ON THE PLANET AND ALSO PROBABLY OTHER PLANETS OUT THERE IN SPACE HAS because it wasn’t and it has the additional features of being flaccid garbage. So the RealDoll Decepticons we call Congress get to shit all over the liberal idealists who wanted it for both “being scary commie socialists who want handouts” AND for the fact that because they’re around fucking shit up, it also SUCKS just as much as it always has.
“I don’t know why Dems thought the ACA would somehow be easier to pass than a single-payer system”
Because it was. And it has made our health care system significantly better. Single-payer (or, in less wonky terms, Medicare for All) would of course be even better still, but it was not going to happen. The ACA itself came within a whisker of not passing; Medicare for All was a non-starter with Congress from the beginning.
I think the problem was they couldn’t get enough democrats to vote for single payer. Because no republicans voted for the ACA at all, so they just had to make it good enough to get the democrats to vote for it. I’m guessing if they could have passed single payer, they would have. Sigh. Sometimes the democrats are really disappointing, especially the ones who are democrats in name only (DINOS)
This conversation happens in my house at least once a week.
We’ve done the numbers and turns out, the greatest healthcare system in the world is one functionally equivalent to Pakistan’s for anyone with under six figures in savings. You’re welcome.
You can still get medical treatment in the US even if you have no money. You can even get an ambulance! Even without insurance! Sure, you’ll get billed later, but you can work that out and they can’t make you pay if you have no money. This will involve talking to people and filling out forms and much headache, but it’s better than sitting at home dying because you are afraid of getting a bill. A lot of people here simply don’t understand our own system, because there’s no concerted effort to explain it to everyone, you’re just sort of left on your own to find out. Also, this is a huge, spread-out country, with a lot of isolated communities, and the ridiculous individualistic “bootstrap” theory that reigns over life here means asking for help is something people don’t like to do.
Note: this is far from an ideal system (in fact it sucks, even with “Obamacare”), but the idea people have that Americans just can’t get medical care unless they can pay cash up front is wrong.
I’m not an American, so I could be missing something, but I thought that was mostly if you were injured or dying? Like, you could definitely get a bullet wound treated, but it would be much harder to get chemotherapy without money or insurance?
Yep, that’s right. Hospitals can’t turn you away by law for inability to pay, but doctors and hospital staff (inside and outside of the ER) can and do make all kinds of small decisions to effectively stop people who can’t pay from getting anything done.
The relevant legislation is EMTALA – the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. So being in active labor is specifically one of those things that they have to let you in for.
Under EMTALA, hospitals are only required to provide emergency care (which includes labor and delivery). They’re not required to provide any non-emergency care, which would include chemotherapy and other types of cancer treatment.
Basically, they just have to stabilize you in an emergency– otherwise (even if you have, say, cancer) you’re on your own.
I read a clinical treatment manual once that talked about how this impacted mental health patients terribly, because a lot of the time people who are having brain problems but don’t have resources are well aware that they won’t get put in a treatment queue unless their symptoms have escalated all the way to SHIT IS GETTING REAL HERE, and it can push a lot of people who might otherwise be able to hold it together into escalation.
Yes, I was in fact mostly talking about emergency treatment, but there are also systems in place to help those with no money for even long-term care. Unfortunately several factors make it difficult to get healthcare to everyone who needs it when they need it (for one thing, our country is HUGE–the UK is about the size of Florida; for another, there are a lot of isolated rural communities, and those are just physical factors that don’t touch on the politics). As I said before, this system is not ideal. But when it comes to *emergencies* like your water is breaking or you are bleeding and it won’t stop (as happened to me, and I had no insurance, and yes I still owe money, but I’m ALIVE), you need to get to the hospital, money be damned.
I’m in Canada, a country which is bigger than the US and which certainly has its share of isolated rural communities. There are logistical challenges related to getting healthcare to people under these circumstances, but I don’t see how that has any real bearing on how that healthcare should be paid for.
It’s good to know that people can get emergency care in the US, and certainly encouraging people to take advantage of that when necessary is good, but it seems like that really only addresses a very small part of the problem.
On the other hand if you have some money they can take it all.
And either way they can give you a court summons when you fail to pay the bill they know you can’t pay then throw you in jail if you don’t show up.
Amuricah!
I mean… in a way, yes, but “they can’t make you pay if you have no money” is an oversimplification that ignores the fact that they can absolutely make you pay the small amount of money you do have, then put you on a “payment plan” that means you will have colossal debt hanging over your head, torpedoing your credit score and preventing you from paying for other things you need, for years and years.
Those of us who are currently dealing with medical collections: rep! I am, god knows.
I used to work with mothers in the WIC clinic, and most of them were on payment plans for their hospital births, and anticipated being on them for life. If you know where the income thresholds are for WIC, you understand that $50 a month for life is a HELL of a bill to keep up with.
When your choice is between decades or a lifetime of indigence and letting that weird shooting pain go untreated, well, maybe the pain might go away on its own.
Sure, you can still get medical care in some circumstances (if it’s an emergency), even if you don’t have any insurance or ready cash. But you can still be bankrupted afterwards, which is what many people are afraid of.
It’s at the hospital’s/ doctor’s office’s discretion if they write off any of your bill or not. In many cases, even if you’re broke, they’ll hound you for payment or send your bill to a collection agency.
So, I have health insurance. Pretty good health insurance, actually. Just had a baby three months ago. Because I have insurance, I was able to call an OB/GYN and get an appointment for three weeks later, when I would be about six weeks along. On my first visit, I sat down with their insurance lady, gave her all my information, and she looked at it and informed me that I had to pay my doctor a $300 deposit. I paid that in two payments, and then I didn’t pay anything at the rest of the doctor’s visits. I had a few scares and went into Labor and Delivery a few times, where I have a $200 copay, but I was never asked to pay anything at the time and was instead billed afterwards. Went into labor, everything went swimmingly, had the baby, and the hospital billed my insurance for about $12,000. After my insurance paid, I am responsible for about $1,400 of that. Not terribly bad, I set up a payment plan with my hospital and will pay that off over the next year.
If I hadn’t had insurance, things would have gone very differently. I would have had to file for Medicaid (state provided insurance) and either pay out of pocket for doctor’s visits until I was approved and got my Medicaid card, or just not gone to the doctor. Once I got the Medicaid card, I would have to find a doctor willing to accept Medicaid, and then made an appointment with them, most likely waiting at least six weeks to see them. The rest of the pregnancy would be filling out lots of paperwork, working to maximize benefits (trying to get doctor to prescribe prenatal vitamins so Medicaid would cover them, etc).
Also, Medicaid has an income limit, so if you are pregnant and without health insurance but make too much, you’re screwed. For a family of 2 (so, new parents), that limit is $30,840 annually (or about £19,300). Make above that and you’re out on your ass for the entire cost.
I was born in New Zealand to American parents. My mom, though there on a long-term visitor visa (my Dad had taken a contract with the Bank of New Zealand) was covered. She was offered two choices; prenatal and postnatal care and delivery for free, or pay an extra $50 NZD and be able to pick her doctor. I am so jealous.
This is some scary stuff. I get that not everyone chewing their placenta is doing so because of money, but I think beyond the general horrified reaction to what these women are writing, I wonder what I (we) can do as an individual people/persons to challenge the insanely high costs of giving birth at a hospital or with a midwife?
After my blood pressure dropped a little in shock and horror from reading this, that was my first thought. I’m pretty sure that this woo would not have proliferated quite so…robustly if decent medical care were accessible to everyone. It’s also the reason why I’m trying to reproduce while living in Canada, because all we had to pay for the entire experience of bringing my son into the world was $150 for circumcision and $200 or so (after extended medical insurance) to upgrade my hospital room to a private one, both of which were optional.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as I’m right about ready to get pregnant. I am living in Germany, married to a German, and have German insurance…which means the whole ordeal is not going to put us into massive debt. And yet. I still for some crazy reason (see: being close to my family) want to give birth in the US. Somehow childbirth also seems to me like an experience that I would prefer to have happening in my native language. Oh, and you know, with trained medical professionals.
Apparently one Cold War Era method of catching spies was to have one cover identity seduce their cover identity, knock em up, stick around for nine months, and wait for them to swear in their native language during childbirth. Apparently this unique experience would invariably bring out the mother tongue. I have no idea whether any part of this is true but twas on t’telly.
I hadn’t heard that but I am prepared and willing to believe it.
my mother tongue is inarticulate screaming then.
Maybe you’re a denizen of the Dread Deeps.
Probably cheaper to bring your whole family to Germany for the birth. I’m sure if you’re diligent you can search out some English-speaking medical professionals to attend you, too!
Yeah, I suspect you’re right. I’ve been casually asking my mother if she’d be willing to come over for six months, and at least in theory, she seems on board. I think if I really wanted an English speaking doctor or midwife, I could find one–you’re right. In that regard, Germany was a good choice for people who want/need/choose to learn English as a second language.
Medicaid has a lot of extra provisions for pregnant women and deliveries at higher incomes than the normal levels, so even in non-expansion states, women should check to see if they’re eligible for pregnancy-related services even if they weren’t eligible for full Medicaid before the pregnancy.
Yes that is sure true! here in PA, the highest income limits are for pregnant women; not only that, but the unborn child counts as a household member, pushing you into a higher bracket. And, not only THAT, but Medical Assistance can be provided retroactively to cover hospital bills AND you can get it for pregnancy even if you are not a citizen AND the hospital can actually apply for you directly to the welfare office!
Never don’t go to the hospital if you think something is wrong!
At least these women are trying to get their kids birth certificates. I read in an article (probably one that you guys linked) about fundamentalist Christians that some of them destroy their daughters’ birth certificates in order to limit their options. (Basically, the daughter doesn’t have a BC, so she can’t go to college or get the ID she would need to drive or get a job)
This is terrifying.
Link, please. Or more specific search terms. I have young relatives to protect, I am afraid.
This is the article (thanks, Instapaper!). It’s only a passing mention in this piece though. http://prospect.org/article/homeschool-apostates
Also, I went to Homeschooler’s Anonymous, which is a site mentioned in that piece and found a few articles when I did a search for “birth certificate” http://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com/?s=%2…
JFC, that is scary as hell 🙁
I don’t understand the point of burning a piece of paper. Birth certificates are issued by county or state Vital Records offices. As long as you’re recorded (they did get recorded, riiiight!?!!? Please tell me they did!) they can always have a new copy of their birth certificate issued. Once she’s old enough, she can get hers herself (I hope!)
I MENTALLY TOLD MYSELF NOT TO BLEED
this is how I skip periods btw, saw it from a midwife on Pinterest
fittingly, I read your name as “toomanycycles”
Maybe she’s a distant relative of Jesse Ventura? (Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7E0HyyNpAs )
Well that was horrifying. Dear anyone who believes thinking happy thoughts (or eating placenta) will cure your ills/massive bleeding, please don’t have children.
Also “holy shit, you have pre-eclampsia! Get to a hospital!” is a thing one can say out loud while reading. And then you get more horrified as you go.
It’s the only thing we’ve all learned from Downton Abbey. FFS, crazy lady, do you want to die like poor Lady Sybill? DO YOU??
First (or at least happiest) things first – awesome tag. Should be way more articles with it.
And then…. Nicole, that cannot possibly be for real, right? RIGHT?! The one who wanted to bite her cord because, apparently, instinct?!? And the one whom god gave a plan?!?!?!?!?!? I’m sorry but… some people really really shouldn’t procreate. Boldly going where no other Darwin Award winner has ever gone before…
But the poor kids, who will grow up surrounded by… well, by this?! And I thought it couldn’t get much more idiotic (in a horrifyingly selfish and self-righteous way) than idiots who feed their cats vegan food…
I remember having a moment of confusion on that forum before realizing that “FTM” = “First Time Mom” in their world.
Between this, having a grotesque birth nightmare the other night and watching The Babadook, those brief nudges towards broodiness have evaporated REAL quick.
IA totally about The Babadook, but last year I watched Rosemary’s Baby and read We Need to Talk About Kevin within the same week, so I had motherhood nightmares for more or less forever.
WICCANING CERTIFICATE
I had to google. You can get one for a reasonable (?) $9!
yah what the hell is that??
I DIDN’T KNOW THAT WAS A VERB
I Wiccan
You Wiccan
He/She/It Wiccans
(Yes) Wiccan?
I’m taking what they’re giving ’cause I’m Wiccanin’ for a livin’
“Here, I have provided my child’s wiccaning certificate!”
“Ah, yes, I see, everything is in order, your child is fully bewiccaned. Carry on.”
On behalf of all Pagan women everywhere, I would like to apologize for that woman’s attitude. (And for the term “wiccaning,” really.)
This cements it, I am actually A Man, you can put me up the wall with the rest when the time comes so long as no-one ever asks me about children of my own ever
I really don’t want to mock these women, I think a great majority are literally scared of doctors and hospitals. But, honestly, when you’re in charge of another person’s life GET YOUR SELF SOME MEDICAL ASSISTANCE.
This is why we need more Planned Parenthood in the US (ETA: as long as politicians are intent on holding health care hostage from those who can’t afford any other options), no more “Pregnancy Centers,” and no more textbooks that leave out sections regarding birth control and sex ed.
[spins self into a tornado of eye-rolling]
Man, I just don’t agree, these are women who demonstrably wield the power of the internet at their fingertips. We’re only here, having this discussion, because they have the access and wherewithal to get online and do research. It’s not like anybody hits “I’m Feelin’ Lucky!” and ends up on an unassisted childbirth page. The research they had to conduct getting to this forum is research that could have been spent looking up “how does babby form” and like, I don’t know, “death – what causes it?” It’s one thing to talk about ACCESS, and get righteously angry that women are in this shitty situation, but damn, y’all have the same internet and free time the rest of us do, apparently, so learn a little about how it all works.
I’m just so glad no one mentioned lotus birth.
i don’t think that would be worse, no-one dies with a lotus birth and it might have the added bonus of deterring visitors for the first week, depending on your inlaws.
*googles*
*immediately regrets googling*
I’m afraid to google because I’m at work and I don’t need IT to give me a stern talking to like they did my coworker the one time she was watching the baby panda cam for too long so uh…can someone give a tl;dr?
Here, this is copied and pasted from wikipedia (and it is ALL wikipedia has to say on the subject)
Lotus birth is the practice of leaving the umbilical cord uncut after childbirth so that the baby is left attached to the placenta until the cord naturally separates at the umbilicus, usually a few days after birth.[1] Lotus birth is also known as umbilical nonseverance.[2][3] Lotus births are rare in Western culture.[4]
There is no evidence that there are any benefits for the health of the baby with lotus birth. A spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has stated, “If left for a period of time after the birth, there is a risk of infection in the placenta which can consequently spread to the baby. The placenta is particularly prone to infection as it contains blood. At the post-delivery stage, it has no circulation and is essentially dead tissue,” and the RCOG strongly recommends that any baby that undergoes lotus birthing be monitored closely for infection
*immediately regrets reading*
Thank you for looking that up for me!
I feel like my general reaction to everything in this post has just been “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah”
Glad to know there’s a way to seamlessly transition into one of those weird moms who keeps their kids on a leash, for free too
Wow, I came ready to mock and now I’m just really really sad. I have zero problems with home birth, though I wouldn’t choose it for myself (in the magical world where my health problems go away & I can have children), but it just breaks my heart that there are women who choose to ignore millenia of women dying in childbirth for financial or ideological reasons. Look, upright posture doomed us to bring forth children in sorrow. WE ARE AWARE OF THIS, AND FIGURING OUT WAYS TO HELP IS ONE OF THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.
Nicole, I think you did a really good job of making this about awareness rather than snark. Happy birthing, lady!
Yeah, I’m still thinking about that conversation from the other day on Twitter! My original feeling was genuine confusion mixed with skepticism and some snark, and I’m working on changing my thinking. The dangerous statements are still dangerous, but I should lay off folks who make non-harmful choices I would not make (like burning the cord in half?). I know so little about the birthing process that I don’t know what’s dangerous and what’s not, so obviously I need to listen and learn.
Right. I definitely get the urge to snark, and I do think there’s a difference between “mocking practices you think are goofy” and “using humor to deflect one’s primal horror”? It can get mixed up, though.
(Should clarify that trans folks can absolutely have children, of course, and participate in unassisted birthing forums! That’s not why I was taken aback. The context of the rest of the sentence was just really unrelated and boggling for a few minutes.)
Wiccaning???????
“I would think you wouldn’t feel very good or seem normal if you are losing too much [blood].”
Can’t argue with that, that’s sound logic.
I recently hemorrhaged 3 pints of blood and I felt fine, not a whit lightheaded.
yup, I have very low blood pressure and it kind of almost makes you feel happy. Loopy, even. They might not notice the difference if they’re generally loopy people.
Donating blood makes me want to just go lie down in a corner while nobody talks to me. But in a happy way.
You know how opiates are amazing? Your brain releases a flood of opiates when you loose a lot of blood, probably to help you crawl into a ditch and lie very still until the lion leaves. Soooooo…
(Apparently being attacked by a large cat is the ultimate high. I was reading interviews with people who had survived maulings, and they all were like “I was strangely calm and felt very little pain”.)
“And then I was looking up at the leaves and it was this amazing, consciousness-raising experience. I totally felt like I was one with the universe. Then I realized that I was just high from blood loss.”
“until i pushed out her head and no body followed”
YOU GAVE BIRTH TO A SEVERED HEAD???
that was initially what i thought too and I wondered if i had tripped into a time vortex and that these were more scary stories from halloween
That is EXACTLY how I first read it.
That is EXACTLY what I thought when I read that except i was thinking just a head without a body. Not severed, just no body at all. (Which, actually, is probably a birth defect that has happened but I will not google.)
I was picturing something alone the lines of a ball-return at a bowling alley.
Oh god, all of these people need to marathon Call the Midwife on Netflix with their eyeballs propped open, A Clockwork Orange style.
Or Downton when Lady Sybil has her kid (YOU HEAR ME, #2? JESUS CHRIST).
i wouldn’t be surprised if one of these posts was from a relative of mine who had a homebirth, then decided not to name the baby until her name “revealed itself.” so the kid didn’t have a name for MONTHS
You can’t not tell us what name finally revealed itself!
Anyone else getting so many maternity ads when clicking links on this page on “reply” to posts?
YES! “childbirth, while a natural process, can also be a supremely difficult one. Women die. Babies die. They don’t have to. I’d rather deal with an asshole doctor than die.”
Can we cut and paste this into every thread on that forum? The attitude that natural is better than an uncomfortable/ scary medical intervention is so pervasive at both extremes of the hippie/ fundamentalist spectrum.
We went to midwives with both our children, and both were delivered in hospital. There were complications that required an OB for our daughter, and our son ended up being a c-section birth. All this is to say, midwives don’t necessarily mean a woo-filled, “traditional” experience or whatever. They worked closely with our family doctor and hospital staff, as a team, and provided longer and more personal care before and after birth. Appointments were an hour long (as opposed to the 15 the doctor can give), there was intensive post-partum care, and unlike a doctor, the midwife was able to be present the whole labour. Midwives, imo, can play a very important role in health care and aren’t solely in the realm of the anti-vaxer types.
That’s why you can’t trust midwives! They are right in league with the needle people!
Shout-out to amazing midwives. I went to a birth center staffed entirely by CNMs who worked closely with the hospital next door. They screen for high-risk conditions — heck, when I had a minor complication during labor that meant a 10% chance of something going wrong, they transferred me to the hospital. Everything turned out fine, but it was 100% the correct thing to do.
There are a million little things I wish traditional OBs/hospitals would take from the midwife handbook … peace and quiet, free movement during labor, those nice long prenatal appointments. You’d never convince all the freebirthing hippies to actually get some damn medical care, but maybe you could tamp down the fear enough that fewer would be swayed to the DIY way.
The vast majority of pregnancy and birth care in the UK is midwife-led. You only get put under a consultant if you’re judged high-risk. It’s weird to me if people think midwives are some crazy hippy shit!
It’s because in the US there are Certified Nurse Midwives, who have medical training, and lay midwives that have no medical training other than watching some babies being born. There’s no regulation of the lay midwives, and no formal certification.
This is 1000% true, props to midwives. I never plan to give birth, but I’ve been going to a CNM for my gyno visits for the past decade and get amazing care from her. I highly recommend CNMs for all of your Annual State of the Vagina Address needs.
Medically trained midwives working with the medical community is one thing. Lay midwives are no better than an unassisted birth; there’s just an extra set of eyes.
Midwives are really mainstream in the UK; I find the idea that they’re just for hippie types really strange.
Also, I dunno guys, in a Distant Future when I finally decide I’m ready to be a mother I want all of the medical things, like the biggest team of doctors and the most artificial white pristine sterile hospital room and the meanest nurse telling me to push because I probably wouldn’t try very hard if she was too nice, and every procedure and machine, the best ones, The Machine That Goes Ping, just a childbirth illustrated in shades of white and surgical steel silver
Co-signed. I am leagues and leagues away from being ready for a baby, but when I am, my childbirth experience will be in a hospital with the very best drugs.
Also the Machine that Goes Ping. Everyone needs a Ping Machine.
I’m gonna need seven of those Machines That Go Ping because clearly that’s how you know how well things are going.
I gave birth in an OR in the presence of 7 MDs, 2 nurses and my husband. It was artificial and white and pristine and sterile and there wasn’t even any pushing, just high-quality drugs, because it was a C-section. And there were awesome Machines That Went Ping. It was quite the party.
I will say this for my OB – He was a goddamn birthing COACH. “You see that? That movement? YOU did that! DO IT AGAIN!”. Everyone should have someone who basically yells/cheers/encourages them through that process, imo.
I am waiting for a Vorkosigan Saga type future myself. Put the material in an artificial womb tank and send me a calendar reminder when it’s time to decant my baby.
‘the meanest nurse telling me to push because I probably wouldn’t try very hard if she was too nice’
Exactly this. The pushing! It is so terrible!
I had to ask the amazing, phlegamtic nurse from Northern England on shift when I had to *oh my god use my own muscles to tear my body open* to boss me. I told her (in a lucid moment), ‘Oh, no, don’t be nice. You have to be mean! As mean to me as you can. Or I WILL NOT DO IT.’
I needed her to yell, ‘Come ON! What are you doing? Are you PATHETIC?’ to push that baby out. She yelled, I pushed, job done. If she had said ‘There, there, just relax,’ there is no way I could have done something so horrendous. I wonder how common that is?
I had three unmedicated hospital births, and they were genuinely good experiences, as far as births go. For my last, I was induced and figured I’d do the epidural. Wow. I can’t believe I ever gave birth without one. My labor involved watching a marathon on cable (which we don’t have at home) about extreme couponers and then taking a nap. My husband ate Wendy’s for three meals in one day, which made it pretty much his best day ever. I was gushing about the anesthesiologist so poetically that it started to make my visitors uncomfortable. After my nap, I rolled over 90 degrees, suddenly felt like there was a head in my vagina, and upon examination there was. One push (or, really, once I stopped trying not to push), and she pretty much just fell out. Pretty much the best hospital birth you could have.
“My second birth was so perfect. Until I pushed out her head and no body followed” is a two-sentence horror story.
This makes me want to cry. My first hospital birth was nightmarish (I was on MediCal, the California form of Medicaid, and I was treated like a non-sentient animal) and that definitely got me looking outside of hospitals for the second child. That said, outside of hospitals was a birth center associated with a hospital, a hospital I ended up in when I had complications. It ended up being my best birth despite the most problems of any of them, because people were kind to me, and my impression after three kids is that births are best when people are kind to you. For the third child, I did consider a home birth, but I was also seeing a doctor, and when I found out my baby was breech, I gave up on that idea and ultimately had a c-section. I’m pretty hippiesh when it comes to birth, but I also want living children and a living self, and that is ultimately more important to me than having a birth experience I like. And yet, when I was scheduling my c-section for the third child, a local hippie friend was telling me that I shouldn’t give up on a “natural” birth, that I should go to another hospital that didn’t take my insurance, where an old doctor apparently delivered breech babies vaginally. And I had told her, more than once, that I would rather have a c-section with a breech baby, that it was what my doctor recommended, and that I didn’t want input on it, but this mystical perfect birth is such a thing to some folks that it was not something she was willing to drop.
There are other ways parents are judgy as kids get older, but I have to say, I was VERY happy once we passed toddlerhood and the measures of perfect parenting could no longer as easily be either/or scenarios. By kindergarten, you cannot tell who circumcised and who did not, who breastfed and who did not, who used a stroller and who used a sling, and nearly any other black and white measure of parenting. What you can tell is which kids are loved (all of them, usually) and generally, they’re going to be OK. My kids are 15, almost 13, and 9 now, and while there are new measurements (whose kid started shrieking during class? MINE!) the simple yardsticks of birth and babyhood no longer apply.
I want you to write a book on how to be a practical hippie. And then for everybody to read that book.
I was a breech baby… until I turned around JUST before they were going to schedule a C-section. After 72 hours of labour.
MY POOR MOTHER
I’m pretty sure they don’t wait that long now for a reason.
I also really like the idea that the cavewomen were super bummed when society “made them” use scissors to cut the cord instead of “from their instinct.” “No!” the cavewomen probably cried. “I enjoy to put my teeth on this fleshy baby rope!” Probably blamed Big Scissor or whoever the corporate bad guys were in the Stone Age. Also, now that I type that, I realize they probably used stones, not teeth. It’s right there in the name.
fleshy baby rooooooope omg
please send help I’m crying at my desk, I want to upvote this a million times
“Big Rock”
Which is not where Dwayne Johnson comes and gnaws through the cord.
Although that WOULD be a vast improvement on the whole experience.
So much of modern society is a flailing attempt to fill the void left by the deep-felt loss of the gnawin’ umbilicus, which all are primally drawn to. Especially the parts of society involved in inventing and producing Slim Jims
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Gotta watch out for the flint-industrial complex!
BIG SCISSOR I am losing my mind silent!laughing at my desk.
If I copied and pasted every single time the word “nope” was used on the Internet (since the beginning of the Internet) into this comment box, it would still not even approximate the level of nope I am feeling.
YES THIS. THIS EXACTLY. I CAME HERE TO CHEW GUM AND NOPE NOPE NOPE AND I AM ALL OUTTA GUM AND ALSO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE.
I am just imagining an neverending, looping army of the NOPE Octopus gif.
I’ve written about this before, but good Lord, when was it decided that the placenta was *~magic~*? If I’m hemorraghing literally the last thing I want to do is to tuck a slice of bloodied organ from my womb into my cheek. I want all the glories of modern medicine. Pump me full of chemicals! Connect me to machines! Turn me into a flippin’ android if it means I don’t bleed out.
Also, once I had a boss who tried to show me his wife’s dried placenta, and I think that was the moment I realized that I will never truly understand white people in California. (I am a white person in California.)
Was the ancient wisdom of the East telling your boss to share a spirit fetish, or his homemade jerky
Oh, that boss was a hoot. Anytime he talked about some new “Eastern” spiritual fad he was into, he would talk to my Asian co-worker, expecting her to be familiar. She was devoutly evangelical, and her family converted to Christianity 60 years ago and she never had any idea what he was talking about. But, you know, Asian women = *~spiritual~* and *~magical~*.
Yeah, as I mention in my comment above my mom is a super hippie-dippy midwife, and when I asked her if she’s into the eating the placenta thing she said “ew, gross”. I believe the exact recommendation she gives her patients is “I mean I guess eat it if you want to but I think it’s gross”.
I have a friend who is a super hippie doula and one of the things she does a lot and loves is stuff with placenta.
She will dry it and present it in something arty, or she will grind it down and encapsulate it in a bunch of tiny pills, or whatever you want! Placenta goodness for all the new mothers!
In all other aspects she seems like a wonderful person to have around for birthing, but christ on a cracker do not try to feed me placenta.
A girl I went to college with is now an anarcho-socialist polyamorous doula, which, you know, not my thing but you do you girl. But! But! I CANNOT FORGIVE HER for posting a placenta as her facebook cover photo. I do not need to see that shit on my newsfeed. Just, NO.
My gf and I had our kid (well, she had the kid, I engaged in critical hand-holding duties) in a midwife-directed birthing center in a hospital in SF. After kid and placenta were both out, the midwife clearly took some amusement in showing the placenta+sac to me (dude, it’s like a handbag designed by H.R. Giger, only there’s a cute baby inside; biology is weird), and then was visibly relieved when we demurred her offer to take the placenta home with us.
California honkies are weird, and like you I am one.
you know who eats the placenta after a birth? Cattle. I’ve seen them do it countless times and even they don’t seem to like it. “Oh well, guess I’d better eat this in case I need any extra nutrients. Then that damned dog can have it.”
Cats do it too! When mine had her litter, she gave birth to Kitten #1 without my noticing (I only caught on when the kitten started meowing) and by then she’d already chowed down it. (We threw the rest of them out.)
It’s also a good way of preventing a huge pile of festering tissue from attracting predators. I feel like if you’re not worried that mountain lions will be drawn to your offspring by the scent of your afterbirth, there’s really no reason to eat it.
our midwife showed made a big show of showing us the placenta, I really liked her but I think she was amused by how grossed out we both were by that.
“He has a very serious fear of me dying every time I have a baby”
Oh my god this poor guy.
There is so, so much going on with this couple. In my expert internet-commenter opinion, they are the last people who should ever be home-birthin’ it.
I felt bad for him. He’s the one I felt most bad for in the entire thing. His reasonable fears are just…gonna get over-ridden, and he’s going to have to figure out some kind of uterine tourniquet in the woods, made of rope.
And, like, his worries about her health are just bumming her out, and totally harshing her positive energy! He needs to learn to calm down and stop unbalancing her chi with his negative thoughts.
ug, men. so unbalanced.
If he could only calm his man-nerves and tap into his inner, feminine energies, he’d realize that a calm environment would keep his wife from bleeding out during a difficult labor, and that he just needs to stop thinking about those times she almost died in a pool of blood. Walk it off, dude, walk it off.
he should probably just suck on some placenta for a while.
“She sat in the birthing pool a while. She pushed once then pushed again. The infant’s head came out first. She waited for the body to emerge and while she waited she smoked a cigarette. She thought about the men she had known and the men she had forgotten. She waited for the infant’s body to emerge but it did not emerge. She sat in her own blood, smoking and waiting, for a long while.”
The birthing pool is masculinity and the blood is America.
This comment is beautiful. I just wanted you to know that after I read it, I had to lean back in my chair for a minute and just nod silently at my computer screen. You get all the gold stars.
My aunt had an unexpectedly unassisted childbirth. Her third child in as many years was born on the driveway because she could not get to the hospital in time.
This is what I thought was a terrifying birthing story until now.
Regarding the cutting of the cord- I once had a conversation with an RN who worked in migrant communities in Saudi Arabia for 6 months of the year. She said it was interesting because of what came up that she would never see in the US, including newborns with tetanus due to unsterile objects (scissors, knives, whatever was on hand) used in cutting the umbilical cord. And the solution was to place these newborns in medically induced comas until the virus passed through, which I have to think would affect that child’s development somehow.
Oh, god, that last one is so heartbreaking.
Also, I had a SHITTY hospital experience, so am not reeeeally looking forward to doing it again (though my kiddo was born at 36 weeks, so we would have gone to the hospital even if we’d planned to do something different), but whether I give birth at home or a birth center you can be DAMN CERTAIN there will be someone there who is actually medically qualified to deliver babies. Jesus.
This is why I left a fairly large and popular crunchy birth/parenting board. Unassisted birth forums were scary. Too much advice about not learning too much about the scary side of birth and labor since that could lead you to not have the confidence and karma for a trouble free unassisted birth. Too many posts from women who were in the middle of labor having issues asking for support to not go to the hospital. If you suggested going to the hospital your post would be deleted and you could be banned.
I started the realize the board was filled with women who believed that if you got sick, had a complication or anything it was b/c you hadn’t believed hard enough/at the right food/hadn’t thought enough good thoughts. Not just for childbirth but for cancer for childhood diseases, everything. The problem was people were dying as a result of it.
That’s so horrifying
The crunchy left-wing version of “well if you’d prayed hard enough, the cancer would have gone away!”
This is why I left a fairly large and popular crunchy birth/parenting board. Unassisted birth forums were scary. Too much advice about not learning too much about the scary side of birth and labor since that could lead you to not have the confidence and karma for a trouble free unassisted birth. Too many posts from women who were in the middle of labor having issues asking for support to not go to the hospital. If you suggested going to the hospital your post would be deleted and you could be banned.
I feel so fortunate re my awesome hospital birth. It was a teaching hospital and I loved being surrounded by all these ambitious, smart young people, mostly women. Everyone was very kind even though my own OB didn’t make until the very end, I was fine. I was so old when I gave birth there was no question of any hippy stuff for me, which was kind of nice re not having to make any decisions or justify them to anyone.
My favorite resident OB was a wee little thing who wielded the forceps. My husband swears she was about to put her foot up on the bed for some traction, but surely not. Right?
just go see a doctor go to the doctor OH MY GOD GO TO THE FUCKING DOCTOR!!!!!!
(LIke, I get being scared of hospitals and doctors and having terrible hospital experiences [I’ve had one!], but I have lost…more than one person because they wouldn’t go see a doctor when they should have.)
Unless you’re in the UK, in which case you won’t see a doctor at any point in your ante-natal care or birth unless there’s a complication!
Wondering if all this is from Mothering.com.
It makes me too angry to say anything coherent. The way birth gets turned into a competition for who has the best/most authentic/most natural/most pain-ignoring experience on one day of your life. It’s the natural follow-on to how your wedding day has to be perfectly managed because it’s the highlight of your life and fuck the next 20 years after that.
Do men have anything analogous to this? At all? The One Day Perfect crazy?
Ok, look, I’ve just given birth, and it did not go how I would have chosen, but that’s fine because I have a two-week-old clawing my boob and fussing about feeding right now which is the best possible outcome. But there are excellent personal AND evidence-based reasons for wanting not to go to hospital or wanting to avoid medical interventions, which are not about wanting to win the natural/perfect/painful prize. Not wanting to start life with a baby with episiotomy stitches or a caesarean scar or a dural leak is a very legitimate wish!
Right, I totally get that Doctor Knows Best is not a good model, everyone doesn’t need a full metal hospital experience, there is a huge range of appropriate care, it’s a good impulse to want to be an agent in your own health and well-being.
But I don’t like how women are made to feel that if you don’t have an uncomplicated natural birth, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough to resist the bad doctors who want to c-section you so they can golf. There are a whole bunch of factors that go into the current excessive c-section rate. Why is it the mom’s fault?
There’s a whole bunch of hyper-preparedness propaganda that encourages the idea that you can plan it enough to control whether you, personally, have a natural birth. This is obviously the bleeding edge of that. As it were.
INTUITING LUNG DEVELOPMENT WHAT THE HELL
Oh my god every last one of these had me going “what the fuck is wrong with you” louder and louder, at more frequent intervals, until I got to the last one and I just… oh my god what. the fuck. is wrong. with you.
I… no. JUST NO.
I’ve been reading American-based internet for over fifteen years now, but I still get shocked by things I read on the Toast every other day. You have to HIRE a midwife? I gave birth two weeks ago and I was under the care of the homebirth team and planning to give birth at home (although in the end it didn’t happen because my waters broke without me going into natural labour, so I had to go into hospital.) If I’d stayed home birth, two midwives would have come out to our house. And it would still have been cheaper for the NHS than the hospital-based syntocinon, epidural and forceps delivery!
I predict the children of these lunatics are going to grow up to be the most pro-science, pro-epidural, pro-vax, pro-modern medicine, pro-consumerism people on the planet.
I predict the children of these lunatics are going to grow up
Well, some of them.
Oh, thank god, the woman with pre-eclampsia went to the hospital. I’ve been thinking about her every day since you posted that on Twitter.
I pushed out her head and no body followed
Welp, I read that in the most disturbing way possible, and now it is stuck in my brain forever.
I hate this kind of magical thinking so much.
Like, “I don’t want to take antibiotics for an infection, what can I do?” “Well, garlic smells really strong, have you considered shoving raw garlic up your vagina?” “Oh, does that work?” “Probably!”
“I don’t want to get tested for gestational diabetes, because what if I have it?” “Have you considered ignoring it and pretending it doesn’t exist?” “GREAT IDEA.”
“What’s the best way of preventing uterine hemorrhage?” “IDK, chew on something or blow into a bottle?” “I’ll try it! How does that work?” “God, why do you ask all these QUESTIONS, you got to BELIEVE IN URSELF!!!!!”
“I don’t want to go to a hospital, they’re full of MRSA. Unlike my house full of kids, dogs, cats, and sticky floors. I know! I’ll go into the woods to give birth! There’s no pathogens there, it’s ALL NATURAL.”
“IDK, what could be more natural than birthing a newborn into a pool full of feces and blood? That’s a great thing to get in the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and lungs of a brand new baby! Let’s do this thing! What? No other primate gives birth in water and “water birth,” ie laboring people going into freezing cold bodies of water, was introduced in Russia during a lack of pain killers to make labor easier by numbing the entire body? But it sounds so ~NATURAL~!!”
I mean, the garlic thing works for mild to moderate yeast infections, but that’s about all I’ll say for it.
Dude, I’ve never heard anyone cite any problems with water birth beyond the difficulty of fetal monitoring. And warm water, not cold, is used.
I am open to correction, though.
1. I don’t understand hippies.
2. I don’t understand American’s fear of “socialized” medical funding.
3. I don’t understand anything I just read here.
I had plans to use my uterus for something eventually, but it closed up shop while I was reading this.
Also, comments about the non-existence of gestational diabetes especially piss me off as it is a thing that I definitely had. Although, I am somewhat grateful they exist? Because I was on the verge of falling down the NCB rabbit hole, and I read Ina Gartner’s book on the recommendation of a friend, and it talked about the non-existence of gestational diabetes and how you should just exercise or something and I snapped out of it right quick.
Planned induction that ended in a c-section twenty hours later and no regrets, not one. C-sections can be beautiful and empowering, too.
Gaskin. Ina May Gaskin. I mix my Inas up.
I was afraid you’d meant Ina Garten and I was SO CONFUSED initially!
I was going to say, Ina Garten wrote a book about the non existence of gestational diabetes!? haha.
There is actually a limit to what a private hospital is required to do if you can’t pay- EMTALA only applies to emergency care, and the ONLY thing a non-county/govt funded hospital is actually legally required to do is get you to a point where one of their doctors will sign off that you’re medically stable for transport. So if you come in in active labor, they’ll (probably) let you stay until you’ve delivered, but if you come in with, a nasty retained placenta infection, they’re legally allowed to triage you as “cool to hang out in the waiting room for ages” before giving you a quick shot of antibiotics and shoving you in an ambulance to go somewhere else, and then bill you for the privilege.
Oh man. Reading all of these, I couldn’t stop hearing Oda Mae Brown from Ghost saying “You in danger, girl!” over and over and over and over…
*thumbs up*
What.
Almost 6 months out from a rather medicated birth that went absolutely as well as could possibly have been expected under difficult and scary circumstances, I still have a panic attack every once in a while when I look at my small-but-healthy-and-most-importantly-still-alive baby girl and play out alternative scenarios in my head. And regardless of anybody’s beliefs or intuitions about premature births, lung development, etc., this NICU vet DOES NOT WANT TO HEAR IT.
Saddle up and take the betamethasone, friends. For serious. Gah.
Speaking as another NICU vet, I completely agree! I’ve been haunted all day, imagining what would have happened if I’d skipped the ultrasound and all that. (Spoiler Alert: I’d be dead!)
As someone trying to fix our godawful broken health care system, I am so angered but not surprised that women are attempting unassisted home births out of a fear of medical costs. Medicaid is a shitty bandaid at best, but it can and does have some additional resources for pregnant women who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for coverage (usually due to income). If anyone runs across someone in this position, please please urge them to look into Medicaid during their pregnancy and post-natal period.
More info here: http://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid-chip-program-inf…
Unfortunately, Medicaid is a state-managed programs so some pigheaded state governments (Mississippi I’m looking at you) don’t fully opt in.
And hospitals DO budget for providing uncompensated/charity care, though they’re cutting back on that due to a decline in disproportionate share payments under the ACA. (Sure that you know that, just adding some additional info for other commenters 🙂 )
So as shitty as the system is…please no one die because you are afraid to go to the hospital due to cost. Hate that this even comes up 🙁
years of reading early modern coroner’s reports has given me a terror of anything but the most medicalized of birth experiences, so this is basically nightmare fuel.
“early modern coroner’s reports”
Please write a piece for The Toast! I would love to read about this.
Aww, thanks! Maybe someday I’ll pitch something about my work, which deals with family dynamics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but I don’t have enough coroner’s reports transcribed to make anything worth reading.
However, Barbara Hanawalt’s The Ties that Bound is a good place to read/read about a whole bunch of them. http://www.amazon.com/The-Ties-That-Bound-Familie…
Our first son, we went to a very pro-natural birth class. The lady had us watch unassisted home birth videos. One was OF TWINS. TWO OF THEM. Oh, ho, ho, it was horrific.
That seems like by far the best way to ensure that nobody in the class even considered an unassisted home birth, so props to your teacher, kind of?
scarier by far than the halloween horror stories…
No no no no no!
My mother had four of us, three of us using midwifes, and one of us at home. She was also crazy young, incredibly heathy, and at the home birth had two midwives/ NPs there to assist. She wasn’t really a hippy so much as she had a very bad experience with her OB when I was born (the birth went fine but no thanks to him). I think it was still somewhat difficult to find a female OB back when we were kids so the midwife choice was less about the “natural” experience and more about finding someone who would take her seriously.
AND she took us for checkups, got us all vaccinated, and made sure we took all our meds when strep throat hit the household.
It’s also painting with pretty broad strokes to compare what she said to being an anti-vaxxer or climate denier. The culture she discusses is pervasive throughout the US, which doesn’t mean all hospital births are terrible but can be a good reason to seek safe, medically sound birth experiences at home. It’s silly to say “all doctors are terrible so I will have nothing to do with them!” but the other side of the coin tends to be “All Doctors and their knowledge of medical science is infallible” and that’s especially dangerous when it leads people to believe that C-sections are inherently easy and safe and painkillers are just magic things that make pain go away, when in reality it can be harder to recover from a C-section than a natural birth and painkillers and epidurals can have really serious side effects. And I’m not saying that nobody should have a planned C-section or take painkillers, just that there needs to be balance in this discussion and people who want home births should not be written off as lunatic anti-science people.
but
but why
Good Lord, these are scary.
#6 is a piece of work, she manages to blame both the Evil Doctor and her husband for the condition. I guess they’re the reason that the shepherd’s purse didn’t work! *eyeroll*
My head hurts so much from reading those. Homebirths are bad enough, but unassisted births make me want to smack the women upside the head and lock them in a room, showing them pictures of dead babies. Harsh? Yes. But OMG those women are blind to reality!
“Bad enough” -why? As safe than hospital birth for second-time mothers with an uncomplicated first pregnancy, according to a study of 60 000 women in the UK.
(For some reason I can’t post a link on my iPad, but if you google “nhs.uk research has compared hospital births and home births” it’ll probably come up.)
this is giving me flashbacks to all my blood-filled pregnancy/birth nightmares. (never given birth but I swear all fertile women have these nightmares, right? I once said that in my law class and was greeted with a blank stare from the immaculately dressed girl next to me. I wished my flatmate had been there to go “we definitely do!”)
Also to avoid my nightmares becoming reality I will definitely be checking into a hospital if I ever give birth. Like for sure.
Why would these women opt for the nightmare risky scenario? I guess it’s the money? Tho I’m from the UK and didn’t know til reading these comments that you had to pay for hospital time when GIVING BIRTH in the US…still can’t believe that. That can’t be right surely? Otherwise that is a literal tax on being a woman.
You pay for the anesthesiologist, you pay for the OB, you pay for the delivery room, you pay for every package of diapers they open, you pay for every bottle they feed your infant (assuming the child is formula-fed at some point during your stay), you pay for the use of the recovery room. You pay for every pre-natal appointment, every blood draw, every urine sample test.
Depending on your insurance. If you have really good insurance, you might just write a small check and be done with it. In the worst case, a healthy birth with no complications could cost you upwards of $30,000 out of pocket. I think my daughter cost us around $2k, after all was said and done. I can say we spent about the same on the two subsequent first trimester miscarriages (in total).
Thanks for informative reply.
I just loudly went “WHATTT” in my kitchen on my own while reading it. Feeling grateful for NHS.
This is just sickening. How do women who can’t afford insurance cope with that size bill? (how much is insurance annually?) No wonder there is a home birth trend, they’re being forced to avoid all medical advances and risk it on their own. They may as well convince themselves it’s a good idea with all this “back to nature” stuff. (if it sounds like I’m being judgmental of their choices, sorry, but really I’m righteously angry at their LACK of choice)
I hope midwives are available at home, and not too expensive?
In many US states uninsured pregnant women are automatically eligible for Medicaid if their income is low enough. Actually they are probably eligible now even if they aren’t pregnant thanks to Obamacare. I bet that some of these women just don’t want to be on the grid.
Also sorry to hear about your miscarriages- I somehow missed that on first reading! How awful to pay for that as well, but at least you have a lovely daughter.
i’m screaming inside of my mind 🙁
This is the most frightening thing I have ever read on The Toast, and I read all of Mallory’s children’s book rewrites.
Also, I can’t unclench my uterus. Alcohol is good for that, right? Or, y’know, herbs.
Also also, as someone who had twins at 32 weeks and watched them in the NICU fishtanks being fed through a tube for a month and ventilated, OMFG PEOPLE don’t even talk about doing that at home, I’ll die of stress just thinking about how that would’ve gone. I <3 u, NHS.
My stepdad (an actual medical doctor, just in a poor rural county) once fashioned a baby incubator from plexiglass, trashbags, and duct tape. So, you know, home-based intensive care is totally doable. (He says he always tried to ship women off to the city a couple hours away if they were in premature labor, but sometimes there wasn’t time.)
All of my pregnancies were with midwives, and there are a lot of them (in the major metro area in which I live). Smaller areas may not have quite as many. As far as expensive, it depends on so many factors that you can’t really say.
There’s theoretically a charge for a service. But your insurance company negotiates with the healthcare services that any given thing/procedure is worth “this” much to members covered by that insurance. And then it depends on what options you chose when you chose your insurance plan (did you opt to pay more out of pocket in exchange for lower premiums? or opt for higher premiums with lower co-pays?).
Most insurance is employer based, which is why so many people have to factor the quality/cost of a company’s insurance offerings when looking at jobs. If you work an hourly job, odds are good you don’t have the greatest insurance. It’s a crap shoot.
FWIW, we have really good insurance. It could have been MUCH worse for us because my pregnancies were all hyperemesis gravidarum nightmares.
Holy fucking shitballs. I need some serious herbs now.
This whole thing reminds me so much of Anne Fadiman’s lovely book “The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down” about the intersection of cultural medical practices and allopathic medicine. There’s a moment in the book when Fadiman waxes poetic about Eastern medicine and how it is so much more holistic and gentle, and a Western doctor points out that “Western medicine saves lives.”
Have the hippiest, dippiest delivery you want. Invite your friends to sit in the pool of warm water and feed you pasta and comb your hair by the light of the full moon as Rebecca Walker dreamed about in “Baby Love”. Do you. But when the bleeding starts and you’re seeing spots, please consult a medical professional. Think of all the self-satisfaction you’ll get from scoffing at his narrow-minded tools and “science”, and most importantly, think of all the days you’ll get to live to teach your children the same smug self-satisfaction. Won’t someone think of the children?
But, it is important to note, it did not save Lia Lee’s life.
Mmmm… yes and no. In the end, all medicine will come to naught.
Lia’s case isn’t directly applicable here because her story isn’t so much one of ignorance (though there was certainly some) as much as deep cultural misunderstandings. Lia’s family and her doctors were fundamentally at cross purposes, which is not what’s going on on these boards.
These boards screen capped here are people who are not working at cross purposes. This isn’t a matter of cultural misunderstandings; they are deliberately turning away from Western medicine and almost willfully cultivating bad science in the process.
Hmmmmm. I was trying to draw a parallel, but I don’t think it quite works. There were “deep cultural misunderstandings” but also the doctors missing that Lia was having seizures for the first few emergency room visits because they didn’t have a translator and weren’t committed to finding out why she was there: the medical professionals were brusque, condescending, and not good at listening, their early efforts to communicate with her family were not great.
The reasons people often want to go doctor-free often come from shitty experiences with doctors. A big chunk of that unassisted childbirth board is people who had terrible hospital birth experiences – there are several women who lost children even in the hospital, and they feel like they were treated like animals and the child died anyway. I… I can see some parallels to the Lees’ experience there? If you’re going to lose, why not lose on your own terms?
(Ideally we would like no one to lose, I understand. And western medicine is the best way to not lose. It just seems like women who feel alienated from the mainstream by awful experiences in hospitals should get some sympathy. And a very nice midwife.)
(Can we stop calling it “western” medicine? It’s “evidence-based” medicine, and current demographics of MDs in the USA suggests that rather a lot of “eastern” people are quite good at it.)
Especially since it arose from a tradition that started in the Middle East in the Islamic Golden Age
Good point.
OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD NOOOOOOOOO
…This is one of the reasons I will not procreate ever. Also I don’t want to bring kids home with me. I want to leave them with their PARENTS.
I am my kitten’s mommy. That’s enough.
More mommy forum content please! I’m pregnant and cannot tear myself away.
Every single defensive comment here is assuming that Nicole is anti-homebirth, which is just an insane failure of reading comprehension. If you’ve got a medically trained midwife supervising you, give birth in the tub in your living room or whatever. If you have somebody who can recognize when you’re, say, bleeding to death (hint – you won’t!), great, best of luck, hope it all goes smoothly and a chorus of Wiccans gently urge your earthsprite into this mortal realm. But don’t sit at home with a rusty bread knife and the firm conviction that the greatest antibiotic known to woman is a steely force of will and a handful of mint leaves. Your unnamed, unvaccinated 6 year old is not the appropriate person to perform an emergency C-section in your bathtub.
OMG bravo!!!!!!
No, mostly its replying to anti-home birth commenters, whose comments aren’t evidence-based.
And the Wiccan crack is ridiculous. Home birth attended by midwives might seem like crazy Wiccan woo to you, but it’s a well-supported option here in the UK and even more normal in the Netherlands and other European countries. Whale song and Wiccans not included. To me it’s bizarre that the majority of US ante-natal care and births is run by ob/gyns instead of midwives: the U.S. system is not actually the global norm!
I think she’s actually saying to go as hippie as you like! If you’re into Wicca then cool! But have a trained midwife! Her comment isn’t anti-homebirth, it’s anti-UC.
Childbirth is full of horrors, without these specific nightmare scenarios.
Everyone should read Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950, by Judy Leavitt. Unassisted childbirth is not a return to some golden age when women had control over their bodies. Women wanted to move childbirth to hospitals and involve physicians, because it has always been horrifying and perilous!
No one has to roll this way. Every woman in the U.S. has access to paid hospital birth through Medicaid and even if they don't have Medicaid for some reason there's EMTALA which is a law that mandates that any woman who shows up in an ER in labor has to get care regardless of ability to pay. Sure there's a bill afterwards but do you know how many people just ignore hospital bills? Not saying any of this is ideal, obviously not, but the overwhelming majority of women in the U.S. do give birth in the hospital. If people are choosing not to there is something else going on.
Besides the blatant ignorance, it seems to me that so many people simply distrust institutions these days — doctors, scientists, paramedics, and (God forbid!) politicians. A lot of it feels like the “Fox News Effect” (aka a policy of attacking and smearing ANY thing you disagree with, regardless of who gets hurt, ie see: Anti-Vaxxers.) But, its not JUST that. We DO have more knowledge at our fingertips thanks (or no thanks) to the Internet. Doctors, hospitals and insurance company who continue to try to maintain the patronizing “status quo” where THEY are the God-like MD and you the mere mortal, are sure not helping things any. And, instead of fixing it, what do we get from Washington? A watered down attempt, like Obamacare (hey, at least he tried!) on one side and a shut-down government on the other. Leaves all us SANE types just scratching our heads! So, while every fiber of MY body was screeming “Eeeeeeeeehhhhh! Gaaaaaaahhhhh!” as I read thru this, I also understand why my sister chose a home birth (for her SECOND child, after safely having her first in a hospital w/o complications and minimal drugs to make sure she could hack it.) That said, I have no patience for mega-hippies who endanger other peoples’ lives thru their own egotism, especially the lives of defenseless newborns.
It is so weird to sit at the intersection of “yessssss handknitting & handspinning and eating only plant matter!” and “oh my god medical science I love you I love how you can make it so I can be a happy auntie to my partner’s siblings’ children and maybe some day in the future my own brother’s children but NEVER EVER ANYTHING GROWING IN MY OWN UTERUS and also educations! vaccinations! sterilized surfaces and people who Know About Possible Weird Things That Could Happen!” The words “paleo” and “homeschooling” regularly appear and I am just so very not here for the crunchiness, thanks anyway.
A few months back I read alllllll about an unassisted birth gone…unexpected, let’s say, and OH MY was that terrifying. I mean, it was a knitting blog so one could reasonably expect some knitting but I WAS warned that it was not about the wooly things but that really just did not adequately prepare me for how harrowing it really was. Unwanted pregnancy! Six other children! Surprise Down Syndrome! No prenatal screening! I still shudder to think of it.
It is so weird to sit at the intersection of "yessssss handknitting & handspinning and eating only plant matter!" and "oh my god medical science I love you I love how you can make it so I can be a happy auntie to my partner's siblings' children and maybe some day in the future my own brother's children but NEVER EVER ANYTHING GROWING IN MY OWN UTERUS and also educations! vaccinations! sterilized surfaces and people who Know About Possible Weird Things That Could Happen!" The words "paleo" and "homeschooling" regularly appear and I am just so very not here for the crunchiness, thanks anyway.
A few months back I read alllllll about an unassisted birth gone…unexpected, let's say, and OH MY was that terrifying. I mean, it was a knitting blog so one could reasonably expect some knitting but I WAS warned that it was not about the wooly things but that really just did not adequately prepare me for how harrowing it really was. Unwanted pregnancy! Six other children! Surprise Down Syndrome! No prenatal screening! I still shudder to think of it.
The ACA mandated my friend get coverage, which she was able to afford for less than 6 months and then had to drop. If she'd started paying in the fall instead of spring, she'd at least have been covered when it was useful to her.
I don't know why Dems thought the ACA would somehow be easier to pass than a single-payer system like EVERY OTHER REASONABLE NATION ON THE PLANET AND ALSO PROBABLY OTHER PLANETS OUT THERE IN SPACE HAS because it wasn't and it has the additional features of being flaccid garbage. So the RealDoll Decepticons we call Congress get to shit all over the liberal idealists who wanted it for both "being scary commie socialists who want handouts" AND for the fact that because they're around fucking shit up, it also SUCKS just as much as it always has.
All of this is legitimately horrifying and beyond my understanding. But it’s also FASCINATING. How do you arrive at this place? Am I right in interpreting a lot of this as some kind of Christian Super-hippy amalgam? Where does this subculture come from? Those who know people like this, how did they arrive at these positions?
So, I had one umcomplicated birth at 21. Fast forward…two healthy births, but LATE, BIG babies and back labor. And lots of fear. My CNM’s in the hospital did everything to keep the surgical team away from me, but I pushed both those boys out with a fully scrubbed c-section team waiting in the hallway–oh, and they were fine, and I was fine, and I had no stitches, etc. But all the worries of the second one “not progressing” would have been non existent had they just let me go home and come back on a different day–I ended up having my son on the 10 year anniversary of a baby I lost, and gee, do ya THINK that’s maybe why my body was trying to wait another day? (there was no fetal stress whatsoever, the docs just declared “you are getting induced today” and wouldn’t let me leave the hospital).
Then I got pregnant in my 30’s. 13 weeks in, no heartbeat. OB GYN told me in the hallway of the office in front of a bunch a pregnant women and sent me home to “let nature take its course”. I bled out at home. From a miscarriage that the OB ignored/didn’t think was important. I live 5 minutes from a hospital but it took 30 minutes for them to even find a vein in the ambulance and stablize me enough to leave my driveway.
Oh, then I was held in the ER and my hubby was held at gunpoint for 4 hours. Turns out they didn’t move me to surgery right away and held me in the ER for 5 hours first because the doc on call was a drunk. 5 hours and 6 bags of saline and one “I don’t believe in blood transfusions but anybody else would have given you one” later, I was surviving.
4 months later told the OB I was going to homebirth the next one when it happened (in a state where it’s legal, with a former EMT and two trained midwives, and again, 5 minutes from the hospital). OB said, “But what if you bleed out?!”
I don’t know how to find the emoticons here, but….UM, YOU ALREADY LET ME DO THAT ONCE YOU ASSHOLE, and *NOW* you’re worried about it?????
Homebirth was beautiful, easy, baby was fine and large, and yes, we had the van pointed out the driveway and 911 on speed dial (I lived next door to a fire station, too) in case baby had ANY signs of distress or ANY bleeding started.
BUT, BUT BUT BUT……I had experienced medical professionals. I had 2 sources of help nearby. My midwife had pitocin at the ready and oxygen. I’d had three successful births before (the first baby’s loss was unrelated to the birth). Dear god. These women—Did they all live? do we know?
Anyone who thinks childbirth is a “beautiful natural thing” should read this article: War in the Womb.
Mother Nature doesn’t care about you. Mother nature is, in fact, terrifying. Mammals are weird, pregnancy is weird, and human pregnancy is fairly dreadful compared to many others thanks to our big heads and bipedal walk.
That being said, I HATED my hospital birth and there’s no way I’m going back without a compelling medical reason. (Going for a birth center, but I’m lucky and privileged enough to live near one and be able to afford it.) Hospitals for birth, especially non-medicated birth, are just awful, and I can’t really blame these women for wanting to get away. I wish birthing centers or medically trained midwives were more available as options.
This COMPLETELY TERRIFIES me for several reasons:
1) I have no health insurance that covers any of this.
2)There’s no way in hell I’d get enough leave within the next several years.
3)Who the hell thinks “birthin’ it like it’s Downton Abbey/1530s’ England/ FLDS escape memoirs” is a great idea????!?!?
My life plans include someone being pregnant. Even it involves the dude playing Mr. Mom. *shudders*
Ugh, yes. In my case, I had one slightly high value on the three-hour test, and was told that I didn’t have GD by one nurse and there was no need to do anything, and then three weeks later a different nurse saw the same records and told me that I would “have to” undergo the whole GD treatment with finger sticking, etc. (which I really didn’t want to do if not necessary because of flashbacks to an abusive relationship with a Type 1 diabetic, which they knew about), and she was like “sorry, them’s the rules,” and nobody contradicted her (the one time my OB actually came to my OB appointment, he was like, “eh, probably not. Who cares.” Other nurses were like, “well, maybe.”). So I waited for over two months in a state of dread to get the referral to the endocrinologist (whom I was seeing for something else, and who was already horrible) for the GD that I didn’t actually have, and finally at week 34 or something, my husband came to my appointment with me and demanded the answers they were refusing me, and it turned out that the endo (who is shoehorning data into a specious-looking research project) just “likes to see everybody.” They flat-out said it wasn’t medically necessary. So I refused and they were like, “OK, that’s fine.” But because of these GD Truthers (the ones that claim GD flat-out doesn’t exist), many people who hear about this think I’m one of them, and it really PISSES ME OFF. So I blame them (as well as my shitty OB’s shitty office).
ETA: This is in response to Kay (?) who was writing about GD. I think IntenseDebate is confused again.
Not sure you’re remembering quite right. (All three of LMM’s births were attended by nurses. Her second baby had a knot in the cord and there was nothing that could be done about it.)
“Mrs. Lockie is jealous of me because I keep a maid and so — as she fondly imagines — can ‘live without working.’ She was jealous when my children were born because I had a trained nurse. I remember the first time I was there after Chester was born she said, ‘We country women can’t get a trained nurse. We have to die.’
“I wanted to ask, ‘Has anybody died around here for lack of a trained nurse’ — but I didn’t. Neither did I say, ‘You have had three children. Yet you are alive.’ But tonight I turned and looked Mrs. Will squarely in the face. ‘You have your U.F.O. [United Farmers of Ontario] government,’ I said. ‘I thought when you put it in it would do away with all the farmer’s grievances.'”
I would not have a homebirth, much less an unassisted one, given how paranoid I am, but hospital births can suck, as noted, and that’s an issue. With my fourth (and last!), I had an epidural (my first epidural, and it was wonderful), and I woke up from the nap I was taking and rolled from my side to my back, and suddenly the baby was in go position. And I told them I was ready and really needed to push, and the two med students and nurse in the room were all panicked and telling me not to push and trying to get a doctor in (it was a madhouse in the hospital that night–16 babies were born). Have you ever tried to not push out a baby that’s ready to be born? It is horrible. And kind of impossible. Finally I was like, “I have done this three times before and we are four smart and capable women, so let’s just do this.” Or I was like, “If I don’t push now I am going to die.” One or the other. Anyway, she was out in one push, and it was absolutely within the capability of the med students and nurse to handle. There is no reason to yell at women not to push in almost any circumstances.
Then I didn’t sleep for 36 hours, because the hospital was so noisy, and they almost wouldn’t send the baby home because she was slightly jaundiced (well within, my ped told me, the normal range of newborn breastfed infants), and then she had a false positive on a disorder they started testing for on the newborn screen just a year ago that has a true positive rate of 1 in 200. (For every 200 positive screens, 1 child will have the disorder.) I also had to attend a class on newborn care to leave the hospital, even though I had three children I managed to not kill as infants at home. It would be nice if we made hospital births a little more pleasant. It might lead to less people seeking out terrifying alternatives.
Also: Unused, healthy uterus for sale. You pay all transplant-related bills and and hormones and for my living expenses in grad school. It’s (probably) PERFECT for baby-growing. Plus I’ll knit you a thing.
My grandmother's aunt did that in the early 20th century not on purpose. She lived in a small cabin and was left alone when her husband went to get the doctor in the middle of a blizzard. She gave birth just fine, but hemorrhaged out trying to keep the fire going and the baby froze to death. The husband and doctor came back to find the bodies. My grandmother always gave this as an example of why we should be happy we lived in the late 20th century.
In the uk home births are attended by community midwives
( fully qualified and employed within the NHS just work out in the community)
They are fully equipped for cleanup/ minimising mess 🙂
Some parts of the Internet and certain print publications are full of misinformation, disinformation, misunderstood information, poorly explained information and a lot of guesses and imagination, plus an unhealthy dose of paranoia. It’s really no wonder that people end up doing and saying ignorant things. I wonder if any of those women had an “under these circumstances, I will dial 911 and start praying” part of their plan.
I am not a fan of the way maternity care is done some of the time here in the US. I’ve got a big family, so I’ve had a lot of different experiences, some good, some bad, some downright traumatic. I’d have bled to death during my last birth if I’d been relying on eating a bit of my placenta instead of pitocin and the quick action of my OB/GYN. For one thing, I can’t imagine why you’d think that would work, and, for another, my hemorrhage happened *before* the delivery of the placenta. (The poor doctor and all the nurses in the room were quite shaken up, but the baby and I were fine when it was all over. Thanks, medical science!)
SO so belated, but . . .
I am a hippie homebirther; I pushed out a surprise posterior baby in the comfort of my own bed with a CNM in attendance. However, more than anything, I’m a believer in the midwifery model of care. The midwifery model DEPENDS on the ability of midwives to send some women to the hospital because they’ve risked out of midwifery care. The freebirth community exists in part because some women have had really traumatic hospital experiences. This is why I believe birth needs to be improved across the board, in all settings. Unassisted childbirth is damned scary. Traumatic childbirth is scary. All women deserve good care.
SO so belated, but . . .
I am a hippie homebirther; I pushed out a surprise posterior baby in the comfort of my own bed with a CNM in attendance. However, more than anything, I'm a believer in the midwifery model of care. The midwifery model DEPENDS on the ability of midwives to send some women to the hospital because they've risked out of midwifery care. The freebirth community exists in part because some women have had really traumatic hospital experiences. This is why I believe birth needs to be improved across the board, in all settings. Unassisted childbirth is damned scary. Traumatic childbirth is scary. All women deserve good care.
I think these women want out of the hospital's because the U.S has one of the highest infant and maternal death rates in the world. Other countries support homebirth and midwives and have lower mortality rates and lower csection rates. Before judging these women who are trying to take control of their bodies and births maybe we should research the reasons behind their choice. The article spurred me to find out why women feel the need to do this. My research on hospital births scared me more then what these women are saying. Just as an example csections are performed more often around 5pm….so doctors can get home for dinner…and the use of pitocin to speed things up causes fetal distress which in turn leads to a csection. Pitocin is used to things up….but why speed things up? Who does it benefit to speed things up? The doctors.
Please don’t buy the cop out that you cannot afford care. Prenatal from county health office, in fact any county in your state, and delivery from public hospital. They cannot turn you away. And you will leave there with the birth certificate papers done, and the baby tested. All of this is available. Choosing not to do these things is another matter entirely.
And then there are the humans who give birth with the help of dolphins! Because that is just a great idea on every level.