I'm convinced that one of the best reasons for having a blog, is so that you can unload your uncensored opinions with total abandon. That is exactly what I'm going to do today.
Sometimes I think I should be a midwife, but then I realize I am too much of a natural birth Nazi to be a reasonable one. I'm probably more of a "write a book about the awesome-ness of natural birth and the total suckiness of all other types of birth and pre-natal care" kind of girl. I can't help myself. I have now experienced 2 in-hospital, hopped up on pitocin, epidural births, 1 unnecessary c-section, and one fabulous water-birth au-naturale. I have some opinions. And I don't really want to hear all the good reasons why some people really need c-sections or medicated births etc..I know all that and much of the time I disagree, and anyway this is my soapbox.
I have experienced the gold standard in pre-natal and birth care and I want to talk about it. I want to talk about it because I think all of us are sheep. Baaaaaa. I was a sheep for my first 3 births, and my "sheep-ish-ness" if you will, almost killed my 3rd son and sent me into post partum/post traumatic crapiness. I think we are sheep blindly following the advice of "medical professionals" in this area of pre-natal care and birth philosophy, and that we have abdicated our natural instincts as women in favor of someone else telling what to do. We haven't really taken ownership, studied, researched, investigated or become educated about current birth practices, statistics, or philosophies. If you have only had hospital births and the typically standard pre-natal care available in America these days, you might be irritated with me, but you don't know what you're missing, or not missing, as it were.
With my gold-standard pre-natal care in Mexico I got to "miss" any type of pelvic exam, I never pee'd in a cup, I got miss glucose testing, I got to miss the Group-B Strep culture, and I was poked with nary a needle the entire time. By golly, these people thought it was perfectly normal that I was pregnant, and I began to realize that indeed, it was!
Instead of asking me medical questions at my dr. visits, Dr. Jose Luis and I just got to know each other. He asked about our family, how I was feeling emotionally, how the kids were doing, if Nathan was helping me out around the house. I came to know and love this gentle man. He was ministering to the needs of the "whole woman", this care wasn't JUST about the baby. Wow. He would smile as we listened for the heartbeat and tell me what position the baby was in. He even offered to paint my belly in the position the baby was in at that time. And then there was Joni, his assistant doula. She invited us over to her beautiful home where we sat visiting over raspberry tea and scones while we discussed pain-management techniques and she taught Nathan how to use a rebozo to help me during contractions. I was in pre-natal heaven. My last birth had been surrounded by fear and control and pain and losing my power, my 'say'. This experience was shaping up to be so much more than I anticipated. When I would ask fear-based questions, Joni and Jose Luis would see right through them and remind me of the very 'normal' experience that birth was intended to be. Their peaceful outlook was contagious, and I eventually settled into the fact that I was just going to to trust God and the body He had given me to do what He created it to do.
It's common sense not to check a womans dilation if her membranes are ruptured (water broken). Of course, you don't know that's common sense unless you've done your homework, because now-a-days, dr.'s (even CNM's) are pretty invasive in their approach to the labor and birthing process. If a womans membranes are ruptured, it is unwise to introduce any type of bacteria into that otherwise sterile environment. Once they do introduce that bacteria, albeit on a rubber glove, the clock starts ticking. Did you know there is a clock? Not a legitimate clock mind you, just a theoretical clock, that says that your water can only be broken for 24 hours (nice tidy amount of time) before they will cut the baby out of you. This clock exists mostly as a safety net for liability so they can't be held responsible if you should contract an infection in the womb. Of course, it doesn't matter if you have an infection or not (as in my case) at the end of those 24 allotted hours, the baby will be cut out. Nevermind that no bacteria would be present at all, had they not stuck their grubby little glove up there in the first place.
Yes, well, back to my story. Dr. Jose never checked me once, not once, the entire time I was pregnant, until I begged him to when I was in transition. Why? Well, if a woman can speak to you and enjoy a conversation after contractions have begun, it's pretty apparent that she is not on the brink of delivery. When I was at this stage, I was told to go to Starbucks and take a nice long walk around downtown and call when things really got started. We had so much fun, my husband, Mom and myself, walking through stores with our coffee, stopping every ten minutes for me to breathe through a contraction. My water was broken, I was wearing a diaper and had no idea how far I was dilated. It didn't matter, I was obviously doing fine, and birth was not imminent. We came to the cozy little birth center and went to sleep around 8 pm with me, still breathing through contractions every 8 minutes or so. At 10 pm, I finally had to get up and move, the contractions were coming harder and closer together, and I asked my husband to fill the birth tub with water. He called Joni and Jose Luis and started filling the tub. A little while later I was in the tub with soothing music and candles and that's where I stayed until my Phoebe made her debut around 6:30 in the morning. Dr. Jose and Joni merely watched and answered questions and at one point suggested a stool with my leg up to help get Phoebe unstuck from the birth canal, otherwise Nathan and I did all the work. Nathan even caught her in the water when she was born. It was fabulous. And..she was 21 DAYS, (3 weeks!) past her "due date"!
So, why do I write this blog today? What brought all this up for me again? Someone I know is pregnant..not full term yet. The dr. has been wanting to induce for 2 weeks even though the baby is measuring underweight. This makes absolutely no sense. Pregnancy is 40 weeks gestation typically, but gestation isn't an exact science, baby development is a God thing, God's timing. Phoebe's "time" was 43 weeks...she was a very typical 7lbs. 12 oz. at birth, so I know she wasn't "late", and I know her dates weren't off either..she was just fully cooked at 43 weeks. Why do dr.'s always want to mess with this? All the statistics prove that one intervention leads to another and your chances for a birth ending in c-section rise exponentially when induced. Why can't anyone just let things be? I mean, this was all God's idea right? For thousands of years women have been having babies. Why is everyone so afraid to now?
