I came across this video and cried watching it. As far as the video and c-section rates go, I couldn’t say it better than midwife Gloria Lemay (who sent this video with the excerpted email):
“It is a call to action for doctors, nurses, midwives and doulas to wake up to the pain that is being caused to real people by the cesarean epidemic. If a woman can’t get a baby out of her vagina in a hospital, the hospitals have to be closed. We have to warn women that the chances of normal birth in a N. American hospital are impossibly low. We must have the courage to steer women in the direction of the practitioners with the low cesarean rates and away from the butchers. This woman endured three major abdominal surgeries and mental anguish because of our complacency.”
Incredibly powerful and incredibly true.
To take a different slant on it, I am concerned about the recent movement (at least in these parts, Northern Arizona) of birth activists taking the position of encouraging women to go back to the hospital to attempt a VBAC.
Yes, the same hospital, and likely the same doctor that performed the first surgery. Consider that “most” of these primary c-sections are done for “failure to progress” – and then tell me, convince me actually, that we should be ENCOURAGING our sisters to go back to the lion’s den to birth.
In the local area here, the political situation is even more charged for two reasons:
First, the local hospital will not “do” VBACs at all, and secondly, licensed Arizona midwives are not permitted to attend VBACs at home either.
So, I agree that it is a tough place to be. Between a rock and a hard place, really. But politics aside, what are we doing?
I see these hardworking women totally going against anything that makes practical sense to me. We are asking the doctors to please, please give us a chance–even when they cut us the first time.
We are begging them for the “privilege” of getting to labor like a normal woman and begging for our insurance to pay for it. To pay for what most likely will end the same way it did the last time. I just don’t get the reasoning.
As women, we have power, incredible power.
Why don’t we educate our sisters about birth at home, about HBACs?
Why don’t we work on, if anything, getting HBACS to be “legal”?
In the meantime, there are always options, and the woman in this video proves it. I have no idea who attended her birth, but whoever it is likely took some personal and professional risks with her after having not 1, not 2 but 3 major abdominal surgeries and NO history of successful vaginal birth.
But it is possible.
Whether it is out-of-state, or some other arrangement, it is NOT illegal for a woman to attempt or have a vaginal birth. Despite what they tell us–it is not illegal to birth the way we want to.
I hear these women virtually asking their doctors for PERMISSION to “attempt” a vaginal birth and it makes me crazy. We don’t need permission to birth any more than we need permission to go to the bathroom.
Women need to stand up and not take it any more.
When you birth at the hospital you are asking for approval, for permission, to do what you were made to do. And a lot of the time, that permission is not granted.
I always say–if you go to the hospital, you get what you get. I have had a hospital birth, and there is only so much blame I could transfer.
Because when you go there, whether a conscious decision or not, you get what they do there, what they are good at.
We need to turn the tides and not only PREVENT primary c-sections but take these VBAC women and help them. Educate them, give them options and ideas that are REAL. Not begging the hospital to take them back, that is just lame.
The c-section rate will only stop climbing when we refuse to go there. It is that simple. C-sections will be reserved, once again, for those true emergencies, those times when mother or baby is seriously at risk.
That is when this epidemic will stop-when we give ourselves the permission to birth the way we know how.
Sooo… what are our options in AZ? I’m nervous about a rupture so I feel safe in the hospital, but I really want a VBAC. I’m also nervous that it won’t turn out the way I want. I’m set up to deliver at a hospital in Phoenix that does VBACs with a midwife group that has a high VBAC rate, however, I’m disappointed that there are no birthing tubs at the hospital. It just doesn’t seem conducive to encourage women to birth naturally. At my last appt my midwife told me to keep my options open and that I should be open to an epidural. And here I thought that getting an epidural was a big part of the reason I had a c-section the first time. So, what are my options? Any good hospitals in AZ that do VBACs? I’m 30 minutes from the closest hospital, so home birthing really doesn’t seem like a safe option to me. Thanks for any help.
Sooo… what are our options in AZ? I’m nervous about a rupture so I feel safe in the hospital, but I really want a VBAC. I’m also nervous that it won’t turn out the way I want. I’m set up to deliver at a hospital in Phoenix that does VBACs with a midwife group that has a high VBAC rate, however, I’m disappointed that there are no birthing tubs at the hospital. It just doesn’t seem conducive to encourage women to birth naturally. At my last appt my midwife told me to keep my options open and that I should be open to an epidural. And here I thought that getting an epidural was a big part of the reason I had a c-section the first time. So, what are my options? Any good hospitals in AZ that do VBACs? I’m 30 minutes from the closest hospital, so home birthing really doesn’t seem like a safe option to me. Thanks for any help.
To all you confused Women out there, the ones who don’t know what to think or believe about your own bodies, please listen to this Wise Woman. I too had placed my faith and perceptions about my abilities in the hands of doctors… much to my own frustration and detriment. Rupture is very nearly a myth, a doctor’s tale… like a wive’s tale, only more dangerous. Designed to frighten women much like mother’s have frightened their children into obedience with stories about the bogey man, what happens when you pick your nose, and that if you sit too close to the t.v…. Instead doctor’s employ distraction tactics, withhold facts, and tell gruesome, unfounded stories of “rupturing” uteruses and the evils of homebirth intended to terrify their patients into quiescence and into their pocket-books. Hey, they have to pay for that Jag and their golf club membership somehow, right? We’re told over and over by the media ( isn’t the Birth Channel inspiring?) and our families, and society in our “advanced” culture, here in the U.S., to Believe!! in The Church of Medicine. Silly us, simple-minded women couldn’t possibly know better than a Man in a hospital, with a stethoscope and everything, what our female bodies are capable of. We NEED him to rescue us from our folly, and from our apparent physical incapability… to let Nature do what Nature does outside of every hospital, all day, every day, all around the globe, in every society, under every bush, in caves, in huts, in grass fields… and has done for millenia. I guess somebody needs to tell Nature to back off, because she is obviously in the dark. Someone needs to tell Nature to stop interfering. And obstetricians and the AMA are the ones to do it. Oh yeah, there’s just one thing… I’m one of millions of women who’ve proved them WRONG! The doctor that “rescued” me from my fallacy by signing his name on my body in blood and a low transverse scar wasn’t counting on the fact that I didn’t care about his car, or his house. That I had no intention of padding his bank account with the future c-sections he was envisioning I would provide him with when he made the first knife stroke. I guess he overlooked the fact that I have a brain, and that Google is pretty easy to maneuver. It helped a little… MIDWIVES helped a LOT! 2 VBAC’s later and preparing for my third, his delusion of deluding me has only strengthened my own resolution to propagate the truth about what real birth is, and what women are capable of. Thank you Maryn, for standing in the gap for us, and your wisdom, and for supporting our generation’s Women’s Liberation Movement.
Well said Maryn and I could not agree more. Women are powerful and our bodies are made to birth, and we don’t need permission to do it. We do need to take back our power. And like you said, there are always options, sometimes they just require more courage to find. Your baby and yourself are worth it!