Birth: the early days

Today I've been going through photos of the play (to put on a website I'm creating to promote workshops I'll be offering in the spring!) and I found this photo taken the day before the first reading of the play...in 2005.

My boys are now 10 and 8 so it was particularly exciting to see them so young! (and shocking to me that I wrote a play with two young energetic boys at home 19 months apart!!!)

Maternal Mortality - in the United States

Really, it's so simple. Mothers should not be dying in childbirth in a rich country. In poor countries they shouldn't either, but at least my mind can comprehend the equation that poverty equals poor healthcare (even though it's not fair and needs our attention). But mothers in rich countries dying in childbirth? This is ridiculous.

Ina May Gaskin, known as the mother of midwifery to many, spends alot of her time lately exposing the atrocious statistics in the US, which many agree do not accurately reflect the maternal mortality crisis. (the stats are higher) Her Safe Motherhood Quilt is famous in many circles and is used to raise awareness that too many preventable deaths happen to mothers in the post partum stage (the biggest problem, Ina May points out, is that in the US we don't consider childbirth related deaths if the mom dies a significant period after giving birth, which we should do - like in the UK).

A piece on yesterday's BBC got me thinking about this. And pissed off. And wanting to do something....like be even BOLDer!!!

A Woman's Nation

The Shriver Report is getting alot of press this week. It's Called, "A Woman's Nation." I was jazzed to read that the number one priority for women and men is health and healthcare. But wait, what kind of health care? Do 33% of mothers really want major abdominal surgery (ie, that's the C-Section rate in the US)? I've got to wonder what health means to these people surveyed. Are they talking about just not getting a disease that will kill or disable them...or are they talking about well-being, which in the United States seems to not come under the definition of "health" for many people.

I want well-being.

Did I really read this right?

No comment!!

Wake Up...and Claim Your Right to Birth Right!

Dr. Christianne Northrup always seems to hit the bullseye. Her recent piece in The Huffington Post proves this big-time.

In it she says given all the evidence that shows the risks of C-sections and inductions it's mind-boggling that women trust having a C-section before trusting their bodies to give birth vaginally without induction.

Yes, I agree. But my mind wanders.... to reality. How are women supposed to trust giving birth inside a medical system that doesn't trust them to give birth? It's unrealistic to think home should be the only place for women to give birth. It's also important women know that while birth centers are super-amazing-fantastic birth options every birth center isn't equal so if you're pregnant you better research your particular birth center to know if it's super-amazing-fantastic. This leaves hospital birth as the main playing field. How can we make it work for mothers? (How can we at least dim the lights a bit?!!!)

Women do need to wake up, get into their bodies and seize their right to birth right...but we've got to give them options, smiling compassionate faces, throw out the EFMs (electronic fetal monitors for low-risk moms, and stop denying women who've had one C-Section a VBAC (vaginal birth after a cesarean). Until we do the birth option where trust in birth is going to be highest is at home...just the place few pregnant moms want to go.

Hmmm...

Driving 350 miles for a VBAC

Everyone's talking about Joy Szabo - which is exactly how it should be.

Ms Szabo is about to have her forth baby. Her second baby was born via c-section, so her local hospital in Page, Arizona reasons she must have another one. That's not what Page Hospital thought with her third baby, though. Which brings up the question: whose interest does a hospital have when they deny a woman a VBAC? Certainly from this case we discover it's sure not the mother and baby.

So now Ms Szabo boldly drove her mini van around the small town of Page with a clear message to the hospital on the back windshield:

“Page Hospital, enter my body without permission... Sounds like rape to me.”

Thank you, Joy. You've just trail blazed a path for other women to know the truth.

Here is just a sampling of the news coverage:


CNN
The Daily Beast
Our Bodies, Ourselves Blog