I hear you, Karina. I'm so glad you're planning a homebirth for next time. A homebirth is light years apart from a standard hospital obstetric birth. Whereabouts are you? Let me know if you need any leads on good 'with woman' midwives in your area.

I'm sorry about all that you went through. Everything you're saying is backed up by research. That VEs are unnecessary and intrusive. That the mother knows her body best and should be listened to. That Directed Pushing is counterproductive, and that instinctive pushing works. That making women push on their backs makes it harder, uphill against gravity, and causes more damage to the pelvic floor. That too many observers undermine her confidence and progress (because it inhibits her hormones).

It's the standard approach - but nearly everything that is policy or routine in an obstetrically managed birth has a detrimental effect on normal, safe, physiological birthing, mostly because anything that interrupts, distracts or disrupts the birthing woman mucks up the flow of her birth hormones and trigger stress hormones instead - her birth hormones go down, her labour is more difficult and protracted, her stress hormones go up, she feels more pain and anxiety .... then they say or imply 'your body is not working, now we have to *help* you" when the problem was caused in the first place by the interference.

If you would like any articles to add to your collection, please feel free to email me: autumnrainoz@bigpond.com.