Safe Birth

[Smoke Jaguar]

This is not news to a lot of us on BB. However, there are lots of first timers, or women who still believe the medicalised model will put their needs and welfare first, and rather than post this where the 'converted' hang out, I thought I'd post it here.
A combination of an academic interest, my own current pregnancy, the current maternity situation in Australia, and a book I picked up from the uni library have led me to posting this:

What gets me is when I hear people say it's about the safety of baby first and foremost, yet the caregivers who are so supportive of drug interventions fail to tell parents that the drugs cross the placenta and affect the baby and often affect the establishment of BFing. This is not the birthing woman's fault - it's the bias of the obstetrics model Drugs and interventions is what they specialise in, they do NOT specialise in normal birth. When you know you're going in for a CS, do the obs tell you how the drugs will affect the baby and for how long? That's a real question, not a rhetorical one - I actually want an answer to that one! Because:

Safety is not only a matter of life or death. Indeed, though the death of a baby is an intense personal tragedy for parents, perinatal mortality rates aer no so low that they are a crude measure of safety. For a women who, as a consequence of labour and delivery, has pelvic infection after childbirth, one who cannot have sexual intercourse without pain, who is incontinent, or who becomes depressed, or is in the panic-stricken state produced by post traumatic stress disorder, or one who longs to breastfeed, but is unable to do so, birth has not been safe

Sheila Kitzinger wrote this in the Foreword of "Safer Childbirth? A Critical History of Maternity Care", 1998 edition. It's a UK book, and so relevant to what's happening in Australia today.
When anyone looks at my approach and responds that what they want is safety of their baby, it suggests in some way that this is NOT what I wanted in my case. When the precise reason I wanted things this way was because of what I know about the effects of interventions for my baby. Safety of both of us is paramount to me. Hence the homebirth for us. If I'm safe and happy, my baby will have a fantastic start. If I'm not in a safe condition after the birth then by extension my baby is not in optimum health. Having only one of us safe is a second-rate outcome, IMO. We need each other and if the caregivers don't render us as separate entities, things will be more likely to go well. Mummies need to be respected and not treated like they're trouble makers (or cash-cows) by the obstetrics model.
My point is, the interventions often don't serve the mummy OR the baby's best interests - they serve the hospital. This is evidence-based, and empirical data, the developed world over.
If you really DO value the safety of your baby, you can't ignore this - it needs to be incorporated into your approach to birth, your birth plan, how you select a caregiver and hospital (or it may influence you to choose to birth at home...before it becomes illegal to have a middie in attendance, that is...).
End of thought process!

[Razzberry]

Thanks Mayaness!

[paradise lost]

I felt this too Mayaness. I put a lot of noses out of joint at a mums group by telling a pregnant woman that the safest birth she could go for is a hombirth, since it offers the same mortality and the lowest levels of morbidity compared to all other models of care. She said "i have a friend who tried to homebirth and ended up having a c-section" and i said "Yes, and i'm willing to bet she really really needed it, whereas those who go to obstetric departments get them even if they don't need them".

People find it very difficult to hear that what they see as inaction offers the safest route - they percieve the doctor's interest in "saving" the baby from birth, even when there are no complicating factors bar the intervention itself, as a positive action they can take in making the baby safer. Until women begin to believe birth is inherently safe they will never believe that intervention can carry inherent dangers. People want to "do" something, the are very poor at wait-and-see.

Bx