Birth Activism - especially those in California!!

[pamamidwife]

http://www.sciencebasedbirth.com/

[~Megan~]

Their opening page is pretty misleading and jumbled. At first I thought they were advocating surgical interventions.
I'd like to see something more streamlined and professional looking, yk?

[bunny's mama]

amarasmom, i agree that the first page is rahter confusing. i think it was written by doctors, LOL. it is not in language for the average person to understand. i really had to put on my thinking cap (on my sleep-deprived brain) to figure out that what they are advocating is LESS intervention.

altho, if it's OBs, i think this is in reaction to more and more women in california especially, searching out midwives for their prenatal care, and also the reserach that shows that midwives (and homebirths) have better outcomes.

interesting.

[applejuice]

It looks to me like the old bait and switch.

[Tanibani]

Totally confused.... gotta read it later. I hope Applejuice isn't right (she might be!)

Yikes - no Applejuice is not right... these pictures are awful! (woman lying flat on her back, lots of horrible - and if the mom had PROPER LABOR SUPPORT - uneeded interventions!)
http://www.sciencebasedbirth.com/FEO_defined_2004.htm

The problem is the text sounds so weird.

[cottonwood]

Seemed very straight-forward to me. But I agree that it is *very* unprofessional looking. They need a professional website designer. Also a proof-reader.

[pamamidwife]

it's created by Faith Gibson, who is a well known traditional midwife in California. I think that it's necessary for you all to contact her and let her know what you think about this - if she's hoping for a nationwide activist call, she needs to have it be easier to understand. Sometimes those of us in birth get so involved into what we're doing that we forget that people not involved in birth do not understand the history, the issues, etc.

Please email her and let her know.

[cottonwood]

Here's what I wrote to her:

Hello,

I love what you're doing, and support it whole-heartedly. That said, I'd like to offer a few suggestions and critiques:

Some people are finding the layout and presentation confusing and difficult to get through. It might help this cause significantly to streamline the site, perhaps even get a professional web designer to work on it. Also, a proofreader -- there are grammatical errors. Unfortunately there are those that this will matter to -- the more professional the website and text are, the more seriously they will take it and the more likely to pass it on.

Re: "full-time presence of the caregiver during active labor" and "continuous one-on-one social and emotional support", the mother should also have the right to decline those things, in accordance with another of your standards, "appropriate physical and psychological privacy for the laboring woman."

Re: "no arbitrary time limits as long as reasonable progress, mom & babe OK", I would say instead that there should be no arbitrary time limit *as long as no complications present themselves*. The term "reasonable progress," unfortunately, can mean just about anything. For instance, one of my labors was 56 hours long, and I did not begin to dilate until 48 hours into it. There are few careproviders (even midwives) who would define that as "reasonable progress," yet the birth was normal, no complications, and to have set time limits based on lack of "reasonable progress" would have likely introduced a cascade of unnecessary interventions.

Re: "Birth position by maternal choice unless other factors require otherwise", again, the phrase "unless other factors require otherwise" could be interpreted to mean just about anything.

Re: "physiological clamping of umbilical cord -- after circulation has stopped (+/-3 minutes)", I would leave out the numbers, since they are irrelevant. Further, the mother should have the right to keep the placenta attached as long as she wishes -- there is no scientific evidence that this causes problems.

I am also uncomfortable with the phrasing of the statement "the employment of physiologically-sound methods does not prohibit hospitalized mothers from receiving drugs and anesthesia as desired or required." Yes, mothers do have the right to receive drugs as desired. However, given the risks inherent in doing so, it is not necessarily a physiologically sound practice.

Another statement, that "70% of pregnancies are normal and occur to women who are healthy", and its attendant implication, that 30% are not, is not scientifically representative of normal, natural birth in healthy women, but rather of managed birth in an unhealthy society. The World Health Organization states, "By medicalizing birth, i.e. separating a woman from her own environment and surrounding her with strange people using strange machines to do strange things to her in an effort to assist her (and some of this may occasionally be necessary), the woman's state of mind and body is so altered that her ways of carrying through this intimate act must also be altered and the state of the baby born must equally be altered. The result is that it is no longer possible to know what births would have been like before these manipulations."

I hope that you will take all this in the spirit in which it is meant, that of greatly wishing this effort to succeed. It's clear you've put a lot of work and passion into this, and I commend you. You are doing important work.

[Aura_Kitten]

... did anyone else find some of those photos really disturbing?

i'm all for birth photos but some of those were just gross. and that poor mama.

[bunny's mama]

ah, well if it's Faith Gibson, it must be wonderful (definitely NOT a bait & switch). she is fabulous and a really really hands-off, very non-medical MW. she has attended many of my friends and everyone loves her around here. she does midwifery as her calling (she's not a quaker, but something similar i just can't remember the name right now...)

[cottonwood]

They've already answered to my email, and responded thoughtfully to my concerns. Seem to be really nice, conscientious people.

[applejuice]

I hope it is for real.

Re: Maria Shriver - how did she have her babies?

I know she is an anchorperson with a great career through all four of her pregnancies, and her cousin, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend had a baby at home, but would she really want to do this? I am not too sure as to how AP she may be in regards to birth.

Worth the try I certainly hope.

[OnTheFence]

I went and looked at the site and agree that something needs to change about the presentation.
First for me, it was very chopped up and the bad grammer, incorrect sentence structure and the bad flow of the whole thing made me want to go on to something else.
The site was more like ramblings and I would think most people would be turned off by it.