Quote:
Originally Posted by GuildJenn
I respectfully disagree. Certainly if I were talking to a group of OBs I would have something to say to them as well.
But there is a systemically entrenched, suspicious attitude towards c-sections within the natural birth community and I'm sorry but I don't find the crab analogy very respectful.
Most women who advocate for natural birth approaches are extremely ready to support - well, natural birth. It's only after they have a "failed" birth/c-section/find they need one for whatever reason/decide to induce/and so on that they discover how hollow the support is for their new choices. (ETA: And experiences.) They are not generally fooled by the medical establishment into thinking they are being judged - they are judged, their stories questioned, and so on.
Women who are, for example, here on MDC talking about it do not generally just turn into advocates for 40% c-section rates. And yet they have shared - do some searches on past threads - how little support they have felt. That doesn't come from nowhere.
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I don't think it comes from nowhere, either. As I've said many times, it comes from the system that pits women against one another. Now, that does not absolve us of the responsibility not to be its willing conduits. Quite the contrary-- it means instead that we all must take a step back and see how we are perpetuating the same injuries on one another. ALL of us.
Although fairly uncommon, I do see NCB-supporters who say things like, "Women who end up with XYZ (terrible, unwarranted consequence of medicalized birth-- not just any C/S, but some 4th degree episiotomy because the OB was impatient or some such) deserve what they get! It's their own fault for not doing the research like I did." It shocks and disgusts me and they get an earful from me every time. The judgment, the selfishness and the downright arrogance are completely intolerable, IMO. And I'm pretty sure I need not list similarly disrespectful examples of "mainstream" mamas who seem full of schadenfreude when a woman who attempts a natural birth ends up with some trauma.
But going back to your comment... I think suspicion of interventions is rational, given their extreme overuse and strong link to a misogynist (racist, classist, etc.) culture. But you're absolutely right-- and I hope I have been clear-- that suspicion of women who have them/are subjected to them/choose them is unproductive in the extreme. And suspicion of all interventions, all of the time, is highly IRrational.
As was stated earlier, I would like to see a culture of support for EVIDENCE-BASED care and respected/empowered mothers. I am thrilled that C/S exist and that C/S techniques continue to be improved. I am similarly thrilled that most medical interventions exist and can be used when necessary in birth. My problem is with their overuse, and all that comes with that.
However, I think I have been misread, or else I have miscommunicated. Just because "the system" is at fault does not mean that we cannot ask each other for specific types of support per this thread-- that we cannot take responsibility for our place in the system. I simply feel it's unproductive to lay blame at the feet of each other as if we, as women-- as mothers and mothers-to-be-- hold the primary responsibility for the state of birth and support for birthing women (or lack thereof).
By which I mean, for example... (And this is not anything you don't know-- just writing it out to clarify my own thoughts...)
The reason for the "systematic suspicion of C/S" within the "NCB community" is not women's personal irrationality or cliquishness or meanness or selfishness, and if they just got over it, they'd be able to support C/S mamas as they should. The reason is A) that the medical community has given us all good reason to be suspicious of C/S in general and B) the larger sexist society has pitted women in competition with each other. So the solution is not to "stop being jerks" or "stop being suspicious" (of the overuse of interventions) it's to A) attack the system and B) do our best to reframe women's issues as a collective struggle, wherein a rising tide lifts all ships.
As I said before, I believe the same things that will lead to more respectful C/S will lead to less of them (overall). Win-win-win.