Mainstream birth sucks!

""I hate this f****** system!!! I hate that women choose to be uninformed and I hate that babies suffer as a result.""

I agree with you that the system does suck. I have two lousy births to prove it. But it may be a bit harse to say that women "choose" to be uninformed. I felt I WAS informed. After all, I had read "What to Expect When You're Expecting" and gone to my hospital's childbirth class, right? What more information did I need? Not to mention that I never for one minute thought that baby would come out any way but my vagina. No one in my family ever had a c/s. Only two friends I knew did, but for very legitimate (spelling?) reasons. Also most women assume (in my case wrongly so) that their (s)OB really has theirs and their babies best interests in mind.

Progress is slow, but is happening. 50 years ago, my mom birthed me during "twilight sleep". I never would have even considered that, and labored with a posterior presentation and exruciating back pain for 12 hours before caving and getting Demerol (don't flame me, I know it was wrong, but I was insane with pain and making no progress.) It is up to us to spread the word that birth can and should be more. We have the literature, many of you have had the positive experience of birth, I've had the negative to warn against..I know I've made at least a couple of people think by sharing some of what I've learned.

Most women like me feel they are informed.....let's help fill in the gaps in their knowledge!!!

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Exactly how I was. I thought I was totally informed and that my OB was doing what was right. My mom loved her OB and he was my GYN until I moved away at 17. I thought OB/GYNs knew everything about reproductive health. It's not really choosing to be uninformed, sometimes the information you get while trying to inform yourself isn't the best information.

The system definately sucks and should really give information that's useful. In my case, I didn't even know where else to look for more information other than what I had. That part of the system sucks even worse!

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This is interesting. Maybe I'm cynical, but for the most part I realize that I am the only person with my best interest in mind. OBs are human and have their own best interest- and it very well won't coincide.

Most people research the kind of car they are going to buy or the kind of dog they are going to adopt more than their preconception, birth, and how they are going to feed their baby. Really, with something so momentous I would read a lot from different sources and look at the research. I would also look at where I'm getting my info. from.

The interesting thing is that I have quite a few friends that have had children and no one has really asked me what I know or what my advice is. They all know that I am in nursing school to be a midwife and that I have attended many births. I have a friend thats a Vet tech and I pick her brain whenever I get the chance. Its some weird thing with women that it seems they don't want to show any kind of vulnerability or something... I have no idea.

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: Sad but so true. I chose not to have my first dd at a maternity hospital because it wasn't medical enough and what if something went wrong. I didn't know that I wasn't fully informed into the natural nature of birth.

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I have to agree with this too. What makes one woman walk away from a birth disempowered and looking for a different way and a woman walk away just thinking thats how its supposed to be? In my case, I felt in my heart that my second episiotomy was unjustified and I went online looking for a better way to birth AND I FOUND IT!

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: ITA.

I have two friends who I see regularly who are pregnant for the second time (both), and neither of them has ever asked me anything about birth. Granted, I'm not a midwife, but I have attended many births and I'd be happy to share all the knowledge and experience that I have with them! They both know I'm a doula -- I'm the only one in town.

My dh is a biochemist and I'm constantly asking him questions about chemistry and things of that nature because that is his area of interest and expertise. Is it just because I don't have a "MD" behind my name that women do not seek my counsel? :

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I know this is true for a lot of first time moms, but I don't know why it has to be. Maybe it came from my longstanding distrust of the medical institution, maybe my upbringing, maybe my sheer bullheadedness, but right off the bat I knew something was wrong when I went to an OB for one appointment. There was nothing unusual about this OB, but my warning sirens went off like crazy. And I knew, just knew, that all the mainstream literature (What to Expect, etc.) was way off base, without even reading it. I could just tell by the covers, you know? So I looked and looked and finally tapped into the good stuff -- Michel Odent, Ina May, Henci Goer, etc. -- and also found a homebirth midwife. I think a lot of women don't trust themselves to follow their instincts and feel more at ease putting their trust in the system. It's so, so sad to me, but life's like that in the bigger picture, too.

I did visit my friend yesterday and she is doing ok. She had a 10 hour labor and pushed for only a half-hour, but her take on it was that it was horrible and she thought she was going to die . Anyway, she realizes that she wasn't able to bond with her baby right away because they whisked him off because of his breathing problems. But, she of course doesn't question her OBs decision to induce her for no medical reason, the day before her due date : (docs should be sued for s*** like that).

She is of course going to circ him. I sent her info. about other choices. I asked her if she was going to watch or go with him and she said "oh no, I don't think I could!" I wanted to say "well, if you can't even watch, why are you putting your child through that???!!!" But, I didn't say that of course...

I was better researched than most my first time through. I had a doula, studied the Bradley method, and I had an OB that is very pro natural birth. I even went to a hospital that is very pro-natural birth and has birthing tubs and so forth and so on. But I still ended up with a very medical experience that I do not want to repeat.

They make you "feel" like you're informed, but they just tell you about the tests and procedures and what they're for and why they're important. They don't understand how birth progresses naturally when it is not managed and so they do not impart that knowledge. So you get this impression that you're "well-educated" but really, you know very little.

And even this time, take gestational diabetes, for instance. They tell you how to take the test, what your score should be, and how serious of a condition it is (terrible things that can happen if you have it). But I had to really look and look and look to find out what the symptoms were outside of some score on a blood test. Wouldn't it seem obvious that you should tell people what the symptoms of the condition are?

You have to somehow look beyond what they tell you in order to figure out the missing pieces of the puzzle, and I agree - a first-time mom is lost in a forest of information.

Man, it feels so good to read this thread.

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I'm so lucky that this is me. My mom birthed all 4 of us naturally, two with a midwife. She was an LLL leader. Now, I'm a doula and I'm not even a mom yet. I'm so glad I'm planning homebirths for ALL of my children. But I am so heartbroken when I do hospital births with women who just don't seem to have the motivation or interest to learn something other than what their doc tells them.

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Same here. I'm a doula and none of my friends ever ask me my advice...unless it's about the color of their baby's nursery.