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Restore Midwifery Blog

What the Ford/Kavanaugh Process and Birth Trauma Have In Common

9/29/2018

2 Comments

 
Image of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh at the hearing on 9/28/18
​One thing the whole Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh process reiterates: we live in a violent and sexist culture. But, things are changing.
 
Never before have conversations about sexual harassment and sexual violence been so frequently spoken in our media or political sphere. People everywhere are getting behind the #BelieveWomen and #MeToo platforms. And while we have a very long way to go, I feel hopeful we will get there, eventually.
 
One thing that the courageous Dr. Ford’s testimony shows is how traumatic experiences can affect us for our entire lives. Anybody with an ounce of compassion could see, during her testimony, how the trauma and violation of her experience with Kavanaugh as a teenager still haunts her deeply.
 
It goes without saying that sexual traumas are far too common in our society. Another trauma that is all too prevalent in the United States and throughout the globe is birth trauma. Although the two are related, I would argue that birth trauma is the most common hurt people experience in our society, because it affects each and every one of us.
 
Almost everybody in our modern society has experience with birth trauma. Those born in the 1930s-1960s experienced the trauma of having mothers who were unconscious from twilight sleep, being pulled out by forceps, separated from their mothers for up to a week, and/or denied the benefits of breastfeeding. While most of these practices have evolved or changed since the 1960’s, birth trauma persists. Birthing people report being verbally abused by their care providers during labor, given unnecessary surgical procedures like episiotomies or c-sections, and/or generally emotionally dissatisfied with their prenatal care and birth experiences. Babies born under these conditions (a.k.a. most of the humans in this world), have our first experiences of this world marred by this painful and confusing phenomenon. We are affected by these traumas in more ways than we consciously know.
 
Sexual and birth traumas are inextricably connected. Of course a society that does not respect or value the female body will relate to birth the way we do. The Western Medical System is deeply sexist and patriarchal, controlled by the some of the same old white men who are running our country.
 
The good news is- humans have an innate and powerful capacity to heal ourselves. Whether it relates to birth, sexual trauma, or any other form of hurt, we are absolutely capable of healing. And not only are we capable of healing ourselves- we help each other heal. We are getting more and more connected, building movements which offer hope to future generations. For the first time in history, white men are the minority of house Democratic nominees. Women of color and trans folks are winning key elections. Birth justice is finally a part of the conversation, with states like New York and California creating initiatives to attempt to address the birth disparities facing black birthing people and other birthing people of color. We have so much more to do in changing the hospital system, making midwifery care more accessible to more people, and eliminating sexual violence from our culture. But, things are changing.
 
Blessings to Dr. Ford, everybody healing from sexual traumas, and all of us healing from our births.
2 Comments
Tarja
10/23/2018 06:16:56 am

I cannot agree with you about increasing births handled by midwives outside of hospitals. This is an extremely dangerous trend that only people who have not seen and experienced birth of either humans or animals, and seen first hand how badly things can go wrong. This is a trend that mainly women living in cities believe in - the women whose lifestyle is as far from the nature as can be. They see natural birth as a goal, while the country women who have seen children and animals born and dying know how dangerous giving birth can be. It is those country women who don't even dream about choosing home or birth center delivery, but go to the best hospitals available, no matter how far.

These midwife centers lull women into a false sense of safety. They give you beautiful stories about babies being born naturally without problems, and fail to tell you anything about the births that went wrong. When things go wrong during delivery, the end result is often either a dead or a brain damaged baby, and at times a dead or badly injured mother as well. When things go wrong, these home or birthing center midwives have no way to even know that the baby is in danger. The baby is not monitored the safest possible way - which is continuous monitoring during the most dangerous part of the birth - the pushing. Many things can go wrong, and when the midwife only listens to the heart beat every 10 minutes, the baby can be dead or seriously brain damaged well before the midwife even knows that there is a problem. When the midwife finally listens and finds no heart beat, she has no options to save the baby, other than trying to speed up the delivery the best she can. In the best scenario the baby is born within minutes after the midwife noticed she/he is in trouble. By then, the baby has been without oxygen for minutes if not longer. Do you know how long it takes for brain damage to occur? Not long. If the mother can't push the baby out, the only option is to call an ambulance and transfer to a hospital. No matter how close the clinic or home is to the hospital, minutes go by before any help is available. When this same scenario happens in a hospital, the midwife (hospitals use midwifes as well) will know immediately when the heart beat slows down that the baby is in trouble. With a doctor standing by, emergency C-section can be performed within seconds - saving the baby from a lifetime in a wheelchair because of brain damage, or even worse, death.

This happened to my granddaughter just a few days ago. The pregnancy was "low risk" so my daughter chose a birth center with midwife instead of a hospital birth. When the baby was about to be born, the midwife listened and found no heart beat. She then told my daughter "we need to get this baby out immediately". My daughter was brave and did her best, and got the baby out very quickly. It was too late. She was dead. She was rushed to the NICU and they tried to revive her, but nothing worked. My daughter bled badly after the delivery - she was given blood transfusion and she was, thank God, saved. However, she and her husband went home without the baby they had so happily expected. They are faced with a lifetime of "what ifs"

Technology has improved tremendously over the past 60 years. Infant mortality has decreased tremendously because of that. Why parents choose to give up the best chance their baby has to live and go to a birth center or have a home delivery where none of the emergency help is available beats me? These midwife centers sell their services professionally, making you believe its safe when its not. They fail to tell you that they have no doctors on-site to help if something goes wrong. They also fail to tell you that if something goes wrong, it takes minutes if not longer to transfer you to a hospital, and that in most cases its too late for the baby. Do your research and compare the infant mortality rates in hospitals versus home or birth center births. There is a big difference. Here is one blog with story after story about things going wrong during delivery. Read them, and if you still choose home or birth center/midwife center to deliver your baby, do so knowing you are risking not just your own life, but potentially the health or death of your newborn, http://hurtbyhomebirth.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-04-17T17:32:00-07:00&max-results=7

Reply
Marea Goodman
10/30/2018 10:36:53 am

Hi Tarja,

I am very very sorry to hear that your granddaughter had this experience. It is a terrible tragedy that your great grandbaby did not make it.

I do not want to argue with you about whether or not homebirth is safe- there is ample evidence in the world that people can interpret either way. What I can say is that even with evidence-based best practice (like auscultating the baby's heart rate every other contraction in the final part of second stage, which many midwives adhere to), occasionally, babies don't make it through birth- at home and in the hospital. It is a reality of human birth, and technology has not been able to save all babies (and babies born in US hospitals have the highest rates of morbidity and mortality out of all of the developed nations).

I wish you and your family so much healing in this grief-full time. If you're interested, here is a resource list for supportive groups and organizations after stillbirth: http://bloombirthpros.com/top-10-miscarriage-stillbirth-infant-loss-resources-for-birth-professionals/

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