New-age stupidity strikes again.
Like all these practises, they're great as long as everything goes well. But, what happens when something goes wrong?
If a baby was born with the umbilical cord around its neck and got into difficulties, should the (private, new-age) midwife resort to proven scientific methods of resuscitation or use Nature's OwnTM methods like rubbing olive oil into the baby's feet or rubbing herbal remedies into the baby's gums?
Read this: Sunday Mail article and weep. :(
It's a sorry lesson to learn, but if the woman had just had her child in hospital she'd have had a perfectly healthy child.
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John,
What happened is tragic and that midwife deserves to be 'struck off' for her actions, however, the rest is just not true.
There is nothing wrong at all with home births or birthing pools, as long as you have a competent and fully trained midwife who knows what she is doing and knows how to get help if things go wrong. In fact, I would probably say that the medicalisation of child birth is the most unnatural and worst thing that has ever happened to women.
I talk from experience with my wife being a fully trained and qualified nurse and midwife, who has been working in the profession for some 20 years now - a combined total.
She has attended many home births during her working life and has dealt with mishaps that have occurred. She used her knowledge and training to make a judgement, such as one situation when she attended a home birth and the baby was a breach. She sent the mother to hospital straight away and all was well and the baby did very well. She works for the NHS as a midwife in a very busy area of London doing clinics, home visits and on call rotas that she shares with her colleagues. She spent sometime working in a natural birthing unit in London, that she very much enjoyed. She went back to the NHS to try and change things a little, but it takes time though.
Anyway, all I am trying to say is that not all midwives are 'woo' as you so elogantly put it and there is absolutely nothing wrong at all with home births outside a hosptial environment, as long as they are well managed by a competent well trained miwife, which my wife most certainly is. I suppose a better place would be a natural birthing centre, where midwives, nurses and gynaecologist are all on hand in the event that something untoward occurs.
Well the point of the story was not to belittle good midwives and the work they do, but to illustrate the point that there are midwives who work outside of the NHS and obviously buy into new-age nonsense.
Also, I’m not just highlighting the point that some midwives work in this fashion but that people (like the mother in this case) also buy into this nonsense. The mother is as much to blame as the midwife in this case. It’s analogous to stories like “psychic stole pensioner’s life savings” stories. Yes, the psychic is disgusting but it’s the beliefs of the people who are harmed by these things that is the root cause of the real harm.
I’m not with you on that one.Originally Posted by Physiotherapist
It used to be quite common and ‘natural’ for both child and mother to die during child birth. Medical expertise has made that once common occurrence almost unheard of these days.
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Yes, it's so unnatural to try to stop people dying. Just because people are capable of giving birth on their own does not mean it's a good idea. Do you consider antibiotics unnatural?
My sister just had a baby and it actually did have the cord around its neck. Fortunately she was in a hospital and she gave birth with no problems (via the highly scientific process of sticking a plunger to his head and pulling him out). If done at home surrounded by woo he would probably have died, or at least suffered sever oxygen deprivation during birth. And yet this was essentially a routine birth with no worries or panic, simply because it was done in a medical setting instead of at home.
The bit of that article that really bothered me was that the indie midwifes operate without insurance.
Staggering. Yes, it's expensive insurance. There's a reason for that, and the reason is precisely situations like the OP.
Midwives should have insurance. My wife does and is both a member of the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives.
What I mean by the medicalisation of childbirth, is that at times, women have their autonomy taken away from them because some midwives want women to give birth at their own convenience rather than the women. In a hospital setting it is for the convenience of the medical staff rather than the woman and she becomes disempowered.
My wife has always tried to make women feel empowered when giving birth. Afterall, it is their birth and they should have some say in how they want to do it, whether this be something as small as not wanting to lie on a bed with their legs in the air and wanting to get up and walk around the room and adapt a squatting position to allow the birth to happen more naturally.
They should have some say in the matter and that is what midwives are for. My wife is scientifically trained and uses this knowledge to the best of her ability to help women give birth in the best way possible. She in no way condones the action of this midwife either having attended home births herself.
Nope. No doubt there are bad midwifes just as there are good ones, but to claim that the entire process is bad simply because some people are busy is just silly. If you have ever been on a maternity ward you should know that the whole point is that the women are catered to hand and foot the whole time. Why should a midwife in your house act any differently from one in a hospital? It is still the same midwife, the only difference is that in a hospital they have lots of other people and equipment nearby if it is needed.
For example, in countries like Afghanistan the women give birth entirely naturally with virtually no medical support. Their neonatal mortality is just over 16%. In the UK it is about 0.5%. (From the 2005 CIA factbook.)Do you really think this is a bad thing?
When I see phrases like "women's autonomy" and "disempowered" my Feminist Whinging detector starts going off. Of course some midwives are going to be more friendly and sympathetic than others, this is the case with all medical practicioners, but this doesn't mean that giving birth in a hospital is a "bad thing". Surely the health and safety of the child, as ensured through the application of best medical practices, is more important than some vague concept of "self esteem" in the mother?
My third child was born with the cord around his neck. When the midwife freed him, she handed him over to me and told me to rub him.. it was frightening because it made me think of the pet rescue programmes where they rub the puppies that aren't breathing. But because the midwife was so calm and relaxed I couldn't panic, thank God.
Even though you may have to wait for pain killers and the midwifes are rushed off their feet in the hospital and can't get to you as quick as you like, they know more about it than you do and as Araneus said the most important thing is your baby being safe.
Also, how 'empowered' should a woman be, over the medical considerations from an expert? For some of my labour, I was made to feel very 'empowered', which left me a bit lost and scared, because I clearly had no idea what I was doing. Thankfully, the various medical staff took over and found the correct level at which to keep me informed and make some decisions, but reassured enough about what those decisions could mean.When I see phrases like "women's autonomy" and "disempowered" my Feminist Whinging detector starts going off. Of course some midwives are going to be more friendly and sympathetic than others, this is the case with all medical practicioners, but this doesn't mean that giving birth in a hospital is a "bad thing". Surely the health and safety of the child, as ensured through the application of best medical practices, is more important than some vague concept of "self esteem" in the mother?
Just because you are a woman, does not immediately qualify you as an expert on pregnancy, childbirth, or raising kids.
I'm reminded of Monty Python's "Meaning of Life".
Woman : What should I do?
Doctor : Nothing dear, you're not qualified.
Seriously though, this is something that bugs me about almost all of medicine these days. Doctors, and other medical professionals of course, spend many years learning to do what they do, and never really stop learning their whole lives. Of course they should discuss things with patients, but it seems that there is far too much emphasis on letting patients decide everything. When it comes down to it, patients are not qualified. No matter how well a doctor explains things, the patient will never know as much as the doctor. Yes, give them choices, especially with important things like choosing surgery or not, but pretending that the patient's opinions are just as valid as the doctor's is just silly.
To be honest I think they give a woman to much choice when she is about to have a baby. It can be quite overwhelming.
I'm not sure what it's like now but I was supposed to fill in a page in a birthing chart (?) to say how I wanted the birth to go.
I didn't bother. I said I just want the baby out and I'll have gas and air please!
What an appalling story. What a foolish mother. It is not only the midwife’s actions that are seriously questionable, but the beliefs of the mother as well. We are not talking about a so-called “New Age” remedy for a wart. Another life was at stake here and one that had absolutely no say in the matter. Because of this shambles a poor child is now brain damaged. Even if the Midwife was insured, the damage has been done and it is irreversible.
At what point did the Midwife realise that it was time to back off when the paramedics arrived and allow them to do their job. She didn’t!!!! Her continued efforts to interfere hampered their critical treatment of the baby.
“She said: "Insufficient evidence has been given to prove that my practice fell below the base standard.”
I would call not being able to properly resuscitate a newborn baby when you are a Midwife acting alone whilst a mother is in childbirth falls well below standard.
What really gets to me about this whole story is that it’s all about people accepting a completely distorted view of the world as being something real.
The new-age movement, as well as the advertising industry, is pushing a view onto us that somehow anything labelled ‘natural’ is automatically ‘good’.
This is known as the ‘naturalistic fallacy’: the idea that nature is somehow inherently good and if something occurs in nature it cannot be bad - so this is how things ought to be: based on ‘nature’.
The trouble is that nature is completely indifferent to the wants, needs, or requirements of living species; which is why life is often a struggle for survival.
This woman, no doubt, thought she was doing something worthwhile in attempting to have a ‘natural birth’ (based on the idealism behind the naturalistic fallacy). And the midwife too probably thought that nothing could go wrong if everything was done ‘nature’s way’.
Unfortunately, ‘nature’ doesn’t care one way or the other and if something goes wrong and appropriate medical action is not taken, the consequences, as in this case, can be tragic.
I see the root cause of the problem in this case to be the willingness to accept as real things that are just not true. Irrational thinking may not harm everyone all the time (hence the naïve “what’s the harm?” quips we skeptics often face) but it does lead to avoidable tragedies like this one.
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I guess if they want to take the "natural" experience to its conclusion, the damaged baby should drowned in a river somewhere or left to die in a cave. After all this is what happens in the "natural" world to damaged offspring that don't develop properly.
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