Pregnancy, Parenthood & Playtime

Above picture is an actual picture of a sign in a OB/GYN office in Utah.

“Because the Physicians at Aspen Woman’s Center care about the quality of their patient deliveries and we are very concerned about the welfare and health of your unborn child, we will not participate in a “Birth Contract” (which is a fancy name for a Birth Plan), a Doulah assisted (doula) or bradley method delivery (type of childbirth class). For those patients who are interested in such methods please notify the nurse so we may arrange transfer of your care.”

Things like this are popping up all over the country and becoming more and more common. But one of the main problems is the lack of support these providers are giving their patients, and the blatent disrespect to their wishes. As someone who is familiar with all of the “banned” things on the sign pictured, I could not imagine why on earth a provider would want to ban them, when most great providers encourage the pictured things.

First I will discuss why it is silly on the part of a provider to “ban” doula’s. Long term studies on doula supported delivered have shown a number of positive things. Decreased cesarean rates, lower induction numbers, deliveries are less likely to be forcep or vaccum assisted, shortened labor time, reduction of pain medication use, less NICU admission in the babies… the list goes on.

But why on earth would Doctors or midwives not want this?  Some providers say that doula’s “get in the way” or “encourage mom’s to not follow medical advice” but if a mother actually takes the time to question a provider shouldn’t that be ok? I mean, moms do have the right to full informed consent. That is federal law.
Many hospitals are now taking an active step in banning birth doula’s in their facility. Which all in all is a violation of a patients right to have whoever she wants supporting her during birth. With the aboe benefits wouldn’t a provider want that kind of help?  Or having the common hospital interventions questioned stepping on their toes?  Not all moms want the cascade of interventions that many laboring women cannot fight while laboring themselves.

An advocate in the delivery room is very important for all women.

As for birth plans, or “birth contracts” which this picture refers to, are also positive because they help the mother to put her wishes down on paper, making them know to the provider as well as the hospital staff. If a mother does not wish to have pain medication or an episiotomy, it is very hard for her to express that while she is in active labor. Again, why is this a bad thing? Bad because a provider who may knowingly violate the wishes of the mother has proof that they did so in a birth plan? Or they simply do not care what the mother wants for her birth?

As for the Bradley Method, which is a husband coached birth class, which teaches their couples about common hospital birth procedures, epidurals, inductions, cascades that lead to cesarean sections, and actually helps to educate unlike the majority of hospital birth classes I have sat in on, which in my opinion teaches their patients to be exactly that… good patients.

Heaven forbid a couple becomes educated on the process of birth and what they want to take place. Granted, there are things that come up that some cannot plan for, or do not plan for, but that is what makes being educated even more important. Knowing how to handle the issue, whatever it may be without being blind sided by hospital staff suggestions, is a great positive.

I always recommend birth classes in a out of hospital setting. It is so important to become educated before you step foot into the hospital to give birth!

As for the above picture, it is sad that giving birth is coming to that with their providers. When did such great benefits start to become taboo and unwanted?

I was shocked, and a bit floored yesterday when I stumbled upon a new report released by the CDC regarding the infant mortality in The United States.
I first came across the article on Birth Activist another publication I have been writing for in recent weeks, and then after they had already broke then news, the AP (Associated Press) released the same story.

While I am not good at analyzing statistics, a friend of mine, Jill from the website Unnecesarean is, and she made a brilliant post about the release, and I would like to share a couple points that she made in hope to help educate parents, and future parents of our nations youth.

“Authors of Behind International Rankings of Infant Mortality: How the United States Compares with Europe explored what they refer to as the recent stagnation in the U.S. infant mortality rate that has generated widespread concern among researchers, policy makers, health care providers and activists.

Using data from the United States’ Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set and the European Perinatal Health Report, authors Marian F. MacDorman, Ph.D., and T.J. Mathews, M.S. of the CDC National Center for Health Statistics found that the main cause of the United States high infant mortality rate when compared with Europe is the “very high percentage of preterm births in the United States.”

According to the study, while infant mortality rates for preterm (less than 37 weeks of gestation) infants are lower in the United States than in most European countries, infant mortality rates for infants born at 37 weeks of gestation or more are higher in the United States than in most European countries.”

I hope I am not the only one that finds this a bit disturbing. We have the best care, and one of the highest survival rates in our babies that are born before 37 weeks gestation, which many consider to be “term”, but the highest infant mortality rate for babies born after 37 weeks gestation, when these babies are supposed to have smooth sailing. Could it be that many of these babies thought to be at “term” have incorrect due dates making them fall into the under 37 weeks gestation category?
It is the number of unnecessary cesarean sections, as well as unnecessary labor inductions that are causing complications in these infants?
We all know that cesarean sections, and labor induction are not risk free procedures, and often have greatly increased risks in some cases. Even the CDC the same agency that released this article have come out in the past month against the high cesarean, and labor induction rates.
Maybe because these numbers are starting to go hand in hand?

The United States remains near the bottom of the rankings.

These graphs help to really depict and put a picture, and numbers to how badly the United States is falling behind.

“The report states, “Reporting differences have little effect on the percentage of preterm births because most preterm births occur well after 22 weeks of gestation. For example, the percentage of preterm births for the United States in 2004 was 12.5% when all births were included and 12.4% when births of less than 22 weeks of gestation were excluded.”

Also, The United States has higher pre-term birth rates. I fully believe this has a lot to do with many factors.
The number of multiple pregnancies the result of fertility treatments. There are no laws regulating fertility treatments at this point in time, while there are “ethics” that some Doctors do go by, such as not implanting more than 2 embryos at a time, there are bad Doctors everywhere who will not follow these ethics, as we saw earlier in the year with the “Octomom”. Which is one reason we need stricter laws on these practices.
Another reason is lifestyle. The number of obese pregnant women is up, smokers, drinkers, women on some form of a prescription medication, and even illegal drug use. These are things that in the past were unheard of for a point in time, but it seems as though in a short period of time it went from taboo to, just sweep it under the rug. And our children are paying for it.

“MacDorman and Mathews attribute much of the high infant mortality rate in the United States to the high percentage of preterm births. Using the direct standardization method to apply the U.S. gestational-age specific infant mortality rates to Sweden’s distribution of births by gestational age, the NCHS found evidence that lowering the percentage of preterm births could have a dramatic impact on infant mortality in the United States.”

Like I previously stated.
If we stopped these elective procedures such as cesarean sections, and labor inductions at late pre term dates, such as 37 or 38 weeks gestation, we could possibly curb this number, as well as the complications and outcomes of these children. Many organizations, including medical organizations have spoke out about cesarean sections before 39 weeks gestation, and it seems as though now the labor induction guidelines are changing to follow suit. In most cases, when babies are healthy, Moms are healthy, babies will come when they are ready, no matter if you try and force them out early or not.  When left alone in a supported environment, most women will give birth on their own perfectly fine. That is not my opinion, that is just another fact.

Lastly, November is National Prematurity Awareness Month.

There are a lot of simple things that you can do to avoid a premature birth.

• Stay Healthy – Eat healthy, exercise regularly, and overall just live a healthy lifestyle.
• Let your labor begin on its own. Unless there is some type of medical reason for a labor induction, or early cesarean section, avoid them. We know that ultrasound estimates of due dates are often incorrect. Do not take the chance with your precious baby!
• Avoid common labor medical interventions such as the premature rupture of membranes (breaking your water), pitocin, and an early epidural. All have been shown to increase the risk of fetal distress, and can cause possible problems in labor, or slow the labor down.
• Choose a Health Care Provider with low intervention rates. If you go to someone with a 50% cesarean rate, your chances are, you have a 50% chance of having a c-section out of the gate. Same goes for labor induction, episiotomy, and other intervention rates.  Providers DO impact your chance of a safe birth.

We have always tried to make household chores fun, make a game out of them, so that our toddler would grow up knowing these should not necessarily be “chores” but just games around the house that need to be done. Over the weekend my husband had to get all the leaves raked up in our yard. Which is always a chore because we have not one tree in our yard at all!

So he got our toddler to help him, and it turned into more fun than anything!

Doesn't this look like fun?

But it reminds me that as parents, we need to teach our children that through out life, they are going to have responsibilities that sometimes we may not like, but it just goes with being a responsible adult. I feel one of the biggest problems we are having with society today, is the serious lack of discipline, as well as responsibilities, our children have. It is becoming more apparent during the teen years.

In my neighborhood, there is a group of teen boys that wanders around, skate board in hand, and doesn’t really do much that is productive. I frequently find them at the end of my driveway taunting my two dogs. The dogs see them through the fence, and proceed to bark out of control at them. Instead of moving along, they stand there and taunt the dogs more. Eventually I got upset because of two napping children inside the house while they played this game.
Out the front door I walked, and asked them to keep moving. We live on a main road, stopping at the end of our drive way is not a smart idea, they could be hit by a car! There is no sidewalk!
When I asked these boys, who looked to be maybe 13 at most to move along, the words that came out of their mouth almost floored me. Then it struck me…. Where are their parents??

Fast forward to the infamous mischief night, which just so happened to fall on a Friday night this year.  My husband, children, and I went out to dinner. As we returned home, we were unpacking the children out of the car and we heard a noise from the leaves across the street from our house, and there they were…. the group of boys, sitting in the dark waiting for our car to get home so they could throw eggs at it or do whatever they had planned. I went inside and phone the police department. 10 minutes later I went outside to get a couple bags out of the car, and the cops had the

Broken Car Window

boys putting their “bags of goodies” in the trunk of his car.

Now I know we were all kids at one point in time, but a little toilet paper was the extent of the damage in most cases. Last year we had the back window of our car broken, landing glass in my toddlers carseat, and all over our car. Random act? It may have been, but having issues with a certain group of children that think nothing about damaging personal property doesn’t lead me to believe it.

Moral of the story, I know that a lot of parents have to have both parents working in order to make ends meet in society today, but it does not take that long to instill morals, and rules into their lives. Show them at a young age that responsibility can, and is fun. Monitor them and what they are doing, whether you are at work or not. It may make a difference when you have to buy a $260 car window for a neighbor.

I know many will probably string me up for this post, but I have noticed a lot lately in passing conversations, internet chats, message boards, and other social situations that when a woman shows sadness of the birth experience she had, or expresses some kind of dissatisfaction of her treatment, emotional, or medically, many people look at her as though she has 3 heads and then the famous line always comes….

“At least You have a healthy baby”

Which is kind of like adding insult to injury in any woman who has had a bad experience. Just open that wound up and pour the salt right in!
I never really thought much about this subject until I started feeling the effects of my first birth experience, and really learning that I became victim to the factory style maternity care system that most hospitals have in place. I was young, uneducated on hospital birth, and thought my Doctor knew everything!  Which landed me in a cesarean section, which in turn caused emotional distress and trauma, when I finally realized what happened. It did not happen right away. It took me months. For the first couple months after my son was born, I was fine, schedule all my kids, elective cesareans, no big deal. Then one day, as I started to read more, learn more about inductions, pitocin, and the hospital I birthed in, it all clicked. Something went seriously wrong.

I started searching for some kind of support, a mother who went through what I did, but I could not find anyone who had a cesarean, that I knew, who felt like I did. Everyone was fine with their experience, everyone threw the healthy baby line out, looked at me strangely when I spoke of my experience and the hate, betrayal, and mistrust I felt. I was an odd ball.
I found myself on an internet forum speaking with women who had also given birth in December of 2007, we had bonded over our pregnancies, and now were supporting each other in our post partum periods, and as we moved further into parenthood.

I expressed my feelings about my recent birth experience, which by this point, my son was about 3 months old. I got the same reactions, healthy baby, blah blah blah, then one woman chimed in about something called ICAN. I started searching to see what it was, who these women were, and I was welcomed with open arms. Women who understood my hurt, who knew that the healthy baby outcome was not all I should focus on, women who had been where I was, and got through it!

It is hard to take those emotions and put them into words.
Of course I am grateful for a healthy baby, a beautiful, healthy, bright, warm, loving little boy.
But the mothers emotions should always be taken into account. You can love your child, without loving the way that they came into the world. In fact, when I look at the experience myself, I separate his birth from him. It is the way HE made it into the world, but it is not what describes him, it is not who he is, and my negative feelings from what *I* experienced do not have an impact on my love for him, and taking care of him.

I came across an article written by Shelia Stubbs, which described fantastically a great comparison.

There is one other very special event in a young woman’s life to which I have tried to compare the act of giving birth: your wedding. It is similarly an emotional rite of passage involving your close relatives and friends. It’s also expected to be stressful but a happy time, and one that will certainly change your life. Now imagine after all your planning for the big day, on the way to the church you are involved in a car accident and have to spend the day in the ER.

To your surprise, the the ER nurses don’t really seem to care that this happens to be your wedding day; after all lots of people get married, and lots of people get in car accidents. They agree it’s unfortunate, but it’s the marriage that matters, not the wedding. They see this every day and think you are being ungrateful for their services and imply you are being rather selfish a bit of a baby!

It is amazing how point on this is.

Let’s compare another situation.
Can you imagine if someone spoke to the victim of sexual assault and said something along the lines of “At least you are alive and healthy” can you imagine the kind of reaction that would get? The complete hysterics, and put downs the person who made that comment would experience?
Many women who have experienced a birth trauma, have been compared to the survivors of a sexual assault, and most are referred to rape councilors after their experience, because of the similarities in the experience, and therapy.

All in all.
I just ask people to be more compassionate and understanding when a woman expresses her negative feelings regarding a birth experience. Healthy baby or not.
Your words may do more harm than good!