- 01-05-2012, 04:38 PM #17Registered User
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Charade, completely agree.
- 01-05-2012, 04:41 PM #18Registered User
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thanka: irrespective of wether i agree with you or not, you seem to be very passionate about birthing wthout intervetions. but what is the way forward ? surely posting on this forum couldnt help beyond a point ?
- 01-05-2012, 09:43 PM #19Registered User
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I'm just having a conversation here--it's only a small reflection of what goes on in real life for me. :) I enjoy interesting conversations and this has been and continues to be one. It is very interesting for me to be exposed to the various mindsets that are out there when it comes to this and related topics.
I'm from the "each one, reach one" camp. I think most people who share a similar mindset with me on this topic also advocate for it on a more individual level--for us it's an intimate topic that we're passionate about because it's close to our heart and we've experienced a lot of great benefits from it. It's easy to write off if you haven't been around it, experienced it or know others who have, I think.
So, as I said, this little forum here only gives a glimpse of my real life involvement. :) If the only thing I do here is challenge womens' perceptions, that is already a great thing. I think the women I've met here mostly stick to one mindset and easily write off others without really examining all sides in-depth. Hopefully, I'm going against that trend myself and hope that others will as well. I think it's really important to engage deeply with this topic. The more people engage, the more they think and then the more likely they are to dig deeper and discover more for themselves. That's how I started on my personal journey and am really thankful for those people who challenged my thinking. But, I tend to be a fairly "fluid" thinker--meaning I don't compartmentalize things so easily--I see that all of life--all aspects of it are connected--so I'm not just a body divided from a mind divided from a spirit--I'm a whole person so that's how I see birth (and many other aspects of life)--it must be approached as a system. That's why I have a problem with the lack of bedside care in the medical system here in HK. Anyway....
As far as what can be done? Depends on what your perspective and agenda are. If you think that the system as-is in the developed world is great for maternity care then there doesn't seem to be any reason to deviate from that. If you think that medicalized birth has gone too far (as I do) then there are women (mostly midwives) slowly but steadily working to give more women options. But...they are met with red tape as the medicalized system is the majority and holds the keys to the gate, so to speak.“Many women have described their experiences of childbirth as being associated with a
spiritual uplifting, the power of which they have never previously been aware …
To such a woman childbirth is a monument of joy within her memory.
She turns to it in thought to seek again an ecstasy which passed too soon.”
~ Grantly Dick-Read (Childbirth Without Fear)
Mother of Two
JMW, boy, born November 29, 2007, 9:43 pm, USA
MJW, girl, born March 17, 2011, 4:14 pm, HK
- 01-05-2012, 11:53 PM #20Registered User
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sure :) am still not fully convinced about the topic but atleast i understand where you are coming from.
nb: birthing was a very neutral expereince for me. i dont remember much nor did i care about pregnancy / delivery. my single agenda the whole of those nine months was that my baby be safe and as healthy as God wills him to be. so we chose and still would whatever was the safest option presented to us and advised by a doctor we trusted. am not saying this is the ideal way to be. change comes because people question existing mindsets. am just putting accross another mindset to you on why women like me are not buying into birthing without interventions.
- 01-06-2012, 10:24 AM #21Registered User
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That wasn’t me. Think it was someone else on another post. I don’t disagree entirely with that position but I also think that it’s the duty of practitioners and advocates of all kinds of birth options to put as complete and clear a picture out there as they can.
So my comment was about how practitioners present the facts and that they might keep in mind that while they are based in North America, their views online and in books are being read and referenced by people around the world so if they are addressing the North American situation alone, they need to say so explicitly. Further, when quoting global statistics – these are rarely related to home births which, as you said, would come across unfavourably in global statistics but to other kinds of risk related to medicalised births – the impression conveyed is that the rest of what they are saying is relevant to women globally who live in similar conditions. At the most, the qualification added would be something like “access to good nutrition, medical care” etc. which women in urban areas in developed countries would also have access to.
They may be writing for people in Western developed nations but I don’t think this is clear to women who do not live in these nations but who live in very similar (but not the same) circumstances in developing nations. I know of two cases where people who lived a long time in US moved to India and attempted a home birth, with access to the best medical care. One abandoned it (a good thing because she ended up needed an emergency c-sec after a very long labour), but the other ended in the death of the baby. They had had a home birth in the US before and put in place everything that was similar, including being literally five minutes away from the best hospital in the city. It could just be a fluke, but I feel that it could also have something to do with not being in the US, just as I think that even in the West, where you live when you do the home birth makes a difference – such as how fast an ambulance can get to you in case you need it. Somehow I never see that stressed – the importance of the back-up plan, maybe to play down the fear factor.
This is just a small quibble about how information is presented and applies to both sides of the debate.
I must add that I do agree with most things on the original poster (and I know home birth was not one of them) you put up. And I am also all for providing midwives in rural areas of developing nations with the best of modern medicine though I also believe that these women deserve hospitals in their areas and the chance to use them.
- 01-06-2012, 11:07 AM #22Registered User
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jut taking up from what Charade is saying; from my expereince of living in India and in a family full of doctors (the kind who will attend conferences and try keeping up with latest changes in medical practices): In developing coutries when governments or NGOs back up midwives or similar services, it is also with the realization that access to full medical services is still some years off. as much as some governments might genuinely want - they would not be able to provide medical facilities in semi urban or rural areas. training midwives would be relatively faster, less expensive and possible. It would save more lives. There are also many cultural and religious factors. There are many women and families in semi urban and rural areas who would NOT go to a doctor for child birth. The advise coming from doctors or anyone foreign to them is discounted faster. If the same advice were to come fom a midwife from the same community as them or a familiar face, the chances that atleast it would be heard are higher. And lets not even get into epidurals and water births etc, the issues on hand are much more basic.
it's not why home birth advocate home birth in western world. totally differnt reasons and totally different scenarios. if you come to think of it the discussion on this thread doesnt even make sense because we are discussing two different things altogether - just with the same name :)Last edited by miran; 01-06-2012 at 11:10 AM.
- 01-06-2012, 02:30 PM #23Banned
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Back to the original poster (the actual poster not Thanka2!) - all of those things support a natural birth and in theory should be easy to achieve. In Hong Kong (which is where we are living so the context in which I am reading it) it is EXTREMELY difficult to achieve even one or two of these things, let alone all of them. There are many benefits to natural birth (as there are to c sections and pain relief) but it is not an option in most circumstances for women giving birth here, which is truely ridiculous. Thanka2 managed to achieve it with a lot of hard work, but many people who want it - particularly first time mothers who have not been through the process and have to rely on caregivers that in most instances have no interest in ensuring the mother has a natural birth- cannot access it. That is what is truly wrong; that it is not an option available in hospitals in Hong Kong and no alternatives to hospital eg birthing centres,govt supported home births are available.
I wish I knew how this could be changed but I am still struggling with that one....
- 01-06-2012, 02:49 PM #24Registered User
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Have to clarify, though, that I was referring to a class of people in the developing world who might choose "home birth" in the same way, and under what they believe to be similar circumstances (and which are similar but not the same), to the women in the developed world. So couples in the big cities, with the kind of medical facilities that make a name for themselves with medical tourism, often people with money who have lived in the West. It is these women who are also the audience for the literature on home birth being written in the West and that's why I feel the literature should be more specific.
For those women in rural areas/small towns in developing countries who don't have a choice, it's just called "birth" I guess.
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