Birth behind bars

According to a recent report in the New York Times, there are still states that keep pregnant inmates shackled during labour and birth. In some cases, an inmates legs, wrists and even abdomen are chained, quite obviously making medical treatment difficult. Although the Federal Bureau of Prisons last fall called for an end to the practice except in cases where inmates are a danger to themselves or others, it is thought that some women are still shackled in spite of state regulations.

After birth, the treatment of new mothers is no better. Most prisons make no provisions for inmates to be with their newborns. Infants are typically taken away from the mother immediately and either sent to live with family members or placed in foster care. According to a 2000 report in Time, New York, Nebraska and Washington State are the only exceptions; prisons in these states have nurseries in which infants are allowed to live with their mothers for a year to 18 months. Understandably, it is debatable whether infants are better off living in prison at the most critical point in their little lives. There is a dearth of research regarding long-term psychological effects of prison life on children.

In New York, however, the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility opened the nation's first prison nursery 100 years ago, and today its parenting program has had dramatic results. Only 10% of women who successfully completed the program returned to prison, in contrast to 52% of inmates overall.

There is some hope for pregnant inmates. There are a number of organisations across the US that try to organise volunteer doulas (traditional birth attendants) to help to empower pregnant inmates. The Peace Tree Prison Doulas serve incarcerated women in North Carolina penitentaries. They offer two main services to these women; each week they facilitate a pregnancy, labor and postpartum discussion group based on the womens' interests and needs, as well as provide continuous birth doula support when inmates go into labor. After delivery, they provide continuous postpartum counseling and breastfeeding support.

How can we deny pregnant women their right to a safe birth?

Camilla Alves talks some sense

Finally some sensible celebrity advice:

Camilla Alves, partner of Matt McConaughey, had this to say about being pregnant and having a caesar in an interview with BabyCenter:

"It’s a hard thing to be pregnant. Your hormones are crazy. Your body is changing. It’s a major change. I really enjoyed being pregnant, but I certainly didn’t love it."

"If there’s any advice I could give to a pregnant women, it’d be to have a natural birth. With c-sections, there’s a lot of pain and recovery is not fun. You already went through the whole pregnancy, and you don’t want to sit around for six to eight weeks in recovery. I don’t understand why healthy women go in and schedule a c-section."

"Women need to give their bodies time to rest. I really recommend that a woman who has the time, take that time to rest, because you’re not getting much sleep."

Source: http://tinyurl.com/524xjj

Bring on the epidural.

"More and more women are planning on getting epidurals, and I don't blame them," said Dr. Jerry Konialian, a fertility specialist at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, who has delivered thousands of babies since 1985.

"They were not common 20 years ago, but now they are demanding it. You don't even have to suggest it. It's wonderful, and it's safe. I tell my patients who do question it, `You wouldn't have a tooth pulled with no local, so why would you want this huge baby pulled out of you with no anesthetic?"'

A discomfiting point of view at a time when having a baby is riskier than ever, despite women living in a time when technology and medical advances are at their peak. No one is disputing that birth hurts. Women should be able to choose an epidural if they want one. However, I find it really appalling that obstetricians might be encouraging women to have epidurals under the assumption that a woman's body is incapable of birthing a baby without intervention. Moreover, the assertion that women are just giving up on natural birth in favour of anesthesia is ridiculous. Birth is very complicated in a hospital and women's 'choices' are often circumscribed by the context; if a doctor says she needs to have an intervention, many women are reluctant to dispute an expert opinion. Moreover, a number of women are so scared to give birth (tokophobia) they decide during the pregnancy that they do not want to feel any pain.

As I discussed a few posts ago, epidurals can slow labour right down and are just a link in the chain of interventions that often lead women down the path to an unwanted caesar. Having an epidural is no joke. It is essentially a spinal block and there are a number of risks:

*forceps or vacuum extractor are required more often (20-75%)

*may slow labor, requiring Pitocin (synthetic oxytocin)

*increases the chances of a cesarean delivery by two or three times

I don't think any woman takes this decision very lightly.

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_8319895

http://www.childbirthsolutions.com/articles/birth/epidural/index.php

freebirth!

Yesterday, I did a 36 week interview with one of the women in my study who revealed that she is actually going to freebirth her second child after a few weeks of careful contemplation. Up until now, no one in my study has done this (although many have had beautiful home births) so I am very excited and thought I would share. Freebirthing, or unassisted birth, is often referred to as one of the most extreme rejections of the perceived 'overmedicalisation' of childbirth in 'Western' countries. For those that don't know much about this experience, proponents of freebirthing argue that women are the only people suited to deliver children into the world.

The woman I have been interviewing throughout her pregnancy had a fairly negative hospital experience with her first child and decided that her second birth would be positive and totally different. In hospital, she felt out of control, uneducated and at the mercy of doctors and midwives who were telling her what to do. In this second pregnancy, she hired a homebirth doctor to look after her and then a midwife to assist with the actual birth. However, after a few hypnobirthing classes which she and her partner found to be really empowering, they decided that they would birth the baby completely on their own at home in a pool. She said that the only reason she initially thought she should have someone there with her was because of the fear that something would go wrong with the birth; that she didnt trust herself even then though they just wanted the doctor and the midwife to stay in the shadows unless they were needed. However, she didn't feel comfortable holding on to the fear of what could happen considering she already made the leap to having the baby at home without any pain relief or intervention. Freebirthing has been a way for her to shake those last vestiges of anxiety. I have to say I really respect her courage in stepping so far outside of the square and making a decision that I think alot of women would love to do but are definitely too afraid to actually carry out.

Also, her 2yr old daughter is going to be present at the birth (or for as long as she can) and they are definitely going to proceed with a lotus birth (maintaining the connection between the placenta and the baby until the umbilical cord falls off on its own). She also mentioned that part of her plan is to eat some of the placenta to maintain and reinforce her connection to the new baby, freeze the rest of it and perhaps give some to the baby at a later date. I've heard of mothers eating the placenta before but on some level it also means that the body of the mother and baby are not so abruptly separated as soon as the baby is born. By keeping the placenta attached to the baby and then later actually ingesting a piece of the placenta, it's as if mother and child remain connected as one body (like in pregnancy) and later on with breastfeeding.

Laura Shanley has developed a really useful site about unassisted birth with lots of amazing photos, videos and birth stories. This is a must-see for anyone considering freebirthing!

This is a link to a great article about catching your own baby:
http://unassistedchildbirth.com/uc/catch.html