Childbirth is a life changing event which can be both exhilarating and draining, the greatest experience of one’s life or the worst. Childbirth carries tremendous dogma, old wives tales, traditions, and controversy.
Adults have their own rhyme and reason for birth choices. Doctors and midwives make choices for convenience, scheduling, to avoid lawsuits or for profit. You may make decisions based on personal beliefs, research, the influence of others, your own benefit, and quite likely for what you believe to be the good of the baby.
Doctors and midwives may claim to “first do no harm”, but that apparently does not hold true in childbirth which is evidenced by the United State’s embarrassingly high infant mortality rate and intervention rate. It is your job as the parent then, to distinguish fact from fiction to uncover what is really in the best interest of your child. What is really best for your baby? What is your baby thinking or feeling during childbirth? What does your baby really want?
BABIES WANT TO AVOID PAIN
It is fairly logical to assume that your baby does not want to experience pain. Many birth interventions such as breaking the water, labor inductions, forceps or surgery can cause the baby pain by forcing the babies skull against the mothers pelvis, crushing the baby with intolerable and relentless contractions, nicking the baby with a scalpel, or the unimaginable pain of forceps dragging them out of the birth canal by their head.
Labor inductions can cause crushing contractions which smash the babies head into the mother’s pelvis repeatedly. For some barbaric reason anesthesia is rarely used in circumcision which is clearly excruciating for the baby not to mention totally unnecessary. Vaccinations are also painful. Some of these procedures are so painful and traumatic that the baby fails to make eye contact with its parents or breastfeed at all.
BABIES WANT OXYGEN
Babies also seem to enjoy adequate blood and oxygen. Anything that compresses the umbilical cord which is quite literally, the babies lifeline, will understandably cause fetal distress and if not resolved can cause potentially irreversible brain damage. This is the worst nightmare of any parent but I am quite sure the baby didn’t sign up for it either. A combination of broken waters and a supine (on the back position) can cause the baby to lie on its own cord and compress it.
The supine position also compresses the mother’s vena cava which is the main vein supplying blood to the uterus. Pregnant women dutifully sleep on their side through pregnancy only to get to the hospital and start suffocating their baby to give the doctor a better view.
Many interventions used in hospitals restrict blood flow to the uterus either through contractions or from the fight or flight response of the mother. The violent contractions brought on by Pitocin and Cytotec restrict or eliminate the blood supply to the uterus causing dramatic fetal distress often “necessitating” a cesarean section. Overly long or strong contractions essentially suffocate the fetus by only allowing the fetus to “breathe” briefly between contractions.
By far the single most common intervention that literally robs a newborn of up to one third of their blood supply is the insane practice of immediate cord clamping. There is not one scientifically valid reason to clamp a cord immediately. The cord pulses for approximately 15-20 minutes following birth and this pulsing is the babies final and vital blood transfusion. The cord blood is rich with stem cells, iron, and oxygen and it is 100% the property of the baby.
The cord continues to pulse during the baby’s crucial transition to pulmonary oxygenation (breathing through the lungs). It can take several minutes for the oxygen from breathing air to reach the baby’s brain and the oxygenated cord blood compensates in this critical time. As you can imagine, cutting the babies lifeline literally starves the babies brain of oxygen until the lungs can take over. In addition to potential irreversible brain damage, immediate cord clamping also robs the baby of vital iron and causes widespread childhood anemia. The easiest way to avoid anemia? Let the baby retain the blood that is rightfully theirs.
BABIES WANT SECURITY
Babies want to stay in the comfort and safety of the womb until it is time to come out. Inductions and C-sections that are scheduled for convenience or some other arbitrary reason are quite simply removing the baby prematurely. Birth will happen when the baby is done growing. Babies stay inside the womb for a reason and they want to remain there until they are done growing. Some studies indicate that doctors are the leading cause of premature births in the United States.
The unfortunate truth is that virtually all medical interventions carry risks to the mother and baby. In fact, many of the interventions are so harmful to the baby that they lead to fetal distress which puts parents under pressure to submit to even more procedures that carry even greater potential for harm. Almost no parent will say no to something that will save their child when the baby’s heart rate is dropping precipitously. The fact remains that the doctor or midwife caused the distress in the first place.
BABIES WANT A LOVING WELCOME
Try to imagine that you are coming into the world for the first time as a baby(or an alien if that is easier for you). You feel yourself being blasted from the sanctity of the womb to the shrieks of agony of your mother and the militant shouts of others as you are suffocated on and off for twelve hours while your head is rammed repeatedly into bone. Then you feel your body become heavy and unresponsive as you are drugged into oblivion. You are suddenly exposed to blinding light and a crowd of eyes peeking between mask and cap as your mother is filleted to rip you from the safety of your mother’s body. 1/3 of your blood supply is drained from your body as your primary life giving organ is cut from your body without painkillers. Your lungs are not fully developed since you are a few weeks early and since you didn’t travel down the birth canal the amniotic fluid was never squeezed from your lungs. You are whisked away in the latex gloves of uncaring, unresponsive hurried strangers who ram a syringe up your nose, weigh you on a cold metal table, inject you with toxic chemicals, blind you, and irreversibly mutilate your penis without any painkillers. You are finally handed to your mother who is too tortured, butchered and drugged to hold you much less breastfeed.
Conversely imagine coming into the world for the first time in a homebirth setting. You stay in the uterus until your mothers highly evolved and naturally intelligent birthing mechanism understands that you are ready to be born. You feel the strong and gentle hugging squeeze of the uterine contractions as they gently but firmly propel you into the birth canal. You can hear the familiar sounds of your parents and maybe some music. They are talking to you, encouraging you, telling you they love you and cant wait to meet you. You feel the familiar rhythm of your mother’s body moving into various positions that give you ample room to comfortably rotate into the perfect position to be born in. You are squeezed out with a final hugging push or two into the loving warm waiting arms of your parents (perhaps to the sound of your mother’s orgasm) and you are placed on mom’s warm waiting chest within seconds. You blink a bit in the semi darkness and hear your mothers voice without the buffer of the womb for the first time. You hear her love and see into her eyes as you instinctively latch on. Meanwhile your body is being infused with the final blood transfusion that will give you all the oxygen, blood, stem cells and immunity you need for the healthiest start in life. While you latch on to your mother’s warm, waiting breast, her body releases oxytocin which improves your bonding, releases her breast milk, and causes the cord to stop the transfusion, the placenta to detach from the uterine wall and deliver itself naturally. The colustrum from your mother’s breast is all the Vitamin K you need especially since no one will be mutilating your penis. There is no Hepatitis vaccine since you aren’t sexually active quite yet and your penis stays happily and gratefully intact.
There are many arguments for and against natural birth but from the baby’s point of view there is undeniably no contest.
Image Source: http://flickr.com/photos/silversldr/2451035644/
you make some excellent points. it’s a wonder why so many women opt for unnatural births for their babies. if you stop for a moment to think about what’s best for the baby, natural childbirth (in most cases) seems only logical.
i’ve had both a hospital birth and a home birth and the differences btwn the two were amazing. thankfully, both were healthy babies born vaginally, even my footling breech at home. but i’d definitely choose a home birth again hands down if i were to have another child.
May 25, 2007 10:46 PM
Posted by amygeekgrl | December 18, 2007, 2:56 amthanks for your comment!
I think most women dont even realize that homebirth is a legitmate option because of their overwhelming fear of birth.
I was pressured into a hospital birth by the whole “what if something goes wrong” argument, only to find that going to the hospital guaranteed that an awful lot would go wrong (despite using a midwife).
I hope alot more women can find the self confidence like you did to trust their body and birth for everybody’s good (except for the OB’s wallet).
May 26, 2007 8:16 AM
Posted by Sheryl Lyon | December 18, 2007, 2:57 amNice article, thanks for including circumcision as something incompatible with Natural Birth. It amazes me how many women want to have a natural birth, but then do the most unnatural act of cutting off the end of their baby boy’s penis.
May 26, 2007 12:18 PM
Posted by Beanie's Appa | December 18, 2007, 2:58 amMy heart breaks for every single circumcised man and boy out there.
It is one of the great (and easily preventable) unjustices of our time.
May 26, 2007 12:30 PM
Posted by Sheryl Lyon | December 18, 2007, 2:58 amI recently watched a story on the evening network news extolling the virtues of parents who had saved their baby’s placenta and years later were able to extract stem cells to treat his cerebral palsy with astonishingly positive results. The story concluded that this was a very prudent and proactive decision on their part but the expense of storage was out of reach for 99% of parents.
The conclusion, juxtaposed against your article was that we were looking at this situation ass backwards and early clamping of the placenta was probably the cause of his cerebral palsy in the first place. You also suggested that autism was another condition that could be caused by this situation.
I would like to go one step further. What about Alzheimers,Parkinsons, diabetes, some cancers and other adult onset diseases.Could it be that there was important cell development that was not completed by clamping the placenta, the effects of which are only now coming to light?
To change our accepted way of thinking would of course put the huge placenta storage industry out of business.
It would be interesting to measure the incidence of some of these diseases in civilized and uncivilized, pardon me, developing societies.
Posted by George | March 12, 2008, 3:19 pmI cannot think of any other situation in which it would be perfectly acceptable to steal 1/3 of a person’s blood for the sake of convenience or profit.
Immediate cord clamping is a dangerous practice that irreparably harms the newborn by depriving them of their own blood, oxygen and stem cells. There is a mountain of evidence as to its harm and none to its benefit. It benefits the birth attendants by shaving 10-20 minutes of time off the procedure.
It is a deplorable practice that should be criminalized and probably the number one reason why I would not be caught dead giving birth in a hospital.
Posted by naturalchildbirth | March 12, 2008, 7:19 pmDoctor always prefer natural child birth rather than surgery, since its not that much safe and healthy for infant, and also natural child birth has many good points which are good if we could follow them
Posted by Jason edwards@ Foot Fungus | November 4, 2009, 2:26 amCircumcision is something that is completely alien to everything I believe in. Why would you want to hurt your baby when at the same time want to give it so much love.
Posted by Dennis @ Light Therapy Boxes | November 12, 2009, 2:34 amGreat article!
Im going to toot my own horn! LOL
The picture of the little boy in the basket is my son! Just 3 weeks old! Sweet little boy.
Posted by Jessica | November 13, 2009, 9:26 pm@Jessica:
He is gorgeous!! Thanks for making his picture available for us to enjoy.
Posted by admin | December 1, 2009, 8:42 pmGood points. Natural birth is better for the babies. Mothers are also better off with natural birth :
- less risk for mothers.
- less pain after birth, hence much quicker recovery.
- after several years, many women still feel the effects of c-section and epidural, or even episiotomy. Not so with natural birth.
- can bond with baby straight away.
- better for your wallet …:)
Posted by Dee | February 22, 2010, 7:06 ami think your piece is extremally exaggerated and obviously very biased. Was your penis mutilated? what country are you referring to? yes home births can be wonderful, but you describe hospital births as if they are gas chambers!!! come on now, its not really like that, you dont havet to be so graphic. if what you are saying is true , about babys heads been crushed? i mean, wouldnt all babies die or be disabled? too much exageration for my liking
Posted by beth | May 31, 2010, 3:41 pmI am so glad that I had a mother who cared enough to have me circumcised instead of an activist trying to make a political statement out of me. Honest researchers are now considering circumcision to be an immunisation procedure. One study in Africa showed the AIDS transmission rate alone was 50% lower. That study was ended early as it was thought to be too inhumane to continue and not allow the uncircumcised men to have the procedure. The other statistic that stunned me was the 140,000-odd uncircumcised US military men hospitalised in WWII with penile infections.
BTW, I am 44 years old, postgrad educated, married, have a circumcised son, and an (uncircumcised) daughter.
The decision to circumcise my son was made on the basis of research and logic. It was made unnecessarily more difficult by finding emotional rants like this one, which is all that there seems to be on the “anti” side of the argument.
As an addendum, the procedure was carried out with local anesthetic and a plastic bell, it went smoothly, and he didn’t seem to notice it at all. I have since been recommending it widely.
Posted by Raymond | August 4, 2010, 10:29 pmokay this one is a little exagerated. both of my kids were born in a hospital, my son was induced for fear of being to big to fit in utero much longer ( he was a week overdue and was running out of room) and my daughter was born naturally in a hospital with little assistance. I had to have my water broken with both of them, but that was absolutely necessary. My daughter was already in the birth canal and my water still had not ruptured. i did heal quicker with my daughter, but the pain was also much worse after her delivery. The pain of delivery itself was about equal but i was walking and active without pain much sooner after my son.
Posted by Ruby | August 25, 2010, 4:10 pmalso, on the circumcision thing, my son was circumcised, but it wasn’t until he was a day old and he had a numbing cream applied. i chose to do this since i was a working mom and didn’t want to take a chance of him getting an infection from inadequate cleaning at daycare which is quite common since most baby boys are circumcised.
Posted by Ruby | August 25, 2010, 4:13 pmI just wanted to add that MOST baby boys are NOT circumcised. In the U.S. I believe the circumcision rate is currently about 33%.
Posted by Anna | September 4, 2010, 12:26 pmHyperbolic, overly emotive and unsourced article. Complications arising from childbirth are not uncommon and can be fatal to mother and child. Every day in the USA alone a mother will die during childbirth and to willingly avoid medical care for an idealised ‘natural’ birth and to write articles like this promoting them is dangerous. Advising expectant mothers to refuse pain medication during something as agonising as childbirth is one of the stupidest things I can imagine and any advantage to the child is negligible.
Posted by Lucy | February 22, 2011, 1:44 pm