What an interesting week.

I said before that basically everyone here is pregnant. Well, this week, basically everything tanked for every one of them who was due any time remotely soon. It's so weird to hear about how these hospitals handle this stuff. It's scary. I also see that hospital birthing so you'll have a healthy baby is definitely at least as much of an oxymoron as I thought it was. The biggest conversation among wives here lately is, "What NICU did they send your baby to after you had him/her?" I'm trying to think of one person I know who's had a baby in the past month and didn't have to send them to the NICU for at least a little while. Hospital birth for healthy babies, though, right? No. Please don't. As former Director of Women's and Children's Health for the World Health Organization, Dr. Marsden Wagner (yes, an American obstetrician) has said before, "If you want a humanized birth, get the hell out of the hospital." This place in the past week (well, more than that, really) has proven him right.

The problem begins because the mainstream obstetrical system has no focus on educating women. Not one of these women had one single clue how her body works, or how to help it get ready to have a baby. Not one of their hospital midwives, or surely not doctors, had told them anything about what they should be doing and should not be doing. They got their knowledge from scary mainstream books like "What to Expect When You're Expecting", which focus mainly on what can go wrong, and include nothing significant on how to prevent it. I notice that it is very different for me, and I feel luckier than ever to have always been assisted by midwives who have been willing to take it upon themselves to teach me the finer points of growing a baby, being healthy while doing that, and of course, having a baby. I'm also thankful to never have been in a system where I would have to call, be put on hold sometimes for hours, and when someone finally answers, be treated like shit when something doesn't seem right and I want to ask if I need help. I'm so glad it's different for me. I KNOW beyond a doubt that I can call Alyson ANY time, and she will answer my questions and tell me what I need to do to help myself, or come over and help me if that would be better or preferable. Not everyone has that. It is sad that it's a rarity.

So anyhow, because these women have not been taught anything important by their midwives (hospital midwives are notorious for this. They are more or less poorly paid doctors.) they end up in terrible health, and then once again, the hospital system drops the ball. Instead of trying to actually fix the problem, they intervene. They shoot them up with the entire pharmacy, put them flat on their backs, monitor their every function, and come rushing in the minute anything twitches. Then they usually go downhill at some point, and end up being either induced or sectioned, and a lot of times, the baby is early. Even if it isn't, the end of its time inside was so inhospitable that it's still not healthy, so the baby is whisked across town to whatever civilian hospital's NICU they arbitrarily decide to send him/her to, while mom stays and gets stitched up. It's ridiculous. Most of these babies seem to stay in the NICU for weeks.

Now, I'm sure it's possible that people have healthy babies at Ye Olde Butcher Shop, but the percentage who don't, is absolutely staggering. Now, why do you suppose no birth center on the planet has NICU rates like that? I mean, I actually don't know anybody who's ever had their baby sent to the NICU after a birth center birth, and only a couple after a homebirth. It's extremely uncommon for that to happen. There are a few key reasons for this, I would think.

For one, birth center and homebirth moms have to be very educated on the process from beginning to end. It's essential, and every midwife I know has a major focus on teaching her clients everything they need to know to make sure they have a healthy pregnancy and a successful birth (obviously including a healthy baby).

For another, having your midwife accessible to you whenever you need her can really prevent problems that begin to arise from getting bad enough to require pharmaceutical intervention. I'm not someone who calls my midwife for every little twinge, but if something felt wrong to me, I would be on the phone to Alyson quicker than you can blink, and if it was something, we could probably nip it right there. If you don't have reliable access to your midwife, but instead, to a clinic where you've got a great chance of being treated like garbage, that changes the game, and can make it where things that were preventable get out of hand.

Still more, the constant focus on labor induction in the hospitals these days is just insane. People can't possibly NOT have put two and two together on this one, right? I mean, I know me and my fellow "outside the box" thinkers cannot be the only ones who see the parallel between labor induction and really bad stuff happening to mom, and especially baby, right? It's just that it's so obvious. When you induce, you are bringing a baby forcibly into the outside world, a baby who is not ready to come out. When a baby is ready to be born, he/she will be born. To induce is to say, "Let's have a mildly premature baby." This is how so many babies are born at "full term", and still have lung issues, temperature regulation issues, and immune system problems. Birth center and homebirthed babies are not premature. They come in their own time, and are generally a lot bigger and healthier than their hospital-born counterparts. The lack of inductions is 100% the reason for that.

That brings me to another interesting, yet unrelated, observation. When I go to any birth center or talk with homebirth moms, and Orren's birth comes up in conversation, everyone just thinks it's cool that he was born 9 pounds and 9 ounces. Nobody thinks it's crazy, or that that's really big, or anything like that. Some even say, "Yeah, you look like the type who would have big babies." (I do. Moms who are thin, especially if also above average height, tend to have large babies.) If you look on the birth wall at the birth center that Orren was born at, you'll see that maybe 25% of the babies born there are 9 pounds or heavier. Well over 70% are above the 8 pound mark. Nearly none are below 7. Big healthy babies are born at every birth center, and while there are no birth walls to look at for a homebirth midwife's record, ask any one, and she'll tell you she delivers a lot of big babies, too, the same proportion of them as the birth center midwives do. (Or in Alyson's case, she practices in the birth center AND in homes, so she can tell you for sure that it's the same in most ways for the babies!) In this age of great nutrition, it would be a reasonable conjecture that human newborns are probably supposed to be in the 8-9 pound range in the majority of cases, yet the mainstream establishment slaps the "Macrosomia" label on anyone who grows one that hits 9 pounds, as if it's pathological, when the record of every birth center in the world shows clearly that it is normal.

OK, anyhow, as tangential as that was, it does illustrate that so many are out of touch with the reality of things. It is not this harmless thing either. This isn't like wishing you knew five years ago how great cloth diapering is so you could have done it with all your kids. This is something with far more widespread consequences than that. This is the difference between having a full term baby, or a mildly premature baby. This is the difference between a child with a lifetime of lung problems (why is the rate of asthma so high, again??) and one who is healthy. It is the difference between a child with a strong immune system, and one who is always sick. These are serious risks to take. I'll quote Dr. Marsden Wagner again. "If you want a humanized birth experience, get the hell out of the hospital." The biggest component to a humanized birth experience is the end result of a healthy baby and healthy mom. I don't know what they're calling what they do at these hospitals, but it is not human.