Back to the Emerald City
Gudday all.
Pretty quiet in leafy corner this week. No babies, off to school for four days (and Lobby Day in Olympia) on Thursday.
This evening I shall hobnob with Rikki Lake and her director consort Abby Epstein (yeah, me and about 500 others) at a screening of "The Business of Being Born".
I expect it shall have the feeling of "preaching to the converted" but there you have it.
I am down to the wire this week as I (continue to) try to refine my senior paper topic which must be submitted by the 31st.
VBAC is still high on my radar but I'm feeling increasingly discouraged about it.
I need some more fire in my belly.
So, if anyone out there has some to share, kindly leave a parcel in my comment box.
Pretty quiet in leafy corner this week. No babies, off to school for four days (and Lobby Day in Olympia) on Thursday.
This evening I shall hobnob with Rikki Lake and her director consort Abby Epstein (yeah, me and about 500 others) at a screening of "The Business of Being Born".
I expect it shall have the feeling of "preaching to the converted" but there you have it.
I am down to the wire this week as I (continue to) try to refine my senior paper topic which must be submitted by the 31st.
VBAC is still high on my radar but I'm feeling increasingly discouraged about it.
I need some more fire in my belly.
So, if anyone out there has some to share, kindly leave a parcel in my comment box.
posted by Louisa at 1:50 PM
6 Comments:
Word. I 100% know your pain.
I'm a student midwife in Johannesburg, South Africa, and I've just been informed by my preceptor that she's been denied ob-gyn backup after seeking assistance with a breech delivery at home. She's enormously experienced and has all the "hand" skills that good midwives live by. But this is an extremely midwife-hostile country, despite the fact that the poverty here would seem to suggest that traditional midwives should be much more popular, given how skilled yet cost-effective they are as caregivers. Anyway, I was trying to leave you a comment to put "fire in your belly", and it's this: despite all the obstacles, the challenges, the humiliation and frustration and all that, people like you and me will still keep fighting for a midwife-friendly world, because we have no other choice. I didn't choose midwifery, it chose me. And I'm so grateful, because I've never felt more alive (and I've never felt more shocked or horrified by birth practices in government hospitals either, of course, but even for those experiences I'm grateful). So keep plugging at it, Morag. Women need you.
I've been looking for a midwife for my HBAC in a city to the northwest of Seattle. You'd be amazed at how many midwives are not scared of uterine rupture, but who have been so whipped by the med establishment that attending a HBAC is considered too great a professional risk for them (even though they technically are allowed to)...
We need midwives who are going to take care of women even if it puts them at professional risk. Thankfully, I found one today - she was my last hope and boy did she come through for me. For the first time, I am not in fear of another trip to the hellish place we call a hospital here.
Well, what about the 4x higher risk of death from a c/section for mother and child vs. VBACs?* In what world is it ok to ask a mother and child to face the risks of surgery and complications so that a doctor doesn't have to worry about a lawsuit?
*if I am remembering the two recent studies that came out to that effect correctly.
Re: fire in your belly...
I suggest reading cesarean birth stories and seeing the pain, emotional and physical, that women seeking vaginal birth endure when they have cesearans. Women need midwives especially in areas where VBACs are banned by hospitals. Then read the healing and joy that occurs in a VBAC. My HBAC was amazing and I would have been devastated if I had another CS. You can read my birth stories at vbacfacts.com.
Jen
stay the course with VBAC! i want to have one but am having a difficult time finding a hospital that will do it here in rural USA! don't give up!
rachael
rltrussell@gmail.com
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