Continued from Newsletter: Freebirthing: The Unassisted Childbirth Trend
Common reasons and motivations
Reasons and motivations for choosing to give birth unassisted range greatly from mother to mother; those most frequently cited in UC literature and advocacy sites include:
* The conviction that birth is a normal function of the female body and therefore not a medical emergency.
* The belief that most interventions commonly used by the medical profession during birth cause more harm than good in a normal birth.
* The belief that the mother will be more apt to follow the natural flow of her individual birth in an undisturbed birth setting, thus enabling her to find the optimum positions or techniques to birth her child safely.
* The view that birth is an intimate, sexual, and potentially orgasmic experience, and the belief that privacy is essential for enabling this erotic dimension.
* A belief that unassisted birth gives rise to a significant increase in maternal feelings and the mother's ability to bond with and take responsibility for the welfare of her child.
* The inability to find a practitioner willing to attend the desired home birth. In many areas of the United States, there are no midwives or physicians assisting at home births. Likewise, the woman may find her specific case presents difficulty in finding a willing practitioner (e.g. as would be the case with a VBAC).Types
Unassisted with friends and/or family: While unassisted childbirth does not include the use of medical personnel or birth attendants in a professional capacity, the birthing woman may still wish to have other people present at her birth. This might include her partner, close friends of the mother, the grandparents-to-be, or other family members. These people may take on various roles such as minding the other children in the family, preparing food, making sure the mother remains undisturbed by phone calls, etc.
Couple's Birth: A woman giving birth and her partner may wish to be alone together for the birth of their child. Some couples who choose unassisted childbirth consider the birth to be a consummation or extension of their married life. In terms of wanting to have an ecstatic or orgasmic birth, a high degree of privacy is desired. Others may simply consider birth to be an intimate bonding time between the spouses and their newborn child.
Solo Birth: Some women choose to give birth completely alone. They may retreat to a room alone at the time of the birth and then bring their partner in afterward; or they may remain entirely alone in their home or another location. Women who choose a solo unassisted birth may see birthing as an intensely private process, or may feel they have all the resources they need through their inner connection to their intuition.
Prevalence
United States: The National Center for Health Statistics reports that of the 4.1 million babies born in the United States in 2004, more than 7,000 were born at home without a midwife or physician attending. It is unknown what portion of these births, roughly equivalent to a sixth of 1% of the nation's annual total, occurred by choice.
Controversy
Controversy over the practice of UC has largely centered over whether it is, as claimed by proponents, a safe method of childbirth. Critics of UC, such as the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC), claim that unassisted childbirth is quite unsafe, and that those who engage in it are "courting danger". A spokesperson for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a one-word assessment of freebirth: "dangerous". The SOGC notes that more than 500,000 women worldwide die annually from complications during childbirth, and that even in developed countries, in which expectant mothers generally receive complete prenatal care, as many as 15% of all births involve potentially fatal complications. In poor countries in which there are conditions of malnutrition and taboos surrounding childbirth or there is a lack of qualified birth attendants, rates of maternal and infant mortality and complications such as fistula are much higher, with disparities in death rates from childbirth between developed and developing countries approaching two orders of magnitude. Critics also point out the high rates of complication and death arising from childbirth that existed before the development of modern medicine: between 1,000 and 1,500 deaths per 100,000 births.
UC proponents have responded to these criticisms by emphasizing that childbirth is not a disease, but rather a natural, physiological process requiring proper nutrition, hygiene, prenatal self-care, and psychological preparation. They claim that both throughout history and in the impoverished regions of today's world it has not been the lack of medical assistance, but rather conditions of poverty and nutritional ignorance which cause maternal mortality to be a major health issue. Rickets, for example, is prevalent in daughters of malnourished women, resulting in deformation of the pelvis and an increased chance of hemorrhage in scenarios of anemia. Proponents assert that the women who plan unassisted childbirth today (many of whom are giving birth to their second or third child, with a 'proven' pelvis), do so with a wealth of information and self-care, and are better prepared than most women who depend on care providers to deliver their child.
(For the complete article please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebirth.)