I've chosen you for an "Excellent Blog" Award. Come by womantowomancbe.wordpress.com to "receive" the award. :-) Thanks for your insightful and informative posts.
Did you check out the comments section though? How come it always takes about three comments before the discussion about the benefits of normal birth gets hijacked into a big catfight about some 'them' being judgemental or competitive with some 'us'.
People are amazingly quick to volunteer the cliches about being grateful for medical advances (irrelevant), or that 'all that matters is a healthy baby'. Huh? just because there is more than one way to have a healthy baby, it does not follow that every way to have a healthy baby is equal. If a healthy baby is really all that matters, and a medically managed birth was indeed the best way to make sure someone's baby is born healthy, then the shoe doesn't fit, does it?
What are these countless women trying to prove by saying they *had* to have medical intervention, *had* to be at the hospital, whatever? Fine, but Ricki didn't, so she wasn't. And Abby did, so she was. How is it judgmental or competitive to tell and discuss their stories?
This 'ALL that matters is a healthy baby' proof implies that for ALL mothers whose baby made it out healthy via whatever series of medical interventions, that was necessarily the only way to achieve that outcome. True for some mothers, but probably not all. Stating this generality simply does not constitute fingerpointing or judging or personal attacks. But I'm not perfectly comfortable with the 'Physiological birth is best for babies' retort either: it's often used as the other side's 'safe baby' rhetoric, which honestly seems a bit misogynistic either way you slice it.
Not a bad article for mainstream media...except the phrase about breech being an indication for C/S :(
ReplyDeleteI've chosen you for an "Excellent Blog" Award. Come by womantowomancbe.wordpress.com to "receive" the award. :-) Thanks for your insightful and informative posts.
ReplyDeleteKathy
Did you check out the comments section though? How come it always takes about three comments before the discussion about the benefits of normal birth gets hijacked into a big catfight about some 'them' being judgemental or competitive with some 'us'.
ReplyDeletePeople are amazingly quick to volunteer the cliches about being grateful for medical advances (irrelevant), or that 'all that matters is a healthy baby'. Huh? just because there is more than one way to have a healthy baby, it does not follow that every way to have a healthy baby is equal. If a healthy baby is really all that matters, and a medically managed birth was indeed the best way to make sure someone's baby is born healthy, then the shoe doesn't fit, does it?
What are these countless women trying to prove by saying they *had* to have medical intervention, *had* to be at the hospital, whatever? Fine, but Ricki didn't, so she wasn't. And Abby did, so she was. How is it judgmental or competitive to tell and discuss their stories?
This 'ALL that matters is a healthy baby' proof implies that for ALL mothers whose baby made it out healthy via whatever series of medical interventions, that was necessarily the only way to achieve that outcome. True for some mothers, but probably not all.
Stating this generality simply does not constitute fingerpointing or judging or personal attacks. But I'm not perfectly comfortable with the 'Physiological birth is best for babies' retort either: it's often used as the other side's 'safe baby' rhetoric, which honestly seems a bit misogynistic either way you slice it.