Paralyzed woman watches helplessly as her unborn baby is surgically removed!

The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS, a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA

Paralyzed woman watches helplessly as her unborn baby is surgically removed!

The Best Thing You Can Do for Mothers, Babies, Birth and Families is to Become Net Savvy!

I just had my mind expanded this morning by Laureen Hudson's hour long online session on how to use the internet to get a message out. Laureen's session “Creating an Online Presence," gave me a wealth of information in a short time and impressed me with how many people are out there who completely rely on the internet for their information. I needed that, and maybe you do, too.

- Ina May Gaskin

I just hung up the phone from doing the hour long session with Laureen Hudson on “Creating an Online Presence”. Laureen’s know-how and expertise were enough to wake up even the birth oldtimers like me and Ina May to the many unused opportunities of the internet. Laureen’s engaging and easygoing teaching style made even those scary (to me) terms like “hypertext, streaming, wordpress, technorati, feedreader and trackback” start to make sense. Her passion is to reach the generation of young women who have not yet given birth BEFORE they fall into the black hole of aggressive obstetrics. I came away from the class today with lots of ways to improve my website and make it more modern, usable and interesting for readers. This class will run again this coming Friday (August 22) and I heartily recommend it.
- Gloria Lemay

REGISTER NOW! SPACE IS LIMITED!

Cost: $35 per session

Each session will be 60 minutes in length

Creating An Online Presence
Sunday, September 7 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific / 8:00 p.m. Eastern
Friday, September 19 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific / 3:00 p.m. Eastern
Monday, September 22 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific / 12:00 p.m. Eastern

Search!
This session will include a case study of Dr. Amy and how we shoot ourselves in the collective feet by visiting and commenting on her website. (PS Hope you enjoyed the Gotcha! page from our last email!)
Sunday, October 5 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific / 8:00 p.m. Eastern
Friday, October 24 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific / 3:00 p.m. Eastern
Monday, October 27 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific / 12:00 p.m. Eastern

My C/S was 15 months ago for "failure to progress". I will have my VBAC in 6 months. I didn't think I was upset about the C/S until I read "Open Season" this past weekend. Now I am furious. I wrote the following article for myself, but my husband was impressed enough that I have decided to share it.

Paralyzed woman watches helplessly as her unborn baby is surgically removed!
By Evelyn B. Walker

A local woman in her last weeks of pregnancy found herself in an alien environment. She described it as being completely surrounded by an unknown metal with bright lights shining down on her. She was unable to move or feel anything from the chest down. Strange green beings with no mouths or noses alternated between discussing trivial matters and speaking some strange, foreign language - full of letters - while slicing open her abdomen. She watched helplessly as they removed her unborn child. The child was taken across the room and surrounded by another group of green beings. They briefly showed her the child and then disappeared. The woman was then put to sleep and left to awaken all alone in another room. The location and condition of her baby is unknown, but she is too drugged to care, so she falls back to sleep. When they finally do decide to let her see her baby, they both have so many tubes and wires coming out of their bodies, that intimacy is impossible. No matter, the woman can barely move because of the pain from the surgery and the child has already become adjusted to a lack of human contact.

This woman volunteered for this experience. It happens thousands of times a day, every day in the US alone. This is a C-section, 25% of all births. It can be a life saving surgery, or it can be the result of a woman's worst fears being encouraged by the hospital birthing mentality. It seems in maternity wards across our nation, Murphy's Law does not apply. If you prepare for the worst, it will happen. How else can you explain that most of homebirths are normal (don't require transfer to a hospital), while practically all hospital births "require" electronic fetal monitors, pitocin, epidurals, narcotics, forceps, vacuum extractors, episiotomies, or c-sections? It can't be blamed on the complicated labors being done in hospitals because most women never even try to give birth at home. Most hospital staff have never witnessed a "normal" birth. It seems impossible for the hospital staff to just stand around and watch a woman have a baby. They have to do "something". Usually this "something" causes something else to be done and eventually the woman ends up in the operating room.

For example, the mother is confined to her bed because of the fetal monitor, this confinement slows labor so pitocin is given, pitocin makes contractions harder, so mother needs pain relief, pain relief slows down labor so more pitocin is needed. Because of the risks of pitocin, they must use an internal monitor, so the water is broken. Because the water is broken there is a time limit on how long the mother can labor. Because the mother and uterus is exhausted from the unnaturally strong contractions, the baby is pulled out, rather than pushed. If at any point, labor doesn't progress according to their time table, the mother is labeled CPD (pelvis too small) or "failure to progress" and she is off to the operating room.

Of course, this scenario doesn't happen every time, but it happens often enough that it has convinced OB's that birth is dangerous.

Also, consider the emotional state of the woman being manipulated. Even if she just has one of the interventions listed, it means she was not able to birth on her own. This can undermine her parenting confidence. After a natural birth, the mother typically feels such exhilaration that she can conquer the world. Caring for a newborn is easy compared to what she just went through. She has faith in her body and her instincts. She won't ask silly questions like, "Should I pick up a crying baby?"