Monday, November 19, 2007

Another bad outcome on MDC

Unbelievable. A woman over 43 weeks was being "supported" in her decision to "trust" birth and plan for an unassisted childbirth. I have been following the story for days with growing trepidation and, not suprisingly, the outcome is bad. What is beyond amazing is that the mother claims that "... I feel good that we did everything we could to give him a good safe birth - and I think he had the best he could have got."

According to her description:
he was covered with mec stained vernix and did not breath or try. I DID end up calling the midwife, and she arrived as I was crowning. It was a good thing we had her. I'm very glad I trusted my instincts when we arrived here and hired her even though I didn't want a midwife. EMTs had to come and take him to the hospital where he is on O2. Afterwards I had some bleeding trouble and I lost quite a bit of blood - we tried wombstring and it didn't work - we think the Shepherd's Purse caused me to clot and the big clots prevented my uterus from clamping down at the bottom. She gave me pit - got a little scary then cause I'm phobic of needles and started to pass out - EMTs came again to make sure I was going to be ok, but I held it together. I'm pretty weak now.
And:
... there is no NICU in our town and they are sending him away. I haven't held him since he was born (11/19, 12:40am), and I'm not going to get to see him before the transport and I'm probably not going to be able to follow him for at least a couple days until I can get some strength back.
It sounds like the baby has a significant case of meconium aspiration, the mother had a major hemorrhage and is too weak to visit the baby, and that's a "good, safe birth"?

Evidently someone had the temerity to suggest that perhaps this wasn't a "good, safe birth" after all, and that a UC would have undoubtedly resulted in a dead baby. That, of course, was deleted and the following message was left by the moderator:
The Unassisted Childbirth (UC) board is a forum of support, respectful requests for information, and sharing of ideas and experiences. To uphold this purpose the board will not host discussions of debate or criticism regarding UC. Disagreements about UC should be set aside out of respect for the diversity and varying interpretations and beliefs that we hold as a community.

While we will not restrict discussions only to those who birth without professional attendants, we will be active in discouraging an individual from posting with no sincere interest in exploring UC. Proselytizing against UC will not be permitted...
MDC should be ashamed of themselves and their role as supporters of practices that lead to serious complications and even neonatal death.

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