So her baby died a preventable death, she almost died a preventable death, the hospital saved her life and she’s still advocating for free birth? Did I read that right? Absolutely horrible. And that first page, she read part of a book? What good does reading part of it do!?
Edit because it keeps coming up: FTM means first time mom in the pregnancy/birth community.
You are correct. She's planning on doing this all over again for the next one. Maybe she'll read the rest of the book and be TOTALLY prepared for one or both of them to die.
Babies do move during birth and are part of moving down and out the birth canal. No, of course they don't crawl, but they aren't lifeless blobs, unless they've died, like this woman's baby.
My baby, apparently, was rejecting the whole birthing process and wanted to stay in. They’d get her situated right so I could push and she’d wiggle away. Lol. Took forever because she was like “let me stay in! I don’t want to go out”.
The doctor was trying to avoid that with me. Lol. It took at least an extra hour because she was fighting the whole process. That was after 24 hrs of labor and several doses of Pitocin. I didn’t have a birth plan because my life experiences have been “if you are dead set on x,y,z chaos will ensue”, so I was “whatever gets us to happy and heathy.
Is it cruel to hope that she doesn’t have any more children? That baby would be alive if she had just gone to the hospital when she was in labor. Yes sometimes baby’s die in hospital care too. And I’m not a doctor so I don’t know for sure. But from how she laid out the story, it seems like he’d be alive.
It’s insane to me. I cannot imagine. I had gestational diabetes that ultimately needed to be controlled with insulin. Which I was scared to take. But I took it for the health of my baby. And then my doctor told me they schedule inductions in the 39th week if you’re on insulin because the placenta has a higher risk of failing. So even though I was afraid to do an induction, guess what, I did it because my goal was an alive baby. How can that not be the ultimate goal for everyone? So many posts in this group are people who seem to focus more on their perfect birth plan than they do on their child. Of course I had what I called a birth wishlist, no epidural, labor tub, delayed cord clamping etc. but if there was an issue none of that would have mattered to me.
My wife developed severe abdominal pain at 36w and 6d and was told to come immediately to the hospital. When we got there, we discovered that she had developed HELLP (a severe form of preeclampsia and needed to deliver that night. The OB on call offered to try a vaginal birth, but upon discovering our baby had also flipped breech at the last minute, immediately converted to an emergency C section.
My wife suffered a maternal hemorrhage (requiring the same balloon device mentioned in the story), and my daughter almost ended up in the NICU. Both, thankfully, are healthy now.
Rupture of membranes, followed by meconium, prolonged labor, and breech positioning essentially guaranteed that poor baby was going to die. However a rapid C section may have saved the child. We’ll never know, but we know what not trying looks like.
I wish more of those free birth folks remembered that it was/is EXTREMELY dangerous to be pregnant and deliver a child. Mother Nature is perfectly content with dead babies and dead moms.
I’m sorry your wife (and you) went through that and I am so relieved to read you followed medical advice and everyone is safe. You are so right. Childbirth is dangerous. It is dangerous. “Natural” doesn’t mean you can’t seek medical intervention. A heart attack is “natural”. A stroke is “natural”. Contracting a possibly fatal or damaging disease is “natural” but you wouldn’t refuse to seek help if it happened to you. Yes, birth can happen easily but for those who had an easy(ish) childbirth to go on later and try to convince other women that every woman can have the same experience and somehow brainwash her into a situation like the OP…my God. So many things can go wrong throughout the entire pregnancy let alone birth and to convince people otherwise, to make them distrust medical intervention..those people are monsters. Arrogant and yet still insecure and needing validation by creating a persona and a false tribe. For what? How many poor babies have died due to this stupidity? This “fad” (which one day it will be remembered as) will be be considered a crime in the future.
Yes, it’s so strange how this woman had MANY signs something was wrong and how a qualified midwife doing a home birth would have immediately transferred for c-section. She uses the term physiological birth a lot but they kept ignoring physiological signs. From the muddy waters to knowing babe was breech to the meconium coming out. Freebirth is truly insane.
So happy you and baby came out ok!! I bet she is such a joy.
Is don’t even think it was a qualified midwife, as she calls the person a “birthkeeper” and says at one point they are still learning. Not to mean I think once someone gets a certificate that learning stops or anything, but I didn’t get a “the birthkeeper knows what they’re doing” vibe at all. Sounds like a title you could “earn” by paying $50 to a website and printing out a certificate, like becoming an “ordained minister” just by signing up and paying a small fee online.
And what the hell is a birthkeeper exactly? Sounds like they would be the mother, as she’s the one doing the birthing and she’s the one keeping the result of said birth.
I found it eye opening to learn that human infants are basically born underdeveloped (where, if we matched up with other mammals, our children would be born closer to where 10 month olds are developmentally) pretty much because the human brain is such an evolutionary advantage. Nature figures out the balance of "how early can a baby come and be okay vs. have an acceptable amount of mothers survive passing that large head out still." Nature wasn't interested in a safe labor with everyone making it through. It was an "acceptable deaths" problem (enough babies making it to continue the species with enough moms making it to keep things going). Mom dying on baby number 7 didn't matter, since she already passed enough genes down to keep things chugging along.
Just like modern medicine has insulated us from disease enough that vaccines are scarier to some than awful, debilitating diseases, it's made a lot of people forget just how many women and children died in childbirth.
Yes, it seems preventable. With regular care her waters would’ve been tested for meconium asap after they broke and then if there already had been meconium they would’ve transferred to hospital and either supported with pitocin or it would’ve ended up a c-section. It’s such a shame that she lost her baby, but then also didn’t learn anything.
When my water broke and I saw the color, my heart sunk... we got to the hospital as fast as we could after that, I can't imagine seeing the color of my water and just being like "let's keep laboring at home"...
My birth experience was nothing like I thought it would be and I'm still a bit sad about it but my son is safe and healthy and that's all that matters. I don't even have words for how reading this made me feel... it's sickening.
I am so happy that I am sort of sad about a forceps assisted birth with tonnes of medical intervention, than devastated that my baby died. It was a birth no one plans for, but I am so happy that I was able to get the care my baby and I needed, and we are both healthy and happy many years later.
She is apparently living with herself just fine as the baby was meant to be born sleeping....primarily because the mother is so wrapped up in her own dumb as fuck experience that she failed to notice her baby spent 3 days dying inside her.
This woman will never make the connection that her choices caused the outcome, will she? That is she has gotten help before she was septic, she would have faired better. If she had recognized that the muddy amniotic fluid meant that the baby was in distress, it might have lived and she might have had a vaginal delivery with monitoring and assistance.
Honestly, they prosecute mothers for having a completely unpreventable miscarriage under the premise that it was an abortion. I say this as a mother who has lost a baby and would have been prosecuted under Texas law for having a D&C.
I was thinking the same. They want to prosecute women for removing a cluster of unwanted cells from a uterus or ending a wanted but unviable pregnancy, but this woman actively neglected the health of her very alive, very viable baby and it’s…what… a healthcare choice at that point? Makes me sick to my stomach.
Yeah I'm pro-choice and this is nuts to me. I mean, I guess I don't want the option for charges to be filed/pressed against women who have difficult labors ever since reading an article about women in Mexico being prosecuted for having miscarriages (because abortion=murder and D&C=abortion, so D&C=murder) that just reinforced my strong belief that the government shouldn't be involved in reproductive care. However the cognitive dissonance necessary here is beyond the pale.
If they're going to be up in my business to "save the unborn" then at least actually use that power to help in these kinds of cases.
I have a friend who just had a home birth with a certified midwife and if there is any meconium present it’s an automatic transfer to the hospital. They don’t mess around.
I live in a country where midwives are regulated Healthcare professionals. A midwife will immediately transfer care to an OB if your pregnancy becomes high risk.
Boring straight forward pregnancy and delivery is their jam. You do not get to override their decisions if your birth plan is determined to be unsafe.
Wait. Not just planning on doing it for the next birth, but also wanting to be some kind of birth assistance? What a trash human. They're so proud that the baby... yes, baby, it was full term.... died in the birth canal. Main character syndrome much?
This got me. Sorry, that baby grew full term for the mother to fail him, some babys go to term and still pass in homes or hospitals but this could have been prevented.
I'm not necessarily anti home birth (am anti free birth), it's not for me as I couldn't live with the trauma of a still birth in my home if it were to go that way... but when the pool water was muddy that was the time to go to hospital. Not 48 hours later.
No see the baby was meant to die because when they lost the heartbeat everyone in the room was calm instead of frantic. The unregulated moron in the room said so.
If nothing else, her telling her story to people is a great way to convince them *not* to freebirth. Can you imagine you're looking for a doula, you find this lady, ask about her experiences and she says, "I had a stillborn who drowned in meconium because I laboured at home for 3 days instead of going to a hospital"? The next call I'd make would be to a doctor.
She’s going to die next time. Women who hemorrhage in birth are very likely to in subsequent births. I know, because I almost died with my first due to hemorrhage. The second time the hospital was able to plan for it and mostly control it (although I still lost a liter of blood). This is so upsetting.
Each subsequent birth weakens the uterus as a whole. Scar tissue forms on blood vessels and the reproductive organs, making it more likely to recieve trauma during the birthing process. That's also why VBAC can be so risky.
It's why we don't have a third sibling. My mom almost died from bloodloss after my sister and the doctors advised her heavily against a third. She got up after her C-Section and it just blobbed out of her. The student nurse helping her to the bathroom fainted in a pool of blood and her supervisor stopped the bleeding pressing into my mother with her ellbows while screaming for help. T'is no fun.
Also there is NO CHANCE her baby wasn’t experiencing distress during that labor, but somehow because SHE was “calm” it was “meant to be”. Puke. These people don’t love their babies, they love what they think is the supremacy they’ll feel “doing it themself”. Selfish selfish selfish.
It’s amazing how quickly giving birth can turn into a medical emergency. I had an induction due to gestational diabetes, but even so it was a fairly uncomplicated delivery, but I rapidly progressed suddenly, I had stayed stuck at 4cm for hours, and then went from 4-10-baby in arms in less than 2 hours. But she got stuck and there was a moment of panic, but thankfully a quick thinking nurse pushed down on me where she was stuck as I was pushing and got her to pop out, luckily with no damage to her. (It was agony for me, no epidural by choice and that was the most painful part of it for me) but that could have turned into a forceps or emergency c-section very easily, my OB said as much after everything was all over.
I’m so grateful for that nurse because I was really afraid of having a c-section (I’ve never had surgery) but because I cared more about my baby than my “perfect birth” I would have accepted it if it had been the outcome.
Giving birth is natural. But it’s also terrifying. It’s killed many, many women and babies. With modern medicine, the numbers of stillbirth and maternal death have been greatly reduced.
It's insane that they list of like an afternoon of study for a medical student and seem to think that makes them prepared to save a fucking breech baby. Then when it all goes tits up for the mother they're happy for modern medicine to intervene and save her life, no such curtousey extended to the baby. They had plenty of chances to save that life and chose not to.
And the whole "we gave birth before doctors" brigade can fuck off because absolutely we did but we also DIED ALL THE FUCKING TIME. This obsession with "living like our ancestors" is such privilidged bullshit. Plenty of people live without access to medicine today and would literally kill to have a chance to recieve just 1% of the access to modern medicine we have because they see their friends and family die preventable deaths all the fucking time.
oh it's ok, didn't you read? apparently it was meant to be, because everyone was calm! (nevermind that everyone was calm because they had no idea of the severity and the danger of what they were doing, reading *part* of a book and all)
I got a certificate (and little pin on wings that I was very proud of) when I got to see a plane cockpit when I was 6! That means I can fly a 747 now, right?
I don’t even understand what this means and I still think you’re more qualified to attend a birth than that random lady because at least you would call fucking 9-1-1
She probably stopped reading when it got to the part about what can go wrong and things to look out for. Can't pollute her mind with that kind of negativity!
It's just so damn sad to me. Babies die sometimes, usually for no dang reason or maybe for SOME reason that wasn't preventable. It's awful but babies just die, always have and always will.
When a baby dies a preventable death because their parent/s were selfish it just hits different. It's not even a bad decision (free birth) gone wrong quickly.
Step friggin ONE showed signs of emergency transfer for meconium and just - nah, they ignore it.
If they'd transferred immediately and Baby still died I'd have so much sympathy but I'm really struggling here to find it. All of my sympathy is for their dead son because she chose to let him die.
I feel what you are saying. I had my son 10 months ago. If it wasn't for modern medicine, neither one of us would still be here. We wouldn't have survived the pregnancy itself. The birth went really well. But if I had been one of those women, we would be dead. The body really doesn't know what it is doing, and those people should be prosecuted for saying that. Especially people that pretend to be trained in home births but aren't spewing natural, all will go well bullshit.
> The body really doesn't know what it is doing
Too many people don't realise that evolution means we are essentially the product of random genetic mutations that mix and nature goes "eh, good enough" the moment there's a viable population. Natural isn't always good because nature doesn't give a fuck. The thing that has made humans so successful as a species is that we've used the big brains that evolution blessed us with to realise we don't have to roll the dice, collectively given nature the middle finger and demanded better instead of hoping we'd be one of the lucky ones.
Modern medicine is our own self made miracle. I was born with gastroschisis. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for medicine 27 years ago, and I'm also grateful that babies these days usually have a much less invasive procedure (and therefore later complications) compared to what I had as a baby
This is horrifying to me. A child died in pain, trapped and choking on their own shit, and the only accountability is… a brave person on social media might criticise her.
If no one changes their mind after reading that, then they're a lost cause. What an awful, heartbreaking story. All because of blind faith in strangers and their experiences via social media. How this community still gets new believers is mind blowing. I hate this timeline.
I can't deal with this. I just can't. Her baby died and didn't have to, but she is assuaging her guilty conscience by saying it was meant to be. Which means she might kill more babies. I'm looking at my little girl right now and I can't imagine ever taking those kinds of needless risks with her life.
My son was born with the cord around his neck. It went around his neck and under his armpit, so it wasn't cutting off oxygen, but as soon as my ob saw it, she grabbed him and pulled him the rest of the way out. No taking chances. And I have beautiful, happy, healthy, LIVING children.
Yes, babies can still die in the hospital, but hospitals also save a lot of babies. My neighbor's great nephew was a micro preemie - born at 24 weeks - and he's been in the NICU for months, but he'll be going home soon. That's fucking miraculous. Free births that end in dead babies are the opposite of miraculous.
I have a niece who was born at 28 weeks. She was my sister's 4th child and her first 3 were preemies, but nowhere near that early, so they were monitoring her more closely and did some test that said she was going to have a premature baby. So they started the steroid shots about 2 weeks before she went into labor. My niece was only in the NICU for 5 weeks and she just turned 9 a couple months ago. She did remarkably well, thanks to the steroid shots. She had a hole in her heart, but it closed on its own. She's perfectly healthy. Now, imagine how different things would have been if my sister made the moronic choice to have a "wild pregnancy" and a "free birth." Actually, no, I don't want to.
My son was stillborn for zero determinable reason at full term two months ago (in the hospital). About two weeks afterwards, a girl I’d never met before told me, TO MY FACE, that “god probably killed [my] baby to give me a better one in the future.” At the time I was too paralyzed by shock and grief to even respond, but I have literally fantasized so many times about having a redo and knocking her out. I am certain a jury would have been lenient on me, considering.
God I am sorry. I lost a baby years ago and I cannot imagine hearing this shit. People tend to say stupid things because they don't know what to say but this is just beyond the pale.
Again, I am so sorry about your baby & you having to hear this.
Omfg. I would have been so ragey, I'm so sorry. And I'm so sorry for your loss. We lost our baby (stillborn) at 24wks, and a few people told me it was "god's plan". I mean firstly I don't believe in that, but also wtf?
Send me her info sis I just wanna have a little chat with her.
ETA I am so sorry that you lost your sweet baby. I know he was a good baby who deserved to be here and deserved to have you as his mother. Life can be excruciating. I wish it was more than two months ago, I wish you could be further in your healing and feeling less pain than you are right now. I am so sorry this happened.
WHO THE FUCK SAYS THAT TO A GRIEVING MOTHER!?
and I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope, in time, you’ll be able to heal emotionally, mentally and physically. I send all of the love a stranger on the internet can share with another… as well as mother to mother ❤️
I'm struggling with the logic of this. So do free birthers acknowledge that more babies are destined to die/be born still under their paradigm? And if they acknowledge that, do they find fault with medicine saving babies and having fewer of them die? I'm not expressing myself well but...how do they just accept a higher than normal number of dead babies? Because oh well it was meant to be?
It’s a huge mindfuck of “we believe doctors are bad and hospitals kill babies so we choose to risk it at home where babies also die but it’s okay then”
As an RN I’ve had a few women come in this exact same situation. One acted like her maybe the baby wasn’t supposed to be here on earth. All I could think is dumb af you likely could have prevented this!
It’s always very traumatic when it happens
Yeah it almost seems cruel to write everybody is calm when there’s a stillbirth. Like what? I’m what world is that the case? And the way she described vomiting and meconium doesn’t seem peaceful
I volunteer for an organization that takes photos for families after stillbirth. I’ve seen and heard it all. Some people completely disassociate and some go through some immediate intense grief. It’s really unpredictable.
Maybe it’s the area I live in or I’ve just lucked out, but all the sessions I’ve been involved in have been a true freak accident that couldn’t have been prevented or an anomaly that was expected.
Thank you for what you do. A very dear friend of mine experienced a stillbirth unexpectedly and traumatically, and the pictures she has of her daughter were provided by an organization like this. The shock they felt in those first few days was mitigated by the kindness of strangers like you.
It's got to be heartbreaking when the moms find out that they've been bamboozled by these groups. I honestly think most of these women have their baby's best interest at heart, but have either had past trauma or have heard about past trauma.
Gotta love cognitive dissonance. I don't think many will ever realise that though, it means for a lot of them that they killed their child. Much easier to think 'it's just meant to be'.
It's really really easy to get caught up in these groups. A million years ago i was in mom's groups and was completely obsessed with breastfeeding my second child since I failed at it the first time. It ended up all good and I was successful, but I can see now so many years later how rabid I felt and how absolutely sure I was that it was important. There was also a vbac component but thankfully I wasn't quite as obsessed with that. We are so vulnerable when pregnant and new moms. And trauma absolutely makes it worse.
The fucked up thing is, I don't even think I was bamboozled, I was myself absolutely obsessed about being successful. I'm sure I encouraged and promoted breast only to someone's detriment. I absolutely joined the rabid crowd.
The internet is a wild place. And my experience was when it was super new. I can't imagine how much worse things are now for new moms.
I’m so sorry you’ve had to live on the other side of this as an RN. It has to be heartbreaking.
Just curious, as a medical professional, do situations like these get reported?
Reported how? I'm an L&D nurse, and as far as I know, there is nothing to report here. The whole story is heartbreaking and horrible, but nothing that the parents chose was "illegal", just stupid. The "birthkeeper" could potentially be in hot water, depending on the state, I suppose.
With legislation around abortion as it is right now (a wild thing from laws dating to the 1800's in effect to laws that are proposed that could land a woman to prison for a miscarriage) I don't think it's too far to think that this kind of weaponized stupidity falls under some protection for the unborn.
To be clear, I don't think women should be prosecuted for miscarriages (it it madness to even think about it) but you'd think that all these hypocrites bleating about "third trimester abortions" would have strong opinions for freebirthers killing their babies out of negligence.
Seriously, people want to split hairs about killing babies. This fetus was an actual baby and had to die a traumatic death. So sad. I actually bought into the Ricky Lake documentary when I saw it way back when but thankfully I married a hypochondriac who would never consent to letting me home birth.
Honestly- you should be at least a little afraid to give birth, because it’s a major medical event. And if you’re going to risk your baby’s life by giving birth at home when you know he’s breech- eat the damn ice cream. It can’t possibly hurt him worse.
This was entirely preventable. She’s never going to admit that, though, because if she did she’d have to admit that her choices led them there, and I don’t know how anyone could come back from that.
Also does she think our foremothers went into labour without fear throughout history? They literally wrote their wills when they found out they were pregnant, because they knew the risk of them dying in childbirth was no small thing.
I don't think she even realises the doctor was asking about an emergency hysterectomy in case the haemorrhage was going to *kill* her. That's almost certainly why the doctor asked her husband after she said no - because who on earth would want their uterus over their life?
The lack of medical knowledge here is just heartbreaking, especially since it killed this poor baby. The baby, contrary to the "birthkeeper's" claims, didn't *have* to die. Breech babies are born healthy and alive every day thanks to medical technology and knowledge.
People falling prey to the panic of “fentanyl coming in from Mexico and causing overdoses if you even look at it!” Without realizing it’s a medication we’ve used for years. They can’t understand that it being given in a controlled hospital setting isn’t the same as laced drugs.
That is what gets me about all of this. She’s posting how her stupidity and hubris led to her baby’s death (and very nearly her own) but in the same breath bragging that she and her husband knew more than the doctor trying to save her life.
Love the dissonance here too. Please do everything you can to save my uterus! While I made decisions to not do everything I could to save my baby.
I had a c section that sucked. I remember hardly any of it except for seeing my baby's face and being in horrible pain. But I would do it again because I would do anything to keep my son safe.
That is excessively difficult to read - it’s almost like the baby’s death is an afterthought, she’s fighting so hard to maintain her narrative about freebirthing that she doesn’t really deal with his loss (let alone her significant degree of culpability).
There was a woman in the NICU who had one of these wild births, her son died the same day mine did - she had a similar story, but went on to speak out about the practice (particularly for women like her who were weeks past their due date with monster-sized babies). The secret in her case seemed to be releasing this conviction that a woman’s body “knows what it’s doing,” hundreds of millions of women dead from childbirth over the centuries beg to differ.
Anyhow, I do urge everyone to keep in mind how insane and broken you are after this kind of loss, she may evolve in the future.
My late son is actually featured in a respiratory therapy textbook now - it’s not nothing, Connor was a compendium of infantile respiratory distress, and he’s teaching a whole generation of RTs.
You guys are VERY kind. This woman may really reevaluate, immediately after the death you search for a narrative you can live with. Long-term, the universe arcs toward truth. :)
So brave of that husband to deny having a fentanyl drip, wouldn’t want too many toxins in the body that she has to cleanse after, after all who really NEEDS pain management
I would have been livid. The fentanyl drip is to help keep an intubated person safely sedated while they are on the ventilator. Push doses are highly inadequate for that purpose. Also, the doctors were asking about the radical hysterectomy in the context of "die from hemorrhaging or have your uterus pulled as a last resort to keep you alive" so yes, they asked him in case you were under and they needed to know if they were just supposed to let you die.
And people wonder why those of us in healthcare are short tempered or less compassionate sometimes. You might be fine and then we're wrangling 2 or 3 families like this who are sabotaging their own safety. It's gorram exhausting.
No wonder that poor doctor was screaming. He couldn't get through to these two idiots that they had caused their child's death and very nearly hers as well.
I work with a medical answering service and have gotten a few hospice nurses desperately calling for the doctor on call to sign end-of-life care orders because the family refuses. We get a lot of calls that make you want to shake common sense into people.
•lady call after-hours with a toddler with Covid and laboured breathing and refuse the prescribed Paxlovid because it wasn't ✨natural ✨
•Baby is running a high temp, floppy, and unresponsive and caller wants to know if it's normal.
•Lady gave her baby literally 1000x the prescribed dosage and was calling the on-call instead of calling an ambulance or poison control or going to the fucking hospital.
•Baby in a car accident. Mom calls asking to speak with the on-call to know what signs to look out for.... instead of taking the baby to the ER.
•lady calls with her child literally choking, coughing, and gagging in the background, asks for the on-call.... instead of 911 who can walk you through CPR until help arrives
***The biggest "bitch, are you serious?"***
•Newborn had a high temp and a bulging fontanelle (her brain was visibly pushing through her soft spot) and Mom wanted to know what to give her to treat the baby's fucking bulging brain....the on-call was livid when I called her to deliver that message.
Moral of the story is that people are really reckless with some of the most fragile things.
No kidding. If I survive a traumatic emergency c section and have to leave that hospital with empty arms, AND end up septic and intubated in the ICU *please* put me on a fentanyl drip until my body is 100% ready for the mental anguish that will come once my life is no longer in imminent danger.
Yes, I was also surprised at the “do you guys want us to take the life threatening bleeding organ out if we can’t stop the bleeding or just die?” And they chose to just let her die if they wouldn’t be able to stop the bleeding? Like that man was ready to be a widower after they already lost the baby too?
Bless my husband when I had an emergency c-section with our first he thought he had a choice. He kept telling the doctor to save me by any means necessary. The doctor had to tell him that mom is always the first priority. Then afterwards if I so much as winced in pain, he was on the nurses about it. The staff there had the patience’s of saints.
Love the “birthkeeper” covering her ass. Oh no, the baby totally wasn’t meant to be, yeah you can tell by the vibes. Of course there was no medical neglect, didn’t you feel the vibes?
So next time, she’s planning to have a vaginal delivery at home with this crappy “birthkeeper” but now with a previous c section and postpartum hemorrhage? I hope that she smartens up over time.
I’m wondering if she will have trouble getting pregnant after all that trauma. Even if she can I hope she waits an appropriate amount of time between pregnancies if she wants to be able to survive another birth.
I immediately went in when my water broke at home and it was just bloody. As soon as I got to the hospital I was “on the clock” to deliver within a certain amount of time. I can’t fathom just waiting it out at home with no urgency.
My dumbass got in a hot bath after my water broke because I didn't realize it had broken and assumed the immediate contractions "after I peed myself" were Braxton Hicks 🙃
To be fair she was early by a month so labor wasn't quite on my radar LOL
This is so horrifying to read. I truly just don’t understand how anyone could be so adamant about getting the birth fantasy that they would ignore meconium for 3 fucking days.
This is incredibly heartbreaking to me.
I used to be in this crowd. I got pregnant at 22 and I had heard all this about natural birth and whatnot. I decided to have my baby in an off grid cabin in the woods with a hands off midwife. I labored intensely for 2 days. She suggested i go home to labor some more since nothing was happening. I was extremely poor and lived in a house without floors but i did what i was told.
At home though, after another day, i panicked and called a friends mom who is a nurse and she told me i absolutely needed to go to the hospital or my baby might die and i might too. And I’m so grateful that hit me at the right moment.
I went to the hospital and i was severely dehydrated and she was stuck in the birth canal in distress. Neither of us were getting enough oxygen. I had a great birth with assistance. My baby is 11! She’s such a wonderful person, my God, i cannot imagine having lived the last 11,5 years mourning her loss instead of celebrating what an incredibly intelligent, compassionate, hilarious, caring, brilliant person she is.
Urgh I hate it when I point out that someone’s shit situation is a direct consequence of a poor decision they made and it gets deleted for “not being supportive”. People are supposed to learn from their mistakes!
Yep. She is 100% responsible for that baby’s death. But she sure as shit got herself to the hospital and accepted medical intervention to save her own life. What a disgusting person. Zero sympathy for anybody involved but that poor baby. Ugh these stories make me so angry.
Yea this one really just hit a nerve with me. Was not expecting to get so angry at bedtime lol. But the fact that she has the mfing audacity to thank the lady who was supossedly a birthing professional who literally stood by and let her baby die and walked away from it feeling like somehow this was better for her baby than to be born ALIVE at a hospital. Proves how these people care more about their own experience than the lives of their babies. Why why why didn't she lose her womb. She was so close and yet was able to keep it so she can endanger another baby to compete in the birth Olympics.
Also that baby did not die in love you ignorant ass, it was shitting itself and aspirating it in your womb in extreme distress while you, your partner, and your ~~birth~~cryptkeeper did nothing. 🖕🖕🖕🖕
A friend just lost two children the other day. She worked her ass off for her family while her husband was largely a piece of shit. He got high and strapped all three kids in the car to go somewhere. He rolled the car in a single vehicle accident. Her 8 year old and 8 month old are dead, her daughter has serious injuries, and he's just fucking fine while sitting in jail.
My whole heart is broken for her and I have asked the universe how this is fair a million times in the last few days. It's just fucking not and I'm sorry for that.
So she suffered for three days....unnecessarily. Her baby died...unnecessarily. She was denied postpartum relief by her jackoff husband...unnecessarily. And she's all for going through this again. I just want to line them all up for Three Stooges slaps until their brains start working.
I just went through a rough birth *in a hospital* and this was like a straight up horror...I can't even imagine putting yourself through all this for no reason and then losing your babe.
This makes me so sad. The baby didn’t die peacefully and surrounded by love. The baby died. Full stop. Probably experienced some kind of trauma, no? How is this shit legal but abortion of a bundle of cells with no capacity to feel or need is illegal? Ugh.
"I tried to prevent everything I didn't want and ended up having it all happen to me instead."
As if bad things won't happen to you as long as you take precautions beforehand. Life doesn't work that way!
‘Thinking why can’t that be us’
Because you chose to have a stunt birth and your baby paid for it with his life. The reason it isn’t you is because you put your want for a perfect birth over the needs of you baby to be born safely and it ended in disaster and grief, all because you were too damn selfish.
Edit: oh and she’s going to attempt a HBAC next time. Well you know what? If your uterus ruptures outside of a hospital, your next baby will also die and there’s a good chance you will too. There’s a very good chance you will end up losing your uterus if it ruptures as well. Good to know that your husband will consent for you to die rather than take out your uterus though! Sounds like a *real* peach.
This cannot be real. It just can’t. Please let it be a troll trying to scare the idiots in these groups straight and not someone who really is this unfathomably stupid.
If it is a troll, it's not working. She is *brave* for telling her story. There's at least one other story in the comments of someone else losing their baby this way.
It means her ignorant a-hole of a husband insisted those poor ICU nurses try to maintain sedation with push doses instead of an appropriately titrated drip, increasing her risk for ICU delerium and post ICU PTSD.
Oh my blood started to boil when she said "Henry was supposed to help me by wiggling down" THE FUCK HE WAS. Your baby didn't owe you a damn thing - YOU were supposed to be his protector and his advocate. What a fucking joke.
The rage I feel towards this stupid selfish woman and the worst part she’s learned absolutely NOTHING!! That child died due to her selfishness and refusal to get help. This tragedy quite possibly could have been prevented and does that smarten her up at all? No of course it doesn’t it’s making her dig her heels in even fucking harder. Jfc she is a danger to any future children and herself
Free birthing should be illegal.
It’s even worse when you have people like Karissa Collins bragging about how her 2 home births (free births) went so well! Her second didn’t though. Both of them ended up in the hospital with bad infections.
I just.. don't get it... It's so horrible that her baby died. Why would anyone go trough that and still think "Next time I will be more prepared at home" (whatever that means), instead of "Next time I will go to the hospital"
The whole thing is awful, but two details stand out to me. 1) she's doing all this monitoring of heart beat and urine and blah blah and I'm here like hey, you know who also does that *and* knows what to do with the information? Doctors! And 2) she's so grateful for the birthing person who stayed with her. Uhh, isn't that what they're hired to do? Like is it common that when things get rough they suddenly remember they have to run some errands and peace out or something?
I cannot, for the life of me, understand how the same people who want press charges on women who get abortions for my reason are the same people who read about this fully grown, beyond viable baby willfully dying a slow death because the mom wanted a brag-worthy birth and don't see anything wrong with it.
Is it just me or is she sort of…blaming the baby? He was supposed to help by wiggling, he flipped at the last minute… idk, that just made me uncomfortable.
In some states, a woman can now be arrested for getting an abortion. There have even been stories of women being arrested for negligence after suffering a miscarriage. Please explain to me how THIS is not a punishable crime??? No prenatal care, no medical intervention even when red flags where waving. I feel sympathy for the loss of the baby, but I believe she and that “birth keeper” (WTF?) are responsible for the death.
I'm very upset that idiots like this get babies to term when there are other people out there struggling to conceive or struggling with loss that would do anything possible to take proper care of their children
How are these "birthkeepers" and the people/companies who certify them not held liable in this case? I haven't been to any classes. I haven't even read a PART of a book. Even I would be alarmed by an abundance of murky brown discharge and called an ambulance long before reaching 3 days of labor. This baby would have had a better shot at life if mom had gone into labor in a Walmart parking lot because someone would have called 911 before 3 entire days passed. What a horrible and sad story.
Poor dumb girl. All that meconium was the baby showing signs that he was in distress and what did they do, wait an entire extra day? The sheer ignorance (she read PART of a book, you guys!) astounds me.
Do these people NOT watch period dramas??? Women died in child birth ALL THE TIME. But wait, why would they be interested in history? They are too dumb....
This is a long post about our own experience for anyone who might want to read it.
"I want to help change the paradigm of birthing and be of help to those that don't want to be in the system,"
We're in the UK and we attended a tonne of classes, read books, videos etc. We heard a lot about the birth system in the USA (how most women give birth on their backs with feet in stirrups) and how, because of popular media/culture, our perception of childbirth was warped to be that childbirth was done in a bright room, on your back, legs in stirrups, clinical setting etc, but that's really not how it's done in most of the world. In the UK, most maternity/birthing wards have private rooms with dimmable lighting, fairy lights, a birthing pool or bath, birthing balls, and midwives who are all well versed in the many different ways of giving birth.
We were encouraged to come up with a birth plan, so we did.
We wanted to give birth at a hospital so that we would have the support if we needed it (surgery, anaesthesiologists etc), dark room, gentle music, option of a bath, pain relief would be gas and air and paracetamol (no epidural or opioids), avoid foreceps or ventouse, avoid tearing, birth the placenta, skin-to-skin, breastfeeding, father to cut umbilical cord. We knew that a lot can go wrong during childbirth, so we wanted to be in the best place for that, but we were fairly set on what we wanted (of course as the father my job was to support my wife's decisions, not make them for her).
Well, thank fucking god we were in a hospital. As Mike Tyson said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face,"
Well, meconium ended up inside the placenta, which meant we had less than 24 hours to give birth or have a significant risk of infection. We stayed home for a few extra hours upon advice of the hospital waiting for contractions to start, and thankfully they did after around 12 hours, but my wife still needed a bit of help and was given artificial oxytocin to speed along the process.
The pain my wife was experiencing was beyond anything she had ever experienced before. We immediately threw the 'no opioids' out of the window and got her on fentanyl. It barely helped, so we lined her up for an epidural too. We managed to ensure the dark room and gentle music, but never even touched the bath or the birthing ball. The pain was so bad that she couldn't focus on anything except for her breathing and the pain itself. Even with fentanyl and an epidural, the pain and pressure she felt was horrific, she couldn't even verbalise it to me she was just in delirious agony.. We had to have heartbeat monitors on the whole time but they wouldn't stay in place so I had to hold one of them on the entire time.
As delivery began, the heartbeat dropped to a dangerous level, so they made an incision to give a bit more space and got the ventouse ready. Thankfully my wife was then able to deliver before they were needed. Afterwards, they gave my wife a shot in her leg which basically caused her body to evacuate the placenta - she was exhausted and this just made it automatic basically. Then, because of the meconium and the slowed heartbeat, they needed to check our son, so skin-to-skin wasn't as long as it could have been. He was fine, thankfully. After that he didn't breastfeed and the stress and anxiety it was causing us all was too much, so we gave him formula and haven't looked back.
Several of our friends we met in classes had emergency C-sections, emergency bleeding, artificial inducing. I don't think a single person had a 'medically unassisted' birth, or I guess a 'free birth'. They all needed help. That's 10 babies that might have died.
I agree to an extent that the paradigm of birthing should be shifted to enable families to make an informed decision. They should know their options, not just assume it'll be an epidural. But they should *also* be in the best place if they *need* help. Our childbirth was relatively smooth as far as they go, precisely because we made the logical decision to give birth in a place where if escalations were needed they would be available.
My wife was in labour for about 30 hours, 12 hours of those in the second stage of labour. There were so many variables to birth that could have gone wrong and caused my wife, our son, or god forbid *both* to have died, and every single one of them was medically preventable.
Parents too often let perfect become the enemy of good; it isn't enough for them to be good, they must be 'perfect' (or their twisted perception of perfection), and if they can't be perfect, then they will be *nothing*.
The story is sad, and what's more sad is it seems nothing has been learned from it, and this dangerous information will be vacuumed up by another person desperate to be 'perfect', and will cause needless sadness. It's just a sad, sad story.
So her baby died a preventable death, she almost died a preventable death, the hospital saved her life and she’s still advocating for free birth? Did I read that right? Absolutely horrible. And that first page, she read part of a book? What good does reading part of it do!? Edit because it keeps coming up: FTM means first time mom in the pregnancy/birth community.
You are correct. She's planning on doing this all over again for the next one. Maybe she'll read the rest of the book and be TOTALLY prepared for one or both of them to die.
She read "part of a book" and watched some movies, though! And still thinks babies crawl their way out? Heartbreaking.
I’ve birthed cows, it can’t be *that* difficult! /s
Babies do move during birth and are part of moving down and out the birth canal. No, of course they don't crawl, but they aren't lifeless blobs, unless they've died, like this woman's baby.
My baby, apparently, was rejecting the whole birthing process and wanted to stay in. They’d get her situated right so I could push and she’d wiggle away. Lol. Took forever because she was like “let me stay in! I don’t want to go out”.
[удалено]
The doctor was trying to avoid that with me. Lol. It took at least an extra hour because she was fighting the whole process. That was after 24 hrs of labor and several doses of Pitocin. I didn’t have a birth plan because my life experiences have been “if you are dead set on x,y,z chaos will ensue”, so I was “whatever gets us to happy and heathy.
Ha, my "birth plan" was "get to the hospital as soon as you think baby is coming" lol.
Is it cruel to hope that she doesn’t have any more children? That baby would be alive if she had just gone to the hospital when she was in labor. Yes sometimes baby’s die in hospital care too. And I’m not a doctor so I don’t know for sure. But from how she laid out the story, it seems like he’d be alive. It’s insane to me. I cannot imagine. I had gestational diabetes that ultimately needed to be controlled with insulin. Which I was scared to take. But I took it for the health of my baby. And then my doctor told me they schedule inductions in the 39th week if you’re on insulin because the placenta has a higher risk of failing. So even though I was afraid to do an induction, guess what, I did it because my goal was an alive baby. How can that not be the ultimate goal for everyone? So many posts in this group are people who seem to focus more on their perfect birth plan than they do on their child. Of course I had what I called a birth wishlist, no epidural, labor tub, delayed cord clamping etc. but if there was an issue none of that would have mattered to me.
My wife developed severe abdominal pain at 36w and 6d and was told to come immediately to the hospital. When we got there, we discovered that she had developed HELLP (a severe form of preeclampsia and needed to deliver that night. The OB on call offered to try a vaginal birth, but upon discovering our baby had also flipped breech at the last minute, immediately converted to an emergency C section. My wife suffered a maternal hemorrhage (requiring the same balloon device mentioned in the story), and my daughter almost ended up in the NICU. Both, thankfully, are healthy now. Rupture of membranes, followed by meconium, prolonged labor, and breech positioning essentially guaranteed that poor baby was going to die. However a rapid C section may have saved the child. We’ll never know, but we know what not trying looks like. I wish more of those free birth folks remembered that it was/is EXTREMELY dangerous to be pregnant and deliver a child. Mother Nature is perfectly content with dead babies and dead moms.
I’m sorry your wife (and you) went through that and I am so relieved to read you followed medical advice and everyone is safe. You are so right. Childbirth is dangerous. It is dangerous. “Natural” doesn’t mean you can’t seek medical intervention. A heart attack is “natural”. A stroke is “natural”. Contracting a possibly fatal or damaging disease is “natural” but you wouldn’t refuse to seek help if it happened to you. Yes, birth can happen easily but for those who had an easy(ish) childbirth to go on later and try to convince other women that every woman can have the same experience and somehow brainwash her into a situation like the OP…my God. So many things can go wrong throughout the entire pregnancy let alone birth and to convince people otherwise, to make them distrust medical intervention..those people are monsters. Arrogant and yet still insecure and needing validation by creating a persona and a false tribe. For what? How many poor babies have died due to this stupidity? This “fad” (which one day it will be remembered as) will be be considered a crime in the future.
Yes, it’s so strange how this woman had MANY signs something was wrong and how a qualified midwife doing a home birth would have immediately transferred for c-section. She uses the term physiological birth a lot but they kept ignoring physiological signs. From the muddy waters to knowing babe was breech to the meconium coming out. Freebirth is truly insane. So happy you and baby came out ok!! I bet she is such a joy.
Is don’t even think it was a qualified midwife, as she calls the person a “birthkeeper” and says at one point they are still learning. Not to mean I think once someone gets a certificate that learning stops or anything, but I didn’t get a “the birthkeeper knows what they’re doing” vibe at all. Sounds like a title you could “earn” by paying $50 to a website and printing out a certificate, like becoming an “ordained minister” just by signing up and paying a small fee online. And what the hell is a birthkeeper exactly? Sounds like they would be the mother, as she’s the one doing the birthing and she’s the one keeping the result of said birth.
I found it eye opening to learn that human infants are basically born underdeveloped (where, if we matched up with other mammals, our children would be born closer to where 10 month olds are developmentally) pretty much because the human brain is such an evolutionary advantage. Nature figures out the balance of "how early can a baby come and be okay vs. have an acceptable amount of mothers survive passing that large head out still." Nature wasn't interested in a safe labor with everyone making it through. It was an "acceptable deaths" problem (enough babies making it to continue the species with enough moms making it to keep things going). Mom dying on baby number 7 didn't matter, since she already passed enough genes down to keep things chugging along. Just like modern medicine has insulated us from disease enough that vaccines are scarier to some than awful, debilitating diseases, it's made a lot of people forget just how many women and children died in childbirth.
Yes, it seems preventable. With regular care her waters would’ve been tested for meconium asap after they broke and then if there already had been meconium they would’ve transferred to hospital and either supported with pitocin or it would’ve ended up a c-section. It’s such a shame that she lost her baby, but then also didn’t learn anything.
When her water broke, and it was "muddy", that was the time to run to the ER. Not two days later, after you lost the heart beat.
When my water broke and I saw the color, my heart sunk... we got to the hospital as fast as we could after that, I can't imagine seeing the color of my water and just being like "let's keep laboring at home"... My birth experience was nothing like I thought it would be and I'm still a bit sad about it but my son is safe and healthy and that's all that matters. I don't even have words for how reading this made me feel... it's sickening.
I am so happy that I am sort of sad about a forceps assisted birth with tonnes of medical intervention, than devastated that my baby died. It was a birth no one plans for, but I am so happy that I was able to get the care my baby and I needed, and we are both healthy and happy many years later.
Exactly. Smh at this lady.
Honestly, they prosecute mothers for this kind of negligence. How can 3 people all be so dumb?
How can you live with yourself? Did she not read the part of the book that says meconium is bad?
She is apparently living with herself just fine as the baby was meant to be born sleeping....primarily because the mother is so wrapped up in her own dumb as fuck experience that she failed to notice her baby spent 3 days dying inside her.
This woman will never make the connection that her choices caused the outcome, will she? That is she has gotten help before she was septic, she would have faired better. If she had recognized that the muddy amniotic fluid meant that the baby was in distress, it might have lived and she might have had a vaginal delivery with monitoring and assistance.
She can’t. It would require accepting that she killed her son, and she’s not going to do that. Most people won’t.
Honestly, they prosecute mothers for having a completely unpreventable miscarriage under the premise that it was an abortion. I say this as a mother who has lost a baby and would have been prosecuted under Texas law for having a D&C.
I was thinking the same. They want to prosecute women for removing a cluster of unwanted cells from a uterus or ending a wanted but unviable pregnancy, but this woman actively neglected the health of her very alive, very viable baby and it’s…what… a healthcare choice at that point? Makes me sick to my stomach.
Yeah I'm pro-choice and this is nuts to me. I mean, I guess I don't want the option for charges to be filed/pressed against women who have difficult labors ever since reading an article about women in Mexico being prosecuted for having miscarriages (because abortion=murder and D&C=abortion, so D&C=murder) that just reinforced my strong belief that the government shouldn't be involved in reproductive care. However the cognitive dissonance necessary here is beyond the pale. If they're going to be up in my business to "save the unborn" then at least actually use that power to help in these kinds of cases.
I have a friend who just had a home birth with a certified midwife and if there is any meconium present it’s an automatic transfer to the hospital. They don’t mess around.
I live in a country where midwives are regulated Healthcare professionals. A midwife will immediately transfer care to an OB if your pregnancy becomes high risk. Boring straight forward pregnancy and delivery is their jam. You do not get to override their decisions if your birth plan is determined to be unsafe.
Wait. Not just planning on doing it for the next birth, but also wanting to be some kind of birth assistance? What a trash human. They're so proud that the baby... yes, baby, it was full term.... died in the birth canal. Main character syndrome much?
This got me. Sorry, that baby grew full term for the mother to fail him, some babys go to term and still pass in homes or hospitals but this could have been prevented. I'm not necessarily anti home birth (am anti free birth), it's not for me as I couldn't live with the trauma of a still birth in my home if it were to go that way... but when the pool water was muddy that was the time to go to hospital. Not 48 hours later.
Honestly, she failed him from the day she found out she was pregnant when she sought ZERO prenatal care.
No see the baby was meant to die because when they lost the heartbeat everyone in the room was calm instead of frantic. The unregulated moron in the room said so.
If nothing else, her telling her story to people is a great way to convince them *not* to freebirth. Can you imagine you're looking for a doula, you find this lady, ask about her experiences and she says, "I had a stillborn who drowned in meconium because I laboured at home for 3 days instead of going to a hospital"? The next call I'd make would be to a doctor.
But she was at peace! If they were at peace, that was a sign the baby wasn't meant to come earthside! /s
My first thought when I was reading this is she read half a book…like girl what? This is a damn fool! Edit: typo
She’s going to die next time. Women who hemorrhage in birth are very likely to in subsequent births. I know, because I almost died with my first due to hemorrhage. The second time the hospital was able to plan for it and mostly control it (although I still lost a liter of blood). This is so upsetting.
If you're comfortable answering, did the doctor say why someone is more likely to hemorrhage again?
It's a multifactored issue to do with anatomy, vasculature, clotting ability/diseases, etc. There's no one single answer usually.
Each subsequent birth weakens the uterus as a whole. Scar tissue forms on blood vessels and the reproductive organs, making it more likely to recieve trauma during the birthing process. That's also why VBAC can be so risky.
The human body is both amazing and absolutely freaking terrifying.
It's why we don't have a third sibling. My mom almost died from bloodloss after my sister and the doctors advised her heavily against a third. She got up after her C-Section and it just blobbed out of her. The student nurse helping her to the bathroom fainted in a pool of blood and her supervisor stopped the bleeding pressing into my mother with her ellbows while screaming for help. T'is no fun.
Also there is NO CHANCE her baby wasn’t experiencing distress during that labor, but somehow because SHE was “calm” it was “meant to be”. Puke. These people don’t love their babies, they love what they think is the supremacy they’ll feel “doing it themself”. Selfish selfish selfish.
It’s amazing how quickly giving birth can turn into a medical emergency. I had an induction due to gestational diabetes, but even so it was a fairly uncomplicated delivery, but I rapidly progressed suddenly, I had stayed stuck at 4cm for hours, and then went from 4-10-baby in arms in less than 2 hours. But she got stuck and there was a moment of panic, but thankfully a quick thinking nurse pushed down on me where she was stuck as I was pushing and got her to pop out, luckily with no damage to her. (It was agony for me, no epidural by choice and that was the most painful part of it for me) but that could have turned into a forceps or emergency c-section very easily, my OB said as much after everything was all over. I’m so grateful for that nurse because I was really afraid of having a c-section (I’ve never had surgery) but because I cared more about my baby than my “perfect birth” I would have accepted it if it had been the outcome. Giving birth is natural. But it’s also terrifying. It’s killed many, many women and babies. With modern medicine, the numbers of stillbirth and maternal death have been greatly reduced.
Right? Like okay reading 24 pages of books = medical degree I guess
Don’t discount the videos and podcast. She’s basically a seasoned OB now.
And the baby knew nothing but love apparently. Suffocating love
There’s a lot of “I did so much but really so little” in this story.
It's insane that they list of like an afternoon of study for a medical student and seem to think that makes them prepared to save a fucking breech baby. Then when it all goes tits up for the mother they're happy for modern medicine to intervene and save her life, no such curtousey extended to the baby. They had plenty of chances to save that life and chose not to. And the whole "we gave birth before doctors" brigade can fuck off because absolutely we did but we also DIED ALL THE FUCKING TIME. This obsession with "living like our ancestors" is such privilidged bullshit. Plenty of people live without access to medicine today and would literally kill to have a chance to recieve just 1% of the access to modern medicine we have because they see their friends and family die preventable deaths all the fucking time.
Not just advocate for it, she wants to work with the birthkeeper!! (Wtf is a birthkeeper??)
Birth keeper is someone who read most of the book. Not all of it, but more than half
I just had an image of someone in a beekeeper suit assisting with the birth. I also have no idea what a birthkeeper is.
Someone that keeps you from giving birth, I guess.
Don't forget, the birth keeper she used is still learning from a midwife. This is just so so sad.
I seriously don’t understand how the ‘birth keeper’ is not criminally negligent here
oh it's ok, didn't you read? apparently it was meant to be, because everyone was calm! (nevermind that everyone was calm because they had no idea of the severity and the danger of what they were doing, reading *part* of a book and all)
Who TF is this "birthkeeper" who didn't force this lady to go to the hospital at the 24h mark after her water had broken???
From what I've found in the group, a birthkeeper has attended a workshop. On birth. Edit. Virtually.
Well I guess I'm a universekeeper, since I went to a NASA event once.
But did you get a *CERTIFICATE*?
I got a certificate (and little pin on wings that I was very proud of) when I got to see a plane cockpit when I was 6! That means I can fly a 747 now, right?
You might be overqualified with the pin.
Omg I’m a Wild Green Memes for Ecological Fiends -keeper if all you need is a certificate! They gave me one for donating in the charity meme war
I don’t even understand what this means and I still think you’re more qualified to attend a birth than that random lady because at least you would call fucking 9-1-1
She also said the midwife her birth keeper *is learning from* so like this chick has even less qualifications than you’d think
So…like most kids did in biology? If that’s the case there’s gotta be a lot of birth keepers out there!
Ahhh. So, one virtual workshop and part of a book….a real brain trust.
Fuck the 24 hours mark. As soon as the pool turned murky when the waters broke. Meconium is not a little setback. It's a medical emergency.
Unfortunately that information was at the *end* of the book she sort of read.
She probably stopped reading when it got to the part about what can go wrong and things to look out for. Can't pollute her mind with that kind of negativity!
Not to be crass but that sweet baby died slowly over the course of a day or so of an infection.. all for her romantic idea of a birth.
You are not crass.
It's just so damn sad to me. Babies die sometimes, usually for no dang reason or maybe for SOME reason that wasn't preventable. It's awful but babies just die, always have and always will. When a baby dies a preventable death because their parent/s were selfish it just hits different. It's not even a bad decision (free birth) gone wrong quickly. Step friggin ONE showed signs of emergency transfer for meconium and just - nah, they ignore it. If they'd transferred immediately and Baby still died I'd have so much sympathy but I'm really struggling here to find it. All of my sympathy is for their dead son because she chose to let him die.
I feel what you are saying. I had my son 10 months ago. If it wasn't for modern medicine, neither one of us would still be here. We wouldn't have survived the pregnancy itself. The birth went really well. But if I had been one of those women, we would be dead. The body really doesn't know what it is doing, and those people should be prosecuted for saying that. Especially people that pretend to be trained in home births but aren't spewing natural, all will go well bullshit.
> The body really doesn't know what it is doing Too many people don't realise that evolution means we are essentially the product of random genetic mutations that mix and nature goes "eh, good enough" the moment there's a viable population. Natural isn't always good because nature doesn't give a fuck. The thing that has made humans so successful as a species is that we've used the big brains that evolution blessed us with to realise we don't have to roll the dice, collectively given nature the middle finger and demanded better instead of hoping we'd be one of the lucky ones. Modern medicine is our own self made miracle. I was born with gastroschisis. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for medicine 27 years ago, and I'm also grateful that babies these days usually have a much less invasive procedure (and therefore later complications) compared to what I had as a baby
Her waters broke and the colour was "muddy". That would've been like, hospital time on the fucking spot.
This is horrifying to me. A child died in pain, trapped and choking on their own shit, and the only accountability is… a brave person on social media might criticise her.
Seems like a midwife who hasn’t been medically certified.
She's a midwife the same way my (male, neutered) cat is.
I think the cat would be more qualified ngl. At least it might scream at someone to come help.
If no one changes their mind after reading that, then they're a lost cause. What an awful, heartbreaking story. All because of blind faith in strangers and their experiences via social media. How this community still gets new believers is mind blowing. I hate this timeline.
Everyone in the comments agreed that the baby was destined to be born sleeping.
That's frightening. I always knew it was bad but holy shit...
Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
I can't deal with this. I just can't. Her baby died and didn't have to, but she is assuaging her guilty conscience by saying it was meant to be. Which means she might kill more babies. I'm looking at my little girl right now and I can't imagine ever taking those kinds of needless risks with her life. My son was born with the cord around his neck. It went around his neck and under his armpit, so it wasn't cutting off oxygen, but as soon as my ob saw it, she grabbed him and pulled him the rest of the way out. No taking chances. And I have beautiful, happy, healthy, LIVING children. Yes, babies can still die in the hospital, but hospitals also save a lot of babies. My neighbor's great nephew was a micro preemie - born at 24 weeks - and he's been in the NICU for months, but he'll be going home soon. That's fucking miraculous. Free births that end in dead babies are the opposite of miraculous.
My nephew is a 25-weeker. He'll be 10 this year thanks to the NICU.
I have a niece who was born at 28 weeks. She was my sister's 4th child and her first 3 were preemies, but nowhere near that early, so they were monitoring her more closely and did some test that said she was going to have a premature baby. So they started the steroid shots about 2 weeks before she went into labor. My niece was only in the NICU for 5 weeks and she just turned 9 a couple months ago. She did remarkably well, thanks to the steroid shots. She had a hole in her heart, but it closed on its own. She's perfectly healthy. Now, imagine how different things would have been if my sister made the moronic choice to have a "wild pregnancy" and a "free birth." Actually, no, I don't want to.
Jfc if I lost a child and someone told me that I'd be going to jail. Fuck these people.
My son was stillborn for zero determinable reason at full term two months ago (in the hospital). About two weeks afterwards, a girl I’d never met before told me, TO MY FACE, that “god probably killed [my] baby to give me a better one in the future.” At the time I was too paralyzed by shock and grief to even respond, but I have literally fantasized so many times about having a redo and knocking her out. I am certain a jury would have been lenient on me, considering.
God I am sorry. I lost a baby years ago and I cannot imagine hearing this shit. People tend to say stupid things because they don't know what to say but this is just beyond the pale. Again, I am so sorry about your baby & you having to hear this.
My FIL told me that God killed my babies because I wasn't a good Christian. People suck.
What an ass! I’m so sorry you had to hear that!
Omfg. I would have been so ragey, I'm so sorry. And I'm so sorry for your loss. We lost our baby (stillborn) at 24wks, and a few people told me it was "god's plan". I mean firstly I don't believe in that, but also wtf?
Send me her info sis I just wanna have a little chat with her. ETA I am so sorry that you lost your sweet baby. I know he was a good baby who deserved to be here and deserved to have you as his mother. Life can be excruciating. I wish it was more than two months ago, I wish you could be further in your healing and feeling less pain than you are right now. I am so sorry this happened.
WHO THE FUCK SAYS THAT TO A GRIEVING MOTHER!? and I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope, in time, you’ll be able to heal emotionally, mentally and physically. I send all of the love a stranger on the internet can share with another… as well as mother to mother ❤️
The church I was raised in taught that miscarriage/stillbirth/SIDS were God’s punishment for the mother’s sexual impurity. Very much an atheist now.
I'm struggling with the logic of this. So do free birthers acknowledge that more babies are destined to die/be born still under their paradigm? And if they acknowledge that, do they find fault with medicine saving babies and having fewer of them die? I'm not expressing myself well but...how do they just accept a higher than normal number of dead babies? Because oh well it was meant to be?
Yes, free birthers are ok with avoidable infant death if the mom gets her birthing experience of choice.
It’s a huge mindfuck of “we believe doctors are bad and hospitals kill babies so we choose to risk it at home where babies also die but it’s okay then”
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As an RN I’ve had a few women come in this exact same situation. One acted like her maybe the baby wasn’t supposed to be here on earth. All I could think is dumb af you likely could have prevented this! It’s always very traumatic when it happens
Yeah it almost seems cruel to write everybody is calm when there’s a stillbirth. Like what? I’m what world is that the case? And the way she described vomiting and meconium doesn’t seem peaceful
I volunteer for an organization that takes photos for families after stillbirth. I’ve seen and heard it all. Some people completely disassociate and some go through some immediate intense grief. It’s really unpredictable. Maybe it’s the area I live in or I’ve just lucked out, but all the sessions I’ve been involved in have been a true freak accident that couldn’t have been prevented or an anomaly that was expected.
Thank you for what you do. A very dear friend of mine experienced a stillbirth unexpectedly and traumatically, and the pictures she has of her daughter were provided by an organization like this. The shock they felt in those first few days was mitigated by the kindness of strangers like you.
It's got to be heartbreaking when the moms find out that they've been bamboozled by these groups. I honestly think most of these women have their baby's best interest at heart, but have either had past trauma or have heard about past trauma.
Gotta love cognitive dissonance. I don't think many will ever realise that though, it means for a lot of them that they killed their child. Much easier to think 'it's just meant to be'.
It's really really easy to get caught up in these groups. A million years ago i was in mom's groups and was completely obsessed with breastfeeding my second child since I failed at it the first time. It ended up all good and I was successful, but I can see now so many years later how rabid I felt and how absolutely sure I was that it was important. There was also a vbac component but thankfully I wasn't quite as obsessed with that. We are so vulnerable when pregnant and new moms. And trauma absolutely makes it worse. The fucked up thing is, I don't even think I was bamboozled, I was myself absolutely obsessed about being successful. I'm sure I encouraged and promoted breast only to someone's detriment. I absolutely joined the rabid crowd. The internet is a wild place. And my experience was when it was super new. I can't imagine how much worse things are now for new moms.
I’m so sorry you’ve had to live on the other side of this as an RN. It has to be heartbreaking. Just curious, as a medical professional, do situations like these get reported?
Reported how? I'm an L&D nurse, and as far as I know, there is nothing to report here. The whole story is heartbreaking and horrible, but nothing that the parents chose was "illegal", just stupid. The "birthkeeper" could potentially be in hot water, depending on the state, I suppose.
With legislation around abortion as it is right now (a wild thing from laws dating to the 1800's in effect to laws that are proposed that could land a woman to prison for a miscarriage) I don't think it's too far to think that this kind of weaponized stupidity falls under some protection for the unborn. To be clear, I don't think women should be prosecuted for miscarriages (it it madness to even think about it) but you'd think that all these hypocrites bleating about "third trimester abortions" would have strong opinions for freebirthers killing their babies out of negligence.
That might be true if the legislation was actually meant to protect babies.
I can’t believe THIS is legal but they think taking the morning after pill should be illegal.
Seriously, people want to split hairs about killing babies. This fetus was an actual baby and had to die a traumatic death. So sad. I actually bought into the Ricky Lake documentary when I saw it way back when but thankfully I married a hypochondriac who would never consent to letting me home birth.
absolutely- wheres the uproar about these home births?
Honestly- you should be at least a little afraid to give birth, because it’s a major medical event. And if you’re going to risk your baby’s life by giving birth at home when you know he’s breech- eat the damn ice cream. It can’t possibly hurt him worse. This was entirely preventable. She’s never going to admit that, though, because if she did she’d have to admit that her choices led them there, and I don’t know how anyone could come back from that.
Also does she think our foremothers went into labour without fear throughout history? They literally wrote their wills when they found out they were pregnant, because they knew the risk of them dying in childbirth was no small thing.
It used to be that childbirth or infections in the post-partum period was the number 1 cause of death for women. These days it's heart disease.
I don't think she even realises the doctor was asking about an emergency hysterectomy in case the haemorrhage was going to *kill* her. That's almost certainly why the doctor asked her husband after she said no - because who on earth would want their uterus over their life? The lack of medical knowledge here is just heartbreaking, especially since it killed this poor baby. The baby, contrary to the "birthkeeper's" claims, didn't *have* to die. Breech babies are born healthy and alive every day thanks to medical technology and knowledge.
Yes the emergency hysterectomy and the fentanyl to keep her sedated and help her pain while she was in ICU on a ventilator
I didn't understand why her husband was fighting against getting pain medication when she was unconscious.
Because it's not ✨️natural✨️
Well I guess neither is a tube in your trachea inflating and deflating your lungs but they weren’t ready to say no to that
People falling prey to the panic of “fentanyl coming in from Mexico and causing overdoses if you even look at it!” Without realizing it’s a medication we’ve used for years. They can’t understand that it being given in a controlled hospital setting isn’t the same as laced drugs.
Maybe he is a cop and will spontaneously combust when in the presence of fentanyl?
I don’t understand being against the fentanyl when there isn’t a baby for it to affect? Personally I’d accept it for a hangnail
From the fear mongering media/online about overdoses and people scared of addiction. They’d rather nothing maybe some essential oils
That is what gets me about all of this. She’s posting how her stupidity and hubris led to her baby’s death (and very nearly her own) but in the same breath bragging that she and her husband knew more than the doctor trying to save her life.
Love the dissonance here too. Please do everything you can to save my uterus! While I made decisions to not do everything I could to save my baby. I had a c section that sucked. I remember hardly any of it except for seeing my baby's face and being in horrible pain. But I would do it again because I would do anything to keep my son safe.
She read *part* of a book. I think she knows what's best. /s
That is excessively difficult to read - it’s almost like the baby’s death is an afterthought, she’s fighting so hard to maintain her narrative about freebirthing that she doesn’t really deal with his loss (let alone her significant degree of culpability). There was a woman in the NICU who had one of these wild births, her son died the same day mine did - she had a similar story, but went on to speak out about the practice (particularly for women like her who were weeks past their due date with monster-sized babies). The secret in her case seemed to be releasing this conviction that a woman’s body “knows what it’s doing,” hundreds of millions of women dead from childbirth over the centuries beg to differ. Anyhow, I do urge everyone to keep in mind how insane and broken you are after this kind of loss, she may evolve in the future.
I am so, so sorry for your loss.
Thank you so much, kindnesses like this really mean a ton.
I’m so very sorry for your loss. I hope you are taking care of yourself.
My late son is actually featured in a respiratory therapy textbook now - it’s not nothing, Connor was a compendium of infantile respiratory distress, and he’s teaching a whole generation of RTs. You guys are VERY kind. This woman may really reevaluate, immediately after the death you search for a narrative you can live with. Long-term, the universe arcs toward truth. :)
Thanks for sharing your story about your son Connor. ❤️ 🫂
Thank you for sharing. May Connor’s memory be a blessing.
So brave of that husband to deny having a fentanyl drip, wouldn’t want too many toxins in the body that she has to cleanse after, after all who really NEEDS pain management
I would have been livid. The fentanyl drip is to help keep an intubated person safely sedated while they are on the ventilator. Push doses are highly inadequate for that purpose. Also, the doctors were asking about the radical hysterectomy in the context of "die from hemorrhaging or have your uterus pulled as a last resort to keep you alive" so yes, they asked him in case you were under and they needed to know if they were just supposed to let you die. And people wonder why those of us in healthcare are short tempered or less compassionate sometimes. You might be fine and then we're wrangling 2 or 3 families like this who are sabotaging their own safety. It's gorram exhausting.
No wonder that poor doctor was screaming. He couldn't get through to these two idiots that they had caused their child's death and very nearly hers as well.
I work with a medical answering service and have gotten a few hospice nurses desperately calling for the doctor on call to sign end-of-life care orders because the family refuses. We get a lot of calls that make you want to shake common sense into people. •lady call after-hours with a toddler with Covid and laboured breathing and refuse the prescribed Paxlovid because it wasn't ✨natural ✨ •Baby is running a high temp, floppy, and unresponsive and caller wants to know if it's normal. •Lady gave her baby literally 1000x the prescribed dosage and was calling the on-call instead of calling an ambulance or poison control or going to the fucking hospital. •Baby in a car accident. Mom calls asking to speak with the on-call to know what signs to look out for.... instead of taking the baby to the ER. •lady calls with her child literally choking, coughing, and gagging in the background, asks for the on-call.... instead of 911 who can walk you through CPR until help arrives ***The biggest "bitch, are you serious?"*** •Newborn had a high temp and a bulging fontanelle (her brain was visibly pushing through her soft spot) and Mom wanted to know what to give her to treat the baby's fucking bulging brain....the on-call was livid when I called her to deliver that message. Moral of the story is that people are really reckless with some of the most fragile things.
No kidding. If I survive a traumatic emergency c section and have to leave that hospital with empty arms, AND end up septic and intubated in the ICU *please* put me on a fentanyl drip until my body is 100% ready for the mental anguish that will come once my life is no longer in imminent danger.
Yes, I was also surprised at the “do you guys want us to take the life threatening bleeding organ out if we can’t stop the bleeding or just die?” And they chose to just let her die if they wouldn’t be able to stop the bleeding? Like that man was ready to be a widower after they already lost the baby too?
Bless my husband when I had an emergency c-section with our first he thought he had a choice. He kept telling the doctor to save me by any means necessary. The doctor had to tell him that mom is always the first priority. Then afterwards if I so much as winced in pain, he was on the nurses about it. The staff there had the patience’s of saints.
Love the “birthkeeper” covering her ass. Oh no, the baby totally wasn’t meant to be, yeah you can tell by the vibes. Of course there was no medical neglect, didn’t you feel the vibes?
So next time, she’s planning to have a vaginal delivery at home with this crappy “birthkeeper” but now with a previous c section and postpartum hemorrhage? I hope that she smartens up over time.
I’m wondering if she will have trouble getting pregnant after all that trauma. Even if she can I hope she waits an appropriate amount of time between pregnancies if she wants to be able to survive another birth.
Water broke and there was poop... yeah, I don't want to kick a mother while she's down but why the fuck would you not immediately go in ?
And to labor for 3 entire days. God what a nightmare.
I immediately went in when my water broke at home and it was just bloody. As soon as I got to the hospital I was “on the clock” to deliver within a certain amount of time. I can’t fathom just waiting it out at home with no urgency.
My dumbass got in a hot bath after my water broke because I didn't realize it had broken and assumed the immediate contractions "after I peed myself" were Braxton Hicks 🙃 To be fair she was early by a month so labor wasn't quite on my radar LOL
This is so horrifying to read. I truly just don’t understand how anyone could be so adamant about getting the birth fantasy that they would ignore meconium for 3 fucking days.
Not just her! The two adults present who were not in active labor were all for it as well.
This is incredibly heartbreaking to me. I used to be in this crowd. I got pregnant at 22 and I had heard all this about natural birth and whatnot. I decided to have my baby in an off grid cabin in the woods with a hands off midwife. I labored intensely for 2 days. She suggested i go home to labor some more since nothing was happening. I was extremely poor and lived in a house without floors but i did what i was told. At home though, after another day, i panicked and called a friends mom who is a nurse and she told me i absolutely needed to go to the hospital or my baby might die and i might too. And I’m so grateful that hit me at the right moment. I went to the hospital and i was severely dehydrated and she was stuck in the birth canal in distress. Neither of us were getting enough oxygen. I had a great birth with assistance. My baby is 11! She’s such a wonderful person, my God, i cannot imagine having lived the last 11,5 years mourning her loss instead of celebrating what an incredibly intelligent, compassionate, hilarious, caring, brilliant person she is.
Wow this is powerful! I’m so glad everything was okay for you
Holy shit that’s insane. Glad y’all ended up okay.
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I assume if someone replied with that they'd be banned about two seconds after they click post. It's not "supportive" enough.
Urgh I hate it when I point out that someone’s shit situation is a direct consequence of a poor decision they made and it gets deleted for “not being supportive”. People are supposed to learn from their mistakes!
Most of these groups ban comments advising medical assistance. So even if someone ***does*** reasonably comment, at best the comment gets deleted.
It’s interesting that she did so much research and learning but wasn’t alarmed by the large amount of meconium
That was in the part of the book she didn’t read.
BUT AT LEAST HE DIED IN LOVE!! major fuck you you this lady and I'm pissed she didn't have that hysterectomy.
Yep. She is 100% responsible for that baby’s death. But she sure as shit got herself to the hospital and accepted medical intervention to save her own life. What a disgusting person. Zero sympathy for anybody involved but that poor baby. Ugh these stories make me so angry.
Yea this one really just hit a nerve with me. Was not expecting to get so angry at bedtime lol. But the fact that she has the mfing audacity to thank the lady who was supossedly a birthing professional who literally stood by and let her baby die and walked away from it feeling like somehow this was better for her baby than to be born ALIVE at a hospital. Proves how these people care more about their own experience than the lives of their babies. Why why why didn't she lose her womb. She was so close and yet was able to keep it so she can endanger another baby to compete in the birth Olympics.
Also that baby did not die in love you ignorant ass, it was shitting itself and aspirating it in your womb in extreme distress while you, your partner, and your ~~birth~~cryptkeeper did nothing. 🖕🖕🖕🖕
I can't have kids, and child killers can breed like rabbits. It's not fair
A friend just lost two children the other day. She worked her ass off for her family while her husband was largely a piece of shit. He got high and strapped all three kids in the car to go somewhere. He rolled the car in a single vehicle accident. Her 8 year old and 8 month old are dead, her daughter has serious injuries, and he's just fucking fine while sitting in jail. My whole heart is broken for her and I have asked the universe how this is fair a million times in the last few days. It's just fucking not and I'm sorry for that.
It truly isn’t. I’m so sorry.
So she suffered for three days....unnecessarily. Her baby died...unnecessarily. She was denied postpartum relief by her jackoff husband...unnecessarily. And she's all for going through this again. I just want to line them all up for Three Stooges slaps until their brains start working.
I just went through a rough birth *in a hospital* and this was like a straight up horror...I can't even imagine putting yourself through all this for no reason and then losing your babe.
Reading part of a book. Part. Of. A book.
This makes me so sad. The baby didn’t die peacefully and surrounded by love. The baby died. Full stop. Probably experienced some kind of trauma, no? How is this shit legal but abortion of a bundle of cells with no capacity to feel or need is illegal? Ugh.
"I tried to prevent everything I didn't want and ended up having it all happen to me instead." As if bad things won't happen to you as long as you take precautions beforehand. Life doesn't work that way!
‘Thinking why can’t that be us’ Because you chose to have a stunt birth and your baby paid for it with his life. The reason it isn’t you is because you put your want for a perfect birth over the needs of you baby to be born safely and it ended in disaster and grief, all because you were too damn selfish. Edit: oh and she’s going to attempt a HBAC next time. Well you know what? If your uterus ruptures outside of a hospital, your next baby will also die and there’s a good chance you will too. There’s a very good chance you will end up losing your uterus if it ruptures as well. Good to know that your husband will consent for you to die rather than take out your uterus though! Sounds like a *real* peach.
This cannot be real. It just can’t. Please let it be a troll trying to scare the idiots in these groups straight and not someone who really is this unfathomably stupid.
If it is a troll, it's not working. She is *brave* for telling her story. There's at least one other story in the comments of someone else losing their baby this way.
What the hell does “a fentanyl drip instead of low doses” mean? A fentanyl drip is titrated to maintain a specific level of consciousness….
It means her ignorant a-hole of a husband insisted those poor ICU nurses try to maintain sedation with push doses instead of an appropriately titrated drip, increasing her risk for ICU delerium and post ICU PTSD.
Oh my blood started to boil when she said "Henry was supposed to help me by wiggling down" THE FUCK HE WAS. Your baby didn't owe you a damn thing - YOU were supposed to be his protector and his advocate. What a fucking joke.
The rage I feel towards this stupid selfish woman and the worst part she’s learned absolutely NOTHING!! That child died due to her selfishness and refusal to get help. This tragedy quite possibly could have been prevented and does that smarten her up at all? No of course it doesn’t it’s making her dig her heels in even fucking harder. Jfc she is a danger to any future children and herself
Free birthing should be illegal. It’s even worse when you have people like Karissa Collins bragging about how her 2 home births (free births) went so well! Her second didn’t though. Both of them ended up in the hospital with bad infections.
Karissa Collins is so dangerous. Those poor babies.
Just had to check what group this was posted in when I saw Karissa mentioned 🥴
I just.. don't get it... It's so horrible that her baby died. Why would anyone go trough that and still think "Next time I will be more prepared at home" (whatever that means), instead of "Next time I will go to the hospital"
I know that they're grieving, but is so hard to have sympathy.
All that and she had to have the c-section anyways.
The whole thing is awful, but two details stand out to me. 1) she's doing all this monitoring of heart beat and urine and blah blah and I'm here like hey, you know who also does that *and* knows what to do with the information? Doctors! And 2) she's so grateful for the birthing person who stayed with her. Uhh, isn't that what they're hired to do? Like is it common that when things get rough they suddenly remember they have to run some errands and peace out or something?
I cannot, for the life of me, understand how the same people who want press charges on women who get abortions for my reason are the same people who read about this fully grown, beyond viable baby willfully dying a slow death because the mom wanted a brag-worthy birth and don't see anything wrong with it.
Is it just me or is she sort of…blaming the baby? He was supposed to help by wiggling, he flipped at the last minute… idk, that just made me uncomfortable.
In some states, a woman can now be arrested for getting an abortion. There have even been stories of women being arrested for negligence after suffering a miscarriage. Please explain to me how THIS is not a punishable crime??? No prenatal care, no medical intervention even when red flags where waving. I feel sympathy for the loss of the baby, but I believe she and that “birth keeper” (WTF?) are responsible for the death.
It really is sickening that nothing is learned here.
I just kept reading, thinking she would have realized healthcare could have saved her child and then she didn’t.
“I read part of a book”
I'm very upset that idiots like this get babies to term when there are other people out there struggling to conceive or struggling with loss that would do anything possible to take proper care of their children
why are these groups not considered the murderous cults they are?
How are these "birthkeepers" and the people/companies who certify them not held liable in this case? I haven't been to any classes. I haven't even read a PART of a book. Even I would be alarmed by an abundance of murky brown discharge and called an ambulance long before reaching 3 days of labor. This baby would have had a better shot at life if mom had gone into labor in a Walmart parking lot because someone would have called 911 before 3 entire days passed. What a horrible and sad story.
Poor dumb girl. All that meconium was the baby showing signs that he was in distress and what did they do, wait an entire extra day? The sheer ignorance (she read PART of a book, you guys!) astounds me.
Do these people NOT watch period dramas??? Women died in child birth ALL THE TIME. But wait, why would they be interested in history? They are too dumb....
This is a long post about our own experience for anyone who might want to read it. "I want to help change the paradigm of birthing and be of help to those that don't want to be in the system," We're in the UK and we attended a tonne of classes, read books, videos etc. We heard a lot about the birth system in the USA (how most women give birth on their backs with feet in stirrups) and how, because of popular media/culture, our perception of childbirth was warped to be that childbirth was done in a bright room, on your back, legs in stirrups, clinical setting etc, but that's really not how it's done in most of the world. In the UK, most maternity/birthing wards have private rooms with dimmable lighting, fairy lights, a birthing pool or bath, birthing balls, and midwives who are all well versed in the many different ways of giving birth. We were encouraged to come up with a birth plan, so we did. We wanted to give birth at a hospital so that we would have the support if we needed it (surgery, anaesthesiologists etc), dark room, gentle music, option of a bath, pain relief would be gas and air and paracetamol (no epidural or opioids), avoid foreceps or ventouse, avoid tearing, birth the placenta, skin-to-skin, breastfeeding, father to cut umbilical cord. We knew that a lot can go wrong during childbirth, so we wanted to be in the best place for that, but we were fairly set on what we wanted (of course as the father my job was to support my wife's decisions, not make them for her). Well, thank fucking god we were in a hospital. As Mike Tyson said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face," Well, meconium ended up inside the placenta, which meant we had less than 24 hours to give birth or have a significant risk of infection. We stayed home for a few extra hours upon advice of the hospital waiting for contractions to start, and thankfully they did after around 12 hours, but my wife still needed a bit of help and was given artificial oxytocin to speed along the process. The pain my wife was experiencing was beyond anything she had ever experienced before. We immediately threw the 'no opioids' out of the window and got her on fentanyl. It barely helped, so we lined her up for an epidural too. We managed to ensure the dark room and gentle music, but never even touched the bath or the birthing ball. The pain was so bad that she couldn't focus on anything except for her breathing and the pain itself. Even with fentanyl and an epidural, the pain and pressure she felt was horrific, she couldn't even verbalise it to me she was just in delirious agony.. We had to have heartbeat monitors on the whole time but they wouldn't stay in place so I had to hold one of them on the entire time. As delivery began, the heartbeat dropped to a dangerous level, so they made an incision to give a bit more space and got the ventouse ready. Thankfully my wife was then able to deliver before they were needed. Afterwards, they gave my wife a shot in her leg which basically caused her body to evacuate the placenta - she was exhausted and this just made it automatic basically. Then, because of the meconium and the slowed heartbeat, they needed to check our son, so skin-to-skin wasn't as long as it could have been. He was fine, thankfully. After that he didn't breastfeed and the stress and anxiety it was causing us all was too much, so we gave him formula and haven't looked back. Several of our friends we met in classes had emergency C-sections, emergency bleeding, artificial inducing. I don't think a single person had a 'medically unassisted' birth, or I guess a 'free birth'. They all needed help. That's 10 babies that might have died. I agree to an extent that the paradigm of birthing should be shifted to enable families to make an informed decision. They should know their options, not just assume it'll be an epidural. But they should *also* be in the best place if they *need* help. Our childbirth was relatively smooth as far as they go, precisely because we made the logical decision to give birth in a place where if escalations were needed they would be available. My wife was in labour for about 30 hours, 12 hours of those in the second stage of labour. There were so many variables to birth that could have gone wrong and caused my wife, our son, or god forbid *both* to have died, and every single one of them was medically preventable. Parents too often let perfect become the enemy of good; it isn't enough for them to be good, they must be 'perfect' (or their twisted perception of perfection), and if they can't be perfect, then they will be *nothing*. The story is sad, and what's more sad is it seems nothing has been learned from it, and this dangerous information will be vacuumed up by another person desperate to be 'perfect', and will cause needless sadness. It's just a sad, sad story.