{"id":1036,"date":"2010-11-15T20:44:28","date_gmt":"2010-11-16T02:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=1036"},"modified":"2010-11-16T12:47:12","modified_gmt":"2010-11-16T18:47:12","slug":"call-in-and-listen-to-our-busy-signal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2010\/11\/call-in-and-listen-to-our-busy-signal\/","title":{"rendered":"Call in and Listen to our Busy Signal!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, 15 November 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, I tuned into KFAI 90.3<\/a> and listened to the oddly-named program Truth to Tell<\/em><\/a>. Today they were having a discussion on the rising popularity and pro-vs-cons of home births. Included in the discussion was one of Jennifer’s midwives, Kim.<\/p>\n

Near the beginning of the show, host Andy Driscoll said that listeners were welcome to call in with questions or comments, which is radio short-hand for “you can either listen quietly to our program or you can frustrate yourself trying to get through for the next 60 minutes.” I opted to not call in.<\/p>\n

But someone else did call in: an obstetrician named Dr. Jennifer. She’s from Minneapolis. She was pretty much the lone dissenter of home births during the entire show. Driscoll explained that he invited nurses, midwives and doctors who perform hospital births to join in the discussion, but they all either turned him down or refused to answer his calls (hmm…red flag #1).<\/p>\n

Anyway, Dr. Jennifer argued that hospital births were preferable by asking a question: she asked if home birth midwives were able to care for birthing mothers who experienced [insert random, unlikely problem here]. I can’t recall the medical jargon she used – so esoteric, in fact, that Driscoll had to ask for a definition – but one of the problems she mentioned had to do with tearing from vagina to anus.<\/p>\n

Disregarding the scare and yuck factors, Dr. Jennifer asked a good question – essentially, she was saying that since there exists medical care for a particular problem, then it is prudent for birthing women to position themselves as close to that help as possible. Let’s use Dr. Jennifer’s argument and apply it to another bodily function: eating.<\/p>\n

I think the smartest thing a person can do if they eat is to, first, eat at a restaurant. Home meals, after all, aren’t governed by the FDA, and don’t generate as much $$$ for the economy. Second, while at a restaurant, a diner should ensure that they have with them a certified dietitian, someone who knows the Heimlich maneuver, and a doctor who can monitor the condition of the diner throughout the meal.<\/p>\n

But of course, people don’t do this. Why don’t they? Is it because it’s cost-prohibitive? Perhaps. But I assure you: even if I inherited $50 billion tomorrow, I would never hire people to attend my meals.\u00a0 Oh, don’t get me wrong, it is a great idea to have people attending my meals, but I would need some assurance that they’d mind their own business. In fact, if a restaurant forced me to sign a blanket consent form before eating there, giving them the right to shove probes down my esophagus, strap monitors on my stomach, and continually check my heart rate and breathing, I wouldn’t eat there.<\/p>\n

I tried calling in to say something like this, but I couldn’t get through. I wanted to ask Dr. Jennifer if there existed a place where I could bring my laboring wife – kind of like a hotel – where she could be in peace to use the bed, the tub, and the toilet as she desired, without nurses and midwifes forcing themselves on her despite her screaming no, but that also had all the equipment and expertise ready to go just in case the baby has a Klingon forehead (or even if my wife just wants their reassurance). Essentially, I wanted to say: “Is there a place where my wife can be within spitting distance of the finest medical care on the planet, but still be guaranteed autonomy over her own body – you know, where no one will bother her until she says, ‘hey, I think I need someone here’?” Because I think a place like that would be a great place to give birth.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, no such place exists. You can give birth in a hospital, where you might luck out with a nurse\/midwife\/doctor who respects your wishes, or you might wind up at HCMC. Either way, the best your nurse\/midwife\/doctor can promise you is that they’ll try<\/em> to respect your wishes. Because when push comes to shove (and push often does come to shove at hospitals), the medical staff are more worried about their jobs and lawsuits than about your birthing experience.<\/p>\n

As Kim, the home birth midwife, pointed out during the show, hospital births bring increased risk of pathogen and, in their hurry to medicate and treat labor as a ‘condition,’ nurses\/midwives\/doctors often cause many of the problems they think they’re saving you from. Dr. Jennifer agreed with this, as she explained that her practice has decided that episiotomies shouldn’t be performed unnecessarily. I don’t think any procedure should be performed unnecessarily, but good job, Dr. Jennifer, and welcome to the 21st Century. It’s good to have you.<\/p>\n

Another problem relates to Driscoll’s reading of a statement of the Union of Hospital Lovers and Doctors Who Love to Put Their Fingers in Women’s Vaginas Even When Women Scream No and then Can’t See How That’s Rape But Instead Claim It’s Standard Practice (or something like that, I didn’t catch their actual name as I was too busy hitting ‘redial’ for the 48th time). They stated that birthing women who insist on giving birth at home, crazily blocks away from high-tech care, are forgetting that it’s not about them – it’s about their babies (red flag #2).<\/p>\n

As soon as I heard this, I struggled to find the right word for it, and I think I finally found it. The word is Bullshit.<\/p>\n

First of all, I love my kids, but they simply had no say in their births. The decision as to how and where they were to be born fell solely with my wife. And any medical practitioner who thinks that women should be drugged, controlled, denied their rights, and treated like a receptacle from which the baby needs to be saved, are sorely mistaken. I think this is another area where we can thank (Warning: redundancy coming up) religious nut jobs for believing pro-life means fighting for the rights of fetuses, but not people who have actually been born.<\/p>\n

Second, while it is true that there are high-risk pregnancy and births, not all of them are. Not by a long shot. Just as not all meals are high-risk meals. Our home birth midwives screened my wife for all sorts of stuff, and they gave us paperwork (which I’m too lazy to go retrieve) that listed all sorts of reasons why they would recommend she transfer care to a hospital. Some of those reasons had to do with certain diseases (she had none), others had to do with her age (she was fine), or with gaining oodles of weight with the pregnancy (she didn’t) or having a whole litter in there (she didn’t).<\/p>\n

Third, why do doctors think you have to choose one over the other? Can’t both mother and child have a safe, peaceable birth? The staph at HCMC may have tried to ‘save’ Owen from his mother, but in religiously following their ‘standard of care,’ they harmed both. Our home birth midwives, by contrast, were able to respect both mother and child.<\/p>\n

I’d write more but I’m trying to be caller #10 for some concert tickets right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, 15 November 2010 Today, I tuned into KFAI 90.3 and listened to the oddly-named program Truth to Tell. Today they were having a discussion on the rising popularity and pro-vs-cons of home births. Included in the discussion was one of Jennifer’s midwives, Kim. Near the beginning of the show, host Andy Driscoll said that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}