Friday, March 26, 2010

Ugh-O-Rama

So... I just stumbled on a blog that really steams my grits. The Homebirth Debate captured my attention with its title. I thought, "How great! Somewhere women can become educated about the pros and cons of hospital and homebirth [or unassisted or whatever one might choose]." What a misnomer! That I'm even dedicating a post to the blog irritates me, I just can't stop thinking about the amount of incorrect, incendiary information on that site.

"Dr. Amy" [credentials in question] is a pundit on the subject of birth, espousing her own beliefs with little regard for others opinions or the facts in her O'Reilly style "No Spin Zone."

As someone who has had two wonderful births (she only uses "natural" in quotes and a derogatory fashion), the thought that this women claims to care for women is ludicrous. She returns to the mentality that epidurals are a feminist-drug - allowing women to escape from the pain of labor so that they are equal with men. I will not try to explain why that is ridiculous here - there is plenty of information out there on what can go wrong with epidurals, designer births, etc. Birth moved out of the home into the hospital because that was supposed to make it safer, but what we see is monitoring which leads, too often, to unnecessary intervention.

This tirade is not to say that I don't support all my sisters out there who want or need medical assistance during their births - I certainly believe that drugs and intervention have their place - just not in a normal, natural birth - when a women desires a drug and intervention-free labor.

Dr. Amy bashes midwives, waterbirth, homebirth, women who feel they were wronged during their births - think a PTSD-induced birth trauma scenario. It all just left me feeling yucky.

Dr. Amy has now moved her blog to the Skeptical OB - the comments on c-section there seem a *little* less biased but also just less opinionated - she states the "facts" - albeit one-sided that support her opinion.

I have to stop here because, well, I've already taken up too much space with this nonsense.

1 comment:

The Conservationist said...

the naysayers can naysay all they want. the fact is women were having children at home everywhere all the time until the 1930's, when hospitals released propaganda to increase income. no matter what they say, I'm not stupid and I'm pro-home-birth.