{"id":16302,"date":"2024-03-30T13:21:45","date_gmt":"2024-03-30T13:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=16302"},"modified":"2024-03-30T13:21:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-30T13:21:45","slug":"freebirthing-in-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2024\/03\/30\/freebirthing-in-ireland\/","title":{"rendered":"Freebirthing in Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day morning and I am on the brink. Desperate, determined, exhausted and certain all at once. I have passed an eternal night trying to push out a child, with no apparent progress.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have a midwife gently coaching, or calling the ambulance, as the case may be.<\/p>\n

I am freebirthing.<\/p>\n

\u2018Is that like a home birth?\u2019, people would ask, when I told them of my birth plans. \u2018Yes, only without a midwife,\u2019 I would say. \u2018Oh,\u2019 they would respond; an \u2018oh\u2019\u00a0 loaded with ambiguity. Because, in fairness, it doesn\u2019t sound ideal.<\/p>\n

Most Irish women choose to give birth in hospital because they think home birthing with a midwife is a riskier option. This is a view promoted by every medical professional in the country. However, some reading of alternative birth experts soon reveals the best kept secret in the Coombe: a woman\u2019s body is designed to give birth unassisted.<\/p>\n

Known as a physiological birth where each biological process activates the next in a delicately balanced sequence, it is the origin of the hypnobirthing image of the unfolding lotus, petal by petal. The most dangerous thing one can do at a birth is interfere with this process.<\/p>\n

Modern obstetrics which is based on the \u2018active management\u2019 of birth, is the petal plucking inverse of this ideal. Drugs to induce and speed labour and pain medications which stall labour, are standard interventions in normal hospital births. These then lead to \u2018emergency interventions,\u2019 such as antibiotics, episiotomies, foreceps and Caesarean sections (c-sections).<\/p>\n

In effect, obstetricians are busy \u2018saving\u2019 mother and baby from the complications they themselves created.<\/p>\n

From the perspective of physiological birth; modern obstetrics is akin to a sexual violation of women. It is predicated on \u2018getting the baby out alive\u2019, an approach which traumatizes and damages the long-term health of both mother and child.<\/p>\n

Most obstetric staff have never even witnessed a physiological birth. Midwifery training in Ireland takes place in a hospital setting only, and most will have never witnessed a home birth, and could be more accurately called obstetric nurses.<\/p>\n

As Irish hospital policy is increasingly determined by insurance liability, where the proof \u2018we did all we could,\u2019 is the best defence against malpractice suits, there is a corresponding rise in the national rate of c-sections.<\/p>\n

So, in the medical paradigm, which expectant Irish mothers are forced to occupy, for lack of an alternative, where home-birthing is risky, freebirthing would be considered reckless.<\/p>\n

And we all know what happens to reckless mothers: They get Tusla called on them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A HSE homebirth<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I applied to the HSE home birth scheme<\/a><\/span> for my first birth in 2018. But the community midwife serving West Kerry had retired one year previously and had yet to be replaced.<\/p>\n

There are about twenty community midwives serving the entire country \u2013 and the HSE insurance requires that at least two midwives attend each birth. As there is no community element in midwifery colleges in Ireland, our national home-birth scheme relies entirely on midwives who have been trained abroad. Little wonder then that just 0.4 per cent (approximately 280) of births in Ireland occur at home.<\/p>\n

So, despite occupying an entirely different health paradigm; the hospital was the only option available to me. And then I discovered freebirthing.<\/p>\n

After reading Laura Shanley\u2019s Unassisted Childbirth<\/a><\/em><\/span>, which lists the myriad ways that medical intervention causes birth complications, I decided to birth at home, without a midwife.<\/p>\n

But with the combination of a long labour, doubtful doulas and a fretting family, fear overtook faith. In the early hours of Little Christmas, we drove from our home on the Dingle peninsula to Tralee hospital, naively thinking we could get checked out, allay our fears and be on our merry way.<\/p>\n

We hadn\u2019t accounted for the Hotel California door policy of the Irish maternity ward. Labouring women can check in any time, but security locked doors ensure they cannot leave. \u2018For our own good\u2019 presumably.<\/p>\n

And there in the belly of the beast, I fell foul of the highly medicalised birth policy, which allows a woman just 18 hours<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/span> to deliver her baby from the time of her waters breaking before emergency intervention. In the U.K. birthing mothers are given at least 24 hours<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/span> before \u2018emergency deliveries\u2019 are considered.<\/p>\n

So, despite the fact that first time births can take up to forty hours to deliver, mine was treated as an emergency and my refusal of syntoconin<\/a><\/span> (a drug to speed up labour) infuriated the obstetrican. The umbilical cord was cut immediately after birth, still pulsing full of blood. The child was pulled from my breast, even as he began to grub for colostrum and taken next door to instead be given a shot of glucose for pacification, as the paediatrician syringed a vial of blood from his tiny veins.<\/p>\n

My refusal of \u2018precautionary\u2019 antibiotics on the grounds that it would destroy my son\u2019s virgin microbiome precipitated a stand-off in which we were threatened with a court order, the Garda\u00ed and Tusla. The Tusla officer was almost embarrassed, being called to \u2018investigate\u2019 and indeed intimidate the only woman on the ward who was breastfeeding.<\/p>\n

There followed three arduous nights in hospital in which my son\u2019s sugar and salt levels were monitored, each day bringing new threats to my hopes for a natural beginning to his life: \u2018If you don\u2019t get those levels up, we\u2019re going to have to give him formula.\u2019<\/p>\n

That was my trauma. Minor compared to most, but it radicalised me, made me an advocate for birthing reform and affirmed my position outside the system. But Life will always buck an affirmed position.<\/p>\n

For my second pregnancy I was even more determined to birth at home. But at thirty-six weeks, after a heavy, heart-wrenching bleed, I went for a scan that showed placenta previa, where the placenta is encroaching on the perineum<\/span><\/span> and obstructing the safe exit of the child. Though the child\u2019s head could nudge past, it\u2019s a high risk one, even for a fervent opponent of the system like myself.<\/p>\n

So, again I was bound for the belly of the beast and Eir\u00fa, my daughter, was delivered by c-section. And I saw the medical maternity machine from the other end of the spectrum. As a birthing mother not wanting intervention, I was treated as a pariah, but as a birthing mother needing intervention, I was treated as a queen. As in this way, I made my peace with these two faces of the Irish medical industry; a merciless machine staffed by heartfelt humans.<\/p>\n

But, though tempered, my view was unchanged. Previa affects 0.2% of mothers. And the national rate of c-section is 30% and there is a chasm of accountability between the two figures.<\/p>\n

\n

A film looking at the way people give birth in Ireland, the system and how it should change.https:\/\/t.co\/2ivReYmId1<\/a><\/p>\n

— Frank Armstrong (@frankarmstrong2) March 30, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n