The thing that really gets me about Akner's birth story is that she says she decided against an epidural because she read "somewhere that they sometimes slow dilation. That's the last thing I needed."

So she eschews one form of medical assistance and instead chooses a shot of Stadol which causes her hallucinations. I'm sure the doctor got her permission to administer that, although she doesn't implicitly say she agreed to it. And she places the blame firmly on the doctor by saying "he came up with a solution for the pain--the narcotic Stadol."

I'm fairly certain her contempt for her doctor is skewing the story--especially the part about breaking her water without saying a word to her. I just find it hard to swallow it all from her point of view.

Maybe Balik doesn't believe in the evolutionary survival theory but I get pretty tired of how blithely holistic birth advocates forget that the leading cause of death of women of childbearing age used to be CHILDBEARING.

I'm a non-mother and have no plans to become one, and I'm offended as fuck that we have a culture that says anyone "failed" at birth. Anyone.

What amych said.

I think if you'd had a C-section, and dealt with a lot of moms who treated you like you'd let down their side, and were somehow not really part of the club, you might feel differently about that.

Yes, but your feeling might not be an accurate assessment of what was being said by this particular person at this particular time.

It's shitty to be treated shitty, but that doesn't mean that everyone who subesquently says something similar is being nasty.

I'm a non-mother and have no plans to become one, and I'm offended as fuck that we have a culture that says anyone "failed" at birth. Anyone.

Hey look, amych and I are as one in this! And I say this as someone who knows a mother who feels VERY cheated that her birth experience wasn't the home birth that she had elaborately planned.

That's kinda my feeling, amych. I mean, the end goal is a baby and mother who are living, right?

I've had friends who have run the gamut of birth and parenting -- some of it has seemed insane0vision to me -- 4 days of labor -- OMFG awful.

It seems to be like the place to be is a happy medium. I'm dealing with demands from a helicopter parent -- packed playdates all summer, teach him how to ride a bike so he can bike with us for a week at the end of summer, organic, no fructose, manna sent from angels, blah blah blah, two half hour to an hour calls a day...

My eyes have rolled so much this summer they are in the basement.

BALANCE. MODERATION.

Yes, but your feeling might not be an accurate assessment of what was being said by this particular person at this particular time.

And you don't know that it wasn't. Since neither of us were actually present during the interview, we won't ever know.

But if I had been that writer, I would have been pissed off.

Also, what amych said.

I'm offended as fuck that we have a culture that says anyone "failed" at birth

I simply don't understand the whole thing about a desire to avoid modern medical technology. I mean I can understand wanting a less impersonal environment (though from my perspective I was happy to know we were already in a hospital if anything went wrong, and our daughter needed some attention after was was born), but I don't understand the negative stigma of taking advantage of medical facilities and pain management.

but I get pretty tired of how blithely holistic birth advocates forget that the leading cause of death of women of childbearing age used to be CHILDBEARING.

It's not always blythe forgetting though. A lot of what killed women in childbirth is no longer a factor in home births due to germ theory and nutrition.

I don't have the percentages at the tip of my fingers, but childbed fever (which, pre-cleanlieness standards killed more women in hospitals than at home) and rickets or polio(which could make the pelvis, shall we say unsuitable for childbirth) were widespread and account for a large percentage of deaths in childbirth. They aren't factors in a modern home birth.

Again, not saying there aren't Natural Assholes, just not willing to let them be the sole proprietors of the Natural world.

I blame the woo.

In things that are cool news. Kid barters his way from a phone to a Porche. [link]