Should mothers go natural?

[Dasher]

Should expectant mothers who plan on a hospital birth buck the system, and insist on natural childbirth, or should they go along with the program?

And if every aspect of their childbirth has been unnatural when it comes time to say yes or no to the inevitable question, "Were you intending to have your boy circumcised?", why should that be any different? Why should a mother suddenly go natural, and say no to circumcision? Wouldn't it be more consistent to go unnatural all the way, and just say yes to circumcision?

The difference is, whatever unnatural birthing brutality the mother decides to subject herself to in the name of modern science, it isn't going to abnormally alter her son's body. Only her decision to have him circumcised will accomplish that.

The real question an expectant mother should probably ask herself is, if I have my baby boy circumcised, how much harm will I be doing? Will I be ruining his sex life? Will I be making his life miserable? Will he hate me for it? What will the unintended consequences be of having his body altered?

Most mothers never ask these questions, but should they?

[intact]

Circumcision is not the only thing that is wrong about giving birth in a hospital.
Lots of doctors went in and out of morgues and then delivered babies without changing gloves. This killed lots. Episiotomy. This is unnatural and harms the vagina. Early clamping of the umbilical cord. This strangles and steals blood flow to the baby.

In the old days, people would not go into hospitals for birth. Had it stayed that way, I think people would be more healthy. Especially in sick, twisted places like english speaking countries where routine circ was done in hospitals.

Childbirth is not that complicated. How did people get by before hospitals were around?

I was not born in a hospital, but in a place dedicated to giving birth. It's called a birth room here. All you need is someone with experience in giving birth, as I think was customary to have in tribal societies too, where older women would be called upon to monitor the birth giving process of younger women.

Giving birth at home I think is fine too. Safer than in a U.S. hospital, that is for DAMN sure.

[admin]

Should expectant mothers who plan on a hospital birth buck the system, and insist on natural childbirth

If by natural childbirth you mean no pain meds, that's none of my business. I don't know if there are stats on "outcomes" but both our births involved a narcotic called Numorphan and our kids are both monster geniuses. One has eczema and some allergies, but not as bad as my wife does.

But to me the non-negotiable elements of a natural childbirth are:

- Mom NOT flat on her back with her legs in the air.

- Preferably in a pool a warm water with every effort made to help Mom relax (music, lighting, massage, breast/genital stimulation etc all to her preferences).

- Nobody whisks the baby away after delivery. He/She rests up on Mom for a while before being checked out.

- Umbilical cord not clamped or cut until it stops pulsing on its own.

If you go to YouTube and watch a few water births you'll be amazed that the baby doesn't cry. It just floats up after being squirted out and Mom peacefully nuzzles the baby to her breast. And the moms aren't in seeming agony. They have not been scared out of their wits about labor pain; they have conditioned themselves to welcome contractions as a necessary force to help them greet their baby. Nothing is rushed to suit a doctor's golf schedule.

My own theory is that what we think of as the G-Spot is a manifestation of the deep splines of the clitoris being situated close enough to the vagina to make childbirth an ecstatic/orgasmic experience.

[MisanthropeKitty]

Unfortunately, the same social conditioning that causes expectant mothers to believe that ric is normal also leads them to believe that birthing in a hospital, strapped to a bed with wires and monitors all over their body is normal. The truth of the matter is that the female body is NOT designed to give birth flat on her back and giving synthetic hormones to "speed things up" is just a way for a doctor to pull the "failure to progress" card and earn himself double the amount of money by doing a c-section on the mother.

The medical system, especially towards mothers and newborn baby boys, is broken in this country. We have allowed doctors to turn something that was natural into something completely medicalized. And even giving birth at home and away from all of the pressures of a hospital is not even enough to protect baby boys from the thought that circumcision needs to happen. I know quite a few home birth babies that were circumcised at their first well visits.

[vicousg42]

america treats childbirth like an emergency. the mother and child MUST BE SAVED FROM DANGER. ive heard of women in more rustic areas of the world walking out into the desert, and having their baby alone, and walking back into their village. i think we're more like animals than we think we are. animals are by definition, natural.

i do consider myself a person who supports home birth, and i certainly back lactivist, intactivist, and equal rights for men and women. it makes me want to vomit when i see the way pregnancy is treated like a medical condition that requires a large regimen of drugs, operations, and bills. fuck the medical industry.

[freddys]

Being a man, I have no experience nor even basis to express an opinion. However, it is hard to keep me from talking.
Both our children were born in a hospital. My wife would have preferred a home delivery, but after 5 years of infertility treatment, we did not want to take any chances. Besides, there were no other types of birthing facilities at the time. Our daughter had her first son born in a hospital, and was so unimpressed that her second son was born in a birthing center, assisted by a midwife. By the way my wife strongly supported the latter decision. That second experience has turned my daughter into an activist for natural deliveries.
As a caveat, many women died during, or following childbirth before hospital deliveries became the norm.

[intact]

Being a man, I have no experience nor even basis to express an opinion. However, it is hard to keep me from talking.
Both our children were born in a hospital. My wife would have preferred a home delivery, but after 5 years of infertility treatment, we did not want to take any chances. Besides, there were no other types of birthing facilities at the time. Our daughter had her first son born in a hospital, and was so unimpressed that her second son was born in a birthing center, assisted by a midwife. By the way my wife strongly supported the latter decision. That second experience has turned my daughter into an activist for natural deliveries.
As a caveat, many women died during, or following childbirth before hospital deliveries became the norm.

Go to a place that specializes in birth. Do not go to a place for sick people.

I'm starting to believe that people from places like India were right the whole time. Meditation, exercise, healthy foods, spirituality... Not pills, scalpels, weight loss drugs, mcdonalds and sunbeds.

It is scaring how all people trust doctors.

[admin]

many women died during, or following childbirth before hospital deliveries became the norm.

But it's hard to know when there were harmful interventions and when there was real natural childbirth. How many other mammals do you see dying in childbirth in unmolested stress-free settings?

The main reasons I could be persuaded that humans have a worse time than other mammals is that through technology we have figured out:

- how to eat like fucking pigs so we may be having larger babies than evolution has had to time to adapt us for, and

- how to interbreed with specimens from way outside our "evolved" home range, so the never-seen-in-a-slowly-evolving-setting DNA combinations could be producing outsized tots.

[MisanthropeKitty]

But it's hard to know when there were harmful interventions and when there was real natural childbirth. How many other mammals do you see dying in childbirth in unmolested stress-free settings?

The main reasons I could be persuaded that humans have a worse time than other mammals is that through technology we have figured out:

- how to eat like fucking pigs so we may be having larger babies than evolution has had to time to adapt us for, and

- how to interbreed with specimens from way outside our "evolved" home range, so the never-seen-in-a-slowly-evolving-setting DNA combinations could be producing outsized tots.

I'm here to say that my second son was ELEVEN pounds at birth. I had him at a freestanding birth center and I FIRMLY believe that if I had been in a hospital he would have been a c-section baby just because of his size and yet here I sit, with no scars on my stomach and an intact perineum all because my midwives believed I could do it and *I* believed I could do it.

[Dasher]

I'm here to say that my second son was ELEVEN pounds at birth. I had him at a freestanding birth center and I FIRMLY believe that if I had been in a hospital he would have been a c-section baby just because of his size and yet here I sit, with no scars on my stomach and an intact perineum all because my midwives believed I could do it and *I* believed I could do it.

And you were right, MisanthropeKitty.

Unfortunately, our esteemed medical specialists take a dim view of vaginal deliveries, and may even think they are unnatural, dirty, or dangerous.

This same preposterous mind-set claims that foreskins are dirty and that the uncircumcised penis is unnatural.

At some point, many Americans are forced to come to the conclusion that our medical system, supposedly the best in the world, has major problems. And I'm not even talking about the outrageous cost. I'm talking about the fact that the system sometimes does more harm than good.

We also know that many American hospitals are as dirty as any hospitals in the third world, and this is contributing to the big increase in infant mortality this year that dropped the U.S. from 27th best to 41st place in that category...a big disgrace and a deadly one too. Some of these infant deaths from hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) must be due to the circumcision of baby boys, but of course circumcision is never listed as the cause of death.

It is an open question how long this situation can continue to be covered up, and swept under the rug. If you read all those wordy CDC press releases, you can see for yourself that they're terrified of the problem, as if it will blow sky high any minute.

[Them Boots]

There's an eye-opening book about the medicalization of childbirth and how typical Western hospitals treat it as a disease to be fought against with as much expensive equipment and interventions as possible:

http://www.amazon.com/Pushed-Painful-Childbirth-Modern-Maternity/dp/0738211664/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315457350&sr=8-1

Jennifer Block, the author, basically points to how everything in the typical modern hospital maternity ward is geared toward performing as many c-sections as possible, more than triple the rate of that in many European countries. There's another show on Hulu about this couple who decided to see how babies are born in other parts of the world and wound up having a home birth of their own instead of going to the hospital.

We have to remember that the way our system is set up is to produce as much profit for private hospital corporations as possible. It's not about making or keeping people healthy, it's about maximizing returns for Wall Street investors and maximizing bonuses for executives. Unfortunately, under this type of system the people at the top grab their bonuses and everyone else, especially patients, grab their ankles. Therefore, we need to take steps to educate ourselves and make sure we aren't the ones being screwed.

We spend far more on "healthcare" than any other country in the world and yet our infant mortality rate in the US is #46, worse than Cuba of all places.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate

[wifeandmama]

What REALLY REALLY REALLY irks me is women who choose to have a homebirth, breastfeed, cloth diaper, wear their baby... and then ALSO choose to circumcise!

If you go to YouTube and watch a few water births you'll be amazed that the baby doesn't cry. It just floats up after being squirted out and Mom peacefully nuzzles the baby to her breast.

ROFL! Makes it sound like baby is a condiment or something, lol.

[TopHat]

What REALLY REALLY REALLY irks me is women who choose to have a homebirth, breastfeed, cloth diaper, wear their baby... and then ALSO choose to circumcise!

It's really weird how that happens, but it does.

[MisanthropeKitty]

What REALLY REALLY REALLY irks me is women who choose to have a homebirth, breastfeed, cloth diaper, wear their baby... and then ALSO choose to circumcise!


I think it is just THAT ingrained into our society that people think it HAS to happen to a baby or their penis will rot off or something. Thankfully, there are changes happening but the vast majority of parents are ignorant to the knowledge that foreskin is NOT a birth defect and shouldn't be chopped off. I won't even try and explain how I thought a foreskin worked before I had my first son. It's pure ignorance in this country.