There’s a growing movement of “free birthing” where people are choosing to give birth unassisted and without medical intervention.
I suspect it’s people trying to take agency in countries without universal health care where giving birth medically supported is financially untenable for a large population. Influencers do it and glorify it and make it look like an attractive option for people who also have anxiety about health.
It’s really sad actually. The child seems less important than “the perfect birth story”
I have nothing against more people trying to give birth without medical assistance, exactly because giving birth nowadays is more and more considered a surgical act than a physiological process.
We have a NHS and the complaints from women and, fortunately, from men as well, about violence during labour as been pilling to create awareness and force changes.
From pushing for C-sections, to strapping women to the “chair”, which is a proven bad position to give birth, systematic episiotomy, forced shaving of the pubic area, premature, too late or unnecessary epidural, no opening for different birthing positions…
I’m going to stop here. It’s a sensible subject for me.
More and more people are looking for alternatives to give birth outside the reach of uncaring or indifferent doctors, which has been making space to doulas and midwives reappearing, often nurses that have undergone specfic training for such purpose.
These people are not trying to make the birth of their children unsafe but instead less violent and less of a medical act and more of a natural process.
The babies are nonetheless visited by a pediatrician, the foot test is done, and the children are registered because not doing so is endangering the child and depriving them for social backing, both child and parents.
Sorry for the long wind. This is a sensible subject to me.
There’s a growing movement of “free birthing” where people are choosing to give birth unassisted and without medical intervention.
I suspect it’s people trying to take agency in countries without universal health care where giving birth medically supported is financially untenable for a large population. Influencers do it and glorify it and make it look like an attractive option for people who also have anxiety about health.
It’s really sad actually. The child seems less important than “the perfect birth story”
I have nothing against more people trying to give birth without medical assistance, exactly because giving birth nowadays is more and more considered a surgical act than a physiological process.
We have a NHS and the complaints from women and, fortunately, from men as well, about violence during labour as been pilling to create awareness and force changes.
From pushing for C-sections, to strapping women to the “chair”, which is a proven bad position to give birth, systematic episiotomy, forced shaving of the pubic area, premature, too late or unnecessary epidural, no opening for different birthing positions…
I’m going to stop here. It’s a sensible subject for me.
More and more people are looking for alternatives to give birth outside the reach of uncaring or indifferent doctors, which has been making space to doulas and midwives reappearing, often nurses that have undergone specfic training for such purpose.
These people are not trying to make the birth of their children unsafe but instead less violent and less of a medical act and more of a natural process.
The babies are nonetheless visited by a pediatrician, the foot test is done, and the children are registered because not doing so is endangering the child and depriving them for social backing, both child and parents.
Sorry for the long wind. This is a sensible subject to me.