{"id":1487,"date":"2013-09-25T13:14:48","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T17:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=1487"},"modified":"2014-06-21T15:07:25","modified_gmt":"2014-06-21T19:07:25","slug":"bettering-birth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/25\/bettering-birth\/","title":{"rendered":"Bettering Birth"},"content":{"rendered":"

I strongly believe in a woman\u2019s right to choose.\u00a0 I\u2019m not talking about abortion or contraception (though I do have my opinions on those too), the right I am talking about is the right to BIRTH.\u00a0 I find it appalling that with everything in the news lately about \u201cwomen\u2019s rights,\u201d you have to dig into the dark depths of the internet to find anyone talking about birth.\u00a0 I fully support a woman\u2019s right to have access to avoid pregnancy, but what about those of us women who WANT to have kids?\u00a0 I strongly believe that women\u2019s rights to have their babies, when, where and in whatever way is safest and most satisfying for each individual woman should be discussed a heck of a lot more often.<\/p>\n

One in three babies in America are now born via cesarean section. \u00a0\u00a0The national c-section rate of 33% (and over 70% in some hospitals including one in my own backyard) is absolutely ridiculous.\u00a0 Many people justify this rate by saying the outcomes are better, but it\u2019s not true.\u00a0 Did you know I am twice as likely to die in childbirth as my mother was when she had me?\u00a0 (And that\u2019s a statistic for the good ol\u2019 USA, not worldwide).\u00a0 There are only 2 countries (Zimbabwe and Botswana) that had larger maternal mortality increases between 1990 and 2008 (according to the World Health Organization<\/a> stats.)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s now been proven that women \u00a0in the US are somewhere in the range of four times more likely to DIE after a cesarean birth than after a vaginal birth.\u00a0 With the C-Section rate steadily rising over the past few decades alongside the maternal mortality rate, any Joe Schmo (i.e. Me) can correlate the two:\u00a0 More women are dying because more women are having (unnecessary) c-sections.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the medical establishment doesn\u2019t take kindly to such bold claims, they only listen to researched and proven facts (and even then it can take years to change practices!)<\/p>\n

When we decided to return to the states from Ireland I had big plans.\u00a0 I had huge ideas of what I wanted to do with my life.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I got pregnant, sick and overwhelmed with mommy-hood in America and have yet to achieve anything.\u00a0 But, I still have things in the back of my mind of what I\u2019d like to do with my life and one of the things I\u2019d really like to get into is research.\u00a0 I want to find out WHY mothers are dying, WHY the c-section rate is so high and WHY no one cares.\u00a0 Unfortunately these kinds of questions need to be answered by medical researchers and I am not qualified.\u00a0 And even more unfortunately (and disturbing) is from what I can tell no one who IS qualified is asking these questions or at least not looking for answers (or very few people, anyways).\u00a0 How do I know?\u00a0 Well, I found this fantastic website out of the UK that lists every maternity related research study completed (http:\/\/www.chimat.org.uk\/default.aspx?RID=78458<\/a>) and I only found two that even touched on maternal mortality.<\/p>\n

In a book I once read (in an ideal world if I had the time and no screaming baby, I\u2019d go find it to properly cite, but\u2026) it was suggested by a male doctor that eventually all women in America will probably deliver by c-section.\u00a0 This doctor claims it will be safer, quicker and easier for everyone.\u00a0 What a scary world that would be and as a mommy of two gorgeous little girls who will (most likely) have babies in this proposed future, I feel obligated to do something, to protect their right to at least choose as I have if not have even more freedom and choice when it comes to birthing.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>\u00a0Every mother deserves to hold, cuddle and nurse her sweet, slimy newborn after birth, not be forced to simply kiss their swaddled, capped, eye-gooped newborn on the forehead before the baby is taken away so mom can “recover”.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m only one woman with one voice but hopefully if many women all scream together, something will get done.<\/p>\n

Here are a few organizations I know of that are trying to fix birthing in America:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.improvingbirth.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.ican-online.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.childbirthconnection.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I strongly believe in a woman\u2019s right to choose.\u00a0 I\u2019m not talking about abortion or contraception (though I do have my opinions on those too), the right I am talking about is the right to BIRTH.\u00a0 I find it appalling that with everything in the news lately about \u201cwomen\u2019s rights,\u201d you have to dig into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baby-business","category-family-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5010,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions\/5010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}