Milk Mommy Diaries: Guest Writer, 2011 CNN Hero Ibu Robin : Childbirth A Global Push themulti-tasking-mom.blogspot.se/2014/08/milk-mommy-diaries-guest-writer-2011.html Human Rights in Childbirth A Global Push Robin Lim CPM written on June, 2014 At the moment I am back in Bali. Since the November Super Typhoon, I have been mostly in the Philippines. To be honest, it is good to be here at home with my family, sleeping in a real bed. The floor of the tent in the disaster zone is challenging for the body. However, it is also torture to be away from the great need of the mothers and babies, in the Philippine disaster area. We have now received over 500 babies, GENTLY in the tent, with no running water, illumined by solar lights. We have proven that the model of kind, respectful, excellent MotherBaby~Friendly, Midwife-to-Mother care in childbirth... works. Even in the most devastated, high risk, low resource places on Earth: Post terrorist bombed Bali, Aceh, after the tsunami, Jyogja, Padang and Haiti, after the huge earthquakes, and now in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, in the Philippines, natural gentle childbirth has proven to be the best way to preserve lives, with dignity. Now Dr Niccolo Giovannini’s, proposed research in Mangiagalli hospital, Milano, Italy, involving 7,000 babies in one year, has the potential to document the benefits of the Bumi Sehat model of care. (Dr. Niccolo was a volunteer at Bumi Sehat for 6 months, in Bali in 2012.) There is indeed already a mountain of evidence that proves; we MUST delay the clamping and cutting of our babies umbilical cords. The study Dr. Niccolo will conduct, will put ALL doubt to rest. Niccolo came to Bumi Sehat Bali, just to touch in and see the project. What he saw moved him, so he stayed nearly 6 months. He says that he has never seen babies so bright, in any other birth setting. He observed how babies born gently, respecting and honoring the mother, with delayed umbilical cord clamping, would gaze wide-eyed at their mothers, crawl to her breast and feed. The MotherBaby Placenta Trinity, when protected, is the best recipe to support healthy beginnings for all babies, especially in low-resource settings. Even with a vast body of evidenced based medicine, to support the Gentle Model of reproductive healthcare, the abuse continues. I have seen it in hospitals in many countries, even today. Caring Midwives and Doctors and Nurses seem to become sheep, allowing anyone they perceive as being in a position of authority (hospital administrators, Departments of Health, even Insurance officers), to abuse our MothersBabies (even in writing I do not wish to separate them). Even worse, the Midwives, Nurses and Doctors who vowed to care, are the perpetrators of the policies of abuse. This is simply Stockholm Syndrome, in the Labor and Delivery rooms all over planet Earth. It must stop with us. It must stop now. We can list the problems: 1) Bullying in Vaginal exams as I have seen them in Hospitals in 4 countries; a stranger, with NO permission, often not even aware of the womans name, puts his or her hand into the womans vagina, even forcefully, usually painfully. In any other setting, this is called Rape! In hospitals, it is medically sanctioned rape. Imagine if men were made to remove their pants and shoes, and lay down on an OB table, and in front of strangers, open their legs and place their feet in the stirrups. The response of many many women is the same as when they are raped; a part of her leaves her body, she becomes numb and disengages, she simply goes away. In the context of becoming a Mother, this has a sad and terrible impact on the MotherBaby relationship. The so-called normal protocols surrounding hospital birth sabotage bonding and breastfeeding, they sabotage the future generations capacity to trust and love. 2) The immediate clamping and cutting of babies umbilical cords. We already know the impact. Clearly the Baby cannot protest. Yet, routinely, at nearly every birth on earth today, babies will be robbed of up to 1/3 of their own blood supply and stem cells. Its a wonder so many mothers persevere, and manage to bond and breastfeed their babies. This gives me hope that love heals all. Even so, the good outcomes for mothers and babies, in spite of the abuse, are NO excuse for continuing the abuse. Here in Bali we have done a study, which proved that babies with delayed umbilical cord clamping and cutting did NOT have higher incidence of Jaundice. The story that was medically perpetrated went like this: if we dont immediately clamp and cut the babies umbilical cords, they will have too much blood, and develop pathological jaundice. This story is NOT researched based. It is a medical Myth, designed to scare us all and undermine our innate instinct to protect our babies. Indeed, there is, according to Michel Odent, evidence that when the mother sees the clamps and scissors used to sever her babys cord, her levels of oxytocin drop. The interruption of the Love Hormone, puts mothers at increased risk for postpartum hemorrhage! When we harm children right before the eyes of their own mothers, we have achieved a level of cruelty that is staggering, and life threatening. This is NOT Science, it is barbarism. We must consider that the under-reported numbers of women dying, in the prime of their lives, from complications of childbirth are still 800 per day, and wonder if protocols that undermine a new mother’s flow of hormones, are at least a part of the cause. If we talk about the inconvenience of just letting the Baby, Umbilical Cord, Placenta trinity be, for some time after birth, I feel disgust. How can we question that our hospital staff, the protocols and even the furniture (the birth tables are so narrow, there is no place to put the bowl with the placenta beside mother and baby) MUST Adapt to what is BEST for MotherBaby, not the reverse, which is the situation now. For example, I witnessed a premature breech birth at the East Visayan Regional Medical Center, a few days ago. The OBGYN wanted to immediately clamp and cut the umbilical cord, so that baby could be resuscitated, even though in the Philippines, protocol is to DELAY. I stopped her from immediately severing the babys cord, though only for two precious minutes, and we began resuscitation for the tiny neonate, there in the delivery room. However, the terrible narrow steel delivery table, with stirrups, makes it impossible to really care for the compromised infant immediately, on the spot, which is bad planning. Thankfully there are people developing neonatal resuscitation units, which roll right up to delivery table. (Our baby was fine, even though the OBGYN had already told the mother that her baby had no heartbeat, it was not true, she was quite easy to resuscitate, and even at just 30 weeks gestation, is doing well, with skin-to-skin and breast milk.) This brings me to my next point…. 3) Archaic/cruel Obstetrical furniture. I say we need to throw out the steel table and stirrups as the place to deliver.” Except for a few obstetrical procedures, there is no need for these tables at all. These OB tables are demeaning. These high steel tables go against a woman’s natural instinct to give birth close to the Mother Earth, in privacy. The very design is cruel and undermines a woman’s natural flow of the hormone oxytocin, for oxytocin is shy and cannot bear being chilled. How can a woman’s oxyticin flow, when she is placed up high, in full view of strangers, with her yoni and most of her naked body exposed? This set-up causes any human to feel cold and ashamed. When a woman’s natural flow of oxyticin is sabotaged in childbirth, the process becomes much more difficult, labor is longer, and in third stage the risk of postpartum hemorrhage is greater. Once the baby is born in such a setting the table is narrow, so healthcare providers are reluctant to put the baby on mother, skin to skin, for fear the baby will fall. Also the table itself makes it difficult to delay the clamping and cutting of the babies’ umbilical cords. What I am saying is: “The OB tables women are forced to give birth on are cruel, demeaning, medically counter indicted as they sabotage the natural process of childbirth, increase the risks for mother, and make breastfeeding and bonding nearly impossible. They must be changed, totally eliminated in our healthcare facilities, if birth is to become universally more gentle. 4) Choices in Childbirth, a Human Right. World wide birthing women are being forced into bigger and bigger, less personal medical facilities to give birth. This is the emerging reproductive health agenda set in motion by the medical authorities, with no regard for the choices and rights of women. Clearly gentle Midwifery-to-Mother care, in the setting of the Birthing Mother’s choice, is the safest most humane option. In a Recent Lancet Executive Summary, Midwifery to Mother care was defended: thelancet/series/midwifery The Executive Summary states: The essential needs of childbearing women in all countries, and of their babies and families, are the focus of this thought-provoking series of international studies on midwifery. Many of those needs are still not being met, decades after they have been recognized. New solutions are required. The Series provides a framework for quality maternal and newborn care (QMNC) that firmly places the needs of women and their newborn infants at its centre. It is based on a definition of midwifery that takes account of skills, attitudes and behaviours rather than specific professional roles. The findings of this Series support a shift from fragmented maternal and newborn care provision that is focused on identification and treatment of pathology to a whole-system approach that provides skilled care for all. “Midwifery is a vital solution to the challenges of providing high-quality maternal and newborn care for all women and newborn infants, in all countries” Midwives can and do safely support women birthing in all settings, including, for healthy low-risk women, the choice to be supported to birth in the privacy and comfort of their own homes. Regarding these 4 points: unethical vaginal exams, immediate or early clamping and cutting of babies umbilical cords, cruel obstetrical furniture, and choices in childbirth; I believe that in less than 10 years time (IF we keep working for Human Rights in Childbirth) no healthcare provider or BirthKeeper will believe that these human rights infractions were common practice. Perhaps we will live to see a day when no one would dare to immediately clamp and cut a childs cord, or do a vaginal exam without the woman’s full consent and only when necessary. There will be a day when the OB tables, where women have been forced to give birth, will exist only in museums of sad history. Homebirth for healthy low risk MotherBabies will be a supported choice. We must push for these Human Rights… There is a violent war being fought on the battlefield of our bodies, because medical institutions profit from technology in childbirth. If we are to reclaim our rights to gentle birth, we must fight on our own terms. I say, let us defend our rights in the Woman’s way, our way, diligently, with the fierce strength of Mother lions defending our young, we must fight this battle with LOVE. In Love, Lola Robin Lim, Grandmother and Professional Midwife Advisory board for Human Rights in Childbirth (humanrightsinchildbirth/advisory-board/)
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 19:16:13 +0000
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