Popular Science: Compassion Cure
http://www.popsci.com/scitech
Check it out. Not only can they screw with our births, not only can they damage our kids, but then they can freaking MAKE MONEY OFF IT LATER when they figure out that ARTIFICIALLY DOSING OUR KIDS with a hormone OUR BODIES PRODUCE AT BIRTH FOR OUR BABIES can help fix what should never have been broken in the first place.
I‘m thrilled for those for whom this is a cure, a help, an assistance. And utterly terrified at what this says for the growing number of women and babies whose natural process is being willfully tampered with.
Profit, profit, profit all around. And all the costs to us.
Fuckers.
UPDATE: Angela tells me this wasn’t clear enough, so let me expand on precisely why I’m upset. Oytocin is flooded into a woman’s system with the end of 2nd stage labor. So the mother and the baby are both just swimming in the stuff. That’s why bonding is such a big deal; there’s a chemical peak of oxytocin in both their systems at the moment of vaginal delivery. Dianne Wiessinger speaks and writes extensively about this, from her background as a biologist, if you want to go look it up.
That entire mechanism is nonexistent in a cesarean.
Neither the woman nor the baby get oxytocin in a cesarean. Jostling the mother, having lights on, pretty much EVERYTHING involved in cesarean delivery stops the mammalian brain from producing oxytocin. This is why if you mess with a birthing cat, for example, she will abandon the kittens. If the oxytocin isn’t there, bonding becomes an intellectual rather than emotional/biochemical exercise. It’s also a fact that the rise in autism completely parallels the rise in surgical/medically managed births (as does violence in a culture. Michel Odent is your source for this tidbit.) So the very idea that they can force women into (profitable for them) cesareans, that mess with the oxytocin delivery, and then make those same women pay for artificial oxytocin to help heal the babies they themselves damaged…infuriating.
Wow. So I’ve had 3 c-sections (cord around neck, etc). Desperately didn’t want to, but had no choice. So you say I have only “intellectually” bonded with my kids, and they have a greater chance of autism and being violent. This kind of post could really make someone feel badly. People like me, and those who adopt. Please be careful.
Heya Heather…
My second HBAC baby had the cord around her neck and around her chest twice. FWIW. Often there’s a choice that the OBs simply don’t tell you about.
As for feeling badly… My first baby was what I refer to as an unnecessarean for careprovider impatience. It was, bluntly put, stupid. I feel dreadful about it.
I absolutely agree that there is such a thing as a necessary cesarean. However in a nation where 33.1% of births are by cesarean and the WHO says that anything over 15% is an epidemic and a crisis… there are a lot of unnecessary cesareans going on.
I am a huge believer in the idea that if you feel badly, there is probably a reason that needs to be talked out. Sometimes it’s because you have to forgive the woman that you were (which was what I had to do; I could hate myself for what I didn’t know, but it was really better to realize that that girl and this one are different people)… sometimes it’s because you were lied to. I’m not sure what your truth is. But if you want to keep talking, I’m here.
Heather,
I know it’s hard to look at a post like that because it forces us to look inside and see what parts we played in our birth or what parts our physicians did and start questioning if there is damage to our children and where it comes from. Someone else can’t make you feel bad about your cesareans, but we definately have the right to not be happy about them, the circumstances surrounding them, the repercussions and consequences in our lives and the effects on our children. Personally, it’s FAR more upsetting to me that OB’s are out there pretending that
And yes, it’s amazing what happens during birth that is often normal and is treated like a casualty when you get into an obstetric system. I have no idea of knowing what happened at your births to cause you to need surgery nor what circumstances were involved that started that process but cords around necks are not typically an indicator for cesarean. My son (VBAC#3) was born with his cord looped around his neck and it was simply looped back over during the birthing process. However, I do know that when I’ve attended hospital births, it’s been treated as a big event and I’ve heard it used to justify surgery without any indicator that there was something wrong with the baby and to justify surgery when there is obviously something wrong due to inductions and they want to blame the mother’s body rather than the induction or physican interference or just accept that sometimes some babies have some issue we aren’t aware of. It’s flooring to me once you start questioning or reading about the damage of cesareans how personal it can get and how badly it can hurt to ask yourself “what effect did this have” and “was it necessary”. Good luck in your journey.
I’ve been following this for awhile - big surprise… Big Medicine wanting to profit from what our bodies do for themselves if left alone. Big Surprise indeed.
I recently doula’d for a woman who, despite my pleading (and yes I pleaded, shamelessly) refused to inform herself and consented to everything that her “wonderful OB” suggested in an 8 hour labor. She ended up with a cesarean and her baby is in NICU as a result. Big surprise. Not for me, but certainly for her. It’s time - way PAST time if you ask me - that women start taking responsibility for the medical decisions made during the reproductive cycle and the consequences of those decisions. It’s not someone else’s fault. It’s ours.
This (faking the oxytocin cycle) is another of those things that we need to be screaming at the tops of our lungs about. L I S T E N. Not to be an alarmist, but I believe the future of our civilization hangs in the balance.
Thanks for this post. I had read about it some time back and I completely forgot about it. I’ve often wondered if my first son’s early childhood aggression (and his pediatrician’s recommendation for autism testing) might have any link to his unnecesarean birth. I ORIGINALLY thought both his surgical birth and his sister’s were good decisions or even necessary—both were obviously my OB’s recommendation. :rolls eyes: I also have to wonder if our choosing to breastfeed exclusively until 12 months (no cereal or other solids) helped with the natural oxytocin we missed at birth. I wonder, I wonder.
As Shannon mentioned above, things like nuchal cord are considered a really big deal in the hospital. After all, they are here to save us all. Nuchal cord, breech, previous c/s and multiple other things tend to warrant surgery without any indication of something actually being wrong with the baby or mom. I’m so happy I birthed my 3rd baby at home—even with the cord wrapped across him and being clamped on by his chin with each push at the end, he was birthed beautifully with no interference, no anesthesia, and no cutting.
In my opinion and experience, there’s NOTHING like the real oxytocin bond. That first magical hour of the highest lifetime surge of oxytocin is, wow, overwhelming. I’m so sad that women are conned into believing they need the fake stuff to get their labor going. And, needless to say, I’m sick of women being convinced they must get cut open immediately to save a life when there’s no indication of that being true.
For the child and family that this fake oxytocin is a cure, I am glad to hear of the possibility. I’m also happy that they will be testing more before passing it out on a massive nationwide level.