"Sovereignty in Birth"

"Why am I not feeling the head yet? [Am I pushing against a tilted cervix? Am I pushing against a cervix that's not fully open]?"
"I just prayed to the universe to God. I tapped into my baby, 'Can you please show me what's going on'?]"
"I wanted to be the one calling the shots at my birth. I would know if I had to transfer myself to hospital."
Kristie, podcast, Free Birth Society

"No one ever talks about how traumatic it is for the OB [hospital obstetrical] team to receive these patients."
"We often have minutes to intervene and so the rush to prevent catastrophe is interpreted as 'you only want to cut me open'."
"Free birthers are] monstrously egotistical [emotionally immature and seriously reckless]."
Dr. Amy Tuteur, clinical instructor, Harvard Medical School 

"[...When women try to speak up] they're bulldozed, told they're crazy, threatened and punished with even more damaging interventions."
"[Medical professionals] sabotage [what should be the] most profound experience of ecstasy, love, power and beauty in our human experience."
"For medical professionals, the idea that 'all that matters is a healthy baby' is predicated on a profound unconscious hatred of women and the assumption that women are mere incubators, rather than full human beings."
Yolande Clark, Free Birth Society, Fredericton, New Brunswick, mother of seven

"Over time, with repeated contractions, they're [fetuses] not getting as well oxygenated and that can lead to complications for the baby, obviously."
"[Under Canadian law, fetuses are not considered] legal persons [with rights. However, should the baby require emergency care after birth and a delay ensued in seeking care] there might be some grounds for charges."
Liz Darling, assistant dean of midwifery, McMaster University

"The bright side of all this weird media attention is it's brought a TON of women to this movement."
"F--k yes to transmuting people's traumatized s--t energy into something powerful and exciting."
Emilee Saldaya, Free Birth Society founder, CEO

And for anyone who is interested in free birth, "coaching" packages are available should you wish to shell out the (US)$899 it will take to acquire such a package which generously is inclusive of phone or Skype sessions alongside audio recordings of free birth "affirmations" so you can "prime your subconscious for a peaceful, powerful birth". One that seems to appeal to some women who believe that childbirth is a simple, natural process that rightly occurs "on your own terms, wild and free".

When Kristie quoted above delivered it was on her own terms, so to speak. She decided on sitting in a birth tub for the delivery, complete with candles, crystals and burning sage. She did feel a bit of concern, but kept on pushing and finally was rewarded when she felt her baby's head, shoulders and body emerge. She "soaked up that beautiful baby bliss" as she held her newborn daughter's head above the water. Present with her was her husband and their 11-year-old, both eager to be useful, happy to help her out of the tub. Quite the experience for an 11-year-old.

The Free Birth Society is comprised of 'activist' members as an online community, their 23,000 followers on Instagram encouraging one another to be natural. All is not sweetness and light, however, as when a few weeks ago one of its private Facebook group members was identified as a "baby killer" in a social media backlash when her daughter was born dead after six days of labour, meant to be a "natural" birth. She received no lack of encouragement with members urging her to "trust the process". Lacking medical attention the baby perished of Group B strep, picking up her mother's uterus infection.

But that hasn't chastened the two leaders of the group, Yolande Clark and Emilee Saldaya. Their business is freeing women up to be themselves. And being themselves they have no need of the "oppressive medical model" of childbirth with its birth interventions, like checking the cervix for dilation; nothing but obstetrical "rape", according to the two.  Hospitals are institutions where women are "brutalized". Midwives are of course, dangerous "birth workers" who operate alongside obstetricians within "the system".



According to Candace Johnson, a professor of political science at University of Guelph, her study of the group has concluded it is comprised mostly of privileged women from developed countries who demand less medical intervention throughout pregnancy. After the stillbirth of the California baby the group was condemned as attention-seekers. And it isn't difficult to arrive at that conclusion given that the movement has left women feeling free to birth in yurts and teepees in southern Oregon, in the Daintree rainforest in Australia, in a bamboo forest in Maui. Many see no need for pediatric care and fail to vaccinate their babies.

On the other hand those who find the claims of the free-birthers making sense point out that they have arisen in response to the high-intervention birth climate of the present day, and a "broken system" that can have the effect of leaving women feeling under pressure, coerced, unsafe and disrespected. Caesarean sections now account for 28 percent of all births in Canada, and labour induction rates have doubled to 25 percent of all births in the past three decades. A startling rise in physical injuries has been documented by a summer study, along with trauma to babies from forceps deliveries.

Women informed researchers they had no wish to be restricted, monitored or informed when and how they must push, in one 2015 study out of New Brunswick on free birthers. Of the nine women interviewed, half described their previous hospital birth experience as traumatic. On the other side of the equation, experts report home births can be risky. One 2010 literature review concluded that though low-risk women with planned birth at home may have fewer haemorrhages, infections, lacerations and tearing, a near tripling in death rates for babies ensued, in comparison to planned hospital births.

Data from over 13 million American births attended by doctors or midwives found home birth increased the risk of stillbirth ten-fold, in a 2013 study. On the other hand a study published in 2015 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found there was no increase in risk of harm to babies among low-risk women in Ontario birthing at home with a midwife where midwives attend about ten percent of births in the province, and about 20 percent of those take place at home. There were 7,799 "non-hospital" births reported in Canada in 2017 according to Statistics Canada.

Of the 371,356 hospital births, 2,899 recorded stillbirths ensued (0.7 percent). The most common complication of unattended home births along with an elevated risk of post-partum haemorrhage is a very long, slow labour, and in these conditions the fetus is hard put to cope. The backlash from the California baby stillbirth last month hasn't dampened the free birthers enthusiasm, however. Its CEO closed down their Facebook page with its over 6,000 members, but now sells private memberships for $108.

Hey, business is business.