Childbearing Rights

In Labor & Childbirth, women not only have the right to, but deserve to be supported by their healthcare options to have:

1.Home Birth

2.Constant Contact/ No Separation of mother and baby

3.Evidence-based Beneficial Maternity Care

4.Informed Decision Making Power

1. Home Birth with skilled labor attendant.

Evidence shows planned home birth is actually safer than planned hospital birth.  Home birth allows the release of a intricate set of hormones that initiate and regulate normal, physiological labor and birth.  The instinctual nature of birth, if disturbed will stop, which endangers the lives of the mother and baby.  Ina May Gaskin talks about the mind/ body connection and how the wrong environment can stall or reverse labor.  “We must consider very carefully before we disturb the mother or disempower her or weaken her instinct.  She is a sacred creature”(1).  Having a home birth also eliminates the risk of infection from exposure to unfamiliar bacteria or viruses in the hospital; as the baby has already built immunity to the germs at home.  At home, the absence of routine interventions means that complications are often avoided.  And potentially dangerous overuse of obstetric interventions found in most hospitals is avoided at a home birth(2).

Humans deserve the right to birth in their natural environment.   

2.  Motherbaby are one unit, not to be separated.

Any procedure that interrupts the mother’s physiological systems or interferes with her self-esteem can be highly detrimental to breastfeeding.  The World Health Organization and International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative recognizes, interference with the breastfeeding process can endanger babies’ health and chances of survival. 

Mothers have the right to be fully enabled to breastfeed, and health care practitioners must work to facilitate breastfeeding practices. 

3. Evidence-based beneficial maternity care and avoid procedures that have been scientifically shown to do harm.

Intervening in childbirth when not necessary is dangerous, as the need for interventions can cascade(3).  Hospital policies that restrict the mother’s ability to eat or drink at-will can lead to weakness from hunger that complicates labor and birth.  Over-performance of vaginal exams can lead to infection. Pitocin induction can lead to dysfunctional labor and premature birth.  Pitocin augmentation shuts down a mother’s own oxytocin production and interferes with her ability to breastfeed.  Epidurals can increase the length of the first and second stages of labor and lead to increased use of forceps and vacuum extraction, and possibly cesarean section.  According to The World Health Organization, “There is no justification for any region to have caesarean section rates higher than 10-15%”.  Yet in the United States, the cesarean rate is 30%.  There are often-ignored, negative, long-term consequences of cesareans, which include infection, chronic pain, difficulty with bonding and breastfeeding, maternal and neonatal injury and death, newborn respiratory problems, problems during future pregnancies, including higher risk of uterine rupture, ectopic pregnancy, preterm delivery, placenta previa, placenta accrete, and placental abruption that may necessitate hysterectomies, and increased incidence of postnatal depression.  “The overuse of this operation that was designed to save lives is now costing them”(4).

Women have the right to receive care that enhances and optimizes the normal processes of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum under a model known as the motherbaby model of care (midwifery).

4. Involvement in decision-making and models of care that prioritize women’s choices.

Birthing Practices affect maternal self-confidence and breastfeeding.   A women’s satisfaction with her birth experience is related more to her involvement in decision-making than to the outcome(5).  When hospitals hurry birthing women, the experience is traumatic rather than pleasurable.  Women have been bullied, coerced and threatened when they do not comply with the treatment the hospital personnel wanted to administer.  We wonder why depression and distress after birth affects one in five women(6). 

Women have the right to be fully informed and involved in decision-making about care for herself and her baby in language that she understands. 

For more information on Birthing Rights and Approach to Optimal Maternity Care, please visit www.imbci.org to read the 10 Steps of the IMBCI.

References:

(1) Sister Morningstar.  The Issue of Birth Rights. Midwifery Today. Summer 2010 No 94.

(2) Wagner, Marsden. Creating Your Birth Plan. 2006, p.146.

(3)Davis-Floyd, Pascal-Bonaro, Davies and Ponce de Leon. The International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative.  Midwifery Today, Summer 2010, No 94, p.65.

(4)  Wagner, Marsden. Creating Your Birth Plan. 2006, p.74.

(5) Hodnett, E.D. 2002. Pain and women’s satisfaction with the experience of childbirth: a systematic review. 

AM J Obstet Gynecol 186 (5 Suppl Nature): S160-72.

(6) Buckley, Sarah. Reclaiming Every Woman's Birth Right. Midwifery Today. Summer 2010. No94

Cohain, Judy Slome. The Dangers of Planned Hospital Births. Midwifery Today. Summer 2010, No 94.

Northrup, M.D. Christiane.  2006. Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom.

International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative. www.imbci.org