International Cesarean Awareness Network

So here we are, with a brand spanking new website. So far I’ve found several things to play with, I think its going to be a great experience for all of us and the women who find us.  We have the mos  read more »

The VBAC ban project is underway!  I’d love to get a significant number of hospitals listed on our map, so anyone who wants to help, please let me know.  It’ll be great to get this going before the  read more »

I had an AHA moment today. I am currently in the midst of a teaching series about happiness – the ancient wisdom of happiness, to be specific. A lot of the teaching comes from Proverbs and Psalms and the basic gist of it is that the ancients had a much better idea of what brings happiness than we do. The tie in to us moderns is that fairly recently, the scientific study of the psychology of happiness has come into its own….and the psychologists are finding that the things they’ve discovered that create happiness just happen to be the same things ancient writings recommend. Today, we looked deeper at “acts of kindness”. The basic lesson was that people who give sacrificially (and we aren’t just talking money, not at all) are just plain happier. AND that in our modern world, to really give and make a difference, we often have to join together with other people in our acts of kindness. (The environment was the example used – the things that we can do as individuals can seem totally insignificant but if we as a group start treating our environment with kindness, you can see a real difference being made).  read more »

If you happen to think that using a Birth Center for your VBAC is a good option, you might have to reconsider. This was just released. An important note — the original study (Nov. 2004) concluded that VBAC resulted in a significantly higher rate of adverse outcomes but they drew that conclusion by including poor outcomes that had nothing to do with the VBAC status of the laboring woman (much like the Hannah Breech Trial did, to kill off vaginal breech delivery). This is part of the reason there was a push to "redo" the study, because the conclusions drawn were so fishy.  read more »

“Nice” isn’t a term that I am generally described with, to be honest.  Yes, sometimes I am described as compassionate, caring or sympathetic.  Often I am described as rational, even-tempered or reasonable.  You’ll hear passionate, strong-willed and stubborn used upon occasion too but really, rarely do people describe me as “nice”. That’s ok with me, I’ve never consciously aimed at “nice” as a personal descriptor.  But like most women in this culture, I still struggle with the “be a nice girl” problem – you know, wanting to be liked, not wanting to cause trouble or difficulty, wanting people to get along, not wanting to offend.  Like most women, a lot of what I’m really thinking in my head doesn’t get put out there for public consumption.  And in some ways, ICAN has struggled with this dynamic, I’m sure in large part because we are an organization that is almost exclusively women.   It hurts us when we are characterized as “hysterical angry women”, because that’s not at all who we are.  We don’t want to be controversial, not really.  We are all about choices and options, really wanting more than anything for women to have both the choices and the knowledge to make them when it comes to decisions during the child-bearing years.  read more »

The President of ICAN, Pam Udy, had a conversation with a person, I’ll call him Mr. Smith (name changed to protect us, the innocent), in which he told her that ICAN would never be welcome to speak at any event he organized because “we don’t have initials behind our name and no one wants to listen to women crying about their birth experience.”  He believes that it is a priority to have an event where mainstream medical professionals (OBs, etc) would attend, so as to foster dialog between them and the “activists” who are concerned about the state of maternity care in this country.   Pam quite coherently explained to him why it is important for ICAN to have a voice and why we cannot continue to let the “medical experts” have the last say in what is best for mothers and babies.  He responded with a series of questions, which I have included below.  More importantly to me, answering his questions allowed me to think through the role that ICAN does play versus the role that ICAN MUST play, if any of the things we all agree are problems are to be solved.  read more »

For a while now, there’s been a big push to legalize CPMs (certified professional midwives) in Illinois, a state with a nasty reputation for persecuting midwives to the utmost extent possible.  The women of ICAN have always had an uneasy relationship with "legalization" and licensure of CPMs….because unless the people pushing for legalization are very careful (and sometimes even when they are), usually the state requires a sacrifice to the gods of the medical association before agreeing to legalization.  The big three sacrificial lambs are VBAC, breech and twins — and sure enough, VBAC moms once again find themselves laid out on that altar, under the bus of licensure, hung out to dry while preserving homebirth for "low risk women".  I think what really stings this time around is that the ICAN chapters in Illinois have been very active in supporting the efforts to get a licensure bill in front of the state legislature, writing letters, raising money and really getting out there for this cause.  And now we find that for our efforts we get a pat on the back, a sympathetic "sorry about that" and a trip back to the surgical suite, since not only are homebirths after cesarean forbidden but we can’t find a hospital to "let us" VBAC even if we want to go back into the lion’s den.  I’m sure the midwives are upset about this and I’m sure they feel like they had no choice.  And maybe they didn’t or maybe they did.  After talking to a few people who know more about Illinois politics than I do, I realize that the situation isn’t simple or even logical…so the story isn’t nearly done, even if it might look like it.  But I’ve got to say, I’m am SO tired of always being the one who gets locked out, when the women I represent need what a CPM can offer more than any other group out there. Still, while the International Cesarean Awareness Network can no longer support The Midwifery Licensure Act (Senate Bill 385, House Bill 385) as it is currently written, we are going to keep very close track of its progress, should it make any.  Keep watching to see what you can do if the opportunity presents itself.

I love positive updates.   

Anyway, those of you who might read my blog/thoughts will remember that I was pretty scathing in my denunciation of a certain “Mr. Smith” who seemed to discount any likelihood that ICAN could bring something of value to a meeting devoted to controversies in maternity care.  An admirable trait of Mr. Smith’s is that he isn’t afraid of controversy and he isn’t afraid to open up dialog that could be heated.  And really, isn’t that the most important thing?  Anyone with any sense knows that there will always be disagreement on some things, and differences of opinion on how any given crisis should be met and challenged and what the priorities for change should be.  But through some very honest communication with Pam Udy, we’ve found that indeed, we do have something to offer each other and that our common ground is something we can definitely work in.  I like that.  A lot.  And have to say, it does say something important about Mr. Smith, that he was willing to reach out as he did.  read more »

A number of days ago, a resolution was passed by the American Medical Association (AMA), as put forward by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) that proposed an organized effort to make planned homebirth illegal (I’d assume they wouldn’t be prosecuting women who really did have a oops homebirth.  Then again, I might be giving them too much credit for compassion or even just rational thinking).  ICAN responded to that statement, as did a number of other maternity and women’s health care concerned organizations.  And the process of doing that has led me to consider the meaning of the numbers we throw around when we describe maternal/infant health and how to measure it.  read more »

This question was raised on an email list I participate in:  “if OBs are constantly feeling threatened by the angry mob that is the rest of us then how will we ever be heard, and how will we ever come to a consensus?”  read more »