International Cesarean Awareness Network

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Less Cesareans with Induction of Labor? Read the Fine Print!

August 22, 2009 by blog Leave a Comment

Media reports this past week have hyped a recent study claiming that induction of labor may actually reduce the need for cesarean. These findings appear to contradict previous research and generally held opinion.

However, these reports have underplayed and under-reported the substantial caveats offered by the researchers about their findings. Although the authors do report a 22% reduction in cesareans in women who had elective inductions after 41 weeks, they temper their findings with the following:

1) These findings may not translate to many, if any, hospitals in the U.S. because of how obstetricians tend to practice in reality. According to the press release, “Prior research has indicated that doctors often tend to proceed from starting an induction to cesarean fairly quickly.” Thus, in order for these findings to be relevant, doctors must have patience to allow inductions to work. (Which begs the question: Why not just wait for spontaneous labor to occur? See Henci Goer’s “The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth,” Ch. 3)

2) Induction of labor, on the whole, remains vastly understudied and further analysis is needed. As one of the lead researchers on the study states, “It’s pretty surprising that something obstetricians do all the time hasn’t been studied all that well.”

With these substantial caveats in mind, it’s far too soon to rush to the conclusion that induction of labor is “safer” than spontaneous labor, even in post-dates pregnancies. The fact remains that women must be aware of the risks associated with any obstetrical intervention and have the freedom to make choices that they believe are best for themselves and their babies, not doctors’ protocols and hospital time clocks.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tags: Cesarean, Induction, Maternity Care, Media, Research

Best of the Birth Blogs – Week Ending August 16th

August 16, 2009 by blog Leave a Comment

This new (hopefully) weekly feature will highlight blog posts from the previous week (or so) that are relevant to cesaren prevention, recovery, and VBAC. If you would like to nominate a blog post to be featured here, email me at blog@ican-online.org.

Gloria LeMay – “A Proven Method for Reducing the Cesarean Rate”: Gloria reviews a successful, but sadly abandoned, effort to reduce the cesarean rate at a British Columbia Hospital.

The Unnecessarian – “New Logical Fallacy: Argumentum ad Necessarian”: Jill breaks down the (il)logic behind the assumption that because a doctor performs a cesarean it was necessary.

Jennifer Block (Babble) – “The Birth Wars: Who’s Really Winning the Homebirth Debate”: Jennifer lays out the arguments for and against home birth and highlight’s the need for the U.S. medical establishment to come to terms with the scientific evidence supporting homebirth.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tags: Best of, Cesarean, Homebirth

ICAN President on the Radio

August 3, 2009 by blog Leave a Comment

ICAN President Desirre Andrews was interviewed this morning on KPFT out of Houston, TX during the Whole Mother show. You can listen here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

We Freakin' Did it: A Freewheelin' VBA3C in Milwaukee

July 28, 2009 by blog 1 Comment

A beautiful birth story is making the rounds online. What  makes this particular story so inspiring is the fact that it shouldn’t have happened, at least not by current obstetric practice standards.

Annmarie Schulte gave birth to her first three children by cesarean, a fact that should have landed her square in the OR for her fourth birth. Instead, she chose to go for a VBA3C (vaginal birth after three cesareans). And she did it….just not in the location she planned. Apparently, babies don’t wait for rush hour traffic!

The proud papa’s announcement upon arrival at the hospital that “we freakin’ did it” and Annmarie’s declaration, “I feel awesome” say it all. Empowered birth is beautiful.

Read the full story here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tags: Birth Story, VBAMC

Guest Blogger: Is a Woman in Labor a “Person”? New Assaults on Pregnant Women’s Civil Rights in NJ Case

July 22, 2009 by blog Leave a Comment

Bringing ICAN’s 25-year-plus tradition of support and education in the mother-to-mother and sister-to-sister model into the internet age, we have invited passionate blogging women to join us around our virtual circle of women. We hope to introduce you to new voices that you have not heard before, and also to respected voices that will already be well-known to you.

This week we welcome our guest blogger Louise Roth, a professor of sociology at the University of Arizona. Her current research studies how health insurance and malpractice in the United States influence reproduction and childbirth, especially the rise in cesarean sections.

This blog originally appeared on the Huffington Post on July 21, 2009. It is cross-posted here by permission.

Yet another ruling is providing legal support for the false belief that obstetricians are infallible, and stripping pregnant women of basic civil rights that are accorded to other individuals. In the case, New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. V.M. and B.G., the New Jersey appellate court found that V.M. and B.G. had abused and neglected their child, based on the fact that the mother, V.M. refused to consent to a cesarean section and behaved erratically while in labor. The mother gave birth vaginally without incident, and the baby was “in good medical condition.” Then she was never returned to her parents, and the judge in the case approved a plan to terminate their parental rights and give custody of the child to foster parents. What, beyond the obvious, is wrong with this picture?

First, from a legal perspective, individuals have a right to informed consent and bodily integrity. In obstetrics, informed consent is a blurry concept since many hospitals perform obstetric procedures on laboring women without informing them of the evidence concerning those procedures or their risks. Perhaps this legal case illustrates how paternalistic hospitals can be with respect to pregnant women – assuming that the hospital staff know best and that informed consent is unnecessary. Never mind that hospitals tend to be run with organizational efficiency, rather than patient interests, in mind. In this specific case, one obstetrician who tried to convince the mother to consent to a c-section concluded that she was not psychotic and had the capacity for informed consent with regard to the c-section. It is clear within the law there is no informed consent without informed refusal, so this obstetrician’s conclusion should have made V.M.’s refusal to consent to the c-section her decision alone. If this mother is not legally permitted to refuse major abdominal surgery, then she is clearly stripped of her civil rights to informed consent.

In fact, individuals are not legally required to consent to invasive procedures even to save other individuals, including fetuses that lack full legal status. But in this case the district and appellate courts subverted a pregnant woman’s informed medical decision-making in the name of fetal rights, arguing that her refusal was a form of abuse and neglect of the child that had not yet been born. This is another dangerous precedent, along with other court-ordered cesarean cases, that will allow all pregnant women to lose their rights to bodily integrity and informed consent. It may be understandable, if not excusable, that the courts don’t understand medicine or recognize that medical judgment is fallible, but it is hard to understand how they could so fundamentally misinterpret the law, in which performing surgery on an individual without that person’s permission can constitute criminal “battery” under common law.

The court’s opinion also suggests that lawmakers have no concept of what it is like to be in labor. Women in labor tend to find themselves on a different mental plane, where they have to focus inward and work with their bodies to give birth. As midwives know, some women become belligerent. Some seek privacy and seclusion. Most women in labor are likely to find the routine and usually unnecessary procedures of hospitals to be invasive and unwelcome. Yet the courts that decided this case didn’t seem to be aware that women are unlikely to behave the same way when they are in labor than when they aren’t. The decision cites hospital records that describe the mother, V.M., as “combative,” “uncooperative,” erratic,” noncompliant,” “irrational” and “inappropriate.” Also, her husband indicated that the way she was acting was not her “normal manner and that she is not as ‘tranquil.’” Why would anyone expect a woman in labor to be compliant, tranquil, or rational? What kinds of expectations does our society have for women undergoing a powerful physiological process, often with an absurd amount of poking, prodding, and general interference? This mother was uncooperative with hospital staff, but clearly her uncooperativeness had nothing to do with the well-being of her baby. There is no reason to believe that she did not have the well-being her baby as her top priority, even though she was not a model patient. There is also no reason to believe that everything the hospital staff wanted to do was essential or even beneficial for the well-being of either mother or baby. In fact, typical obstetric care engages in many procedures that are unnecessary and often harmful, more out of habit and for the convenience of hospital staff than in the best interest of patients.

While the court opinion also focuses on the parents’ psychiatric diagnoses (which are fallible medical judgments) and their history of care in determining their fitness as parents and abrogating their parental rights, their psychiatric state would never have been questioned if the mother had not refused invasive abdominal surgery – which was entirely within her rights. The tragic consequence for this family was separation from their infant daughter from the moment of her otherwise uneventful vaginal birth. That kind of injustice can’t have been good for the psyche.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tags: Cesarean, Consent, Guest, Maternity Care, Rights

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