Sometimes when debating a topic you have to start with the end in mind. If you look at my posts, you see that I carefully went from introducing Obstetrician Michael Odents work in my first post and by page six I was talking about sexually fulfilling childbirth.
I said in my first post,
"but if you people on this forum are into the evolution of human sexuality then you need to do some research on Freebirth.
Michael Odent, a french obstetrician has written some fascinating books and articles on the scientification of love. Here is a basic primer article
Freebirthing fits perfectly into this paradigm. When faith overcomes fear in birth, amazing amounts of joy bless the family."
I know it feels like I have been darting around the issues, but that is only because we have been talking apples and oranges. Many of you here have been talking about medical birth and medical statistics. I am talking about Freebirth. They are really two very different topics. Perhaps someone should start a thread on the merits of hospital birth.
As I said in my first post, if you are interested in our human family evolving to a higher level sexually, then you really should check out freebirth. The cool thing is that recent scientific discoveries have provided explanations for this amazing process of procreation. Our job as thinking human beings is to line up birthing realities with what the research has shown.
Dr. Odent wrote a book called
The Scientification of Love.
Amazon describes the book this way:
'Why do all cultures ritually disrupt the first contact between mother and new-born baby? Why has there hitherto been an evolutionary advantage in developing human potential for aggression rather than the capacity to love? Until recently love was the realm of poets, artists and philosophers. Latterly it has been studied from multiple scientific perspectives. Michel Odent argues that the specialist approach has overlooked the importance of love as a potential new strategy for human survival, and that the old survival strategy, the domination of nature and other human groups, is no longer appropriate.
By weaving together data from a multitude of disciplines, Michel Odent, is able to offer a number of insightful, and exciting explanations, and makes the case for the adoption of radical new strategies for human survival.'
Many of the ideas in that book are outlined in his article that I linked to in my first post. Here are some quotes from that article:
Primal Health (This is also why most freebirthers refer to themselves as Primal Mothers engaged in Primal Mothering)
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A synthesis of our current knowledge of the behavioral effects of hormones that fluctuate in the perinatal period supports the concept of 'critical' period previously introduced by behavioral scientists ('ethologists'). Ethologists were the first to understand that among mammals in general there is, immediately after birth, a short period of time that will never happen again and that is important in mother-baby attachment. A subgroup of studies included in the Primal Health Research Data Bank also suggests that the development of the capacity to love is highly influenced by perinatal events. Whenever researchers study the background of human beings who have expressed some sort of 'impaired capacity to love', they always detect risk factors in the period surrounding birth. 'Impaired capacity to love' is a useful term because it can include self-destructive behaviors (impaired capacity to love oneself).
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It is precisely because we are in the process of realizing that the way we are born has long term consequences in terms of sociability, aggression and capacity to love that we are led to interpret the countless beliefs and rituals that disturb the physiological processes in the perinatal period. Many of them are intriguing, because they disturb the critical phase of labor between the birth of the baby and the delivery of the placenta.
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We must keep in mind that from the time when the basic strategy for survival of most cultures was to dominate nature and to dominate other human groups, creating more aggressive and destructive human beings conferred an advantage. In other words it was an advantage to moderate the capacity to love, including love of nature, the respect for Mother Earth. It is understandable that the most successful societies were those who had at their disposal the most appropriate beliefs and rituals in the period surrounding birth.
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Over the millennia there has been a selection of human groups according to their potential for aggression. We all are the fruit of this selective process. This explains our inability to recognize and to take action against clear-cut manifestations of the impaired capacity to love.
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Today Homo Sapiens must invent new strategies for survival. We are at a time when the limits of the domination of nature have become obvious, and at a time when the necessary dialogue between humanity and mother Earth demands a substantial unification of humanity. In other words, human beings must learn to master the energies of love. Human beings must learn to formulate the necessary basic questions, instead of just going on promoting love. Scientific data can already provide useful answers. That is why the scientification of love may be presented as a landmark in the history of mankind.
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Today the promotion of breastfeeding is one of the priorities of the important public health organizations. In many countries, this promotion is to a great extent in the hands of governmental departments.
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.....Public Health promotion can be seen as effective if we consider that in our societies everybody is now convinced that 'Breast is Best'. This is a conclusion of my unofficial survey among taxi-drivers in different countries. But one can wonder how useful these modern and direct methods of promotion really are. There is an enormous gap between knowledge, awareness and intentions on the one hand, and statistical facts on the other. In many countries the duration of breastfeeding falls far short of those recommended by their national plans. Today the point is not to promote breastfeeding: it is to understand why in our societies lactation is difficult and cannot continue as long as recommended.
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HOW DOES THE CAPACITY TO BREASTFEED DEVELOP?
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This simple, basic, and necessary question is also paradoxically new. As long as we put it aside, the promotion of breastfeeding will suffer. Today we are in a position to explain that breastfeeding starts before the baby is born.
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Until recently the fact that the maternal body prepares to secrete milk before the baby is born was in the realm of intuitive knowledge. Today, physiologists are in a position to explain how the hormones released by mother and baby during labor and delivery play a role in the initiation of lactation.
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Here are some examples of easy-to-explain connections between the physiology of birth lactation:
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In 1979 we learned that the levels of beta-endorphins increase during labor (Csontos, Rust, Hollt, et al., 1979; Akil, Watson, Barchas, & Li, 1979). We already knew, since 1977, that beta-endorphin stimulates the release of prolactin (Rivier, Vale, Ling, Brown, & Guillemin, 1977). It became therefore possible to interpret a chain of events: physiological pain in labor (system of protection against pain) and the release of the key hormone of lactation.
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Swedish studies, published in 1996, demonstrated that two days after birth, when the baby is at the breast, women who gave birth vaginally release oxytocin in a pulsatile (i.e., effective) way, compared with women who gave birth by emergency caesarean section (Rivier, Vale, Ling, Brown, & Guillemin, 1977). Furthermore there is a correlation between the way oxytocin is released two days after birth and the duration of exclusive breastfeeding.
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The same Swedish team found that the caesarean women lacked a significant rise in prolactin levels at 20-30 minutes after the onset of breastfeeding (Nissen, Uvnas-Moberg, Svensson, Stock, Widstrom, & Winberg, 1996).
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An Italian team demonstrated that the amount of beta-endorphin in the colostral milk of mothers who gave birth vaginally is significantly higher than colostrum levels of mothers who underwent caesarean section (Zanardo, Nicolussi, Giacomin, Faggian, Favaro, & Plebani, 2001).
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It is probable that one of the effects of milk opiates is to induce a sort of addiction to mother's milk. One can anticipate that the more addicted to the breast the newborn baby becomes, the longer and easier the breastfeeding.
In general it is easy to explain that the first time when the human neonate is able to find the breast (See Odent, 1977), the behavior of mother and baby is influenced by the numerous hormones they released during labor and delivery (Krehbiel, Poindron, Levy, & Prud'Homme, 1987). These different hormones released by mother and baby during the birth process are still present during the hour following, and all of them play specific roles in the interaction between mother and baby and therefore in the initiation of lactation.
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Of course there are many other factors that participate in the development of the capacity to breastfeed (Odent, 2003). However, we must focus on the physiological processes that are routinely disturbed by the cultural milieu.
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Such considerations are particularly relevant at the age of elective caesarean section on request and at a time when we have at our disposal multiple powerful ways to disturb the physiological processes in the period surrounding birth. It is undoubtedly because the basic questions are not addressed that the results of public health campaigns are rarely cost effective. None of these public health campaigns take into account the widespread, quasi-cultural lack of understanding of birth physiology that leads to high rates of obstetrical interventions and to the extensive use of pharmacological substitutes for natural hormones. The priority now should be to rediscover the basic needs of women in labor (Odent, 2001).
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It is to rediscover the basic needs of women in labor. Public Health bodies must take into account that 'lactation starts before the baby is born'.
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REFERENCES
Akil, H., Watson, S. J., Barchas, J. D., & Li, C. H. (1979). Beta-endorphin immunoreactivity in rat and human blood: Radioimmunoassay, comparative levels and physiological alterations. Life Sci., 24,1659-1666.
Almeida, J. A. G. (2001). Breastfeeding: A nature-culture hybrid. Rio De Janeiro: Editora Fiocruz.
Csontos, K., Rust, M., Hollt, V., et al. (1979). Elevated plasma beta-endorphin levels in pregnant women and their neonates. Life Sci., 25, 835-44.
Diamond, J. (1991). The rise and fall of the third chimpanzee. Radius.
Hastrup, K. (1992). A question of reason: Breast-feeding patterns in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Iceland. In V. Maher (Ed.), The anthropology of breastfeeding: Natural law or social construct? Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Krehbiel, D., Poindron, P., Levy, F. & Prud'Homme, M. J. (1987). Peridural anaesthesia disturbs maternal behavior in primiparous and multiparous parturient ewes. Physiology and Behavior, 40, 463-72.
Marques, N. M., Lira, P. I., da Silva, N. L., et al. (2001). Breastfeeding and early weaning practices in northeast Brazil: Longitudinal study. Pediatrics, 108(4), E66.
Nissen, E., Uvnas-Moberg, K., Svensson, K., Stock, S., Widstrom, A. M., & Winberg, J. (1996). Different patterns of oxytocin, prolactin but not cortisol release during breastfeeding in women delivered by caesarean section or by the vaginal route.Early Human Development, 45, 103-18
Odent, M. (2003). Birth and breastfeeding. Clairview (British edition of The nature of birth and breastfeeding. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1993.)
Odent, M. (2001). New reasons and new ways to study birth physiology. Int J Obstet & Gynecol, 75 (Suppl 1), S39-S45
Odent, M. (1999). The scientification of love. London: Free Association Books.
Odent, M. (1977). The early expression of the rooting reflex. Proceedings of the 5th International Congress of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Rome. London: Academic Press, 1117-1119.
Personal correspondence with Dr. Guonjon Guonason, retired obstetrician. Reykjavik, May 1993.
Rivier, C., Vale, W., Ling, N., Brown, M., & Guillemin, R. (1977). Stimulation in vivo of the secretion of prolactin and growth hormone by beta-endorphin. Endocrinology, 100, 238-241.
Rousseau, J. J. (1998). Les confessions. Paris: Larousse.
Zanardo, V., Nicolussi, S., Giacomin, C., Faggian, D., Favaro, F., & Plebani, M. (2001). Labor pain effects on colostral milk: Beta endorphin concentrations of lactating mothers. Biology of the Neonate, 79(2), 79-86.
It has been said that I was ignoring questions posed to me by various people because I did not answer specific questions about so called safety of homebirth. And I would say the same in return....the ultimate priority of Dr. Odent:
The priority now should be to rediscover the basic needs of women in labor (Odent, 2001). has no only been completely ignored by modern medicine, it has been tucked away as completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
What are the basic needs of women in labor and are they being met by allopathic birth?
Well, all we have to do is look at what is happening in a woman's body hormonally and we get some clues as to what would be an ideal birthing situation. Freebirthers believe, and it is in fact backed up by scientific evidence so carefully collected by the french pioneer Odent, that birth is a
sexual event. The final act in the three act play that started with conception, moved through pregnancy, and then led to the birth of a child.
We believe that birth is safest for both the mother and the baby when these hormonal realities are respected and honored.
Because the medical profession has no respect for this reality, and in fact frustrates it at every turn when a woman is in labor at the hospital, we unapologetically promote the
facts of childbirth. Namely that birth should ideally be conducted in the privacy and sanctity of a husband and wifes bedroom and that the same energy that put the child into the womb will also
safely conduct that child out of the womb.
My biggest concern with the recent media interest in Freebirth is that some powerful people may be pulling strings behind the scenes After ignoring us for so very long (We did have a New York Times article appear in the media five years ago, but we have basically been ignored), why all of this sudden interest? I believe the doctors are about to push for legislation that would ban our movement outright, and are looking for "public support and indignation" to cut us off and provide the momentum to get some major laws passed.
So, we go back to the question, "who gets to decide where the babies are born?" Doctors? Judges? Parents? Government?
When I say the most educated women are giving birth at home alone, I mean that women who have studied the primal mothering literature have made the logical conclusion that giving birth alone makes sense hormonally.
As for what would designate a person as a doctor in the philosophy of mothering, I would suggest someone start a new thread discussing what would consitute the criteria for said advanced degree. It is really not pertinent to our discussion about wether or not freebirth is defensible.
As high thief said in the post that started this thread,
"is this concept really defensible?" Freebirth is not only defensible, it is desire-able, do-able, and scientifically plaus-ible. I also happen to believe it is the future, and that we are on the cusp of a huge societal shift towards evidence based birthing.
But this will not be possible if the doctors are able to ban it outright.
Some doctors are calling for a one hundred percent c-section rate. They really are. No Joke.
So yes, I get a little bit emotional, sarcastic, and even hostile when I hear
that various obstetric societies are talking about how dangerous and deadly we are. And some docs are even throwing out words like Manslaughter and Litigation.
It puts my panties in a wad.
As for answering all of your individual questions about various birthing issues. Nope, not going to take the time to even try.
This is my argument and I am sticking with it.
Birth is sexual. And no, there is not a whole heck of a lot that anyone could throw at me that could convince me otherwise. (Believe me, my parents have already tried) You know? It would be so refreshing if someone for once would say...."that is the coolest thing I have ever heard....TELL ME MORE!!!" Doesn't feel like we have too many of those on this site, but LOTS of couples are getting really interested in that message.
Birth is a sexual event, and as such it should be done privately and the doctors backed up by the courts and the government need to get the heck out of my bedroom.
Jenny Hatch