Rise of the ‘free birthers’
THESE WOMEN ARE CHOOSING TO GIVE BIRTH WITHOUT MEDICAL HELP — AND AT LEAST ONE BABY HAS DIED
Kristie is a three-time “free birther,” having delivered all of her children at home, unassisted — without the presence of a doctor, midwife or any other medically trained attendant.
Her first-born was birthed on a yoga mat, her second and third in a birth tub. There were candles, crystals and burning sage at her daughter’s birth last year. At one point, while pushing hard, Kristie wondered, “Why am I not feeling the head yet?” Her mind started racing: 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,” the Canadian woman said on a podcast for the Free Birth Society. “I tapped into my baby, ‘Can you please show me what’s going on?’ ”
She kept pushing until she finally felt the head, shoulders and body come out. As she held her daughter’s head out of the water, Kristie “soaked up that beautiful baby bliss.” Her husband and 11-year-old helped her out of the tub.
Free birthing isn’t for every woman, said Kristie, who declined to comment for this story. She had to accept that “my baby might die.”
Still, “I wanted to be the one calling the shots at my birth,” she said. “I would know if I had to transfer myself to hospital.”
Her birth story is among dozens posted online by the Free Birth Society, an activist group and online community with 23,000 followers on Instagram. The community came under fire this month after a member of its private Facebook group was branded a “baby killer” on social media. Her daughter was born dead following six days of excruciating labour without any medical help.
The California woman had reportedly been encouraged by members to “trust the process.”
The death has drawn new attention to a fringe but thriving movement that rejects the “oppressive medical model” of childbirth and considers interventions during birth, like checking the cervix for dilation, tantamount to obstetrical “rape.” Some women even aim to have a “free pregnancy,” without any prenatal care.
Co-led by Yolande Clark, a New Brunswick mother of seven, the Free Birth Society encourages women to claim “sovereignty in birth” and to trust their intuition. Giving birth, the group says, is a simple, natural process that should be “on your own terms, wild and free.” Hospitals, on the other hand, are compared to being “in captivity” and produce “industrial births.” They are places where women are “brutalized.” For some free birthers, even midwives are considered dangerous “birth workers” for working with obstetricians and hospitals inside “the system.”
“Stephanie,” a Canadian woman who free-birthed twins, said she would have preferred a midwife, but was told she was high risk. Before her twins were born in a birthing pool in her dining room, one was in a horizontal position in the uterus.
“I trusted him entirely” to move into a more birth-able position, Stephanie said on a recent podcast with Free Birth Society founder and CEO Emilee Saldaya.
This summer, a woman in Halle, Germany, free-birthed her sixth child in her back garden, next to a trampoline and child’s play structure. She uploaded a video of the birth to Youtube, where more than 1.4 million people watched it.
While most free birthers tend to give birth at home, women on the extreme end of the movement have free-birthed in remote areas — in yurts and teepees in southern Oregon, in the Daintree rainforest in Australia, and in a bamboo forest in Maui. Radical free birthers are also more likely not to have pediatricians or vaccinate their babies.
With no national data in Canada, it’s impossible to know how many women are choosing “unhindered” or do-it-yourself birth, but Candace Johnson, a University of Guelph professor of political science, has found that it is mostly privileged women in developed countries demanding less medical intervention in pregnancy. And, while free birthers describe themselves as unwavering feminists, their rhetoric can shame and frighten women who choose to birth inside “the system.”
The free birth movement horrifies obstetricians.
In the wake of the California infant’s stillbirth, Dr. Amy Tuteur, a former clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, accused free birthers of being “monstrously egotistical,” emotionally immature and seriously reckless.
“No one ever talks about how traumatic it is for the OB team to receive these patients,” tweeted Canadian-born gynecologist and obstetrician Dr. Jennifer Gunter. “We often have minutes to intervene and so the rush to prevent catastrophe is interpreted as ‘you only want to cut me open.’ ”
But other scholars say the movement is in response to today’s high-intervention birth climate, and a “broken system” that can leave some women feeling pressured, coerced, disrespected and unsafe.
In Canada, caesarean sections now account for 28 per cent of all births. Labour induction rates have doubled to 25 per cent of all births over the last three decades. A study published this summer documented a startling rise in physical injuries to women and trauma to babies from forceps deliveries.
While the culture on maternity wards is changing, the hospital bed is still often front and centre, sending a powerful message to women that this is where they are supposed to be, even though labouring in an upright position — standing or crouching — often means shorter labours and fewer interventions.
In one 2015 study of free birthers in New Brunswick, women told researchers they didn’t want to be restricted, monitored or told when or how to push. Half of the nine women interviewed described their previous hospital birth as traumatic.
However, when women try to speak up, “they’re bulldozed, told they’re crazy, threatened and punished with even more damaging interventions,” says Clark, who free birthed the last five of her seven children.
In her bio for the Free Birth Society, the “wild birth” educator says medical professionals “sabotage” what should be the “most profound experience of ecstasy, love, power and beauty in our human experience.”
Free birthers are not reckless or negligent, Clark says in a blog post on the Free Birth Society website.
“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,” wrote Clark, who declined to comment for this story.
The Fredericton woman does, however, allow that, in the event a birth does require medical help, “I’m very grateful for the existence of obstetricians.”
Experts say home births can be fraught with risk. One 2010 literature review concluded that, while low-risk women who have a planned birth at home experience fewer haemorrhages, infections, lacerations and tearing, there was a near tripling in death rates for babies compared to planned hospital births. Another 2013 study based on data from more than 13 million U.S. births attended by doctors or midwives found a home birth increased the risk of stillbirth 10-fold.
Still, the research is conflicting: A study published in 2016 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found no increased risk of harm to babies among low-risk women in Ontario who birthed at home with a midwife. (In Ontario, midwives attend about 10 per cent of births, and only about 20 per cent of these are at home.)
According to Statistics Canada, there were 7,799 “non-hospital” births reported in Canada in 2017. In all, 257 — or three per cent — ended in stillbirths. By comparison, of the 371,356 hospital births, there were 2,899 recorded stillbirths (0.7 per cent).
In addition to a risk of postpartum hemorrhage, the most common complication is a very long, slow labour, said Liz Darling, assistant dean of midwifery at Mcmaster University. The fetus stops coping as well.
“Over time, with repeated contractions, they’re not getting as well oxygenated and that can lead to complications for the baby, obviously,” she said.
There’s no case law in Canada that would suggest people would be at risk legally for free birthing at home should something go tragically wrong. Under Canadian laws, the unborn are not considered “legal persons” with separate rights. And, as with all health care decisions, competent women have the right to reject treatment, Darling said.
If, however, the baby needed emergency care after birth and there was any delay in seeking it, “there might be some grounds for charges.”
In the California case, it was reported that the mother had an infection in her uterus and that the baby died of Group B strep.
According to the Daily Beast, the mother received death threats the day she came home from the hospital. Others posted comments in their own Facebook groups. “I wouldn’t mind seeing this monster swinging from a light post,” one said.
Despite the backlash, the Free Birth Society’s leaders remain ardent. Saldaya closed the group’s Facebook page, which had more than 6,000 members, but she is now selling private memberships for US$108.
While she and Clark believe that women can birth autonomously, they also believe women need their help. The duo is offering free birth “coaching” packages for up to US$899 that include phone or Skype sessions, as well as audio recordings of free birth “affirmations” to “prime your subconscious for a peaceful, powerful birth.”
“The bright side of all this weird media attention is it’s brought a TON of women to this movement,” Saldaya posted last week on Instagram. “F--k yes to transmuting people’s traumatized s--t energy into something powerful and exciting.”
NO ONE EVER TALKS ABOUT HOW TRAUMATIC IT IS FOR THE OB 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.’ — DR. JENNIFER GUNTER