Looking glass Alice examines birth and parenting in our culture.

• 2/10/2007 - Put your anger where it belongs, not with me, with your surgeons.

How do we organise the revolution without offending anyone?

Why am I supposed to pretend it’s ok for surgery to be presented as an equal choice with spontaneous, physiological birth when it’s not?

Why should I go on the same manipulation trip that surgeons are on when there are facts which just speak for themselves?

When will women start to put their anger where it belongs? It belongs with the medicalised birth industry, not with activists who are telling you the truth and telling you that your body works.

Just like there are facts about breastfeeding, there are facts about birth and we are just not responsible for how others choose to interpret facts.

The fact is that surgery is a suboptimal way to be born and that most surgeries are not for evidence based reasons. I know, I've had one for no reason and I read the perinatal data. The main reasons for caesarean in Australia are previous caesarean(s) (yep, no evidence to support that one), breech (and again), twins (c'mon now people!). There are going to be isolated occasional women who fluke surgery because they really needed it. Most of us don't, it's just a fact.

We can't inhabit other's heads and know how they're going to receive things. Women will either be ready to hear it or not and if we "tone it down" or "make it widely acceptable" we're never going to push any boundaries and get through this constant violent assault against us and our babies. Anti-smoking ads aren't tailored to avoid offending, they're designed to shock you with the reality of the danger you're putting yourself in, and rightly so!

If I'm offended by something I look to myself first to see why I'm responding in that way. Let's take responsibility for our own actions in leading to surgery instead of blaming others for somehow creating some feeling in us.

If you had surgery you really needed, why feel bad about it? Surgery exists for a reason and if you've needed to access it, and been able to access it, and it's saved your life and your babies life isn't that great? I'm very glad that the handful of women I know have been able to access it for life saving reasons but of all the hundreds of women I know personally and the thousands I see online, they're the minority by a long shot.

The reality is that most caesareans are unnecessary, dangerous, created through iatrogenic practices, inadequate support for women, money making and misogyny and until we accept that as birthworkers, and start telling it like it is, we may as well swim around in the same crap forever.

We got to this position in birth because we were all taken by surprise at how efficiently the multinational medical juggernaut overtook us and because we've always played nice and tried to not offend even the most scalpel-happy surgeons who slice and dice us on a whim.

Do I feel bad when discussion about the risks and dangers of caesarean occurs? No, not in the least. Why should I?? I had my caesarean because my careprovider told me I needed it. I made that decision which I now know was a poor one. I therefore learnt a lot, processed a lot, took responsibility for my own actions and despite feeling sadness and regret over what my son and I missed out on, I moved on. I also still have some PTSD from some of it but that's my issue, I don't expect anonymous strangers on internet forums to read my mind and avoid my triggers. I also understand and place responsibility on my careprovider and our medicalised birth world where that responsibility belongs.

Women aren't "to blame" but if we keep whining about how reality "makes us feel bad" then we continue to blame ourselves instead of speaking out about a whole system which makes mincemeat of us. We are responsible when we lie to each other and support each other to make bad decisions that risk our lives and our babies lives.

Why should someone else's inability to deal with her unnecessary surgery stop a first time mother accessing the accurate information she needs to potentially save her life?!

You can't run a campaign of any kind which is going to make everyone happy and neither should you try. We need to get angry and understand the contexts in which our largely unnecessary surgeries occur instead of blaming activists for speaking the truth about them. I'm so tired of being criticised for "making women feel bad" when nothing I say can ever do anything like the damage that unnecesary major abdominal surgery has done to a woman and her baby who is also permanently altered for life and yet the surgeons who perpetrate this violence go scot free. At least if I speak the truth about birth I'm not continuing the lies we tell women and I can sleep at night with a clear conscience.

All revolutions take truth speaking to get off the ground.

There is immense and tragic pain among so many of us over our birthing experiences and this violence won't stop until we cease to pander to surgeons by lying to women.

But the anger and blame belong with the system that does the damage not the activists who are trying to save women's lives.

No matter how uncomfortable the truth, it’s not more uncomfortable than trying to comfort your toddler and breastfeed your newborn over your stitches and through a haze of pain from infection.

No matter how inconvenient it is to have to shop around for an appropriate careprovider for your VBAC, it’s a lot more convenient than being rehospitalised because your wound is infected with Golden Staph and you have to have IV antibiotics that play further havoc with your child’s injured gut.

Think it’s rough waiting at the end of pregnancy for spontaneous labour? Not half so rough as waiting to see how your child’s damaged gut responds to allergens, and whether your child develops asthma.

It’s going to be a lot less convenient trying to find a surrogate mother because you lost your uterus in surgery you didn’t need because you hired a careprovider you didn’t need, a surgeon.

No matter how bad this list makes you feel, it’s nothing compared with how bad you’ll feel recovering from surgery and risking your life in the myriad of problems it commonly causes.

If this makes you uncomfortable why don’t you tell your surgeon instead of blaming the activist who is telling you the truth?

The surgeon who told you that you needed to book a repeat caesarean because your pelvis was too small, or your baby was too big, or because you’re too old, small, tall or fat was lying to you and your anger belongs with them. If you feel upset with yourself, look at it, don’t fear it. Use the pain to work out why you felt drawn to something patently bad for you, or if you felt uncomfortable with it, look at why you consented while having doubts. That way lies your healing.

Don’t just heal a small portion, heal your life, take back your power and get angry with those who robbed you, not those who support you to heal and other women to avoid the traps we fell into.

• 2/10/2007 - awesome

Posted by SungaiKecil

fucking brillaint.
i totally agree about putting anger and blame where it belongs.
we only seek to inform, not inflame.

love to you j.

x B