Friday, September 02, 2005
Thoughts on the Effect of Hurricane Katrina on Mother & Babies
I recently published an article on my website that I conducted with Jenny Hatch about Providen Living. Jenny is amazing and has always informed and inspired me about many things related to motherhood.
As I read about the devastation taking place now due to hurricane Katrina, Jenny's interview comes to mind, (and also an article she has written about emergency childbirth.) Specifically, I am concerned for expectant mommas, and mommas with babies.
Here are some exerpts from news articles about Katrina that I read tonight and the thoughts they evoked.
Doctors in their scrubs had to use canoes to bring supplies to blacked-out-hospitals... Hospitals were running out of power and scrambling to find places to take their patients...
"It's like being in a Third World country," said Mith Handrich, a registered nurse manager at Charity Hospital where nurses were ventilating patients by hand after the power and then the backup generator failed. Some 300 patients had yet to be evacuated, but the babies in intensive care had been flown out.
"We're just trying to stay alive," Handrich said. ( Source: Advanced AP Crisis Grows As Flooded New Orleans Looted. )
My thought: If "(i)n the United States, 99 percent of births occur in hospitals, including most midwife-attended births," what happens when the United States becomes like a Third World country without power, supplies, or enough physicians?
One childbirth website states that "Currently 25% of babies born in the United States are surgically delivered from their mothers' bodies. Another 50% are born to mothers who are numb from the waist down and tangled in a web of tube and wires." What happens during chaotic times when hospitals are under supplied, short of hands, in ruins, maxed-out, or impossible to reach?
(Actually the cesarean rate is even higher than the statistic cited above. A recent USA Today article stated, "C-sections hit an all-time high of 27.6% in 2003, the most recent year for which information is available.")
So when a crisis occurs, what happens to women who depend on obstetricians and nurse midwives to deliver their babies? I know it took me years of study and prayer and epiphanies to be able to birth at home with ease. What took so long was reprogramming my brain from all the years of being brainwashed. I needed to shed the dependence on medical professionals that I had been indoctrinated with all my life.
I needed to learn to trust God, my body, and the birth process. I have now given birth at home 4 times, the last 3 with just my husband and family assisting me. I now know that I can give birth without medical help - even without bothering to time my contractions or checking for dilation. What would I have done if the hospital was unavailable all those years ago when I had been told that I needed to check-in once my contractions were 5 minutes apart? What would I have done without having a hand inserted into me and being told when it was ok for me to "push?"
It brings to mind something Brigham Young once said,
"...here is a growing evil in our midst. It will be so in a little time that not a woman in all Israel will dare to have a baby unless she can have a doctor by her. I will tell you what to do, you ladies, when you find you are going to have an increase, go off into some country where you cannot call for a doctor and see if you can keep it. I guess you’ll have it, and I guess it will be all right, too." (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 15, pg. 255)
This statement was made long before the c-section rate was 1 out of 4 births. Now all these cesareans that are occuring make this statement less favorable for a woman who has previously given birth via abdominal surgery. Although VBAC's can safely occur, there is of course a concern involved in vagnal birth after cesarean that a woman who has never had a cesarean doesn't share.
I think that most of the births that will occur during a crisis (like the one now caused by Katrina) will be complication free. Even so I am sure that the unprepared women and those around them will be terrified. I have watched several episodes of Amazing Births and I have seen frightened fathers drive crazily, one father driving about 100 miles an hour with his hands off the steering wheel even, just to try to get to a hospital before the baby was born. I once wrote an article about this entitled Safe At Home. I wish such parents knew that homebirth is safe and preferable to risking lives in a fast moving vehicle.
In reading through the coverage about hurricane Katrina I read through several emergency preparedness lists for future possible disasters. I didn't see anything about preparing for disasters by avoiding cesareans and studying homebirth as well as emergency childbirth.
Which leads me to the second point I want to make. I also didn't read anything about the importance of breastfeeding and sling wearing from an emergency preparedness standpoint.
I did read this though:
The federal government began rushing baby formula, communications equipment, generators, water and ice into hard-hit areas, along with doctors, nurses and first-aid supplies.
...They were brought by the truckload into shelter, some in wheelchairs and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and of those who didn't make it.
(Source: Dozens killed when hurricane roars onshore Allen G. Breed, Associated Press)
My thoughts: Thank God for breastfeeding! Warm milk in our bodies, readily available and free! Priceless, life-giving-liquid-gold. What could happen to babies without it? Death.
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Isaiah 49:14-16
What will moms who forget their childrens' needs and put their own desires first, (by choosing to bottlefeed) do in a crisis? What will happen to the babies of ill-informed, misguided, or uneducated mothers if the government can't get formula to them? Hopefully they meet a breastfeeding mother who will nurse their child. A mother with plenty of priceless breastmilk.
Another thought: How wonderful to have a sling! When I watched the coverage of the tsunami months ago I thought of how easy it would be to have your baby swept out of your arms in a flood. I held my baby closer and thought how much safer babies would be in any crisis if they were carried in a sling. I carry my little girl in my sling most of the day and she holds on to me snuggly. I often marvel at how secure she obviously feels with her little fist balled around my shirt or her arm holding mine. She falls asleep so easily in the sling and she just melts into dreamy sleep. If I have to bend over while holding her she holds on tight! Every mom should wear a sling about her. I realized today that this is one emergency preparedness item I already own!
The last point I want to make before retreating to my bed that I share with my husband and baby, is related to this statement:
At a drug store in the French Quarter, people were running out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.
( Source: Advanced AP Crisis Grows As Flooded New Orleans Looted )
My thought: I guess this is one reason for stocking cloth diapers in an emergency preparedness kit. It is also another reason for my learning more about elimination communication.
Written by:Susan Fierro-Baig
As I read about the devastation taking place now due to hurricane Katrina, Jenny's interview comes to mind, (and also an article she has written about emergency childbirth.) Specifically, I am concerned for expectant mommas, and mommas with babies.
Here are some exerpts from news articles about Katrina that I read tonight and the thoughts they evoked.
Doctors in their scrubs had to use canoes to bring supplies to blacked-out-hospitals... Hospitals were running out of power and scrambling to find places to take their patients...
"It's like being in a Third World country," said Mith Handrich, a registered nurse manager at Charity Hospital where nurses were ventilating patients by hand after the power and then the backup generator failed. Some 300 patients had yet to be evacuated, but the babies in intensive care had been flown out.
"We're just trying to stay alive," Handrich said. ( Source: Advanced AP Crisis Grows As Flooded New Orleans Looted. )
My thought: If "(i)n the United States, 99 percent of births occur in hospitals, including most midwife-attended births," what happens when the United States becomes like a Third World country without power, supplies, or enough physicians?
One childbirth website states that "Currently 25% of babies born in the United States are surgically delivered from their mothers' bodies. Another 50% are born to mothers who are numb from the waist down and tangled in a web of tube and wires." What happens during chaotic times when hospitals are under supplied, short of hands, in ruins, maxed-out, or impossible to reach?
(Actually the cesarean rate is even higher than the statistic cited above. A recent USA Today article stated, "C-sections hit an all-time high of 27.6% in 2003, the most recent year for which information is available.")
So when a crisis occurs, what happens to women who depend on obstetricians and nurse midwives to deliver their babies? I know it took me years of study and prayer and epiphanies to be able to birth at home with ease. What took so long was reprogramming my brain from all the years of being brainwashed. I needed to shed the dependence on medical professionals that I had been indoctrinated with all my life.
I needed to learn to trust God, my body, and the birth process. I have now given birth at home 4 times, the last 3 with just my husband and family assisting me. I now know that I can give birth without medical help - even without bothering to time my contractions or checking for dilation. What would I have done if the hospital was unavailable all those years ago when I had been told that I needed to check-in once my contractions were 5 minutes apart? What would I have done without having a hand inserted into me and being told when it was ok for me to "push?"
It brings to mind something Brigham Young once said,
"...here is a growing evil in our midst. It will be so in a little time that not a woman in all Israel will dare to have a baby unless she can have a doctor by her. I will tell you what to do, you ladies, when you find you are going to have an increase, go off into some country where you cannot call for a doctor and see if you can keep it. I guess you’ll have it, and I guess it will be all right, too." (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 15, pg. 255)
This statement was made long before the c-section rate was 1 out of 4 births. Now all these cesareans that are occuring make this statement less favorable for a woman who has previously given birth via abdominal surgery. Although VBAC's can safely occur, there is of course a concern involved in vagnal birth after cesarean that a woman who has never had a cesarean doesn't share.
I think that most of the births that will occur during a crisis (like the one now caused by Katrina) will be complication free. Even so I am sure that the unprepared women and those around them will be terrified. I have watched several episodes of Amazing Births and I have seen frightened fathers drive crazily, one father driving about 100 miles an hour with his hands off the steering wheel even, just to try to get to a hospital before the baby was born. I once wrote an article about this entitled Safe At Home. I wish such parents knew that homebirth is safe and preferable to risking lives in a fast moving vehicle.
In reading through the coverage about hurricane Katrina I read through several emergency preparedness lists for future possible disasters. I didn't see anything about preparing for disasters by avoiding cesareans and studying homebirth as well as emergency childbirth.
Which leads me to the second point I want to make. I also didn't read anything about the importance of breastfeeding and sling wearing from an emergency preparedness standpoint.
I did read this though:
The federal government began rushing baby formula, communications equipment, generators, water and ice into hard-hit areas, along with doctors, nurses and first-aid supplies.
...They were brought by the truckload into shelter, some in wheelchairs and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and of those who didn't make it.
(Source: Dozens killed when hurricane roars onshore Allen G. Breed, Associated Press)
My thoughts: Thank God for breastfeeding! Warm milk in our bodies, readily available and free! Priceless, life-giving-liquid-gold. What could happen to babies without it? Death.
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Isaiah 49:14-16
What will moms who forget their childrens' needs and put their own desires first, (by choosing to bottlefeed) do in a crisis? What will happen to the babies of ill-informed, misguided, or uneducated mothers if the government can't get formula to them? Hopefully they meet a breastfeeding mother who will nurse their child. A mother with plenty of priceless breastmilk.
Another thought: How wonderful to have a sling! When I watched the coverage of the tsunami months ago I thought of how easy it would be to have your baby swept out of your arms in a flood. I held my baby closer and thought how much safer babies would be in any crisis if they were carried in a sling. I carry my little girl in my sling most of the day and she holds on to me snuggly. I often marvel at how secure she obviously feels with her little fist balled around my shirt or her arm holding mine. She falls asleep so easily in the sling and she just melts into dreamy sleep. If I have to bend over while holding her she holds on tight! Every mom should wear a sling about her. I realized today that this is one emergency preparedness item I already own!
The last point I want to make before retreating to my bed that I share with my husband and baby, is related to this statement:
At a drug store in the French Quarter, people were running out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.
( Source: Advanced AP Crisis Grows As Flooded New Orleans Looted )
My thought: I guess this is one reason for stocking cloth diapers in an emergency preparedness kit. It is also another reason for my learning more about elimination communication.
Written by:Susan Fierro-Baig
Comments:
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You have given me greater courage to speak with my RS Pres! I certainly know that I would be rather blunt and a lot of sisters just might be offended but the reality needs to be faced. Thank you for such succinct thoughts on the matter.
Sharon
Sharon
# posted by 
: 9:05 PM
: 9:05 PM
Susana
Great post and you bring up very valid points. We need to be self sufficient in birthing and having our babies, not rely on formula, cribs and carseats and paper diapers.
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Great post and you bring up very valid points. We need to be self sufficient in birthing and having our babies, not rely on formula, cribs and carseats and paper diapers.
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