My midwife is not a criminal

Yesterday, which just happened to be the International Day of the Midwife, midwife Karen Carr plead guilty to community endangerment and practicing medicine without a license, avoiding jailtime and a charge of involuntary manslaughter for attending a birth in Virginia. More than 50 supporters stood behind her in the courtroom on Wednesday, many of them wearing the babies that Karen caught in her trusted and experienced hands.

Those hands also caught one of my babies. My son Carter was born in 2007 in my little house in Washington, DC, as the morning sun shone into the window. Karen had been with me all night, and as dawn broke she was frantically calling other clients to rearrange appointments—I’d wave my arms and she’d put the phone down and come to my side, then return to the phone when my contraction ended. I was a first-time mom, shocked and terrified at the intensity of labor, and she guided me through the journey with grace and kindness.

Me and my baby boy September 12, 2007.
Karen Carr was my midwife when I was left out in the cold by DC licensing rules.

So this is personal for me. Washington, DC, licenses only Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs) to attend births at home. Due to a series of events during my pregnancy, my original midwife was not able to attend my birth, and I was left at 6 months pregnant without a birth attendant. I’d heard about Karen through the grapevine and drove up to Baltimore to meet her. I’ll be honest—I’ve always been one to follow rules, and I was nervous about Karen, who is a CPM, attending my birth illegally in DC. But I knew a homebirth was a smart and educated decision for me, and I knew Karen had the experience to help me along my path.

She didn’t flinch at the idea of being unlicensed in DC. She’d attended hundreds of births in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, often serving women who were risked out of natural birth options in birth centers and hospitals (such as twins, VBACs, and breech births). Quite simply, she went where families needed her.

Very tragically, one of those families lost a baby. And the state of Virginia charged Karen with involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment, with a possible prison term of 30 years. Yesterday she plead the charges down, and will not serve any jail time. She still faces proceedings for a Cease and Desist order in DC, but the nightmare in Virginia is over. She will not practice again in Virginia.

This is all very complicated. It’s sparked a renewed debate about the safety of homebirth, the education and licensing of midwives, and how women should approach childbirth. I’ve struggled at finding ways to talk about this case to friends and family who are not active in the natural birth world; “Why didn’t she just get licensed?” they ask, or “If the baby was breech, why didn’t the mother just go to the hospital?”

Part of me just wants to scream and shake my fists, while the rest of me knows that if I want to spread a message that women have the right to make their own healthcare decisions, and that certifying midwives may not be the answer we seek, I have to take a breath and have these conversations, as difficult as they can be.

At Karen’s hearing, the prosecutor implied that the mother in this case—whose baby was breech—did not have the right to birth at home, given her status as high-risk. This kind of language certainly raises alarm bells, and tells us that we need to keep paying attention to these issues, because they are not going away.

Andrea Kimball (whose baby is pictured above) writes of Karen: "Each day as I cared for the four beautiful children she helped into this world, she was constantly in my thoughts. Her care for me, her compassion, her wisdom, her sacrifices ... so that I could have the choice to birth in the way I knew to be best, in the place I knew to best, and with the people I knew to be best. I would trust Karen with my life and the life of my children."
Photo by Emily Sopha

For more information about Karen’s case, visit In Service to Women. Founded by some of Karen’s supporters, In Service to Women set up a legal defense fund for Karen and other midwives facing prosecution. You can donate to this important organization and follow them on Facebook. 

And Karen, if you read this as the dust settles—Thank you. Your care and support has empowered me as a person, a woman, and a mother. For the gifts you gave to me, and hundreds of others, thank you.

-Sarah, SQUAT Editor

Call for paper based media- books, zines, etc. for Summer 2011

OK- the spring issue just hit the virtual shelves yesterday but we are a forward thinking bunch round here.

SQUAT exists both digitally and in print. I love the fact that digital version of our publication is tree-less, accessible to a larger audience, and available at a lower cost. I also adore holding something in my hands and enjoying its permanence. The imagery is rich, pages can be taped to my wall, it can be packed in a box, left in a waiting room, or handed around to my friends. But let's face it, even Mothering Magazine has gone digital and left publishing (and magazine making) behind. Well, not us. From a financial perspective it makes sense to go paperless. SQUAT makes .60 more on digital copies than print copies of the magazine. But it isn't about the money, it is about the art of the page, and for now we are sticking to it. I am deeply grateful for the paper (trees who have given their lives) on which it is printed, and our continued existence in paper form definitely keeps me smiling.

To get down to the point- because of our love for the hand-held page the summer issue of SQUAT's Stuff We Love editorial piece will be focused on Print media! Think books (ie. paper based readers, super popular up until recently) zines, even newsletters. The key here is that it exists in paper form. SQUAT is radical yes, but old fashioned in some important ways.

Contact us at submissions@squatbirthjournal.org to find out how to have your work considered.

Cheers
Jeramie @ SQUAT

Why Homebirth?

Written by Laura Schuerwegen

A while back, I read this post by Lindsey Beyerstein on Majikthise. In the post, she wonders why anybody would want a homebirth. To be completely honest, a long time ago, in a dark era, before baby came, before I ever became a crunchy, natural birth-obsessed lactivist, there was a time I asked myself the same question. I had read stories of women birthing at home. I found it strange, and found it a very treehugging-people thing.

Becoming a mom changed my views in various departments and guess what, I too became the treehugging kind. But that's another topic altogether.

I had always wanted a natural birth, which to me was just an epidural-free hospital birth with a natural onset; and no lying down on my back. (Little did I know!), but the medical world decided differently for me. I was diagnosed with GD and went on insuline shots soon after. I was told I HAD to be induced (international protocol, yeah right) and spend my labouring attached to an IV and ended up pushing on my back. As a reward, my baby was taken from me to be put on the neonatal ward for the first 24 hours of her life.  Matters worsened even further as I had a serious bleeding little time after giving birth, so I was unable to get out of the bed to the NICU to see my baby.

In a way I am happy about my daughters birth, but if I could turn back time, I might have taken action to do it differently. So slowly, the idea of a homebirth sipped in.

Now why would I want a homebirth?

The first reason is to be in a familiar environment, that you can mold to your wants (dimmed light, some music maybe...) Not the cold and unfamiliar hospital setting.

Reason number two is to not to have to dump baby number one on the grandparents for 5 days. Frankly, I wouldn't know how that would work, because they are all still working, so we would have to get a sitter? Which would be difficult because we have no home of our own over there...

Number three is the greater liberty one has when birthing at home. You can eat and drink what you want (was I ever hungry with daughters birth!). You can move around the way you want. You can give birth in whatever position you like.

Four: There won't be a dozen people walking in and out the room. With dd, I suddenly looked up to find there were 6 or 7 people around me!

Five: If there is a way to escape the overmedicalisation of birth and the train of useless interventions, I'm there!

Six: All these things add up to the fact that you can only be more sereen, which can only make labour easier.

There are probably a dozen other reasons I could come up with why a homebirth would suit me better than a hospital birth, if I would think about it longer. But you get the picture. Now this doesn't mean I think everybody should have a homebirth, but I think it's nice to have a choice, and for it to be an informed one.

Some nice articles and blogposts along these lines:
Intuition in childbirth
On fasting during childbirth
Homebirth safety
Why get a midwife? "The midwife is (or should be) an expert in normal birth, while the obstetrician must be an expert in pathology."
Afterbirth high: why not to disturb mother and child in the hour following birth.
Management of third stage of labour

Laura Schuerwegen is a Belgian mother, wife and writer. She lives in Sub-Saharan Africa. You can find her thoughts on birth, parenting and life on Authentic Parenting.

Setting Positive Trends

Proud papa, Owen Wilson

Is it true? Is celebrity home birth becoming a trend? It would certainly be a welcome improvement from the trend of elective cesareans to avoid the "negative" affects of birth on the body. The latest celebrity home birth story comes from actor, Owen Wilson, and his partner, Jade Duell, who had water birth in Hawaii.

I don't spend much time following the lives of celebrities, but when I found out about Owen and Jade's decision to birth at home, it gave me some hope for mainstream birth culture. Celebrities have always influenced culture through trend setting and I hope that more birthing celebrities speak up about the benefits of natural birth. It seems that after Owen went through a period of depression and then recovered, he began to seek out a new and improved lifestyle. Part of his new healthy lifestyle involved he and Jade choosing a water birth for their first child.

"Jade and Owen were both on the same page when they decided to have the baby at home,” a source told Star magazine. “They wanted a calm, quiet, soothing atmosphere for their boy. It was very important to Owen that the birth be Zen-like, because now he’s all about tranquility being the key to a healthy life.”

Healthy birth cannot be compared to a South Beach diet or similar trends that come and go. Once you begin to educate yourself about the undeniable benefits of a safe and healthy birth, you just can't ignore it.

This post is by Meghan Guthrie, art director of SQUAT Birth Journal. We are looking for folks who are interesting in writing for this blog. If you are interested in contributing to the SQUAT blog please contact us at SquattingBirth@Gmail.com