A Framework for Aware, Safe, and Gentle Birth

A Framework for Aware, Safe, and Gentle Birth
Based on the perspectives of Pre and Perinatal Psychology and
the physiological, science-based Midwifery Model of Maternity Care
By Janel Martin-Miranda , MA , LPC © 2005

A Framework for Healthy Birth:

• Honors birth as the human's spiritual (soul) and biological (body and brain) process in relationship with his or her mother and father (even if absent) from conception throughout life;
• Supports a woman and her partner to be responsible for their baby and birth choices from conception, prenatally during labor and birth, in order to be responsible throughout their child’s life.
• Provides evidence for a social agenda of allocating financial, emotional, and physical resources to ensure gestating mother is safe, nourished, and supported during pregnancy (in contrast to wasting money throughout all stages of human development to address the problems from abuse, neglect, and poor nutrition during pregnancy).
• Acknowledges that the majority of healthy women are capable of natural birth just as the majority of women and men were able to conceive and gestate their baby naturally;
• Acknowledges the growing scientific research showing that medical management interferes with the baby's biological process for birth (an event and expression of the continuum of brain development), and that this trauma is imprinted in the brain (and contributes to life-long physical, emotional, and psychological dysfunctions); and,
• Recognizes that the obstetric malpractice crisis is a symptom of a larger social and political issue of holding physicians responsible for birth which has removed the responsibility for the continuum of development (preconception, conception, gestation, labor, birth, and post-natal) from men and women;
• Recognizes that the obstetric malpractice crisis is an issue of control over maternal choice and that this is, in part, a result of the hundred years of medical intervention and drugs, and now involves insurance, drug company, and litigation attorneys’ influences over doctor’s and true scientific knowledge;
• Recognizes that this is a social and political system problem that equally, yet differently affects the ability of obstetricians to provide quality care for women and decreases the ability of a woman and man to take responsibility for their baby's labor and birth; and,
• Sees the need to control litigation has led to the increasing use of the drugs and technology (yet to be shown to be safe but withdrawn only after extended periods of maternal and infant trauma and loss), that harms women and babies, prevents parental responsibility; thus, maintains the obstetric malpractice crisis; and,
• Calls for a national reform of maternity practices as the evidence-based research and mortality statistics show in the US that a healthy woman and baby are endangered and not safe or best cared for in hospital settings (BECAUSE woman have little if any control over choice and doctors are wrongly and disproportionately responsible for birth);
• Demands that hospitals, doctors, lawyers, and politicians engage with midwives, consumers, and concerned citizens to create new laws based on the evidence-based science that honors woman's body, supports her birthing choices, and allows her to make decisions and to take responsibility for her choices from pre-conception throughout life; and importantly,
• Acknowledges that birth is more than just about the woman's needs and experience, and birth is more than about the doctor's schedule and malpractice woes.
• Acknowledges that Birth is the BABY'S birth! And, that baby will be affected for life by his or her conception, gestation, and birth experience.

Written for http://www.infantparenthealing.com/ and MOMS for America's Babies - Missouri