Strollerderby : birth stories

Move Over Angie's List: It's the Birth Survey

Miriam Axel-Lute — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:30:00 GMT

The Internet is a wonderful thing for making our opinions known: We can rate our professors, our Amazon purchases, our contractors, and our favorite blog posts (hint, cough). Why not our midwives and doctors and hospitals?

After a pilot in New York City, the Coalition for the Improvement of Maternity Services has launched The Birth Survey to collect detailed information about mothers' experiences with their pre-natal, labor and delivery, and post-partum care. If you've given birth in the last three years, I strongly urge you to go fill it out. The sooner they get a volume of responses, the sooner other parents can get meaningful information on the options in their area. (NYC parents can already view the pilot data here.)

The survey is anonymous, and takes about 20 minutes (longer probably if you're ranking more than one care giver, which you have the option to do). It gives you almost entirely questions that are relevant to you based on your previous answers, which makes it much more pleasant to fill out than many surveys, especially on something that can go as many different ways as birth.

The questions focus on issues that feed into CIMS's 10 Steps to Mother-Friendly Childbirth, especially things like how much support and information care providers gave and how well they listened and respected parents' wishes, as well as breastfeeding support provided and what sorts of procedures were done during labor and delivery and what rationales were given for them.

I also took the demo survey to see what kind of questions they asked about hospital births, and though it's clear they are concerned about high c-section rates, for example, I think they did a good job of being non-judgmental and focused on the mother's experience and assessment. And in case the survey brings up bad memories for anyone who had even half as miserable an experience as Catherine Skol (the Chicago mom suing her abusive OB), they also provide links to networks of counselors experienced in helping with birth trauma at the end of the survey.

If you've always wanted to officially record your displeasure with or your gratitude for (or ambivalence about) your birth attendants, now's the time!

Photo by peretzpup.

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Mother Sues OB Who Said She Deserved Pain—And Gave It to Her

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Your Birth Story in 6 Words

Madeline Holler — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:56:00 GMT

You know that book Not What I Was Planning, the collection of memoirs that are six words long? Well, a blogger/doula is riffing on that idea and asking people to writer their birth stories in just six words. (I believe "ouch" counts as a word.)

Can you do it?

Here are a few so far:

Front seat, 60mph, early morning, WOW!

Nurse insists it's worth it. Correct.

On all fours, laughing him out.

Unplanned cesarean. Stillbirth avoided. Overwhelmed...overjoyed.

thank god i'm not pregnant anymore.

Don't push, can't not, he's here!

Come on, Babble readers, give us your birth and adoption stories in six words.

Strollerderby Playdate: The Awful Blog I Can't Stop Reading

Madeline Holler — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 12:32:00 GMT

How can it be that I am a regular reader of this blog? I mean, you could hardly call it a blog -- she posts only once or twice a month, it's not terribly interesting, it's surrounded by ads for gentle yet overpriced baby laundry detergent that you don't even need.

And it's her! Her! I don't even like her! I am not interested in her! I do nothing but criticize and disagree with her. I didn't watch her on TV before and, now that she's back, I still don't. I won't! Yet, I read her blog. I check it for updates, feel let down when there are none. I find myself identifying with her truly mundane stories and smiling at -- and I mean this in the rudest ways -- the very unfunny funny things she strains to write. Please, what is wrong with me?

Somehow, I have let Elisabeth Hasselbeck get under my skin and into the heart of my web browser. Bafflingly, I don't consider the three minutes I put in each month checking out her posts -- she doesn't even have links or games or a photo album to look through! -- wasted time. How could I? I love reading it! But shouldn't I hate myself a little more for loving it? Shouldn't I want to soak in a tub of scalding hot water and gentle Dreft soap bubbles?

It's like the playgroup I go to again and again. The membership is dwindling, the only mom who shows up is the one you have nothing in common with. Nothing! But I keep going -- once or twice a month -- to not connect, to not agree, to not enjoy. Why go? Why not.

Is That a Baby In Your Pants Or Are You Just Happy to See the Paramedics?

Kelly Mills — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:13:00 GMT

Sometimes you just have to love a "baby born in..." story. I mean, I've heard of babies being born in cars, in elevators, in fast food restaurant bathrooms, but I think this might be the first "Woman Gives Birth Inside Pants" headline I've ever seen. I'm sure many of us can report doing all kinds of things in our pants in our lifetimes, but I doubt many can say they dropped a baby. Does that mean the pants are true mom jeans? Maybe I was wrong about those birth clothes... Did I also mention she had twins?

So when Larryett Thomas went into labor, her mom called 911. But it was too late to get to the hospital, and when paramedics arrived, one baby was already coming out. Thomas had one leg of her pants on, which I guess qualifies as giving birth in your pants, especially since paramedics had to cut the pants off. They delivered the second baby by flashlight, because Thomas had no lamps. While I'm sure it was a little nerve-wracking for everyone, Thomas has done the whole birth thing before (she has five other children) so maybe that helped. She named the twins Curt and Curtis after their dad. Levis is a good name too.

Birth Stories, Happy and Sad

Amy Kuras — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:05:00 GMT

Something about having a baby makes a woman compelled to share her "birth story." If you read parenting blogs at all, ever, you’re guaranteed to run across several. There's something so profound and elemental about the experience of bringing another human being into the world that we can’t shut up about it already.
I'm always fascinated by them, drawn by how common the experiences are even when the circumstances are wildly different. And okay, sometimes I think they are a little TMI. If yours includes descriptions of poop, mucus or placenta pot roast, maybe giving it a judicious editor's eye before making innocent Internet people read it would not be the worst idea.
That being said, birth stories are one of those topics people love to talk about, often to the dismay of parents-to-be who are nervous enough as it is. But when things don't go so well – a baby is born too soon, too sick, or tragically, doesn’t make it – new parents can have trouble finding an audience.
That's why I think this March of Dimes http://www.everybabyhasastory.org/default.aspx campaign is so lovely. Every Baby Has a Story is a place for families to share photos and remembrances of their babies' births, whether those babies were hale and hearty or needed major help. Even parents grieving the loss of a baby born too soon can submit a story. The site is connected to a bus tour March of Dimes staffers embarked on during the fall to raise funds for NICU family support programs, but the site is still open to accept stories and donations.
After all, the parents of these babies deserve to be heard and these babies deserve to be celebrated, no matter how short their lives were. A birth is still a birth, even when its circumstances are less than ideal, and those stories are still fascinating reading