I’ve been told that she’s a disciple of killer midwife Lisa Barrett, who’s notched at least 5 neonatal deaths. But Gaye Demanuele has exceeded her mentor; she’s notched the ultimate obstetric disaster, a preventable maternal death.
Demanuele is taking a page out of the Lisa Barrett playbook. She is acting as if the Coroner investigating the death of Caroline Lovell is a fool by making extraordinarily implausible claims and hoping that he will believe her anyway.
I wrote yesterday about the homebirth horror that ended in Caroline Lovell’s demise. Lovell bled to death in front of not one, but two midwives who assured her she was fine even when she told them she was dying. Allegedly they never even took Lovell’s blood pressure or pulse. Apparently they “trusted birth” while birth was busily killing Caroline Lovell right before their eyes.
According to the Herald-Sun, Lovell’s mother, Jade Markiewicz, stated the obvious:
… [I]t was outrageous that her daughter was the first to notice her condition and that it took too long for an ambulance to be called.
She said two girls had been robbed of a mother and lessons must be learnt to preventing this from occurring again.
“Her death was preventable and it must not be in vain,” she said.
Demanuelle, in contrast, reeled off one whopper after another.
Senior registered midwife and nurse, Gaye Demanuele, told the court the haemorrhage was not in the medical records she was shown by Mrs Lovell and her patient did not tell her about it.
However, she did know about the uterine fibroid, a tear and two operations over suspected retained placenta after Lulu’s birth.
So Demanuele DID know that Lovell was at risk for hemorrhage.
The midwives said Mrs Lovell lost approximately 400ml of blood at home, which the midwives said was not excessive.
But they simply made up that number. Lovell was sitting in a pool of water and there is no way to accurately assess blood loss into a pool of water.
How much blood do you have to lose before succumbing to hemorrhagic shock? According to Clinical review: Hemorrhagic shock, an otherwise healthy person can lose more than 40% of blood volume before lapsing into unconsciousness. Since the average person has approximately 5000 cc of blood volume, it means that Caroline Lovell probably lost more than 2000 cc. That’s more than 2 quarts of blood.
But the biggest whopper of all is this:
[Mrs Demanuele] … denied the homebirth was a political statement in light of this situation.
That is a bizarre claim considering the paper trail left by Lovell and by Demanuele herself.
Caroline Lovell was a prominent homebirth activist who wrote a letter to the government threatening to give birth unassisted if midwives were regulated.
Within months of Lovell’s death, and facing disciplinary action, Demanuele made this flamboyant political statement:
… I choose to no longer call myself a registered midwife (which would attract a $30K fine if I did).
I choose to not collude with a maternity care system that does not respect the rights of birthing women and their midwives.
A maternity care system:
• That restricts women’s birthing choices; that coerces some women into medical treatment that places them at a 1 in 3 risk of surgical birth with it’s associated complications. (Less than 10% of women actually require obstetric services.)
• That restricts the ability of midwives to care for women in a woman centred and holistic, primary health model…
Earlier this year, Demanuele published this manifesto, Why Birth is a Feminist Issue:
… Obstetric practice is based on risk aversion, dictated by insurance underwriters—not on good evidence of where true need exists. More women are facing legal action, accused of acting against the “rights” of their foetus. Midwives and doctors who support women’s autonomy are similarly persecuted. By putting its trust in technocracy instead of the birthing woman, the maternity care system is failing women.
Why is the culture of childbirth saturated in fear? Why not trust women to make their own informed choices about their bodies and their babies?
The answer lies in the rise of private property and the division of society into classes many millennia ago. The ruling class needed to exterminate what remained of matrilineal kinship society and subjugate its respected leaders: women. So it invented patriarchy…
And we’re supposed to believe that neither Lovell nor Demanuele viewed homebirth as a political statement?
Poor Gaye Demauele implies that she is being persecuted by the patriarchy just because the mother of two small children is dead and would be alive had Demanuele provided even the most rudimentary care. She must view the Coroner and the rest of us as gullible fools.
Demanuele is just another in a depressingly long parade of self-pitying homebirth midwifery sociopaths who leave a path of death and destruction in their wake and refuse to accept any responsibility for their own actions.
It wasn’t the patriarchy who ignored Lovell’s obstetric history; it was Gaye Demanuele.
It wasn’t the patriarchy who refused to accurately assess Lovell’s blood loss; it was Gaye Demanuele.
It wasn’t the patriarchy who couldn’t be bothered to check Lovell’s blood pressure when she complained of feeling faint; it was Gaye Demanuele.
It wasn’t the patriarchy who failed to call for an ambulance when Lovell said she was dying; it was Gaye Demanuele who assured her she was fine as her life ebbed away.
It wasn’t the patriarchy who let Caroline Lovell die an easily preventable death, leaving two small children motherless; it was Gaye Demanuele …
And for that she should be punished to the fullest extent the law allows.
