Yesterday afternoon, The Childbirth Connection hosted a Twitter conversation with Dr. Sarah Buckley, the author of its new report destined to become a pseudo-knowledge classic, Hormonal Physiology of Childbearing.
I tried to ask Dr. Buckley a question. The hormonal physiology of childbirth has yet to be elucidated. We don’t know why some women go into labor prematurely (and their babies die) or why some women fail to go into labor when pregnancy is threatening their life (pre-eclampsia) or the lives of their babies (postdates stillbirth). So, if no one knows how it works, how can Dr. Buckley be sure that “the hormonal physiology of childbirth nearly always works best when it is left to work at its own speed”?
She can’t, of course, so she deleted my question and blocked me as shown above.
Can you imagine the CDC deleting and banning someone who asked how we know that vaccines work? Me, neither. Legitimate healthcare providers and organizations recognize that they have an obligation to answer questions (even tough questions). But, of course, Sarah Buckley doesn’t provide healthcare; she sells natural childbirth propaganda. And The Childbirth Connection isn’t a healthcare organization; it’s a lobbying firm, always pressing for greater employment for its constituency: midwives, doulas and childbirth educators.
Natural childbirth advocates decide what to believe based on who wrote it. The imprimatur of author Dr. Sarah Buckley signals to them that they can be sure its conclusions are the same as the conclusions of all other pieces of drivel written by natural childbirth advocates: maternity care is “in crisis”; interventions are bad; midwives, doulas and childbirth educators are good; and the process of birth is more important than the outcome.
Those who are slightly less gullible, which is everyone else in the world, might wonder why The Childbirth Connection had to go so far afield to find someone to write their report. It’s ostensibly a report about the hormonal physiology of childbirth and the implications for American maternity care, yet Dr. Buckley is a New Zealand trained, non-practicing family doctor; not an obstetrician, not an endocrinologist, not from the US.
Apparently none of the usual wackaloons were available.
Not Ina May (“Sometimes I see that a husband is afraid to touch his wife’s tits because of the midwife’s presence, so I touch them, get in there and squeeze them, talk about how nice they are, and make him welcome.”) Gaskin.
Nor Michel (“[T]here is little good to come for either sex from having a man at the birth of a child.”) Odent.
No problem. Dr. Buckley is an acolyte of both … and equally wacky.
The testimonial of a midwifery professor that leads her bio inadvertently says it all:
Discovering Sarah Buckley is like being told, authoritatively, that chocolate is not only good for you, but is guaranteed to make you slim. And also beautiful.
In other words, Dr. Buckley tells natural childbirth advocates what they’ve always dreamed of hearing, even though it has no more basis in science than the claim that chocolate is guaranteed to make you slim … or beautiful.
I would have thought that Dr. Buckey’s history of nattering absolute nonsense would have given pause to the folks at The Childbirth Connection. But then I guess beggars can’t be choosers.
Dr. Buckley is best known for being a devotee of lotus birth, and waxing rhapsodic over the placenta.
What’s lotus birth? It’s the wackiest childbirth practice ever. Lotus birth is the decision to leave the placenta attached to the baby for several days until it rots off. It is a bizarre practice with no medical benefit and considerable risk, particularly the risk of massive infection. Dr. Buckley did that with 3 of her homebirth born children.
In an article written for the July/August 2005 issue of (what else?) Mothering Magazine, Buckley explained:
For the next three days we dried and salted Jacob’s placenta every 12 hours or so, then wrapped it carefully in a cloth diaper, and then in the red velvet bag I had sewn. Jacob’s “breaking forth” time—the time between his birth and the separation of his cord—was quiet and still as we honored his original wholeness …
Why did Buckley adopt this ritual which human beings never practiced until is was made up in 1974?
The relationship with the placenta does not end with its disposal, whether by ritual burial or by hospital incineration. Placental symbolism is everywhere in our culture, from the handbags that we carry—holding our money, datebooks, and other items of survival—to the soft toys that we cram into our babies’ cribs. Some believe that much of our culture’s discontent and our urge to accumulate possessions—including all of the aforementioned—come from the traumatic loss of our first possession: our placenta. And each year we honor our placenta by lighting candles on our birthday cake—in Latin, the word placenta means “flat cake.”
Jacob’s placenta has been his conduit, passing life from my body to his. Now this placenta—his womb-twin, his primal anchor—has gone back to the earth. Seven years after his birth, Jacob tells me “your placenta is like your heart;’ and I realize that he received more than physical nourishment through his placenta. Along with the oxygen, nutrients, hormones, and all the other placental gifts, Jacob also received my love, which was equally his sustenance in my womb, transmitted subtly but vitally by this amazing organ—the placenta.
But wait! There’s more in this article, Lotus birth – a Ritual for our Times:
My older children have blessed me with stories of their experiences in pregnancy and birth, and have been unanimously in favour of not cutting the cord, especially Emma who remembered the unpleasant feeling of having her cord cut (after it had stopped pulsating), which she describes as being “painful in my heart”. Zoe, at five years of age, described being attached to a “love-heart thing” in my womb and told me “When I was born, the cord went off the love-heart thing and onto there [her placenta] and then I came out.” Perhaps she remembers her placenta in utero as the source of nourishment and love.
Lotus birth has been, for us, an exquisite ritual that has enhanced the magic of the early post-natal days. I notice an integrity and self-possession with my lotus-born children, and I believe that lovingness, cohesion, attunement to Mother Nature, and trust and respect for the natural order have all been imprinted on our family by our honouring of the placenta, the Tree of Life.
Whom does Dr. Buckley credit with inspiring and influencing her ideas?
Many people inspired this article. Jeannine Parvati Baker contributed some core ideas and phrases; ecstasy in birth, ‘healing the earth, healing birth’: ‘giving birth is women’s spiritual practice’ and ‘the wound reveals the cure’, which is the canon of her Mystery school, Hygieia College. www.birthkeeper.com
Thanks also, for inspiration and ideas, to Leilah McCracken (www.birthlove.com) Michel Odent, and especially to my teacher Shivam Rachana and the women’s circle that we share in the International College of Spiritual Midwifery. www.womenofspirit.asn.au
Those are among the “thinkers” who have shaped the wacky world of Dr. Sarah Buckley.
This is who The Childbirth Connection hired to repackage their lobby campaign in scientific sounding jargon: a woman who thinks that handbags are symbolic placentas and who imputes the ills of the present day to “the traumatic loss of our first possession: our placenta.”
I guess they were desperate.
