This post is for the apologists parachuting in to my blog and Facebook page attempting to excuse their role in a baby’s death.
Yesterday I wrote about the Facebook group Ten Month Mamas who cheered a woman as she refused to seek care for an extremely postdates pregnancy, 44 weeks by her reckoning. As complication piled on complication — prolonged ruptured membranes, meconium, transverse lie — they kept cheering, right up until the moment that they learned the baby was dead.
Had the mother successfully delivered a live baby, they would have patted themselves and each other on the back for offering the support that got her to her goal. Yet when the mother delivered a dead baby, they immediately began absolving themselves of responsibility and expressing their anger toward me for exposing them.
Here are a few choice examples of their prose:
Sadie Canning Dossor: How dare you post this! This is someone’s life you’re pontificating on and she chose to share it with a specific group and not you’re pathetic negative and Ill informed group. You are the worst kind of person for posting such confidential and sensitive information to point score. I’m not even gonna argue the issue of pregnancy time frames because each case is different, though I will say I went to 43 weeks with both mine, had lovely home and hospital births and almost no intervention.
You and your idiotic followers are full of judgement hate and ignorance and you clearly feel the need to spread this tripe. Well good luck to you, you utter bint.
And this:
Aliki Doula Livanis: This is so stupid… the whole way you go about doing things… If you didn’t bully admins in groups nor the moms who have just lost life, I would actually have some respect for you. Hell, 44 weeks plus is a far stretch for me too. I was born at 43 weeks after a medical induction, without an epidural. Maybe that’s why my mom just had me? But it was safe after having constant NST’s, or so she said. If you ended up bullying her if she had lost me, would it have changed anything? My point is, you’re not really winning… if you did what you do with dignity and grace some of us “hippies” might even hear what you’re saying. But with all this screaming and shaming, all we see is a lonely old hag who lost her medical licence for who knows what reason… who also had traumatic hospital births and doesn’t talk about it… and is bitter now shames others who choose a more graceful birth. Just a thought.
And this, which I confess I don’t really understand:
Michelle Bromley: Ms T, please go and get some help. It’s quite obvious that so need to do some serious debriefing.
You are dangerous.
These groups help and support so many. People do not advocate harm to mothers and babies. I’ve seen many of your posts advocate serious harm and trauma.
Please stop the harassment!
Debriefing?
And this:
Cygnus Lindsey: Amy you’re a nasty ass bitch. Like a damn dog salivating waiting for a crumb to drop. Fuck you old wench!
Where did I go wrong? How did they get the impression that I care about their opinions?
Be that as it may, I feel confident that they know what they did is wrong and now they are they engaging in a variety of cognitive distortions in an attempt to shed guilt, including:
It was unpreventable. In this case, they insist that if I knew the facts about what happened, I wouldn’t blame anyone. Yet no one seems to be able to come up with any facts that I got wrong.
Women have the right to do this. Yes, they have the legal right to risk their unborn children’s lives, but that doesn’t make it ethical or justifiable.
Unassisted birth is actually good for babies. Yes, this time the baby died, but had the baby lived an unassisted birth would have provided benefits for the baby.
The baby wanted it. No one invoked that here, but in previous cases mothers have claimed that the baby communicated to them where and how the he or she wished to be born.
The mother and her defenders did not pioneer these excuses. They’ve been used by child abusers since time immemorial.
Yes, I violently shook the baby for crying, but how was I supposed to know it would die?
It’s my right as a parent to beat my children bloody if I think it is for their own good.
Spare the rod, spoil the child.
If they didn’t want to be punished, they wouldn’t have misbehaved.
Those who harm children have a million excuses about why they aren’t responsible for the resulting injuries and deaths.
But the truth is that no one beats a child to death out of love; they do it to satisfy their own impulses and needs.
And the truth is that no one plans an unassisted pregnancy and birth out of love; they do it to satisfy their own impulses and needs.
The truth is that while parents have a right to discipline their children; they have responsibilities as well.
And the truth is that while mothers have a legal right to let their unborn babies die in service to their cognitive delusions, they have the ethical responsibility to provide appropriate medical care.
The truth is that children don’t benefit from being beaten; the parents benefit.
And the truth is that babies don’t benefit from unassisted pregnancy and birth; the mother benefits from bragging rights and the toxic “support” of other members of the Facebook group.
Unassisted pregnancy and birth are child abuse, albeit entirely legal. And if YOU support an abuser, YOU bear responsibility for tragedies like this one.
