I’ve written a great deal about midwives’ reflexive demonization of C-sections, but even I didn’t think they’d stoop to this.
Ginger Breedlove, CNM, former President of the American College of Nurse Midwives, and current Senior Vice President of Clinical Operations at Baby+Company, a birth center consortium, posted this tweet on Feb. 9.
We lost a highly admired Certified Nurse-Midwife to complications post c-section last night, never able to meet her first child. Explain how we are losing SO MANY WOMEN post C-Section in the 21st CENTURY! In 1978 when I worked L/D 9.6/100,000. Today 26.4!
Based on her tweet you might think that her midwifery colleague died as a direct result of an unnecessary C-section. But that’s not what happened.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]What could midwifery care have done to save the life of the midwife who recently died? Not a damn thing.[/pullquote]
According to a fundraising page set up by midwives who chose to help, not exploit the tragedy:
On February 9, 2018, a month before her due date, W. developed abdominal pain while working in the clinic. She was sent to the hospital for evaluation. Labs were normal, but the NST was ominous. She was rushed for cesarean section. The baby boy did well and was admitted to the NICU for observation … W. was awake in recovery room, and saw pictures of her baby boy. However, she unexpectedly suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in the recovery room and was unable to be revived. It is suspected she suffered from an amniotic fluid embolism.
From the description, it sounds as though W. may have suffered a concealed abruption, which seriously compromised her baby. If it were an abruption it could have killed her son and potentially killed her. This was a necessary — indeed a lifesaving — Cesarean.
Breedlove wants to know why we are losing “SO MANY WOMEN” post C-section in the 21st CENTURY.”
Curiously, Breedlove has already publicly acknowledged the reasons:
I believe the most profound reason – and the least talked about – is institutional racism and inequities in health care for marginalized populations, specifically African Americans. Most African Americans live down south, and that’s where the majority of maternal deaths are located. Access to care is limited. Government funding for agencies and facilities providing services to rural or uninsured populations has been on the decline for quite some time.
Other issues include increases in obesity, pre-existing hypertension, women who have chronic stress, and other variables that influence a woman’s health prior to and during pregnancy…
Notice that the C-section rate is NOT one of the reasons for the increased maternal mortality rate, no matter how much midwives try to imply that it is.
Breedlove deliberately left out the most important reason for maternal (and perinatal) mortality: physiological childbirth is inherently dangerous.
What about amniotic fluid embolism as a cause of death?
As the chart indicates, it is relatively unusual.
How about the overall trend for US maternal mortality?
As this graph from a recent Mother Jones article about maternal mortality demonstrates, it is indeed rising and that is a bad thing.
But how does it compare to the overall trend of maternal mortality in the past century?
See the tiny “x” to the right of the graph. That’s how today’s maternal mortality rate would appear if added to this graph. That puts it in perspective.
Breedlove, of course, seems to think that midwifery care is the answer to everything.
The next day, in response to news of a birth center opening in the UK, she tweeted this:
… @CallTheMidwife1 @BBC We need more Midwifery integration in US hospitals and all settings with seamless team based care to improve outcomes and #growmidwives @ACNMmidwives @neel_shah Why am I in ED right now with 11 week postpartum Mom and she has been dismissed for concerns expressed now for weeks?
How has midwifery care impacted the maternal death rate? As we can see from the Mother Jones graph, it hasn’t impacted it at all.
For most of human existence midwives were the exclusive providers of childbirth care and both maternal and perinatal death rates were astronomical. In the past 100 years midwives haven’t discovered anything or invented anything that served to decrease the mortality rate. The truth, a truth that midwives are loath to acknowledge even to themselves, is that physiological birth kills women and the interventions of modern obstetrics — especially C-sections — save tens of thousands of maternal lives in the US each year.
What could midwifery care have done to save the life of the midwife who recently died? Not a damn thing.
She was probably receiving midwifery care when she developed a serious complication that threatened her baby’s (and her) life. Her midwives handed her off to obstetricians because there wasn’t anything they could do about what was happening. How ugly then to blame obstetricians for being unable to do what midwives could never do, save her life.
Almost as ugly as exploiting her death to demonize C-sections.
