I have written many times about freebirth (unassisted childbirth), the practice of giving birth without any birth attendant. The stories differ but they are united by a personal trait shared by all freebirthers: emotional immaturity.
What do I mean by emotional immaturity? Consider toddlers.
Toddlers are the standard for emotional immaturity.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Freebirthers are monstrously egotistical, reflexively defiant of authority, unwilling to admit mistakes, incapable of accepting responsibility for their own actions and entirely devoid of any empathy for their suffering babies.[/pullquote]
- They are supremely egocentric. They believe the world revolves around them.
- They reflexively defy authority.
- They refuse to admit they are wrong.
- They never take responsibility for harmful actions.
- They lack empathy. Indeed many don’t realize anyone else beside themselves has feelings.
Both of the founder of the freebirth movement — Australian Janet Fraser and American Laura Stanley — exhibit extreme emotional immaturity.
Fraser was interviewed in late March 2009, supposedly during labor with her third child:
Janet Fraser is in labour… Has she called the hospital to let them know what’s happening? “When you go on a skiing trip, do you call the hospital to say, ‘I’m coming down the mountain, can you set aside a spot for me in the emergency room?’ I don’t think so,” says Fraser, whose breathing sounds strained…
When born FIVE days later, baby Roisin was alive but in need of expert resuscitation.
According to the Coroner:
Essentially, Ms. Fraser was quite unprepared for what happened. There was not even a hard, flat surface available on which Roisin could be placed for resuscitation so these three amateurs – Ms. Fraser, Mr. Stokes and Ms. Duce, first placed the child on the rim of the inflatable pool and, when that proved unsatisfactory, used a chair. They were unable to abandon the chair and place Roisin on the floor in order effectively to administer CPR there because, the placenta not having been delivered, “that was as far as she would reach. ” Evidently, it occurred to nobody present to clamp and cut the cord and, anyway, Ms. Duce told the inquest, she had not been aware of the ready availability of any equipment to enable her to do so. According to Ms. Duce, further difficulties were encountered in administering CPR because Roisin was slippery and difhcult to hold and, evidently, it did not occur to anybody to wrap her in a towel although there were towels nearby.
Any one with a modicum of maturity might have been devastated, or at the very least chastened, by the preventable death of her baby. Not Fraser:
My birthrape with my first child is traumatic. My stillbirth was not.
In other words, the supremely egotistical Fraser could not admit she was wrong, would not accept responsibility for her daughter’s death and had no empathy for Roisin’s suffering.
American freebirth advocate Laura Shanley boasts about the successful freebirth of four children. But she has freebirthed five children, one of whom died. She made no attempt to stop the premature birth of a son and watched him die in the bathtub. Shanley denies responsibility for her child’s death.
For sheer unadulterated egotism, though, it’s hard to beat Paala. She was admitted to the hospital at 24 weeks for vaginal bleeding and premature labor. The bleeding was so serious that she received multiple transfusions.
Everyone was so mean to Paala. They made her wear a hospital gown! But she showed them!!
As she wrote on her Facebook page:
I took out my IV lines (nothing was being pumped into them at that point anyway) and my hospital bracelet. I wanted to take a shower with both arms free of junk. I figured they could put that crap back on me if it was an emergency but I needed to feel like myself again. (Did I mention they tracked and measured everything that came out of my body?)
Shortly thereafter she was in active labor with an extremely premature baby. She retreated to the hospital bathroom to decide what to do.
Option 1. Call the nurses and either be prodded while birthing right there or be wheeled in for an emergency CS.
Option 2. Wake my husband and labor with him secretly but then I knew he’d lose his cool and call for help.
Option 3. Labor by myself with my baby, just us, and I’d birth him and catch him and then call for help.
Surprise! She went with the most transgressive choice!
Obviously, I went for option 3. It seemed like the safest thing for my baby and myself at the time. The studies I’d read didn’t report benefits for a c-section for babies of his age, that vaginal would have been safer, and I knew getting drugged up and controlled by strangers was going to make things dangerous for us. After a couple of painful contractions by the toilet, I laid out a couple of chux pads to catch the blood and crap I was sure was coming.
She’s so proud of herself, since it’s all about her:
I had an unassisted freebirth, en caul just like my last baby, except in the hospital …
What about the baby?
He weighed 1 pound 6 oz, but survived. He spent four and a half months in the NICU and is doing well … no thanks to his mother.
The freebirth death that I wrote about earlier this week is also a story of emotional immaturity.
So the surges keep coming every day, but still no baby. Just making me more and more tired and my body ache everywhere. Nothing I could do would ease the pain but I tried so hard to stay positive.
My water broke the evening of the 4th and was discolored. Since I was 42 weeks I thought it was normal. But as the days went by it got more foul smelling and turned a sick poop color which was constantly leaking and the baby stopped moving on the 6th.
I woke on the 7th with so much pain and pouring meconium that Chris and I agreed it was time to transfer.
Not surprisingly, the baby was dead. The mother’s lack of empathy is truly chilling:
Sometimes nothing seems to go according to plan. That’s been the theme of this pregnancy …
But it’s no more chilling that Fraser’s insistence that her previous “birthrape” was traumatic but the death of her subsequent baby was not. It’s no more chilling than Laura Shanley watching her own premature baby die in the bathtub. It’s no more chilling that Paala’s pride at giving birth to a 24 weeker unattended in the bathroom rather than calling for medical help that was within earshot.
Every one of these women, indeed every woman who chooses freebirth, is profoundly emotionally immature. Like toddlers each and every one is monstrously egotistical, reflexively defiant of authority, unwilling to admit mistakes, incapable of accepting responsibility for their own actions and entirely devoid of any empathy for their suffering babies.
They should be ashamed of themselves; even toddlers are sometimes ashamed. But that would involve putting aside their egotism, an action that appears to be utterly beyond them.
