St. Vincent’s is closing. It’s a bad situation for many involved, the women who gave birth there, the other patients who received care there. No attempts at saving the hospital have worked.
Another result of the closure is that the NYC home birth midwives no longer have a back-up hospital or WPA (written practice agreement). They need this WPA, signed by a doctor, in order to practice in NY, even though those doctors have little to no involvement in their practice. St. Vincent’s was one of the only supportive hospitals in the city.
About half of the homebirth midwives in NYC have found other people to back them up–but the other half are stuck. At midnight tonight, they can no longer practice legally, despite the fact that they are licensed practitioners.
It’s a mess, and the NY government is not considering this an emergency because their patients can “just give birth in a hospital.”
We all know why this is unacceptable.
You can help. Take action today to put pressure on the NY State Department of Health:
YOU MUST ACT NOW to save the home birth option for New York Women:
Call:
311
Wendy Saunders, Executive Deputy Commissioner for the NY State Department of Health, appointed by Governor Paterson. 518-474-8390
Larry Mokhiber, the Secretary of the Board of Midwifery(518-474-3817, extension 130)
And say….
With the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital, half of the licensed, highly trained home birth midwives serving NYC have lost their Written Practice Agreement (WPA). St Vincent’s was the only Hospital in the city supportive of a woman’s right to choose a home birth and willing to sign a WPA. In the weeks since it’s announced closure, these midwives have reached out to hospitals and obstetricians all across the city looking for support, with no success. Please help us to save the homebirth option in New York.
For a few months now, news has been circulating that St. Vincent’s, a Catholic hospital in NYC’s Lower East Side West Village was facing closure due to crippling debt.
It’s a Catholic hospital, which means no abortion procedures, no emergency contraception, and probably some other shitty anti-choice practices as well.
But it’s also one of the best hospitals for birth in NYC. Not only has St. Vincent’s been the back up hospital for most NYC home birth midwives, it’s also done a lot over the last year and a half to reduce c-sections and improve conditions. Doulas, midwives and VBACs were supported by the labor and delivery ward there.
It’s not just NYC that facing this kind of problem–in Miami, Jackson Memorial Hospital is also facing potential closure. It’s a hospital that serves many un and under-insured patients in the Miami area, and also has relationships with midwives.
For a movement that wants to get birth out of the hospital, you’d think we’d be happy to have hospitals closing. But we need hospitals as back-ups for home and birthing center births. Also why is it always the birth friendly hospitals and centers that get shut down? I wonder if not doing enough c-sections is bad for the profit margins.
Just found this site called My OB said WHAT?!? with alternately sad/funny/appalling things that OBs have told their patients about birth. Despite the title, it’s not just OBs, but also nurses and midwives as well. It’s a testament to the fact that no provider is perfect, all of them are human, and many of them are pushing some really problematic ideas about birth.
A few choice ones:
“Oh, honey, it’s too late for that!” – L&D nurse handing the mother a bedpan when the mother asked if she could go to to the bathroom. The mother was 5 cm dilated at the time.
“You’re much too small. This baby will never fit in your pelvis. I can’t believe someone told you you’d be able to birth a baby vaginally.” -OB to a mother, upon meeting her for the first time, without an exam or medical history.
“Listen, if you don’t trust me to make decisions, you need to find another Doctor.”- OB to patient when asked about flexibility around options for delivery.
“Oh come on, stop that. Suck it up!” – midwife to a mother shivering from the cold and epidural while being strapped to the bed, shaved, and prepped for an emergency c-section.
About the site:
The purpose of this site is to capture the crazy but true comments said to birthing women by doctors, midwives, doulas, lactation consultants, and childbirth educators when they are having their babies! Got a “My OB Said WHAT?!?” to share?? Send them to submissions@myobsaidwhat.com. And watch this site for more unbelievable but true comments said to women as they birth their babies!
This 50 Best Blogs for Midwives round-up includes Radical Doula in the “Doulas” section, but it’s seems to be a pretty good survey of all sorts of birth blogs around the web.
This is a post I wrote for Feministing that I wanted to cross-post here. It’s a bit broader (and less political!) than what I write for Radical Doula because of the audience there.
Birth has been making national news lately because of the release of recent data indicating continuing upward trends in maternal mortality and c-section rates.
Jessica mentioned the recent California report that exposed the rise in maternal morality in the state. But this problem isn’t just in CA, it’s national.
The New York Times reported this week that the US c-section rate has reached an all-time high of 32%. That’s more than 1 in 3 women giving birth via surgery. C-section has been the most common surgical procedure in US hospitals for a while now, and the increases don’t seem to be slowing down.
I often get flack for being anti-doctor when I write about birth politics here, but pretty much everyone can get behind a concern about this rate of surgical birth.
The increases — documented in a report published Tuesday — have caused debate and concern for years. When needed, a Caesarean can save the mother and her child from injury or death, but most experts doubt that one in three women need surgery to give birth. Critics say the operation is being performed too often, needlessly exposing women and babies to the risks of major surgery. The ideal rate is not known, but the World Health Organization and health agencies in the United States have suggested 15 percent.
The risks to c-sections are numerous. It’s major abdominal surgery, with it’s resulting possibilities for complications. It presents problems for subsequent pregnancies, and it can be really difficult to find a hospital that will allow you to try a vaginal birth after a c-section (VBAC), meaning once a c-section, always a c-section.
Amnesty International recently released a report entitled Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the US. Amnesty, an organization often focused on highlighting the stark situation of countries around the world, found itself examining what is a crisis among maternal health in the US.
The report exposes the fact that the risk of dying during childbirth is greater here than in 40 other countries, putting us at the bottom of the developing world when it comes to maternal mortality.
I heart the Birth Attendants, who run this Prison Doula Project. I also love this video because it shares the stories of these doulas and the women they work with–but it protects their anonymity using this cool form of animation. That’s a big piece of telling the stories of these incarcerated folks–you also want to respect their desire for privacy.
For more about The Birth Attendants, check out their website.
More good news on the midwifery front, this time from Wyoming!
A bill was signed into law there on March 5th, legalizing the practice of Certified Professional Midwives. CPMs are midwives that are trained to practice in homes or birth centers. They are an essential player in out of hospital birth access.
Yay Wyoming!
According to the Big Push, Nevada is now the only state in Western US that does not allow CPMs to practice.
Basically, the bill that has passed the Mississippi State House would outlaw the practice of any midwives that aren’t nurses.
There are many ways to learn midwifery, including the excellent programs completed by CPMs, which include traditional schooling as well as apprenticeship.
I’m speaking at a great event next week in NYC, at Barnard College. If you are in NYC, you should check it out.
It’s a panel with Mary and Lauren, the two other co-founders of the Doula Project (and current coordinators!) as well as Aishia Domingue from the Brooklyn Young Mother’s Collective. It’s going to be an interesting conversation.
Reproductive Justice in Action
Aisha Domingue, Mary Mahoney, Lauren Mitchell, and Miriam Pérez
Panel Discussion:
Wednesday, 3/3, 6:30 pm
Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor Barnard Hall
This panel will feature a group of reproductive justice activists and birth doulas who work across the spectrum of pregnancy, birth, and women’s health, connecting the traditional reproductive rights movement with new social justice activism that considers the complete physical, political, and economic well-being of girls and women. Birth doulas, as trained sources of physical, emotional, and educational support, work to empower women and support their reproductive choices. How does childbirth fit into the discussion around reproductive rights, a discussion that is often based around access to abortion and contraception? How can the reproductive justice framework help us consider institutional barriers, such as racism and poverty, that have limited women’s empowerment and decision-making when it comes to their reproductive health?
I’m also speaking at a couple of other places in the next few weeks, including Smith College, University of Iowa and University of Minnesota. Check out the details here, and if you’re interested in bringing me to speak email me.
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About Me
Miriam Zoila Pérez is a writer, blogger and reproductive justice activist. She works with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and is an Editor at Feministing. Miriam was trained as a doula in 2004.
Posted by radicaldoula 
Just found this site called 
More good news
