One of the blogs I read frequently is The Skeptical OB, a site run by a now-retired OB-GYN named Dr Amy Tuteur. She blogs about science, childbirth, and the craziness of homebirth and even crazier Natural Childbirth Advocates (NCBs).
NCBs are people who think it’s fine and dandy to risk the lives of mothers and babies just to uphold antiquated and often sexist views about how and where women should give birth. They’re not shy about telling complete strangers how they think things should be done (no drugs, no interventions – which often lead to dead babies. But apparently dead babies are irrelevant, as we’ll see).
Background: Up until I stumbled across the “SOB” (a fitting self-styled acronym for the feisty Tuteur), I was mostly unaware that people even considered having their kids anywhere but hospitals if they could help it. Unfortunately that’s not always the case. Some people choose to risk their lives and that of their babies by having them at home, with little more than a high-school graduate attending.
That brings me to the reason for this post, and the new link on the right side of my pages that you may have noticed:
StillBirthday.com
For parents who have lost a pregnancy – a place to find support and to grieve.
The relevant post from the Skeptical OB is here.
The gist of what’s happened is that an NCB advocate named Gina doesn’t like the fact that some people who read her blog (The Feminist Breeder) also go to StillBirthday.com in search of support. StillBirthday is run by a woman named Heidi.
Excerpt from the Skeptical OB post:
“What did a sweet, caring, devout woman like Heidi do to warrant the Narcissist Breeder’s ire? Nothing, of course. But in classic mean girl fashion, Gina is trying to punish others through Heidi. Since Heidi is friendly toward everyone in the world, it is inevitable that she is friendly with women who refuse to praise Gina (a veritable maw of approval seeking desperation). If Gina can’t hurt those women, she’ll hurt Heidi instead.”
The Skeptical OB post ends with this request:
I know a secret, though. It really doesn’t matter whether Gina supports Stillbirthday. Everyone else does. I’d like to suggest that in a show of solidarity, anyone who has a blog or website put up a link to Stillbirthday. Let’s boost the popularity of a site that does an amazing job of providing support for an extremely vulnerable group. And let’s show mean girls like Gina that we’ll be friends with whomever we like … and there are very few people more worthy of our friendship than Heidi Faith.
Even though I’m not religiously-minded (which the StillBirthday site leans towards), I’ve never lost a child, and initially when I heard about it, the name of the StillBirthday site creeped me out, I had a look-see around it. The title now makes a little more sense to me. It’s not for everyone, but I do think that the Feminist Breeder bashing StillBirthday is a nasty, silly and immature thing to do, especially since Heidi is trying to do is help devastated, grieving parents deal with the death of their child.
Religion or atheism is irrelevant: the death of a child not something any parent should live to deal with. Good sites like StillBirthday should be supported.
I got to know Heidi and many other sensible women through Fed up with Natural Childbirth, the Facebook group that was founded as a result of the SOB. Dr Tuteur also created a website to bring attention to the dangers of homebirth, which contains stories of families who have been Hurt by Homebirth – ending up with a severely compromised infant, or, more often, a dead baby.
That doesn’t deter people like The Feminist Breeder from being assholes.
