Quite possibly the stupidest women on Earth.

There is this message board for supposedly hippy, earth-mother types called mothering.com. They actually call themselves mothering.comune. Several years ago it was a gathering place for people who cloth diapered, breastfed, preferred slings to strollers, used natural cleaning products and beauty supplies, recycled, and probably had a garden in the back yard. Not insane at all.

Now it has turned into full on freakville with women who are completely against anything that reeks of The MAN. Including medical care. Especially medical care for pregnancy and childbirth. They have an entire forum dedicated to unassisted childbirth (UC) which means having your baby at home alone, with no attendants possibly not even your husband/baby daddy there to help. No midwife to help if something goes wrong. Birth attendants, especially those in hospitals are predators and dangerous. Doctors are just looking to haul you off for unnecessary c-sections.

There are women there who claim they would rather their baby die in childbirth than them have a c-section, because of the slight risk of maternal death during the c-section. Someone forgot to tell them, or they just refuse to hear, that even if the baby dies, it still has to come out, one way or another. A baby that dies in the womb because it is too big to fit through mom's pelvis is not likely to fit even after it dies.

So stupid women, stupider message board, because this board is moderated, and the moderators will delete anything that they deem unsupportive. If you gently encourage someone to seek medical care after 5 days of ruptured membranes, with meconium staining, and your post will get deleted. Encourage a woman leaking fluid and having contractions at 28 weeks to see a doctor? Deleted. Do it often enough and you get banned from the board. There is no voice of reason, only insanity.

If this isn't neglect, I don't know what is. It should be criminal, and this message board that enables these women should be shut down.


I want to add that I understand wanting to have the perfect birth, wanting your baby's entrance into the world to be beautiful, that medical intervention can be scary and traumatizing. My daughters are 5 yrs old and I still have strong feelings about their birth and regrets that it had to be that way. It was the single most terrifying thing I've ever gone through, and I have no doubt that I was suffering from PTS afterwards. But, the reason it was so terrifying, the reason I was so scared was not because of the drs and the medical care I received, it was during those moments when we couldn't get the nurse, couldn't get help and then just knowing that they were being born 10 weeks premature, and I was fucking terrified that my babies might DIE. I wasn't thinking about the birth experience then, I was thinking about my babies, that I loved more than myself even before they left my body, and I didn't want them to die. Just get them out and get them in the NICU where they will be safe.

When Sam was born, and my hopes for a VBAC were going down the drain, I was bleeding, he wasn't moving much, and again, I just wanted him out, where I could see him, and I knew he was safe and ALIVE.

Yes, there are feelings of anger and regret about the surgeries and the way things worked out and the lost hours with all of them, but I knew they were alive and safe and under competent medical care. Even with that, I have one child with some minor brain damage, and the guilt I feel over that far surpasses any feelings I have about the fucking c-section.

So, to all of those women at Mothering.com, I say grow the fucking hell up and think about someone besides your own selfish self for a change.



I just want to add that my child with the little bit of brain damage is learning to read. *Proud mama*