Hello, and thank you for joining me for today's podcast.
Whether you're pregnant, you've got a baby in your arms or a child at school. Whether you are a birth worker or an allied health practitioner, you will find this conversation very interesting.
I believe it is important to have conversations with people who think differently, especially those who are curious. People who speak their minds and research outside the mainstream narrative.
Dr. Stuart Fischbein has been an obstetrician in America since 1986. After working in the standard medical model at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, California, he now practices community-based birthing. He works directly with home birthing midwives through www.birthinginstincts.com to offer hope for those women who prefer and respect a natural birthing environment and cannot find supportive practitioners for VBAC, twin and breech deliveries. He is an outspoken advocate of informed decision-making, the midwifery model of care and human rights in childbirth, receiving the 2016 “Most Audacious” award from HRIC.
He has spoken internationally on breech and vaginal birth after cesarean section. He has appeared in many documentaries, including: “More Business of Being Born”, “Happy Healthy Child”, “Reducing Infant Mortality”, “Heads Up: The Disappearing Art of Vaginal Breech Delivery” and multiple YouTube videos discussing birth choices and respect for patient autonomy and decision making.
He has the goals of improving collaboration amongst the differing professions in the birthing world and the re-teaching of the core skills, such as breech and twin vaginal birth, that make the speciality of obstetrics unique.
One of the most challenging conversations I have during She Births is informing people that your body is your own and only you can decide what to do with it, even during pregnancy and birth.
The second uncomfortable truth is that so-called evidence-based care is a term that gets bandied about a lot in search of status and prestige and power, but in truth, health care varies from practitioner to practitioner. From hospital to hospital. From country to country.
In today's conversation, Dr Stu and I explore how the medico-industrial complex is more likely to be influencing the policy and therefore the suggestions, trickling down into advice and maybe even coercion that is given to us during pregnancy and birth.
Different policies flow down to us as consumers from the private companies that own the hospital as to whether we are allowed to birth in water for example. An insurance company that covers an OB may be the determining factor as to whether you are offered a VBAC.
We need to do our own research and choose. Just because someone says so, does not make it so for you.
Right now we are living in an age of disinformation and misinformation, and as the powers that be seem to continually try to confuse us and divide us. We're going to have to come back to ourselves.
We talk about
the medico-industrial complex
How informed consent is not able to happen in our current model of healthcare
Medical induction, the reality of due dates and the ARRIVE trial
Natural breech births and other so called high risk mums being offered more choice
The risks of multiple ultrasounds, the label of growth restriction and realising what ais happening redefining risks within maternal foetal medicine
How continuous monitoring of labour and tracking the time of labour increases c-section rates
And finally my favourite part is seeing this system vs consumers as a Star Wars battle. We also lean into a vision that has hope.
I hope you enjoy today’s conversation with Dr. Stu - sending lots of love across the ethers to you and your family.
If you feel passionate like I do, and you want to help families have better births then reach out and join me in our upcoming training. Become a wise woman of birth and help others find their own way. I also will be holding a Wise Woman Retreat towards the end of the year.
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