I wish that it was always ignorance, but it isn’t. There is a movement out there right now called “freebirth”, and its full of women that exhaustively looked into child birth options and chose an unassisted pregnancy and birth. Home birth midwives (who are not nurses) teach classes to women wishing to freebirth in order to rake in a few thousand dollars off of this horrendously dangerous practice.
As an OB nurse, one of the most unfortunate and all too often scenarios we encounter is having to take care of women who have had little or no prenatal care. When they present to our unit, for a moment we hold our breath. Will this be the patient that escaped any pregnancy-related complications? Will she deliver a healthy baby, screaming and pink…or will this be the patient that walks in and makes us all scramble? We have all seen horrible outcomes from these scenarios. It’s easy to lose empathy for people who do not get adequate prenatal care.
Growing up, my mother made sure that I never missed a routine doctor’s appointment and she made me get a dental checkup every 6 months. When I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, I was all of two weeks pregnant, and living in England. I was not a citizen, and I wasn’t sure when I was coming back to the United…
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