Steingraber's tour of prenatal care

[walkitout]

In the course of _Having Faith_, Steingraber gets prenatal care in a variety of geographic locations (Illinois, Boston, Alaska), mostly from OB/GYNs, altho there was one woman in Alaska who I think may have been a midwife. That care provider had the least gear, was clearly the most competent and who did the least to further arouse the author's already substantial anxiety. When the author stops feeling as much movement in the third trimester, she goes in for a non-stress test and one of the theories for why she isn't feeling movement that appears to be happening is that the baby may have turned OP from ROT (my summary). What no one bothers to mention is, yay, happy, happy. The baby is working her way 'round to the best possible position for delivery. With any luck, she'll be LOT next and you'll be feeling those kicks on the other side.

There's all this data here (like, it was brutally obvious she was feeling hiccups, but despite her extensive reading of pregnancy and obstetrics books, she didn't realize that) that's just begging for better interpretation. Is this an authorial choice? Or did she really keep running into people who were Just Not Helpful?

Comments

child birth classes

[walkitout]

Steingraber hated hers, and given her description I'm not surprised. It _did_ lead to her doing a bunch of reading that resulted in some rethinking, altho the next steps she took are a little odd (calling in a midwife from Canada? Oooookay.). Her summary of the history of obstetrics by obstetrics, vs the history of obstetrics by midwives is pretty cool.

Of course I sympathize with not wanting to do a homebirth in an apartment. I hear her there.

I'd like to take this moment to give thanks for my brother-in-law J., who is/was a family physician. When I got knocked up with T., I sent e-mail? called? and asked him for good books to read. He pointed me at Henci Goer and I never looked back. It's not at all clear to me how long it would have taken me to figure out what I wanted to do, if I'd just started at a bookstore/library the way Steingraber did. As it was, I didn't have to contemplate rethinking my care provider/birth attendant/birth location late in the third trimester. (Just mid-second trimester, when I moved across country.)

Thank you, J. Thanks to the path you sent me down, even _after_ having a c-section, I knew _exactly_ where to find midwives that would do an out-of-hospital VBAC.

No baby yet, so we don't now if I get to ultimately have an out-of-hospital VBAC, but at least I get to try.

Judging by the reviews over on Amazon, I'm the only person reading _Having Faith_ and having a lot of problems with whether I trust her information. Here's what did it to me most recently: "About 10 percent of babies born in the United States arrive more than two weeks before their due dates -- that is the official definition of prematurity". Really? How does that work? 37 completed weeks = not premature anymore. Am I having a huge fencepost error? It could happen.

But she also seemed to think 12% of babies are born on their due dates. I've seen a range of estimates, but none of them double digits.

I, personally, have no opinion of child birth classes, having thus far not taken any.