Childbirth in America sucks: one woman's view

I forget who linked me to this site, but Nayla has some things to say. In long posts that sometimes tire me. Oh well! An interesting young woman with a lot to say.

As Ms. Nihilix is a doula, I pay attention to the western medical consumer healthcare machine, esp. how it deals with childbirth.

Here's hoping the link will show up!

Enough Already
With ten weeks of pregnancy to go, I'm done with our doctors and taking steps to transfer to a nurse-midwife practice down the street that delivers at a hospital where pregnant women aren't routinely strapped down. The final straw? My doctor yelling to the staff that I couldn't refuse a gestational diabetes test, despite being demonstrably hypoglycemic, then attempting to bully me with boogeymen of fetal death, and finally, unwilling to concede that my stomach would promptly and dramatically invalidate the test, demanding I monitor my blood glucose five times a day while keeping a food diary religiously. Did I mention she scrawled a page's worth of bad patient/mother shaming in my medical records while she was at it? Well, aside from plenty of evidence that the gestational diabetes test is harmful and my own firsthand experience of Eli's behavior when our blood sugar is thrown for a loop, neverminding that the test would cost a lot only to end up on the floor, I'm done with the attitude. Need I, a lowly volunteer EMT, remind my doctor that patients have rights, including refusal of inappropriate medical care? Rights that supercede their bottom line.

Read the rest here.