ICAN has posted an interview with VBAC-warrior Joy Szabo - check it out!
Interview: Joy Szabo
I posted on her (about two entries down) a week or so ago, but for anyone who hasn't heard about this story - Joy Szabo was threatened by her home-town hospital in Page, Arizona with a court-ordered cesarean if she did not submit to an elective repeat cesarean section for her recent birth (the hospital has stopped "allowing" VBAC births). Although nothing has been done about the criminal behavior (my opinion) of of the hospital in question, Joy successfully thwarted the system by moving to a different town for the last few weeks of her pregnancy in order to birth at a VBAC-friendly (or VBAC-allowing, at least) hospital. And... she got her VBAC!
Hopefully this story will bring much-needed publicity to the VBAC scene, which is currently in a ridiculous state of hysteria. VBAC birth is statistically safer than repeat cesarean birth, but it is not more profitable - and it is more liable - so the current trend is for repeat cesareans, or "trials of labor" that are stacked against the mother (and so turn into repeat cesareans). The tide needs to turn sometime, and it is great stories like Joy's that will help it to turn!
Hi there! I found your blog after reading Chukwuma's OB blog. I just noticed your use of the term "cesarean birth". Well notice is a gentle word, I was actually feeling more like I got kicked in the gut when I read it. :-( Which is why I am commenting, I am wondering if you would ponder using the more neutral term "cesarean", instead of the more controversial "cesarean birth". This allows each woman to add her own qualifying word on the end... cesarean section... cesarean surgery... cesarean birth... cesarean extraction. It becomes the woman's choice to define the experience, and it is not thrust upon her. Calling it a cesarean birth feels like one negates the experiences of the many women who do not view it as a birth at all, and for whom the term is disturbing and a "trigger phrase". I hope you will consider that alternative wording, and please continue the wonderful blogging!
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