A Framework for Healthy, Safe Birth

Based on the perspectives of Pre and Perinatal Psychology and the physiological, science-based Midwifery Model of Maternity Care

By Janel Martin-Miranda, MA, LPC Copyright, 2005

A Framework for Healthy, Safe Birth:

• Honors birth as the human's spiritual and biological process in relationship with his or her mother and father from conception throughout life;
• Supports a woman and her partner to be responsible for their baby and birth choices from conception, prenatally during labor and birth, in order to be responsible throughout their child’s life.
• Acknowledges that the majority of healthy women are capable of natural birth without drugs and interventions, just as the majority of women and men were able to conceive and gestate their baby without drugs and mechanical support;
• Acknowledges the growing scientific research showing that medical management disrupts the baby's biological process for birth (an event and expression of the continuum of brain development), and that this trauma is imprinted in the brain (and contributes to life-long physical, emotional, and psychological dysfunctions); and,
• Recognizes that the obstetric malpractice crisis is a symptom of a larger social and political issue of holding physicians responsible for birth which has removed the responsibility for the continuum of development (preconception, conception, gestation, labor, birth, and post-natal) from men and women;
• Recognizes that the obstetric malpractice crisis is an issue of control over maternal choice and that this is, in part, a result of the hundred years of medical intervention and drugs, and now involves insurance, drug company, and litigation attorney influences over true scientific knowledge;
• Recognizes that this is a social and political system problem that equally, but differently affects the ability of obstetricians to provide quality care for women and decreases the ability of a woman and man to take responsibility for their baby's labor and birth; and
• Sees the need to control litigation has lead to the increasing use of the drugs and technology (never shown to be safe but withdrawn only after extended periods of maternal and infant trauma and loss), that harms women and babies, prevents parental responsibility; thus, maintaining the obstetric malpractice crisis; and,
• Calls for a national reform of maternity practices as the evidence-based research and mortality statistics show in the US that a healthy woman and baby are NOT SAFE and best cared for in hospital settings (BECAUSE woman do not have control over choice and doctors are wrongly and disproportionately responsible for birth);
• Demands that hospitals, doctors, lawyers, and politicians engage with midwives, consumers, and concerns citizens to create new laws based on the evidence-based science and that honors woman's body, supports her birthing choices, and allows her to be make decisions and to take responsibility for her choices from pre-conception throughout life; and importantly,
• Acknowledges that birth is not just about the woman's needs and experience, nor is birth about the doctor's schedule and malpractice woes....
• Knows that Birth is the BABY'S birth! And, that baby will be affected for life by his or her birth experience.

Copyright, 2005 Janel Martin-Miranda, MA, LPC