This is a first draft. This is not medical advice. I have no personal expertise in this field. I've read some books and articles, and talked to people about their experiences, and have come to some conclusions based on what I learned from them. These are my personal opinions, expressed as I am learning. If you are making any kind of decision involving pregnancy and childbirth, you should do your own research, and you should consult one or more health care providers of your choice. You should not make any decision based only on what I have to say on this subject.
When we are ill or hurt, we want to do something about it, or find someone who can do something about it. In our culture, we often go to a family member for minor complaints ("I cut myself can you put a bandage on it?") or a doctor for more serious problems ("I've been coughing for a week, doc, can you give me something for it?"). When we are ill or hurt and we decline to do something about it, we may feel social pressure from those around us to do something about it ("you should go home and rest, that sounds like a bad cough"). We may choose to resist this pressure ("it's just allergies"). We may comply. In the parenthetical examples I've given, no substantial harm is likely to occur whether something is done or not. We can readily imagine other examples where substantial harm could come from inaction, say, a high fever with hallucinations, but even there, harm from inaction is still not guaranteed. We generally assume that the family member (in the minor cases) and the doctor (in the more serious cases) will not do anything to us worse than what we are already suffering from. When we have suffered harm at the hands of a doctor, we feel aggrieved and may try to find a way to be compensated or at least punish the doctor for harming us.
When we encounter people who choose not to do something about their illness or hurt, or who choose non-medical options (laying on of hands, prayer, meditation, etc.) or alternative medicine (homeopathy, naturopathy, ayurvedic medicine, etc.), a discussion or debate often follows.
Chronic diseases challenge our normal system of thinking about wellness. They tend not to respond well to drugs, or the drugs have undesired effects. They tend to not to respond well to surgery, or to return after successful surgery. Practices Outside the Norm often have better success at returning us to a state of wellness in these situations first because our normative system of medicine is so bad and second because these alternative practices often address context better. Our food, our pattern of activity, our life choices are all considered in some alternative practices. If these are the source of illness and trauma, they can then be mitigated or resolved, where our normal model never gets to these sources as they are outside the normal realm of medical consideration.
Our normal system of medical care has little to offer in cases of the "common cold" and other minor complaints. Antivirals are insanely expensive and have excessive undesirable effects. Antibiotics won't help a viral infection. Symptom treatment may help symptoms and generate others. Symptom treatment can also slow the body's effective response to the illness.
But we still want to Do Something. Practices Outside the Norm with few or no undesired effects can satisfy the need to Do Something, even if they turn out not to do anything particularly effective to the illness or hurt directly. They can also rally the placebo effect, which is considerable.
I don't really know. If you think you do, think a little about how you know what you know. Is that a standard of truth you apply fairly? If you are opposed to practices outside the norm, would your reasons for doing so support using the normal practices?
Whether we choose a practice outside the norm, or no action at all, when the Norm offers a particular set of options and we refuse them, we refuse not only the risk, the harm and the ineffectiveness of the norm, we also refuse the good and effective cures available within the norm. By refusing effective treatment within the norm, you may get sicker, become disabled or die.
I place this risk in a larger context. When normative care has the capacity to cure an ill or hurt person and the capacity to damage or kill, the odds must be weighed. If seeking care in the normal way merely shifts deaths from those who are ill or hurt to those who were not, a rational person would be careful only to seek such care in very serious circumstances. This isn't hypothetical. A pregnant woman is very likely a healthy woman with one or more healthy unborn children. When such a woman seeks care within the normal system, she risks being made ill, disabled or dead (or the same for her unborn children). If some event in the course of her pregnancy or birth would have made her ill, disabled or dead (or the same for her unborn children), it is possible that the normal system of care could save her and/or her children. I believe that our current system of care does not help those latter women (and their unborn children) more often than it hurts the former women (and their unborn children). I believe our normal system of care for pregnant women is not only shifting sickness, hurt and death from the ill to the well, it is adding illness, hurt and death to the entire group.
It may be possible to Do Nothing, to wait out the course of illness or hurt, allowing the body time to cure itself, supporting it of course in its ongoing basic needs for safety, food, water, clean air, rest and so forth. This can be a difficult change, requiring a leap of faith in the body and in ourselves, every bit as great as the leap of faith required by the laying on of hands, the acceptance of an injection, pill or powder, or the use of aromatherapy. It is worth trying, gradually, over time, because with the sureness that comes from the fulfillment of the expectations of faith comes a sense of our own power. From this power comes wellness and the ability to trust in our own judgment, to make our own decisions and the courage to get what we need every day, all day, not just when we have waited so long our bodies have in turn failed us as well.
When I took a pill and was told it would cure my headache and it did, I believed in pills, even after some of the pills gave me much worse headaches and made me very ill. When I tried to learn about those pills and understand why they gave me worse headaches and made me very ill, my body was blamed for being abnormal and I came to question my body. I was sick more and more often.
When I stopped taking pills for headaches (and other things) and listened to my body, it told me what I should not be doing. When I did not do those things, I felt less bad. It told me what I should be doing, and when I did those things, I felt better. Over time, I came to feel very good, a lot of the time.
Now I know that I am my body. I am very generous when I know from within my body what I need. I am very conservative when I am told from outside my body that I need something. When I came to share my body with another life, this conservativeness told me to listen to the experience of other women closely, to sift all advice carefully. This conservativeness told me to be very suspicious of blanket advice to take vitamins (pills I had already given up except on rare occasion) and to subject myself and my decisions to The Professionals (who had let me down so many times before, even when wonderful, compassionate, well-meaning and well-trained).
Much of my advice about pregnancy and childbirth comes from this personal history of choosing to Do Nothing, but rather to support myself with safety, food, water, clean air, rest, exercise and attention focused inward, rather than outward. I did not become who I am in a day, or a week, or a month or a year. I am who I am because of decades of personal experience. While I believe passionately that you should listen to your own body, I also believe that you should trust your own judgment. If my approach does not feel right to you, if my vision is not your own, you must choose the right path for you.
Copyright 2005 by Rebecca Allen
Created May 20, 2005 Updated June 1, 2005