Terrifying Screenshots From Unassisted Childbirth Forums

Editorial Note: I love women and I want you to live. I personally think that good hospitals are the best place to deliver babies (and that the onus is on hospitals to be better places to give birth, a lot of these women are coming off really shitty hospital experiences), but if you do decide to give birth at home, which is 100% your choice, please hire a skilled attendant. In the US, that’s ideally a certified nurse-midwife, and please consider waiting until you’ve had an uncomplicated vaginal delivery in a hospital first. You can bleed out from a postpartum hemorrhage faster than you can imagine. And, PRETTY PLEASE, do not opt for an unassisted childbirth because you’ve risked out of your midwifery practice. That is a terrible idea. Be safe.

1. no this is not true, this is completely untrue, get the damn Rhogam shot:

2. go to the hospital now (she eventually did, she’s alive):

3. this one is not really scary other than this does not seem like someone who possesses the correct mindset to give birth without a medical professional:

4. a midwife you read a midwife you read said it was BASICALLY A 100% CURE FOR HEMORRHAGE it is not please do not do this and also that first part is not great:

5. if you had complications with BOTH your previous births and required assistance from your attendants AND YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF BLEEDING sweeeeeeet jesus please do not try this by yourself:

6. (faints)

7. OKAY okay guys if your water breaks do not put even your own clean fingers in your vagina and that is also way too many days and i do not know what the hell your alkaline diet is supposed to do to magically ward off infection from having your water broken for six days:

8. you cannot tell if your baby’s lungs are mature via intuition, and 34 weeks is definitely premature and you need to go to the hospital do not listen to this woman’s advice:

9. NOPE:

10. what kind of race to the bottom is this:

11. oh of course they don’t vaccinate:

12. WHY would you be surprised that it might be complicated to walk into a government office with an ELEVEN MONTH OLD BABY with no paperwork and get a birth certificate when you could have just jacked said baby from a stroller at the mall:

13. ….

14. (taps mic) gestational diabetes exists:

15. oh well then please do not get worried:

16. Okay. Literally every WORD of this is terrifying, this is something you need to go to the ER about way sooner than ten days after delivery, but it is also terrifying to think that some percentage of the women asking the horrifying questions and/or receiving the terrible advice I have highlighted in this post have made the decision to give birth unassisted because they cannot afford to go to the hospital, they cannot afford the couple grand it will cost for a homebirth midwife (often out-of-pocket), this is them making what seems like the only possible decision for their families.

That is not most of them, most of them are ideologically driven, and will tell you so, but as a nation, we should not have anyone asking a forum of self-educated mega-hippies what herbs they can take when they’re afraid they’ve retained placenta and can’t afford to go to the hospital to get checked out. And, to be fair, even this forum of self-educated mega-hippies told this woman it was time to go to the ER, money be damned, and she did.