Throughout my pregnancy I faced a unique set of challenges. For some women, pregnancy brings morning sickness, taste aversion, medical difficulties, bed rest and so on. During my pregnancy I faced the challenge of being a natural health lover in a modern medical world. You see, my husband and I believe that, much of modern medicine is not in fact better. We believe in looking back towards our roots, to those things that God gave us to us for our health and wellness. Call us hippies, tree huggers, natural health nuts, whatever it is you want to call us, we love the way we live.
When we found out I was pregnant with my first child we were thrilled, albeit suprised. When it came time to pick a doctor we were a little concerned as we don’t really have doctors ourselves. For the most part, we choose to practice natural healing remedies and health maintenance practices. While we do have insurance we choose not to use it as our primary care physician knows only modern medicine. After receiving a list of obstetricians in our area, we quickly realized that, any obstetrician our insurance would pay for was not going to understand, nor have knowledge of our natural health practices. We ended up choosing a younger doctor as we thought she might have received a more rounded education, as that tends to be the general direction of education.
To put it bluntly, we were wrong. It became very apparent after the very first visit that the doctor knew nothing about natural medicine and in fact viewed it as dangerous. For most doctors, I think that natural medicine is viewed as ineffective or dangerous because they do not understand it, it intimidates them. Also, lets face it, there is no motivation to understand natural medicine better because the pharmaceutical industry pads their paychecks. Doctors wont make as much money if people start healing themselves and maintaining a higher level of health.
Throughout my appointments there was always a question directed towards me regarding what I was doing to my baby by following these principles. When it came to our diet, the nutritionist warned of the dangers of my choices (apparently she had never heard of eating nuts raw before). There was always questions directed towards me about how I was harming my baby and that I should stop immediately and follow what ‘they know’ to be best.
I am thankful that throughout the duration of my pregnancy I remained knowledgable about my choices. This gave me the strength to look the medical professionals in the face and say I think you wrong. They would point out their track record with healthy babies, which was fine, no arguing that they have a high success rate. To me, having a baby born healthy and alive wasn’t everything. I wanted to know that my baby was born as healthy as she could be, and I couldn’t follow guidelines and recommendations I knew were wrong for me and my baby. The key here was that, what is right for one mom may not be right for me. I felt like as long as I knew what I was doing we would both be okay.
Long before the modern medical profession took over the birth process women used to deliver healthy babies, in their homes, they used natural medicine practices and lived a more organic lifestyle. If anything, there is more ‘research’ behind my choices to have a natural preganncy than that supporting the modern medical profession.
Against my better judgment I decided to deliver in the hospital instead of in a natural birthing center or somewhere similar. There was, on my part, a certain fear that I may not be able to delivery the baby due to size. I had been warned of how big my baby would be. This by the way is the result of modern medicine, women are taught to believe that they are not capable of delivering their baby. In fact, women are taught that they are weak, and need modern medicine to survive. In this respect, I lost the battle to the modern medical world and became doubtful of my innate God given ability.
I will save you all the blood and gore of a 24 hour delivery. Suffice it to say, there was entirely too much modern medicine involved, some of which endangered our baby for a period of time and had to be counteracted. By the time I had to push I was so doped up and full of over five bags of iv fluids I could barely think straight. Throughout my labor I had told every nurse that saw me that my daughter was not to be given any shots at birth, nor were they to put antibiotic ointment in her eyes, or anywhere else on her body. My doctor had been notified of these wishes for three consecutive months, as had my daughters future pediatrician.
The time was 11:00 am the doctor was there and it was time to push. I reminded them once again of my wishes. My husband gave the nurses colloidal silver for my daughters eyes and the drama began. An argument broke out in the delivery room. The doctor accussed us of wanting to give our daughter crack. We started being told that they were not going to use the colloidial silver and could not allow us to use it either. My daughter was only moments from being born and we were being accused of trying to give her drugs? I remember thinking that maybe the drugs were making me hallucinate. My husband had to step in and reminded them that she was our daughter and we had the legal right to choose. To which they stated that he was right. Ha! I thought, we had won. The modern medical profession will do anything to persuade you to follow what they are taught, even lie. Threats of calling cps had been thrown out as well as warnings that our daughter might be blind and dumb if they didn’t give her the antibiotics.
My daughter was born a few moments later and I remember thinking how unsafe the delivery room felt. I was petrified for them to take her from me and demanded my husband stay by her side to make sure they didn’t try anything sneaky. Before the doctor left she apologized for the way she acted and of course presented some excuse. I am not the type to start a scene so I accepted her apology and thanked her.
Once the nurses had cleared out of the room it was just the three of us. I suddenly felt relaxed, the threat was finally gone and we were free to be our natural selves. There our little girl was healthy, perfectly plump and a beautiful 8lbs 7 oz’s of raw, organic, whole food, natural goodness. Any parent knows that when you hold your child those first few times there is an incredible sense of pride that surges through you. I would like to thank all of those doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and office staff for every unnecessary, uneducated comment, in they end they only made me feel twice as good of our accomplishment. We stood up to the modern medical giant and won. There was our little girl shinning her bright baby blues, a lifelong reminder to always stick up for what we believe in.
Update: Just to provide a little update about how she has developed since her. She has consistently hit every milestone early. Her doctor is amazed at her verbal development, problem solving skills and muscle tone and development. She is bright, beautiful, and healthy. We can’t wait to see how she continues to grow and learn.
