Oregon State University wrote an article about research focusing on 100 different birth outcomes within hospitals, birthing centers and home births. This book puts highlights Oregon’s commitment to a healthy birth environment.
“Despite the U.S. spending more on maternity care than any other country – an estimated $110 billion each year – it has the worst outcomes among peer countries for mothers and babies.” Oregon State News reporter Molly Rosbach writes.
“We should not separate the outcomes of care from the experience of care,” Missy Cheyney said. “How we treat mothers matters as much as the clinical outcome, and we have lost track of that in some places.” Missy Cheyney is one of the books authors.
I remember thinking about the way the system is set up in the U.S. as far as seeing mothers after childbirth. It usually works that babies are brought in to be seen by a physician at six weeks postpartum. Is anyone asking to see the mom!! What about after a cesarean section? My cousins wife almost bled to death after her second c-section (no joke). If he wasn’t scared enough at home seeing his wife bleeding, she would be dead.
In my own experience seeing mother’s suffering from peri-natal mood disorders and having a question about breastfeeding with no place to find the answers. I really mean this. Her doctor pointed at a box of formula and shrugged, and the two ‘lactation consultants’ her family found were not certified and offered no solution. This is the birth of isolation to me. They reached out. They found no one to help them. They retreated.
I then watched this mother slip off the mental health cliff. She started to separate from her partner, and pull away from baby because she felt like a failure. Never mind the fact that drinking at night alone became her coping mechanism.
Not on my watch. I am here to offer more to the best of my ability. Our future demands a healthy community, one birth at a time.
