“Healing
Our Cesareans - Birth Renewal Workshop”
by: Claudia E. Villeneuve
Attending the Birth Renewal workshop with
Jamie Stouffer in Encinitas, California, the day before the
ICAN Conference of 2005 began, was meant to be an excuse
to hang out with fellow ICANers. Little did I know that the
workshop would affect me so deeply. In it we all had our
turn in the circle to tell our birth stories. Since my cesarean
had happened 7 years ago, and I already had had an awesome
home VBAC, had become a childbirth educator, and a doula,
I thought I was done healing from my cesarean. But the moment
I opened my mouth to describe the power object I had chosen
for the circle, I began to cry. The crying did not stop (I
am sobbing as I type this) until I finished talking. It seems
that my healing has only just started. My power object was
a piece of wood I found outside the hotel that very morning.
It was a sturdy piece of wood chip, nice and straight except
for a sharp kink in the middle. That was me. My life was
going “nice and straight” until my cesarean threw a kink
into it and threatened to derail it. Like the wood chip,
I am trying very hard to come back to the straight path.
The rest of the workshop helped me dig into other areas of
my healing that included my past and present generations.
In one exercise we closed our eyes and I imagined I was my
great-grandmother, and tried to guess how she ruled her life
and how she birthed her babies. It was eye-opening to go
through every generation until today, and into our own births.
Then we had to imagine we were our daughters and I thought
about how my daughter would remember me giving birth to her.
Tears rolled down my face as I realized that my efforts in
birth advocacy, for myself and for others, are meant to help
my daughter's future births. The healing that the workshop
unleashed has been painful at times (I had a stress attack
a few days afterwards) but as I come out of it, I decided
to hold my own Birth Renewals with the mothers in my family.
Just like Jamie Stouffer did at the workshop, and just like
the hotel staff at the conference did too, I will keep several
boxes of Kleenex tissues on hand to pass around just in case.
“Edmonton Chapter CAM 2005 project – Distribute
the Cesarean Booklet”
by: Claudia E. Villeneuve
When the Maternity Center Association,
MCA, issued their booklet on cesareans called “What Every
Pregnant Woman Needs to Know About Cesarean Section,” the
Edmonton VBAC Support Association/ICAN of Edmonton saw a
great opportunity to develop a project for Cesarean Awareness
Month 2005. In collaboration with a local childbirth support
group called ASAC, Association for Safe Alternatives in Childbirth,
they purchased enough copies of the booklet to distribute
one to every Obstetrician, Midwife, and a few family Doctors
in their city, along with a letter asking them to review
it and place it in their waiting rooms. The booklets were
marked with a sticker that read “Office Copy – Do no Remove” to
help them maintain the booklets within the office. Shannon
Beckett, Chapter Leader of ICAN of Edmonton, and Tracy Kennedy,
President of ASAC, see this project as an opportunity to
educate caregivers and consumers about cesareans. “In hospitals
today, informed consent is very difficult to achieve,” said
Tracy Kennedy, president of ASAC and an obstetrical nurse
herself. Shannon Beckett, chapter leader of ICAN of Edmonton,
says that: “a state of informed consent and also of informed
refusal regarding cesareans is possible if we make information,
like the MCA booklet, available to all pregnant women.”
The cesarean rate in Edmonton, Canada,
is reaching 25%, while the VBAC or vaginal birth after cesarean
attempt rate has dropped to below 39%. Compared to the United
Sates, the VBAC-backlash in Canada has only begun. In 2004,
the medical guidelines issued by the SOGC (Society of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists of Canada) were revised to mirror the ACOG
guidelines banning VBAC unless an immediate cesarean was
always available. In 2005, the Canadian guideline has been
changed to note that a ‘timely' cesarean must be available
which means that many hospitals and birth centers without
24-hour operating rooms could welcome VBAC again. But this
shift will require time and effort from Canadian birth advocates
and consumer organizations.
Both articles printed in the May
2005 issue of THE CLARION, published by International Cesarean
Awareness Network (ICAN).
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