That Freebirthing Woman Who Just Let Her Twins Die in the Forest...

...will be punished.

“How do you feel about that woman [who freebirthed] her twins in the forest, [with no knowledge of being pregnant with] twins, since she never had scans to begin with, just to let them die??”

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This is, believe it or not, a question I recently received from someone on social media.

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Just to let them die.

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Let’s allow that line to marinate for a moment, shall we?

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This is actually what I believe a real person—a mother, no less—wrote to me.

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First of all, for the record, I had not heard the news (until today) that somewhere in the world a woman gave birth to twins in a forest, and that her babies subsequently (or perhaps prior to birth) died.

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I hadn’t, believe it or not, encountered that little tidbit of information, in a world full of supposedly billions of people who are constantly dying at various ages. Contrary to what some might think, I am not actually notified whenever a freebirth-related tragedy occurs.

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And no, I will not be trotting off to look up the prurient publicized details of a grieving mother’s private experience of devastating loss, either.

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I can, however, just imagine exactly the kinds of comments she is likely receiving from the drooling multitudes, because despite the fact that (thank God) all my children are alive and well, I too frequently have hateful numbskulls inform me of how reckless, irresponsible, disgusting, and delinquent they think I am, an opinion that is delivered with a kind of frothing anticipation suggestive of the hope that one of my future children will die, and I’ll finally get the comeuppance I deserve.

But I digress. Back to the question of How I “feel” about a third-hand piece of gossip pertaining to a woman I do not know personally, in some faraway land whose child (or children) recently died…

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I mean…what kind of question is that, really?

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Among other things—in addition to being shockingly small-minded, merciless, and unkind (to say the least)— I suspect it’s the kind of question that hearkens to another related category of pathetic, baseless gossip, which is the “story” that because I speak about my personal experiences in birth, and because I share my personal perspectives on birth, and because I have written a book about birth and offer courses and programs in which I discuss my philosophy of, and approach to birth, and because, apparently, some women have chosen to emulate or idolize or mimic me (so I am told—though I prefer to give women more credit for self-ownership and basic intelligence, perhaps to my detriment), that I am somehow therefore “responsible” for the choices other women—women on the other side of the world, women whom I’ve never met— make, including the choice to give birth to their babies at home, or in forests, or in canoes, or swimming with dolphins.

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Which, of course, is preposterous to any reasonable thinking person.

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But let’s assume, for a moment, that I am, in some imaginary alternate realm of sheer delusion, personally responsible for Betty Jones of Michigan’s freebirth choice (let alone the outcome).

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Who, then, is “responsible” when babies die in hospitals?

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Oh, are those *crickets* I hear?

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No, I had not heard (until now) that a woman just “let her babies die” in the woods somewhere in the world.

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But I did hear, just last week, directly from the devastated mother herself (because I regularly work closely with women who are experiencing loss and birth-related traumas of various kinds) that her baby was recently born via the doctor-recommended c-section, after a pregnancy in which she followed ALL of her obstetrician’s orders.

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Like every Good Mother who does what she’s told to do by the experts, this woman remained in the hospital postpartum, of course (caesarean section is major surgery after all) and two days after her baby came into the world—seemingly the picture of robust health—the child mysteriously died. Sometimes these things “just happen,” she was told by the doctors and nurses. Which, of course, is very true.

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Although I have only personally experienced loss at a relatively early stage during my pregnancies (I’ve had 3 miscarriages, two at 10 weeks and one at 14 weeks) I am VERY confident that my suspicions are true, that anytime a mother’s baby dies, in whatever context or location or institution (or forest), that mother will be heartbroken, grief-stricken, and in need of empathy, solidarity, love, and compassion—as opposed to judgement or condemnation.

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I am also very confident that the mother whose baby died in the hospital, probably isn’t hearing from many people who are suggesting that by showing up at the hospital and submitting herself to a scalpel, and by having her baby extracted from her body by a licensed and qualified doctor, she just let her baby die.

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Of course not. Such a response would be beyond cruel—not to mention preposterous.

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No. That mother (and so many grieving mothers like her—the compliant, obedient ones) certainly will not likely receive the kind of treatment that women who dare to give birth outside the system do, when they experience loss.

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Women whose babies die in the hospital don’t tend to get reported to the police for negligence, or for failing to seek “adequate” medical care, do they?

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They don’t get told that they’re reckless and stupid, do they?

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They don’t have strangers blaming them for their child’s death, and questioning whether or not they even loved that child in the first place, do they?

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No, the acquiescent mothers get abused and gaslit in a very different manner. They get told that inevitably, without question, the doctors did absolutely everything they could; that by definition, they exhausted every option, and that the proof that their baby was simply destined to die, was the very fact that their death occurred on the hallowed grounds of the medical institution, which is, irrefutably, the most objectively “safe” place on earth—despite the fact that based on their own statistics—statistics gathered and admitted to by the medical “community” itself, over 250000 iatrogenic deaths occur every year in the US alone. (This is according to a study done by Johns Hopkins university, although other researchers suggesting that number may be far far higher—and we can assume, therefore that iatrogenic harm, might be exponentially higher than that.)

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Most women whose babies die in hospitals don’t even question the idea that their babies’ demise was unavoidable. After all, social approval and guaranteed moral impunity in exchange for compliance and conformity are the primary means by which the medical industrial complex exerts control, garners submission, and maintains its power.

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But woe betide the grieving mother whose baby dies in the hospital and who dares to hesitate, to question, or to voice aloud her instinctive sense that maybe, just maybe, the medications, the injections, or the treatments that her precious child was subjected to during his birth or immediately after —or the decisions imposed on her by her almighty obstetrician—were anything other than necessary, optimal, and even divinely appointed.
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If she does voice any dissent or distrust, or doubt, she will likely be told with dripping condescension, that it’s the just the “trauma” talking, or that she’s suffering from “postpartum depression.” She may be offered medication, or counselling by a therapist who will help her to re-frame her wrongthink.

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How do I know this? Because these women are my clients. These are the women who come to me to share their stories in a space where they will actually receive validation, understanding, coaching, and support. These are the women who join my private network, populated by other women who have also woken up to the intrinsic coerciveness, manipulation, exploitation, and abuse within the system.

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As I have been repeating ad nauseam for over twenty years, there is no risk-free option. Sometimes babies die, in hospitals, in homes. Sometimes babies die even when their mothers follow all the rules. And sometimes babies die during homebitrhs and freebirths. Stillbirth and infant death occurs in ever context. There is no amount of technology or surveillance that have solved the “problem” of death, and the greatest taboo—maybe the most forbidden of all perspectives, is the acceptance and embrace of the spontaneous process of life and death.

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One of the most common themes I encounter among women whose babies were either born still at home or whose babies died soon after birth (at home), is