If Your Midwives Are Advocating Anti-Vaxx Nonsense, Time To Find A New Birth Team

confused-coupleA soon-to-be-father wrote in to Dear Prudence this week with a dilemma. It has come to his attention that the midwives tending to his pregnant wife are anti-vaxxers, and they have started shaming her for her plans to vaccinate their baby. My advice would be “run.” Prudence agrees.

He explains that the midwives shamed him and his wife for 30 minutes on a home visit when they found out the couple would be vaccinating. One went as far as to say they weren’t “considering the safety and health of [their] child. He says the point of the homebirth was for his wife to be relaxed, and that this judgment was having the opposite effect.

Yeah. I’m not trusting the judgment of a midwife who is anti-vaxx. Sorry. Next.

Prudence gives some very sane advice. She says the couple shouldn’t have to worry about having “one of the happiest times in [their] lives ruined by misinformed bullies.” Totally agree. I had a similar experience with my midwives. It’s disturbing when those who advocate drug free birth also go as far as to advocate no drugs, period — including vaccines.

Admittedly, my midwives didn’t go that far, but they did question the benefit of allowing doctors to administer the Vitamin K shot — given to newborns because they are born with very little of it and it helps the blood clot. They gave me some literature from some quack website. I ignored their concerns. But then they sent me to a chiropractor that they said was “the best” pregnancy chiropractor around.

She was amazing. My sciatic pain vanished almost immediately after my first visit and my body just felt better. Until visit number three. That’s when she started preaching her anti-vaccination stance, when I was a captive audience on her adjusting table. I didn’t want to open my mouth, because I knew it wouldn’t end well and honestly I just wanted her to finish my amazing adjustment. But she wouldn’t stop talking and my nerves were on edge. I couldn’t ignore the nonsense coming out of her mouth:

Kids will build up a natural immunity! Kids don’t die of measles anymore. They will get a little sick and get through it. Neither of my kids are vaccinated and they are perfectly healthy.

Ugh. Thanks for your nonsense singular anecdote of your perfectly healthy unvaccinated children. Then she drops this bomb:

I attend births to help stalled labors and my daughter comes with me. She loves having a front-row seat at a birth!

Come again, lady? You take your unvaccinated child into a delivery room? I tell her I think what she’s doing is criminal and that I am super sad she has access to so many pregnant women and spreads so much misinformation when she has them captive on her adjusting table. She is absolutely floored that I don’t agree with her. Pregnant women have enough to stress out about without having to navigate the horrible advice of someone they probably trust.

I tell my midwives about it at our next appointment, and they act like it’s no big whoop that they are sending pregnant women to a health professional who advocates not vaccinating children. When they say nothing about her being totally wrong — I assume they have the same beliefs. Woah. They weren’t delivering my child, they were only giving me prenatal care. I was already ready to pop at 40 weeks pregnant– so I didn’t leave their practice or anything. But I was really shocked.

If your “birth professional” is advocating nonsense, probably time to find a new one.

(photo: wavebreakmedia/ Shutterstock)

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