Translated material
Women giving birth to money
00:00, June 24, 2008
Six died, two were disabled
In St. Petersburg, the leaders of the Center for Parental Culture “Kolybelka” have been on trial for 10 months. Alexey and Elena Ermakov, without higher medical education, spent almost 15 years consulting expectant mothers, giving them lectures and supposedly preparing them for childbirth, and then delivering the same births – at home. As a result, 6 newborns died, two children became disabled.
“They offered to simply bury my dead child.” They said that other parents already have places in the woods or on the site where they can come to their children,” says Olga Vasilyeva.
Her boy was stillborn, with a broken neck and a traumatic brain injury. Then the examination showed that if the Ermakovs had performed a caesarean section on time, the baby would have been alive and well. But advocates of home births separate themselves from “bad” maternity hospitals - they allegedly perform “unnecessary” CS to double the cost of childbirth, do “harmful” ultrasounds and stuff them with medications for no reason.
“I’ve attended 500 births at home and haven’t stuck a single syringe,” says Alexander Naumov, a pioneer of home births in the capital. “I had three deaths, none of them were my fault. But the Ermakovs attended 1,500 births, and here are only six cases. This is a good statistic, and there is waste in any production.
The Ermakovs perceived dead babies exactly like that – as “waste.” Women were taken to the maternity hospital only in a dying state - they did not want to lose the $1,000 fee for childbirth. Expectant mother Katya S. was forced to give birth to a stillborn child for a week.
“Ermakova dragged her to the bathhouse, to the pool, and kept her in her apartment,” says Katya’s friend. “The waters were already flowing brown because the baby had begun to decompose in his stomach. And when Ermakova vomited from their smell, Katya was taken to the maternity hospital and simply abandoned in the emergency room.
Partners and competitors
In Moscow, there are at least 50 offices similar to “Kolybelka”. The scheme of work and preparation for childbirth is the same - under the guise of parenting schools, courses for pregnant women. Lectures, instructions, breathing exercises, swimming pool, yoga - all this is money, on average 20-30 thousand rubles per course. And latently, future parents are instilled with horror of maternity hospitals, setting them up for another paid service - home birth for 2-3 thousand dollars. Private owners in the capital perform about 1,000 such operations annually. And they have no less “waste” than St. Petersburg residents.
– I became pregnant in 2005. – Tatyana lost her child in a home birth. – I went to parenting courses at one of the schools. My husband and I were constantly convinced there that maternity hospitals were not needed. They played videos of hospital births, saying, look how much negligence and mistakes there are.
Tanya made a mistake: she stayed at home to give birth. In agony, without anesthesia, two days later she gave birth to the corpse of her son.
In parent schools, these tragedies are called lies and provocation on the part of doctors. Doctors are really categorical in their attitude.
“Home birth is definitely dangerous,” comments the chief neonatologist of Russia, Elena Baibarina. “I was invited to participate in such undertakings, but I always refused, because if something happened, even I with my qualifications would not be able to help without hospital equipment. Fans of home births cite the example of Holland, where the majority actually give birth at home. But there is always an intensive care car on duty outside the windows; in five minutes, if anything happens, the woman will be taken to the maternity hospital. In India, where 90% of women give birth at home, they envy us that we give birth in maternity hospitals. Because out of 100,000 of them, 1,000 babies die during childbirth. And we have 20.
But these are dry numbers. Doctors don’t talk about the fact that almost every unhappy mother goes to a private midwife straight from the antenatal clinic, with her “boorish and disregardful attitude.” And the promotion of home births begins with stories on forums about equally terrible and real cases of children dying in maternity hospitals. Actually, “black” obstetrics is the flesh and blood of people in white coats.
Moreover, many home midwives officially work in maternity hospitals, and their superiors, loudly condemning their way of earning extra money, turn a blind eye to this.
Wallet instead of life
This, to put it mildly, is cunning and allows “spiritual” obstetricians to flourish. And it is virtually impossible to prosecute them for the deaths of infants. For almost a year in court they have been unable to prove that the Ermakovs were engaged in medical activities - this is not written down anywhere.
“After all, they worked without any documents, and now they claim that they just have a club of interests,” says Olga Vasilyeva. – They provided only psychological assistance. And we came to the birth by chance - we were passing by. Fortunately, they cannot deny their presence, because they themselves made video recordings, which were later found by operatives.
Most “spiritual” midwives simply do not exist on film or paper.
“Any medical activity in our country requires licensing,” explains Roszdravnadzor representative Viktor Kniga. – But a private clinic, for example, can obtain a license from us. But home midwives do not have the right to do this by law. The legislation probably needs to be changed, but we haven’t done that yet.
That is, home obstetricians, even if they wanted, could not become legal. Although so far they have not had such a desire.
“It’s necessary to rub shoulders with official medicine, but we don’t want to be friends with doctors,” says home obstetrician Alexander Naumov.
Doctors also don’t want licensing. After all, then private clinics will legally take on maternity hospital patients.
“Here the interests of state medicine and this wild business collide,” says the head of the League of Patient Defenders, Alexander Saversky. “There is a war going on for the money that obstetrics provides.
And in this war, women and children become victims. And for some reason, law enforcement agencies hardly interfere in it.
The same Ermakovs, despite the lawsuit, continue to work. The center has not been closed, home births are accepted - although without video recording. And hundreds of “black” obstetricians continue to work uncontrollably. And a pregnant woman remains a tender, which illegal immigrants and maternity hospitals are trying to win back from each other by any means. After all, losing her life costs nothing to anyone.