Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
Or sheep in wolves' clothing?
Recently I met another mom who had a predictably similar experience to mine (residing in the same part of Maine) where her pregnancy was hijacked by an over-medicalized midwife and her home birth almost sabotaged when she didn’t meet said midwife’s “requirements”. She transferred to a more supportive midwife just before she reached 42 weeks and then gave birth, at home, with no complications.
She was abandoned in support by the same midwife I ended care with. And she was warmly accepted by the same midwife who was there during the birth of our daughter. Now I’m sure the state of Maine (the smallest town there ever was) is full of expecting mamas who are catching on to this local medical-midwife’s MO. She pays a lot of lip service to women’s autonomy while simultaneously pressuring women into screenings or scenarios by hanging their much-desired birth of a healthy baby over their heads.
Unfortunately, she’s not unique. If there’s one thing I get rant-y about, it’s the particular sinister-ness of home birth midwives who don’t actually trust the female body to birth. Or who are subservient to state licensure over client privilege, bodily autonomy, and a mother’s right to choose.
Whether they are self-aware enough to admit this in closed rooms, I’m not sure. Maybe they really believe that the only two existing options are a medicalized birth or a less-medicalized birth. I don’t know too many home birth midwives, at least in Maine, honoring personal responsibility and serving up a truly autonomous experience.
The reason I find this particularly gross is because their “brand” - their website mission statements, their social media cries, their elevator pitches - are often (always?) centered around women’s “empowerment”, “natural” birth, and bodily “autonomy”.
(Note: There ain’t nothin’ natural, empowering , or autonomous about jabbing a woman with ptosin without consent, transferring her to a hospital against her wishes, or scaring her into screening procedures with threats of a stillborn baby. And yet, these are the stories we hear from women with home birth midwives. Every. single. Day.)
I won’t get on too much here because I already covered this pretty extensively in my essay, The Birth Saviors.
If you’re a woman seeking out a hospital birth and an OB, at least you can pretty much assume (I hope) that you’re going to be prodded this way and that way, like a cattle, to this required test or that required protocol (required by insurance and “hospital policy”). You’re likely going to face a little bit of condescension by a male doctor. You’re going to be in an environment completely outside of your control. You’re probably going to have to fight for information. And you’re definitely going to be coerced into this or that intervention that will protect the OB’s liability.
We (hopefully) know this.
But I think many less women know the risk they’re taking on when interacting with licensed midwives.
It hit me, recently, that this same phenomena is what has me so fired up about the “alternative medicine” community in the post-covid world.
Before the pandemic, I had a few guides or teachers (not idols, not quite mentors, but people that inspired me) that I turned to when orienting where I was steering my ship in my practice of natural medicine.
They generally seemed unafraid to go against the grain - to speak out on the injustices of gaslighting women by dismissing their symptoms or of the harm done by popping a pill instead of addressing the underlying imbalances.
They preach the wisdom of ancestral medicine and the medicine of indigenous cultures. They hold themselves out as the “alternative” to the “western medical route”, doing “less harm” and just generally champions for health.
But when it comes to the issues that are hidden in plain sight - the issues that have been politicized - the issues that are controversial - the issues that are undeniably going to get them some raised eyebrows or online mob cancellations…
They are silent.
At first I would justify this to myself in my head. “Okay, that woman built her business from the ground up. Why should she ruin it with one opinion? Why should she be responsible to spread the truth if so many people are not willing to listen?”
And yet it bothered me, as someone who’s always been righteously committed to truth over comfort. The opinions of these teachers on health would have mattered to me, as I’m sure they would matter to many. They are trusted. People turn to them for guidance. Is offering guidance not, then, their responsibility?
If your health practitioner is silent on the issues of health facing us today - issues they undoubtedly have an opinion on - because those issues may be emotionally or politically charged -
The fact is they care more about their personal brand, wealth, and success, than they do or ever did about the health and happiness of their clients.
If a health practitioner knows more about a disease, side effect, or intervention than you do, and they withhold that information for fear that their audience will meet them with some degree of angst or opposition, they are not in service to you and to your health.
If your health guru is suspiciously unopinionated on the health crises hitting the headlines. If they are obviously talking about anything other than the medical interventions and diseases plastered across every television screen. If they’re just in business as usual mode -
They are implicit in the harm that is done from a lack of information.
Let me repeat: they do not care about the health and wellness of their audience, or clients, as much as they care about their positive optics, social credit score, or money.
If you are not going to speak on the topics that are so obviously at hand, at least do not fall into the same trappings of the medicalized midwife. At least do not regurgitate the wisdom of indigenous traditional medicine. At least do not pretend to champion women’s health. At least do not hold yourself out as the alternative.
What comes to mind, actually, is not a wolf in sheep’s clothing in this scenario: it’s a sheep in wolf’s clothing, pretending to step outside of the status quo, but really offering up some non-controversial allopathy disguised as a “natural alternative”. More of the same, served a different way.
These Instagram health celebrities are not the alternative, in that case. They’re a watered-down, derivative, shallow pool of Reels and podcast episodes about “health”. Willing to push their audience outside of the “norm” when it comes to wellness - but not too far.
If your opinions align with modern medicine over alternative medicine, for goodness sake, let them be heard. Let your audience see you. Let the truth be known!
And if they don’t align with the majority vote, with the socially acceptable narratives, let that be known too.
If you are a champion of women’s health, champion their health.
I recently heard Emilee Saldeya of Free Birth Society quote, “Consciousness requires commitment to truth.”
So take note of the conspicuously silent. Take note of the business-as-usual….. The ones who have an opinion on everything, except not that one thing. The glaring omissions. The ones speaking their truth .. but not all of it.
As the physical health of our world grows increasingly more concerning, with a greater burden placed on each consecutive generation to resolve the problems created by the ones who came before (with less and less likelihood that they will succeed in doing so), History will not shine positively on those who were silent. Who leaned into natural medicine when it was flowery, herbal, trendy, and uncontroversial, but not when it mattered most.