A mom who decided to take her labor into her own hands is now being slammed online for not keeping her baby safe. The California mom, who is referred to as Lisa to protect her privacy, delivered her baby after six painful days of labor, but unfortunately for her, the baby was stillborn. Lisa is a "Free Birth" mother, meaning that she didn't use any medical intervention in her labor. Now, Lisa's story has sparked outrage online and some even calling her a new name: "Baby killer."
Lisa was a member of the Free Birth Society, an online group that encourages women to give birth without medical intervention.
According to the Facebook group, the Free Birth Society is "a movement of women reclaiming their autonomy during pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood." Woman are encouraged to take "responsibility for her pregnancy and birthing experience." But in this case, that meant that Lisa and her husband had committed themselves to laboring alone for six days, completely off the grid, in their home in the California dessert before Lisa was ultimately rushed to the hospital from severe complications related to the birth.
The 29-year-old mom spoke with Daily Beast and explained that from the moment that she became pregnant she knew she wanted to have a home birth. Her desire only intensified once she found the Free Birth Society and was sure that laboring with just her husband, away from the "harsh hospital lighting and strangers’ gloved hands" was the best best thing she could do. She said that they felt excited and powerful over the thought of delivering their own baby.
On October 2, Lisa started to have irregular contractions, which lasted all through the night, but then suddenly stopped in the morning. Her contractions picked up again on October 4 at midnight and didn't stop throughout the next day. Lisa said that the pain was so intense and they happened so frequently that she almost couldn't breathe.
“Been in labor for days,” the mom wrote on the Free Birth Society Facebook page. (The mom had decided to document her experience for the other 12,000 members of the group.) "Thought I was in transition at 11:30pm but nows its 3am and it’s intensely painful…like I just want to lie down and for the pain to stop for just a second.”
It took another three days before Lisa's water actually broke. When she woke up and got out of bed, she found smelly, odd-colored liquid streaming down her legs. Her stomach was aching and her bladder was distended from being unable to urinate for days. It was becoming painfully clear that Lisa was in real medical danger, and despite her intentions, she knew it was time to go to the hospital and get help.
When Lisa got to the hospital, doctors immediately admitted her and used a doppler to check the baby's heartbeat: It was silent.
Lisa says she remember's her husband mouthing to her "it's okay" and doctors told her to push. She did as they told her to and pushed for three hours with no success. Her doctor came back with a vacuum and told her to push again; they then used anesthesia to knock her out.
She said that it was hard to remember what happened after that point. “When I woke up I was covered in blood and so was everyone else,” she said. “And it was so quiet in there.”
Lisa's baby, whom they named Journey Moon, was stillborn. But even after Journey's birth, Lisa kept her baby by her side, singing to her, taking pictures of her, and telling her what her life would have been like.
According to The Metro, Lisa wrote on Facebook that "Journey Moon was born a sleeping angel on Oct. 7 at 8 lbs 13 oz. She passed due to a massive urinary tract infection I had… I’m laying in the hospital writing this and get to go home tomorrow. We will be having Journey cremated."
“Life is made up of meetings and partings; that is the way of it,” she added. “I am sure we shall never forget Journey Moon, or this first parting that there was among us.”
But Lisa didn't know that there were moles in the group who created "sock puppet" accounts to criticize the movement.
Sock puppets are accounts made to deceive other members of an Internet community. And in this case, the puppets were taking screen grabs of Lisa's updates and spreading them in their own communities online because they felt that Free Birth mothers were putting their babies in danger. The Daily Beast noted that the accounts were often critical of Lisa and of Emilee Saldaya, who created the FBS Facebook group and who many believed gave Lisa advice that led to Journey's death.
The comments divulged into hateful trolling, and some people even took it a step farther and messaged Lisa, calling her horrible names and telling her they hoped she would die. On her personal Facebook wall they posted memes with the words "baby killer" on them and commented on messages from Lisa's family and friends who had been trying to send their condolences.
“What should have been a time of grieving and mourning alone with my family was now a time of defending myself from evil people and their horrible words,” Lisa said.
“I could spend hours defending myself and family, but I feel like these are people who will never admit to being wrong. They will always fight you even dirtier than before," she added.
The backlash against Lisa's birth has caused the Free Birth Society to close some of its accounts, though members say that they will continue in private.
In a statement written by Emilee Saldaya on October 22, she explained that the Free Birth Society would be closing its groups on November 4.
She also tried to clarify some of the misinformation being circulated about her involvement in Lisa's labor.
"In the past two weeks, the grieving mother and myself have been harassed endlessly," she said. "I have received hundreds of death threats. Posts and private messages calling for my murder, my jailing, and for my family to be harmed, have come streaming in, and other administrators of Free Birth Society have also been targeted."
But despite the chaos, Emilee said members will continue their group in private, through a mailing list, while their business page will stay public.
And even though it's been three weeks since Journey's death, Lisa still believes in the movement. Although she admits that next time she would like to labor "less naturally" she does believe women should have the right to chose how they give birth.
“My body is fully capable of birth. I was created to birth. I can and will birth again,” she wrote to the Daily Beast in an email. “I will conceive again and birth again and the outcome will be different. I believe that.”
