#2980: Barbara Harper

Water-birthing, the practice of delivering a baby into a body of water, even a putatively sterile one, is inherently risky and has no benefits for anything whatsoever, something that is pretty obvious even to people with little medical experience. The practice has nevertheless had a run as a woo fad, because of course it has. There is a decent discussion of the practice here.

 

An influential and thoroughly woo-infused resource for the practice of waterbirthing is something called Waterbirth International, which is run by Barbara Harper, a nurse who is also a proponent of rebirthing-breathwork., the idea that suppressed negative emotions can be healed by ‘reliving one’s birth’ while … breathing. Harper and Waterbirth International apparently promote waterbirthing all over the world with plenty of incoherent New Age fluff (including, apparently, something about your cells having feelings) centered on the desire for a drug-free childbirth based on a fallacious appeal to nature; you don’t need to ask her what definition of ‘natural’ makes waterbirthing natural. And her response to reluctance from actual MDs and people who know things about medicine (and risk) is entirely predictable: the backlash is a result of the fact that with a waterbirth “you as the attending physician pretty much have to stand there with your hands in your pockets and let it happen without your participation. That is pretty scary to a physician-oriented institution.” She doesn’t address concerns referring to risks. She does, however, express some rather striking and frightening misconceptions about human physiology and childbirth.

 

In fact, there is some research on the practice, which also summarizes the existing evidence of benefits – which is precisely what you’d expect: “most published articles that recommend underwater births are retrospective reviews of a single center experience, observational studies using historical controls, or personal opinions and testimonials, often in publications that are not peer reviewed”. There is, as the study obviously has to point out, also a stark absence of basic science to support the proposed physiologic benefits.

 

Diagnosis: In fairness, complications from waterbirthing are probably relatively rare if conducted in the presence of a medical professional. Harper might, as such, not be more than a moderate danger to her environment. But her misconceptions and woo are certainly not benign.

 

Hat-tip: Clay Jones @ Sciencebasedmedicine