Midwife charged in DC? Karen Carr, CPM...

[Anonymous]

14:45, did you have a baby in the NICU? I think officially of course the NICU does recognize it. But in reality, it is NOT always convenient for the nurses who will then push you to fall in line and be the good patient who doesn't rock the boat. They are the gatekeepers to your baby in the NICU. You are NOT in charge. They are. They tell you when you can be there, when and how you can you feed your baby, when you can hold your baby and for how long. It's an incredibly disempowering exeprience, especially if it was preceded by a traumatic birth experience, as many NICU parents have had.

[Anonymous]

to the 14:58--goosh. I am the 14:19 poster and my NICU experience was nothing like that. We were at Children's and the nurses still keep in touch with me 14 months later through emails, phone calls and visits. I am still amazed at the staff there.

Sorry for the diversion . . . back to Karen Carr.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most NICU's DO recognize the importance of kangaroo care. When I was pregnant, I made sure to research the NICU's as well as the OB care at the various hospitals. That is what most of us are talking about, doing your research so that you will be in a facility that you are happy with. There are many of them out there to choose from.

To the poster who said a doctor recommended formula for her baby because of concerns about NEC, I would like to know what hospital this occurred at. Pretty hard to believe, IMO. MOst babies being worked up for nec are NPO, and BM would be milk of choice when feedings were resumed.

VHC. I don't remember the doctors name (it was NOT Dr. Runkle....she was awesome). Keep in mind...not all the doctors were in agreement. The place was a mixed bag and I would say the good outweighed the bad. I think the private rooms helped a lot.

[Anonymous]

The "movement" does not blindly support Ms. Carr or any other unlicensed midwife. There is a small group of consumers (and a very few midwives) in the DC metro area who are opposed to licensing midwives as some kind of matter of very strange anti-government principle. Most midwives and midwifery clients support regulation and licensure, as is evidenced by the national coalition of midwives and consumers that is known as The Big Push for Midwives Campaign. Our state groups are working for regulation and licensure in most of the presently-unlicensed states and we expect to have a group of pro-regulation consumers from Maryland and DC to join in with us in the near future. We hope that the investigation and charges against Ms. Carr will wake up some of the formerly-anti-regulation minority to understand the vital importance for consumers in having a regulatory board, just like doctors and nurses and hospitals, that has jurisdiction over midwives and that requires all applicants for licensure to have passed the national board exam provided by the North American Registry of Midwives.
No one can protect consumers against a practitioner who refuses to be licensed, but it is irresponsible of state governments NOT to provide a regulatory mechanism so that consumers can not only know in advance the credentials and records of their midwives but have a government body to which complaints can be submitted. Check out our website at http://www.thebigpushformidwivs.org

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The "movement" does not blindly support Ms. Carr or any other unlicensed midwife. There is a small group of consumers (and a very few midwives) in the DC metro area who are opposed to licensing midwives as some kind of matter of very strange anti-government principle. Most midwives and midwifery clients support regulation and licensure, as is evidenced by the national coalition of midwives and consumers that is known as The Big Push for Midwives Campaign. Our state groups are working for regulation and licensure in most of the presently-unlicensed states and we expect to have a group of pro-regulation consumers from Maryland and DC to join in with us in the near future. We hope that the investigation and charges against Ms. Carr will wake up some of the formerly-anti-regulation minority to understand the vital importance for consumers in having a regulatory board, just like doctors and nurses and hospitals, that has jurisdiction over midwives and that requires all applicants for licensure to have passed the national board exam provided by the North American Registry of Midwives.
No one can protect consumers against a practitioner who refuses to be licensed, but it is irresponsible of state governments NOT to provide a regulatory mechanism so that consumers can not only know in advance the credentials and records of their midwives but have a government body to which complaints can be submitted. Check out our website at http://www.thebigpushformidwivs.org

THANK YOU! You need to speak up more in this thread because the midwifery movement has really not made a case for itself the way it argues for Carr. I'm not a home birth advocate. I think it's a wonderful thing but I cannot wrap my head around the benefits outweighing the risks of serious, time-sensitive, and very sudden complications. I much prefer investing my energy in fighting for what i want from within the hospital. But if your movement is more credible than its advocates have made it seem here, please be more vocal so that home birth seekers get the responsible care they're looking for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The "movement" does not blindly support Ms. Carr or any other unlicensed midwife. There is a small group of consumers (and a very few midwives) in the DC metro area who are opposed to licensing midwives as some kind of matter of very strange anti-government principle. Most midwives and midwifery clients support regulation and licensure, as is evidenced by the national coalition of midwives and consumers that is known as The Big Push for Midwives Campaign. Our state groups are working for regulation and licensure in most of the presently-unlicensed states and we expect to have a group of pro-regulation consumers from Maryland and DC to join in with us in the near future. We hope that the investigation and charges against Ms. Carr will wake up some of the formerly-anti-regulation minority to understand the vital importance for consumers in having a regulatory board, just like doctors and nurses and hospitals, that has jurisdiction over midwives and that requires all applicants for licensure to have passed the national board exam provided by the North American Registry of Midwives.
No one can protect consumers against a practitioner who refuses to be licensed, but it is irresponsible of state governments NOT to provide a regulatory mechanism so that consumers can not only know in advance the credentials and records of their midwives but have a government body to which complaints can be submitted. Check out our website at http://www.thebigpushformidwivs.org

I agree. There is no movement... there are families that have been served by Karen who have been treated very well by her and are horrified at her getting served. They want to offer support as she supported them through labor. I was served by Karen and asked her if she was scared to break the law. She said the laws were wrong. I choose to believe her stance is one of civil disobedience - I won't get in the back of the bus type of thing. I get it on some levels and don't on others. I used her services because she provided the care i could not get anywhere else. She broke the law. I knew she did and I knew she put her ass on the line to serve me. For that I am thankful and support her. I do not agree with her, but respect that it is her life to live.

I don't think there are but a very small handful of consumers and midwives who think not licensing is the right way to go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The "movement" does not blindly support Ms. Carr or any other unlicensed midwife. There is a small group of consumers (and a very few midwives) in the DC metro area who are opposed to licensing midwives as some kind of matter of very strange anti-government principle. Most midwives and midwifery clients support regulation and licensure, as is evidenced by the national coalition of midwives and consumers that is known as The Big Push for Midwives Campaign. Our state groups are working for regulation and licensure in most of the presently-unlicensed states and we expect to have a group of pro-regulation consumers from Maryland and DC to join in with us in the near future. We hope that the investigation and charges against Ms. Carr will wake up some of the formerly-anti-regulation minority to understand the vital importance for consumers in having a regulatory board, just like doctors and nurses and hospitals, that has jurisdiction over midwives and that requires all applicants for licensure to have passed the national board exam provided by the North American Registry of Midwives.
No one can protect consumers against a practitioner who refuses to be licensed, but it is irresponsible of state governments NOT to provide a regulatory mechanism so that consumers can not only know in advance the credentials and records of their midwives but have a government body to which complaints can be submitted. Check out our website at http://www.thebigpushformidwivs.org

I agree. There is no movement... there are families that have been served by Karen who have been treated very well by her and are horrified at her getting served. They want to offer support as she supported them through labor. I was served by Karen and asked her if she was scared to break the law. She said the laws were wrong. I choose to believe her stance is one of civil disobedience - I won't get in the back of the bus type of thing. I get it on some levels and don't on others. I used her services because she provided the care i could not get anywhere else. She broke the law. I knew she did and I knew she put her ass on the line to serve me. For that I am thankful and support her. I do not agree with her, but respect that it is her life to live.

I don't think there are but a very small handful of consumers and midwives who think not licensing is the right way to go.

She didn't put her ass on the line to serve YOU. She did it for her paycheck and personal dellusions of passionate grandeur. She'd fail to qualify for her license and so she "chooses" to protest it by breaking the law. She's NOT doing it FOR YOU. But I'm sure she LOVES that her customers think that way. Wherever the hell her passion comes from, it doesn't magically make her good at her job. How can you be so bent on supporting her competence when she's demonstrated she lacks it the second something doesn't go right? And how can you assert that she puts her ass on the line for ANYONE when she's elligedly told customers to LIE to doctors about drugs in their system so they wouldn't trace it back to HER obtaining/administering it illegally? She's no martyr. People who refused to ride the back of the bus and rode the freedom buses WENT TO JAIL. They didn't take plea bargains. HOLY CRAP.

[Anonymous]

Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, it doesn't have anything to do with going to jail or becoming a martyr.

The families want to support her because she supported them. The support has nothing to do with if she fucked up or not. I hope you receive love and support, like Karen is, when you fail.

You are welcome to believe whatever you want to about her motives. I choose to believe something else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, it doesn't have anything to do with going to jail or becoming a martyr.

The families want to support her because she supported them. The support has nothing to do with if she fucked up or not. I hope you receive love and support, like Karen is, when you fail.

You are welcome to believe whatever you want to about her motives. I choose to believe something else.

Oh, I think her motives are good. It's her skills I have serious reservations about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, it doesn't have anything to do with going to jail or becoming a martyr.

The families want to support her because she supported them. The support has nothing to do with if she fucked up or not. I hope you receive love and support, like Karen is, when you fail.

You are welcome to believe whatever you want to about her motives. I choose to believe something else.

Oh, I think her motives are good. It's her skills I have serious reservations about.

She is very experienced (the skills of birth workers have been debated elsewhere), but even very experienced professionals make mistakes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, it doesn't have anything to do with going to jail or becoming a martyr.

The families want to support her because she supported them. The support has nothing to do with if she fucked up or not. I hope you receive love and support, like Karen is, when you fail.

You are welcome to believe whatever you want to about her motives. I choose to believe something else.

Oh, I think her motives are good. It's her skills I have serious reservations about.

She is very experienced (the skills of birth workers have been debated elsewhere), but even very experienced professionals make mistakes.

Again "the skills of birth workers". Carr sucking at what she does has nothing to do with the general skills of the profession (though it does speak a little for its lack of standardization and regulation). Experienced professionals make mistakes, sure. Then they are investigated. If they REPEAT FATAL MISTAKES, they lose their right to practice - something Carr doesn't care about. Lack of a license with this record is starting to sound like a lunatic with a calling. I would hope that if my mistakes were not learned from (remember that she admitted to not knowing OR finding out what had been wrong with the infant who died of respitory distress on her watch), that anyone I'd supported would NOT blindly support my continuing to hurt people. What kind of logic is that? You're my friend so I'll let you keep hurting people because you're passionate about it? She can't handle complications yet she seeks those cases out. And I'm sorry but "civil disobedience" is nothing but a crime if you are not prepared to represent your cause by demonstrating what you claim to be "unfair consequences", such as going to jail. When you make a plea bargain, you're not longer "disobaying". So excuse me but her "cause" certainly hit a fricking brick wall when she suddenly had to be an example for it. Let's stop making a god out of this woman.

[Anonymous]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/20/midwife-charged-virginia-involuntary-manslaughter/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/20/midwife-charged-virginia-involuntary-manslaughter/

Yeah... and?

[Anonymous]

I saw a documentary last night on PBS about the Freedom Riders. At each stop on their tour south they were taunted, beaten, their bus was burned, a black church was surrounded and the national guard had to be called, Bobby Kennedy was on the phone with MLK Jr.

I think often someone's crime may seem to be a form or protest against the MAN, but come on. Karen Carr is a convicted criminal. She's killed at least one baby. She risks the lives of mothers and their babies for "her cause" not for anyone else's. She's really a pretty lousy martyr and saint.

[Anonymous]

I just keep coming back to the fact that NARM has not suspended her certificate subject to an investigation or otherwise acted to review her conduct (after being convicted of two felonies relating to her provision of care).

What does the "Big Push" matter when the CPM standard is such a joke? Why should we encourage licensing of people whose certification is laughable and subject to no meaning on-going review or professional education standards?