Philosophy of Birth
Natural childbirth is best and safest….and possible with proper education and support.
Natural childbirth is God’s design, and it works!
God gives strength and grace for birth and parenting.
The Fall has left us with imperfect bodies, and the occaisional need for medical intervention.
Life-saving medical intervention is an essential moral responsibility.
Breastfeeding is God’s perfect design.
The Complete
Philosophy of Birth
We believe in natural birth as the best, safest and most efficient mode of delivery for the vast majority of babies and mothers. We believe that the vast majority of women are fully capable of giving birth naturally, normally, and joyfully if given proper education, strong emotional support and allowed to labor and give birth spontaneously. To these ends, we advocate the excellent preparation of expectant parents via comprehensive, consumer-oriented, natural childbirth classes. We further encourage parents to seek out and assemble a birth team who supports these views.
We believe that God in His infinite wisdom designed a woman’s body for giving birth in a timely and safe manner, and that in the majority of cases physical intervention is unnecessary and perhaps even detrimental.
We believe the role, importance and power of faith and prayer in the birth process. We believe that God’s grace is sufficient for pregnancy and birth, and that His timing and design are superior to anything man might contrive.
We believe that man’s fall from grace has left us with imperfections in our humanness which may in a small percentage of cases indicate a need for physical and/or medical intervention in a birth. We believe that God’s authority is supreme and that medical personnel are His gifted servants, sometimes called upon to function as His hands to save the life of a mother and/or baby.
We believe that all those in attendance at a birth have an essential moral and ethical obligation to intervene physically to the best of their training and abilities when necessary to save the life of a mother and/or baby, including getting the mother and/or baby to a place where such assistance can be administered.
We believe that God has entrusted parents with the ultimate responsibility of stewardship for the life of their child, and that they should be empowered to make informed decisions on their child’s behalf and have those decisions respected by their birth team. We believe that this stewardship extends far beyond birth, giving parents the right and responsibility to lovingly execute their God-given authority in the home, as they see fit in accordance with the Scriptures.
We believe that breastfeeding is God’s perfect design to nourish and protect babies from harmful disease and death, and to promote strong family bonds, particularly between mothers and babies.
We believe that the vast majority of women are physically able to breastfeed in whole or in part, given proper education, factual information and emotional support. However, we also acknowledge that in a small number of cases God’s design has been disrupted. We have the utmost respect for parents who, in spite of prayerful and earnest efforts at breastfeeding, have been unable to breastfeed, in whole or in part, and have therefore resigned themselves to partial or complete formula feeding.
We believe that parents have the right and responsibility to be informed of the risks of artificial feeding. We believe that all educators and care providers have a moral and ethical responsibility to provide such information to expectant parents, support parents in their attempts to breastfeed, discourage artificial feeding, and refer parents to a qualified lactation expert when a problem arises in order to ensure continued success at breastfeeding.
We believe it is the responsibility of care providers to be informed and to inform parents about the many options open to mothers who wish to initiate or continue breastfeeding their babies in spite of factors traditionally thought to preclude breastfeeding, including but not limited to parenting style, adoption, medications, medical conditions, working outside the home, socio-economic factors, etc.
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I want to thank you for your informative web page. I was
looking for maybe a video I can watch at home on christian labors and procedures.. If you have anything that I can use for Christian ChildBirth (video) or a packet for at home use please let me know. Thank you and God Bless.. Karen Veleski
Hi Karen,
I am working on the site, so I apologize for not replying sooner. I have talked with the members of the ACCP and so far, no one knows of anything. I hope that by having your post here, someone else will stumble on it and answer…in the mean time, you might try checking with Dr. William Sears at http://www.askdrsears.com. Apparently there was a video called Birth: A video presentation on childbirth by a Christian lay midwife…featuring 36 births done a few years back by Veronica Wagner. The link will take you to Amazon.com but at the moment Amazon states it’s unavailable. Maybe that will give you some information to aid your search. If you find something, please report back here! I’m sure others would like to know about it.
Marci