In the last week of June, two different circles of blogs invested in the Quiverfull movement—both as critics and supporters of the pro-natalist, patriarchal, conservative Christian lifestyle—focused on the sad news of the death of one Quiverfull mother’s child shortly after birth. The woman was Carri Chmielewski, author of the now-private blog “Carri Me Away,” where she described her Quiverfull lifestyle, eschewing contraception, having as many children as God gave her, submitting to her husband’s leadership, and, in a related conviction common among Quiverfull adherents, her plans to deliver her children through unassisted childbirth—a home birth with no doctors, nurses, or midwives to help her and her husband through labor and aftercare.
For weeks, Chmielewski’s plans drew the scrutiny and concern of Quiverfull critics, such as the commenters on the wryly-named ”Free Jinger” forum, a discussion board dedicated to “freeing” Jinger Duggar, one of the daughters of the Quiverfull Duggar family featured on reality TV show 18 Kids and Counting. Commenters there and elsewhere followed news of Chmielewski’s pregnancy, at first with light snark directed at this exemplar of Quiverfull conviction, and then growing concern as Chmielewski described mounting complications: she reportedly measured much larger than expected for a normal pregnancy and discussed her own doubts and misgivings about going through with the unassisted birth.
Because of these worries, Chmielewski sought the opinion of a certified professional midwife (a class of midwife distinct from certified nurse midwives, who have extensive medical training) from Central Indiana Home Birth Midwives. According to retired OB-GYN blogger Amy Tuteur, the midwife told Chmielewski that she was carrying twins, and maintained her diagnosis despite an ultrasound that only revealed one fetus, claiming that one twin was “hiding” behind the other. As Chmielewski was nearly three weeks past her due date, the midwife advised her to wait; when the baby was born, Chmielewski suffered amniotic fluid embolus (a rare condition that can occur in hospital births as well), causing the child, Benaiah, to die, and the mother to survive in critical condition.
At Salon’s Broadsheet blog and the Free Jinger forums, commenters weighed on whether the death constituted actionable child neglect, in the model of Christian Scientists—or the recent case involving the Nemenhah Band—refusing medical care for their children. Chmielewski’s husband, who critics charge has erased or hidden much of his wife’s past writing, described her survival as a miracle of God, who spared her even as He took their son.
Where Quiverfull Meets New Age
The tragedy in the Chmielewski family also prompted other discussion of the role that unassisted childbirth has within the Quiverfull movement. Vyckie Garrison, a former Quiverfull follower who writes about leaving the movement at the blog “No Longer Quivering,” described her own experiences with unattended home births, including one that ended in the emergency room after Garrison suffered a partial uterine rupture.
“Like you,” Garrison wrote in an open letter to Chmielewski, “I held to a firm conviction that children are a blessing from the Lord and I strongly desired to have as many blessings as He chose to send my way. Faced with the very real possibility of half a dozen or more pregnancies in my future, I was highly motivated to diligently seek out the very safest—least expensive, traumatic, painful, and unpleasant birthing options available.”
Garrison described a path taken by many other Quiverfull women, who progress further into the movement, first forswearing contraception and then hospitals, picking up additional, related convictions as part of an all-encompassing “home lifestyle” independent of what they consider the tyranny of outside “experts,” whether in medicine, the education system, or denominational leadership. Chmielewski’s description of herself in signing her online writing, “Homeschooler, Homebirther, Homechurcher,” is an apt summary of the lifestyle: one of deeply interwoven home industries, where a family is reliant on itself to as great an extent as possible, but ultimately always reliant on God.
As Chmielewski wrote on her blog, “God never meant for man (Pregnant Women) to surrender himself (herself) to the total control of man (dr./technology, etc.) God considers that idolatry. We are to surrender ourselves to GOD.”
While not all Quiverfull believers agree that medical decisions and labor need be left solely up to God, the shared language of reliance on God and suspicion of experts points to the anti-establishment or “agrarian,” off-the-grid ethos of many believers. It’s fertile ground for home birthing to flourish as a sub-movement of Quiverfull families hoping to make the birthing experience a part of the productive, independent home where husbands learn how to “catch the babies” themselves, both saving money and demonstrating their faith. A number of Quiverfull families follow a similar arc (as had Garrison) graduating from conventional hospital births—often where mothers felt pushed into a birth plan they didn’t desire—to midwife-assisted births at home, to the final challenge of unattended home births. It’s a logical extreme of the movement whose naturalistic bent actually overlaps with the back-to-the-land, new age counterculture in some ways, with Quiverfull moms staking out their territory of natural pregnancy in the odd company of feminist doulas and naturopaths, opposed as they are to high rates of hospital C-sections.
The Quiverfull Fringe: Caesarean-Sections Deliver Babies unto Caesar—and Through Him, Satan
Although unassisted childbirth is not at all limited to Quiverfull believers, the practice has certainly been taken up by the community, where the refrain to surrender oneself to God, to lean not on one’s own understanding but to trust and obey, take on a particularly literal meaning when it comes to the body. This birthing refrain includes many of the core concepts found elsewhere in the movement, which stresses that God will take care of his flock if they put utter and complete faith in Him.
Garrison describes her own past attempts at unassisted childbirth:
I had envisioned a glorious testimony of God’s protection and provision—His reward for my complete trust and obedience in allowing Him to use my womb for His purposes. I imagined myself explaining after my successful home birth that it was because I had been faithful in seeking His will for my life that the Lord had carried me and my baby safely through.
The flip side of that trust and faith can lead women to ignore all doubts or intuitions as challenges to one’s faith, as Chmielewski seemed to when she wrote (italics added):
I have thought about my wondering and doubting and I have often thought am I saying that God I do not think you are handling this situation right?… God will refresh me and fill me up daily… He will provide my needs and my babies or baby’s needs… I need to trust Him and keep him in control of this birth and not me!
Unassisted childbirth has found a home in the fundamentalist communities of the United States and Australia. Part of the reason for this shared enthusiasm across continents is due to the popularity of the Quiverfull-friendly teachings of Nancy Campbell, editor of the conservative Christian women’s magazine Above Rubies, which has a large readership in all three countries Campbell has lived: New Zealand, Australia, and now the United States. While Campbell has not been a particularly zealous proponent of unassisted childbirth, she has in the past helped promote an extreme version of the practice taught by Carol Balizet, head of the obscure, Tampa, Florida-based Home in Zion Ministries, that is condemned even by fellow unassisted childbirthers.
Balizet, a former nurse and the author of a number of books on Christian home-living, motherhood, and home birthing, represents a fringe expression of the Quiverfull suspicion of mainstream, institutional experts. She condemns banks, public schools, “statist” government, and denominational churches, but she saves her harshest judgment for institutional medicine: a bastion of pagan religion, where doctors serve as “high priests.” These priests, Balizet argues, make pagan sacrifices through their surgical incisions, so that through Caesarean-section births, the newborn is delivered, as it were, to Caesar, and through him, Satan.
Balizet urges Christian mothers to deliver their babies at home, a movement she advocated through her book, Born in Zion, which gained access to a wide audience when Nancy Campbell’s Above Rubies ministry endorsed it. Balizet wrote:
Our goal is to encourage separation from the counterfeits of the world, and entrance into what is symbolically called Zion. This is a life TOTALLY dependent on God alone. We advocate home childbirth, home schooling, home healing, often even home churching, and other things which accompany a separation from the world and a return to the God-centered reality of the kingdom.
Balizet goes on to describe home births as taking place in Zion rather than Egypt—language which echoes the rhetoric of conservative Christian homeschooling group Exodus Mandate, which calls for the removal of God’s children from “Pharaoh’s schools.”
Chief among the lessons of the book were Balizet’s claims, based in Pentecostal Word-Faith theology, that all physical ills have spiritual origins. She taught that difficult and painful labors were potentially due to disagreements between the parents over child discipline, while perfect childbirths were the result of proper spiritual preparation. She reportedly has walked out on women in labor on receipt of a prophetic message from God that Satan was deceitfully creating the impression of a troubled birth, and argued that “Ineffective labor can also be caused by words of opposition and death spoken by others about the couple’s decision to trust God.” This last recalls Carri Chmielewski’s concern that her doubts about proceeding with the unassisted birth were a lack of faith, and that others’ warnings gave an entrance for evil.
Above Rubies does not make the same claims as Balizet regarding the medical establishment, but staff sold the book at camps and retreats and plugged it on their Web site as, “A book about home birth that will inspire your faith. Even if you are not interested in home birth, this book is a great faith-builder.”
The endorsement didn’t last. In 2001, Balizet’s antipathy to medicine brought her name and work into a tragic scandal when a 31-year-old Australian mother of five died following Balizet’s proscription of hospitals during an unassisted, unattended “Zion Home Birth.” The mother suffered severe hemorrhaging and swelling during the birth, but received no medical attention. After several weeks of extreme pain, she died. Balizet’s teachings were subsequently publicized and derided as cultish and irresponsible, though Above Rubies’ Australian director, Val Stares, appeared on national news to give a tepid defense of the book, arguing that the mother’s death was not necessarily a “failure” of Balizet’s philosophy, but rather showed the mother had been “seeking truth and walking in faith.”
Above Rubies in Australia and the United States later declared they would no longer carry Balizet’s book. Other Quiverfull-minded Christians such as Jill Barrett—who tallied seven infant and three maternal deaths due to “Zion Home Births”—condemned Balizet as a heretic who sought to direct God’s will through supernatural means and was besmirching the name of Christian midwifery with her judgmental approach to women’s health.
Clearly, such strong criticism coming from within the Quiverfull movement is an indication of the wide gulf between the maximalistic, spirit-driven version of unassisted childbirth advocated by Balizet (who has disparaged women who’ve had hospital C-sections as tainted) and the more compassionate, mainstreamed versions which acknowledge the necessity of midwives or doctors in case of emergency.
But there are overlapping convictions, suspicions, and sensibilities which seem to lead Quiverfull practitioners of unassisted childbirth down parallel paths. As ministry critics at the cult-watch organization, Lookout (formerly known as Concerned Christian Growth Watch), have argued, “The Above Rubies’ emphasis on the importance of wombs, breasts, motherhood, and fertility, the judgmental comments against all forms of contraception… provide a ready groundwork for the acceptance of the more extreme and bizarre claims of Carol Balizet.”
Similarly, as Vyckie Garrison noted, her Quiverfull convictions led her to desire total reliance on, and trust in, God, neglecting her own instincts and health in favor of obedience and submission. “Our deeply beloved belief system denied us an important safety net,” she wrote to Carri Chmielewski, “that of our own feelings. When our bodies and minds screamed out, ‘Something is wrong!’ our faith calmed us down.” And in some cases, that calm, the “peace that passes all understanding” of trusting entirely in God, can be very dangerous indeed.
Tags: australia, c-section, child welfare, childbirth, midwifery, quiverfull, reality tv, unassisted birth
why do people think God doesn't want them to use the brain her gave them? To observe reality and learn therefrom? To create solutions for human suffering and use them?
sheesh!
My father did not want my mother to receive medical care when she was pregnant with me. Fortunately, my mother had and still has good sense. Along with my birth, those of all six of the subsequent children plus the term of another lost in a miscarriage involved proper medical care.
From where do these people come? Of course, I knew an atheist physician who held to the same sort of nutty ideas. His wife suffered from childbirth fever.
Maybe then we can get people the help they need so they aren't a danger to themselves or others. Involuntary commitment for the worst cases.
If I may use the word evolution (many will quit reading at this point) I would comment that by removing all cultural influences, it is a set up by prideful people to deliberately refuse to be able to look at the wisdom that has brought every society to this place in time. What they do is to recall, on an individual basis, something in the past that resulted in negative outcome. Much like how I might say that my upbringing in the 50's and 60's made me into the mess of a person that I am. So I decide I'm going to do it the opposite way. "I won't spank my kids, I will allow them to speak their mind"
If I have no model for doing this, I run the risk of following only my own way. (It seems that the individuals in this movement are looking for a spokesperson to tell them how to proceed, and these who have taken on that roll have been extremists) So if each generation eschews the previous generation's wisdom practices become narrower, more and more ideas become harmful and evil.
I prefer to be thankful and notice how the advances in medicine have improved the lives of each mew generation. Conventional wisdom, along with new thinking on the part of churches tells us: we don't have to suffer needlessly--my end days don't have to be filled with pain; we don't have to waste 65 years of our lives in a psychotic state or allow our relatives to suffer this.
All in all, to look at one of the cardinal sins: pride, is what I believe is at the bottom of this groups biggest mistake. Proud to be closed minded, proud to be set apart, proud to not have to rely on conventional wisdom, proud to be the decision maker when dealing with another person's life.
I would recommend reading Margaret Atwood's classic "Handmaid's Tale", and compare this cult to that which she created. It shares some of this movement's themes: patriarchy; use of women's bodies for men's purposes; decisions about childbirth and mothering.
The Handmaid's Tale was not about women making unconventional choices about their reproductive health. It was about women losing the right to that choice to the state-an important distinction.
And you think the Quiverful movement is really about homebirth? Please.
excellent suggestion.
I believe it is a woman's right to determine how many children to have and in what manner. When this right is called into question for those who have radical beliefs, it is threatened for all of us.
As a doula, I have consulted with expectant parents of all backgrounds, planning all types of births. This has included women who are investigating or who have chosen unassisted birth, for either religious or personal reasons, and Quiverful women. Contrary to how they are painted in this article, I have found many of these women are strong, critically-thinking, informed women who also have a deep spirituality and faith in God. They may not make the same choices I would make, but they are done a disservice by being protrayed as reckless, backwards, and controlled by men. I have spoken with some women who spent years negotiating with their reluctant husbands to stop using birth control.
The reasons why women make the choice to have unassisted births are varied. Most of the times, the outcomes are good. The studies I have seen do not find that unassisted births are significantly more dangerous than hospital births.
Studies show that the safest births for normal pregnancies are at home, with the CPMs that the author seems to imply are unqualified. Nothing could be more untrue. Unassisted birth carries with it certain very real risks, and those that choose it are usually aware of these risks. Routine interventions that are done in the vast majority of births in our country also carry certain risks, but they are not held under scrutiny because they are mainstream. It is these mainstream births, not the rare unassisted births, that are the source of our high infant mortality rate in the US.
Ultimately, women need to be the center of decisions about their own bodies, and short of abusive situations, their children's health.
I would be more interested in seeing a balanced article that investigates some of the reasons women are choosing the risks of unassisted birth over other risks, as opposed to what appears to me as sensationalized fear-mongering about birth and religious people.
"Contrary to how they are painted in this article, I have found many of these women are strong, critically-thinking, informed women who also have a deep spirituality and faith in God. ...I have spoken with some women who spent years negotiating with their reluctant husbands to stop using birth control."
JadeSouza ~ you just described me to a tee ~ that is me, as I was in my "quivering days." Nevertheless ~ now that I've come out of that mindset and lifestyle ~ I know for absolute certain that at the time I chose to attempt an HBA3C and again with my successful HBA4C and again when I planned a UC ~ I was "reckless, backwards, and controlled by men."
Unless you've been steeped in the QF way of thinking ~ you really have no idea the level of fear, pride, martyrdom, and spiritual deception going on within the minds of the otherwise intelligent, good-hearted, deeply spiritual quiverfull mothers ~ even if you spend considerable time with them and know them well.
Check out some of the info. at the No Longer Quivering blog and forums ~ you'll read story after story from former QF wives and daughters whose lives have been forever damaged due to following the quiverfull ideal. My own daughter found it so impossible that she tried to kill herself because she could not live up to the perfect standard which she believed the Lord required of her.
No Longer Quivering
My heart goes out to your daughter and to you. I just don't understand how almost anyone can speak as an authority about the vastness of God. I've talked to Dr's who have sworn that God gave them their talent, or helped on particular cases. To me limiting oneself to a non medically assisted birth, could also be limiting God. I think what is at the heart of this though is money. It is very expensive to deliver a child in the US, even for those people who do have good insurance. Some hospitals now do recognize the serene environment of home as beneficial to some people, and they will help/ or at least stand by (if needed) in a home birth, but again this is expensive.
Instead of perhaps taken up a God given initiative to change the way childcare cost are done, these people (IMHO) have chose to become prideful and to wall themselves up. Instead of perhaps trying to find ways to help each other fund safe child births (or help others) they have chose to wall themselves up, only supporting w/ rhetoric. There's something wrong w/that and again I think they are limiting God.
The idea that you have a right to a full quiver is environmentally irresponsible and a weird and hopefully small kind of Christian chauvinism. We are not living in the Iron Age. All religious traditions have an environmental obligation. Get aware.
Just FYI, the death of Carri's child would have happened regardless if she was at home or in the hospital. It was a rare condition that is NOT forseeable. And her son would have died regardless of where she choose to birth at. Maybe you should check things out in advance. As once this fact is realized, most of your agument is null and void. You are basing the end results on her birthing choice...which is an inappropriate alignment. Thus it makes your statments, thus your line of argueing, in turn your final arguement false. Cause if one part is found to be false, then the conclution can be defined as false as well.
Not to mention you have ran a person,s name thru the mud, without checking the facts. Kind of permature and actually cruel, not to mention very unprofessional.
So are all your arguements based on false facts and premisses?
Funny how nobody bothers responding to this post. Because if they were to actually check things out and base these articles on FACTS, they would see how foolish it is to criticize a mother based on the completely UN-preventable condition that struck her son down. There was no helping it, people!! Leave this poor mother alone to mourn for her son!
It is so that the condition was unavoidable. However, regular and consistent prenatal care for the duration of the pregnancy--not the last month or so--may also have indicated problems which could have been either solved or at least mitigated. Also remember that this is a mother over forty, overweight, and having high blood pressure. Risk was written all over this pregnancy from the start. A medical doctor or medically-trained nurse midwife could very well have stepped in with induction or caesarian before it got too far along.
Just as an FYI, an induction is actually one of the risk factors for an AFE, so that would have harmed more than helped as it would have raised her risk factors. Also, I highly doubt that the OB would have rushed to a Csection based solely on her existing risk factors - multiple births, older mother, and going late.
Late is such a subjective term as well because cycles can be so off, and without having a early (7-9 weeks pregnant) ultrasound, it becomes harder to pin down exactly how pregnant a women is. My own sister was born 2 weeks early by induction because she was supposedly 2 weeks overdue. She had many signs of not quite fullterm baby, even though they estimated her at 38 weeks.
That being said, I was charting when I conceived with my 1st child and know the exact date we conceived (only was intimate once that month!) and ovulated. She was born at 38 weeks and 5 days, and had all the signs of a postterm infant. Apparently, I just cook them faster. You just really never can tell.
The Duggars (pictured above) are the poster-family for the Quiverfull movement but as far as I know they utilize a hospital and obstetrician for each birth.
I think it is important to clarify that CPMs (Certified Professional Midwives)who primarily attend out of hospital births are able to be licensed in 26 states. The state in which this tragedy occurred does not license them. Numerous studies have shown their safety record, and the safety of out of hospital birth. When midwives are not regulated, and homebirth is driven underground, this unfortunate scenario is much more likely to occur. It saddens me that your only quoted source on CPMs came from "Dr. Amy" who is known in the midwifery/obstetrical world as pushing an agenda against homebirth rather than facts or good research. Associating the "Quiverfull movement" as representative of the diverse families that seek out of hospital care, or associating the choice to homebirth solely based on religious beliefs is very inaccurate. As well, the practice of one midwife does not reflect an entire profession.
For more information please see-
thebigpushformidwives.org
or information on the CPM credential at narm.org
...makes me see people like this as "addicts."
Being addicted to god or religion or some type of theology or ideology beyond all reason seems like being addicted to drugs or alcohol beyond all reason.
It is cult-ish at best.
I agree with another comment that some of this is hubris and prideful and seems not at all humble.
These movements become toxic and dangerous when they become what they fear in others and the differences are just in the details.
So sad and so unnecessary.
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He who fights against monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you stare persistently into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you. - Friedrich Nietzsche
18 kids? just what the world needs... more religious fanatics and their overpopulation methods.
Before I allow a man to dictate what I will and will not do with my body. When men can give birth, they can dictate all they want. Until then they can shut up!
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