We’re fortunate here in Lewis County to have access to dedicated women’s healthcare clinics and providers. Even though Centralia Women’s Clinic is bursting at the seams with patients, the office and its providers continue to work diligently to find new, progressive ways to meet the community’s demands while improving women’s health outcomes and quality of life.
It’s important to highlight this topic and the need for these services at the community level, because we live in a time when maternal health outcome statistics are continuing to decline across the nation — while every other developed nation on the planet continues to improve their maternal health outcomes.
But why is that?
According to multiple in-depth studies and reporting, it’s believed that some of our current models for obstetrical and gynecological healthcare in the U.S. are antiquated, that hands-on educational training can be lacking, that inadequate hospital and provider protocols can turn routine maternal complications into lethal situations, and that hospital processes and protocols can be woefully less-than-nimble in the event of an obstetrical emergency.
Those are all things that can be debated and weighed across a spectrum of considerations. Instead of focusing on true health and quality of life, our medical models and options are often short-sighted, short-term and limited by what insurance deems “necessary” or “appropriate.” But for the U.S., I think the problem is deeper than that: In the U.S., we treat pregnancy and birth like an illness, instead of the natural process that it is.
Case in point: We all dread gaining weight during pregnancy. The pressure to minimize your weight gain during and after pregnancy in this country is stifling at times. There’s an incredible market for post-partum girdles, supplements and procedures to mitigate the immediate post-effects of pregnancy. But at what cost has that come?
We now know, according to studies, that body fat gained during pregnancy is often DHA-rich fat stored in our hips, etc. — that our bodies are storing fat to prepare for breastfeeding. This is biologically sound. Nearly every prenatal vitamin you buy has been enriched with — you guessed it — DHA, because we know it’s an essential component for fetal development.
Yet at every turn in most pregnancies, you see women deny themselves good, healthy foods for fear of gaining weight. Our fear of weight and fat has shaped our society in rather incredible ways — could it be contributing to less-than-stellar maternal health experiences?
We’re facing some of these potential negative contributors right here in Southwest Washington.
At least one popular hospital-based women’s obstetrical and gynecological clinic in Olympia is now offering “fat sculpting” services inside their clinic. Let that sink in for a moment: A cosmetic procedure is being offered inside of an OB/GYN clinic.
Pregnancy changes your body. We know that. There are countless examples across the mammalian class of animals that pregnancy chances us. For human females, pregnancy wreaks havoc on our core and abdominal muscles.
Diastasis Recti — a condition where a measurable gap exists between the abdominal muscles above the navel following pregnancy — can affect (and contribute to health issues) for more than 50 percent of women even six months postpartum. More than half!
In other countries, many healthcare providers offer functional-based physical therapy for postpartum women. It’s common in European countries to see women actually prescribed pelvic floor and core physical therapy to better support their postpartum bodies.
Well, in the U.S, we’re seeing fat sculpting offered and marketed as first line therapy instead. Instead of seeing doctor’s offices and clinics offering classes and paying to promote postpartum fitness and health education on social media — we’re seeing non-functional, cosmetic procedures marketed by actual health professionals.
According to Google, one fat sculpting service can run you about $1,200. And most clinics recommend that you have two appointments.
For that same cost, you could have a family gym membership and book a personal trainer for an entire year … but that isn’t profitable for medical providers.
The creators and investors behind products like this aren’t stupid — they know that marketing their products inside of women’s health clinics adds an air of supposed “legitimacy” to their products (at the expense of women).
It’s not like these same cosmetic procedures aren’t already widely available in spa settings, etc. … they are! So why have they crossed lines into a medical setting?
I mean, have you seen fat-sculpting offered at the urologists office? No. They know that pressure exists on women — and the fact that doctors are allowing these lines to be blurred with shades of sexism is certainly enough to make me question the real motives.
I contacted the University of Washington Medicine’s Weight Loss Management Center for more information.
“Procedures that target body shape do not have the same proven health benefits as even a modest amount of weight loss accomplished by changing eating and exercise habits,” said Dr. Ellen Schur.
So, before you choose your next prenatal or women’s health provider, take a look at their clinic and medical infrastructure. Does the doctor and / or clinic champion the things that you, personally, value about health, or are they looking to make a quick buck off your pregnancy and postpartum body?
Don’t forget: There are many prenatal and obstetrical providers who work outside of a traditional hospital setting. There are numerous midwives, doulas and birth assistants in this area who would would be happy to recommend a holistic provider who is outside the hospital system.
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Brittany Voie is a columnist for The Chronicle. She lives south of Chehalis with her husband and two young sons. She welcomes correspondence from the community at voiedevelopment@comcast.net.
