Vent: the Brew.er Diet

Recently I’ve begun trying to educate myself about childbirth, and the options available to me. Being a high-risk pregnancy I am preparing myself to be very flexible and “go with the flow” based on my doctor’s advice and whatever my circumstances are around the time of delivery. However, I also want to be really confident and informed going into labor. I’m one of those “read everything I can get my hands on” people who likes to research as much as possible. Information is power!

I’ll write more later about what we’ve looked into and learned about, but this post is a vent about something that REALLY ticked me off. And made me cry. And brought me back about 10 steps from where I was, as far as my emotional well-being/acceptance of the loss of my boys.

I was reading a workbook I friend loaned me about the Brad.ley Method of Childbirth. I won’t get into the method itself here, because I have no problems with it in general, and think it’s great if it helps women achieve the kind of birth they desire. One of the main focuses of this program is nutrition, which we can all agree is very important! HOWEVER, the claims of their particular nutritional plan are what got me so upset.

The nutrional plan emphasized is called the Brew.er Diet. Again, I won’t go into the details here (you can google it), but it purports to help women AVOID preeclampsia.

And there it is.

This diet claims that by eating properly, women will not get preeclampsia (they call it toxemia), and it outright pisses me off. It pisses me off because this diet was developed a long time ago (the 60s), and research has totally blown the theory out of the water, at least for developed countries. There is no peer-reviewed research to support this diet. But the BIGGER issue I have is that, by stating that women who follow this diet will avoid the disease, it also insinuates that it is somehow MY fault that I got sick.

I cannot tell you how long I have spent trying to convince myself that what happened was not my fault. It is only very recently, and with more and more research coming out, that I’ve been able to recognize that there is nothing I could have done to prevent this. It is not my fault.

It is not my fault. And yet, reading this small bit in the Brad.ley workbook brought me to tears, because I felt so judged. The plan made me feel like it was MY fault that I did not “stay low-risk,” which is a major focus of the program. And just like that, I was back to square one, blaming myself. And worrying that I’ not doing all I can for this new baby. And thinking about how, if something goes wrong, I will again feel like a failure.

What I really hate is knowing that there are people out there who, due to misinformation, think that it truly is my fault, or that I could have eaten more protein and avoided this tragic loss. There are probably even friends of mine who, though they would never ever say it aloud, deep down think that “if only she’d known about the Brew.er Diet” things would have been different.

I know I can’t change what other people think, so I have to focus on being OK with myself, and not blaming myself. That’s all I can do.

If you’re curious to read some more about this diet/reactions to it from the pre-e community, check out these links:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19437225

http://www.preeclampsia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9742

You can google the diet and find the official website for it, too, but I’ll tell you that I could not spend more than 30 seconds there before my blood was boiling. Whew! (Trying stay calm and positive!) Thanks for letting me vent.