The Business of Being Born

This article reenforces my continued skepticism of Western Medical practices. It reminds me why I so passionately continue to research pregnancy and birth in North America. I actually have already watched The Business of Being Born, but I haven't had a chance to blog about it. However, since the American Medical Association is posting that women should pay no attention to Ricki Lake's home birth, expect a post about the documentary shortly. Unfortunately I'm at work right now otherwise I would post the paper I wrote about it this year for one of my women's studies classes.

I am very upset our medical systems are so corrupt that even after conclusive evidence illustrates that 95% of women with low-risk pregnancies who give birth at home do so with little to no intervention, that the hospital is still the ideal setting for birth.

The hospital is not the ideal place to have a baby. First of all, name a mammal who gives birth on their back. I cannot. Mammals all give birth on their sides, standing up, squatting, any position which will facilitate the shape of the pelvis, and make it easier for them to give birth. Yet here we are, at the hospitals, lying on our backs trying to push a baby out. How is that even supposed to work? Who decided this? Who decided that the environment you bring your baby into the world in should be the cold metal sterile world of the hospital? The hospital where you are no longer treated like an ethical subject, and rather, like an object, with pressure for unneccesary interventions to take place... I am just so disturbed that Ricki Lake's documentary is being discredited in this way, when it has been proven time and time again that a midwife home birth is safe, if not safer than a hospital birth.

I personally will not have my baby in a hospital if I have a normal birth with no complications. I would rather let my body do its thing at its own pace, and not have some asshole standing over me with a ticking clock: "you're only dilated 8cm... only 20 minutes left and then you'll have to be rushed into an emergency C-Section!" Oh yes, I would LOVE that. I would LOVE to have an emergency C-Section just because I'm not dilating fast enough... I will post my paper up here when I get home, but I just had to comment on how furious it makes me to see that women are still being deterred from home births when the results are almost always better. You are treated like an ethical subject in your own right, you can play an active decision-making role, you will not be rushed, you can do it the way you want, you can have friends and family around, you can lay in your own glorious bed... why would you want it any other way when you're about to do something so important as give birth? Giving birth is beautiful and amazing and hospitals disregard its significance in women's lives. It's heartbreaking really.