The Business of Being Born

In the past few weeks, I have been researching options for childbirth.  This may sound like an odd thing to do when one isn't pregnant, but what can I say, I'm a planner.  Luckily my lovely husband (which is still fun to say) knows this and just rolls with it, which frankly is all you can do once I get going on something.  So I've been reading reading reading, googling googling googling, and what do I find out?  The way we as women are intended to birth is, shock and dismay, the healthiest for everyone.  Of course there are exceptions, but about 85% of the time it would work like it should if we would only let it. 
A few statistics:  Save the Children (April 2006). This is the second worst newborn death rate in the developed world.
- Among 33 industrialized nations, the United States is tied with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with a death rate of nearly 5 per 1,000 babies, according to a new report from
- The five countries with the lowest infant mortality rates in the March of Dimes report -- Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Finland and Norway – midwives were used as their main source of care for 70 percent of the birthing mothers.
- Cesarean-delivery rates are now at an all time high in the United States, standing at 1.2 million, or 29.1 percent of live births in 2004. The increase represents a 40 percent increase in the past 10 years. (In 1970 the rate was 5.5%) In several New York City-area hospitals, the Cesarean-delivery rate is even higher – over 40%.  In my research, I have found it to be about 38% at my local hospitals.
- A new report by the World Health Organization, published in the international medical journal, Lancet, identifies complications from cesarean surgery and anesthesia as the leading causes of maternal death in developed countries, including the United States.

I highly recommend that anyone pregnant or thinking about getting that way do some research.  You don't have to see the movie, that being said it was a lot easier for NG to take in the information that way.  He was HORRIFIED at the statistics, he had NOT A CLUE that we even had the option of birthing outside a hosptial.  The movie focuses on home births, and he was upset to discover from yours truly that attended homebirths are illegal in our state.  ILLEGAL.  We are strongly considering going to a neighboring state (only about a 30m drive) to a birthing center just so we can stay out of the hospital and avoid the cascade of interventions. 
TD is a cascade-of-interventions baby...........go to the hospital on the due date, get pitocin (fake hormones that your body isn't really that faked out by), need an epidural (because your body isn't really faked out), be unable to walk because of the epidural and the whole strapped-to-the-bed-with-monitors thing, don't eat anything but ice chips (since you're probably going to have major surgery), get totally exhausted, shockingly your labor fails to progress (since you're exhausted, stressed out, and fighting the force of gravity), then end up with a C-section.  There are so many things wrong with that process that it's hard to even wrap my head around. 
First of all, NO ONE straps me to a bed.  Unacceptable.  I can check my email while I sit in the creek at my dad's, you can't tell me the monitors can't be wireless, too.  Second, generally babies will come out when they're good and ready to come out, not when the doctor says it's time.  Babies don't have little tiny calendars in there with their due dates circled in red.  This tirade of mine just scratches the surface of the problems inherent in medicalized birth.
It's time to stop thinking doctors know everything.  It's time to stop looking at pregnancy as an illness.  A huge part of me just wants to scream about the destruction of personal power inherent to being strapped to a bed with an (often male) authority figure messing with your girl parts telling you you've failed.

Here are just a couple of the great blogs out there on the subject:

Well Rounded Birth Prep
Navelgazing Midwife