- Share This Post
- submit
- 1
-
Sparkle (0)
I watched The Business of Being Born (TBOBB) last night (available now through Netflix). This is a documentary produced by former talk show host, Ricki Lake, on the state of birthing in America. As I posted the other night, in short the summary of the film is this: (from The Business of Being Born's Website)
Birth: it's a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life. But more than anything, birth is a business. Compelled to find answers after a disappointing birth experience with her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to examine and question the way American women have babies.
The film interlaces intimate birth stories with surprising historical, political and scientific insights and shocking statistics about the current maternity care system. When director Epstein discovers she is pregnant during the making of the film, the journey becomes even more personal.
Should most births be viewed as a natural life process, or should every delivery be treated as a potentially catastrophic medical emergency?
As I settled in to watch, I was expecting a "good" documentary on a subject that interests me. To be perfectly honest, I don't watch very many documentaries, and had kind of figured this would be like The Baby Story, but in reverse. Instead of seeing high drama-hospital medical births with drugs and C-sections, I would see midwives and natural home births.
In no way was I prepared for my reaction. Shortly into the 1 hour and 24 minute documentary, I was in tears, sobbing. It was like a floodgate had been opened, and every vented up emotion that I had about my own experiences giving birth, was released.
I was in awe of the beautiful, natural, and peaceful births shown at home, with skilled and highly trained midwives. During labor, the mothers were roaming around their homes, freely and unobstructed. There was a woman who had a water birth, with her young son watching, totally calm and relaxed. There were images of newly born home birthed babies lying peacefully and contentedly on their mother's chests just seconds after being born, gazing lovingly up in their mother's eyes. The mother's, though tired from just giving birth were alert, happy, and peaceful.
Those images were contrasted with the "typical" hospital birth. Women in bed, hooked up to monitors, oxygen masks, and IV's, with drug cocktails dripping into their systems. Babies left screaming and crying in the incubators by themselves, or not "allowed" to be with their mothers immediately after birth. One scene showed an exhausted mother, being prepped and wheeled off on a gurney to the operating room for a C-section. It was not hurried, so I don't believe it was an emergency C-section, rather more likely than not, she was not able to birth her baby in the allotted time that so many hospitals have. She had her eyes closed, totally detached from the experience, and it struck me like she was a lamb going off to the proverbial slaughter.
It was so striking seeing that, compared to the homebirths. The women at home were in control and had complete and entire power over the birth of their babies. They were the ones who decided when it was time to birth their baby, and they had total confidence in their bodies. They didn't need IV's, drugs dripping in their systems, weakening the labor process, constant monitoring, doctors and nurses telling them when to push, and micromanaging their labors, and they didn't need C-sections.
As I sat there watching this, I kept thinking of the women shown having their babies at home, and THAT is what birth is supposed to be like. That is how women have given birth for thousands and thousands of years, until the last fifty years or so in America. Women should be the ones to dictate how the birthing of their child, their flesh and blood goes, not doctors, nurses, and hospitals who have to practice defensive medicine to avoid lawsuits, and to meet insurance companies criteria.
It was a powerful moment for me, and I realized how angry I have been about Ryan's birth. I have written about my C-section before, but in summary, the only reason I had to have a C-section with Ryan was because he was breech. No other complications or problems. A C-section was my only "option." Doctors don't "do" breech vaginal deliveries anymore and certainly
