The Medicalization of Birth

To change the experience of childbirth means to change women's relationship to fear and powerlessness, to our bodies, to our children; it has far-reaching psychic and political implications.

-- Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born, 1976





















Despite what many women have been conditioned to believe by the health care profession, birth is not a medical issue. Giving birth is a natural occurrence that the medical establishment has taken over to make money and disempower women. This makes me very angry.

Most people know a natural birth is better. Better for the mom's recovery, for the baby, for breastfeeding, for having your baby skin to skin ASAP after the birth (proven to lower blood pressure for both mom and baby and promote bonding), and the list goes on and on. And a midwife/doula birth is the best way to ensure having the natural birth you want. Midwifes have been helping women have natural births for millennia. They are the wise women and sages of the ages.

The story of my own labor and birth is not told how I originally envisioned it being told. I really wanted a natural birth and even labored at home till I was 8 cm before getting to the hospital.I instinctually knew that once I got there I could kiss good-bye all my best laid plans. Needless to say,I had a very unplanned C-section that I believe I did NOT need but because of hospital red tape was "forced" or at least bullied into having. I think this happens way too often in hospital settings and with doctors either because they are afraid of getting sued or because they don't get paid to sit around and watch you labor and sometimes just get tired of waiting. The hospital environment is in itself an unproductive place to advance your labor and give birth. Here are just some of the many reasons why:

1) Fetal Monitoring.
Hospitals demand that you put on a fetal monitor the minute that you get there; the problem with the fetal monitor is that if you're looking for something to be wrong you'll find it. They've done studies that prove that the rising rates of c-sections directly corresponds to the rising rates of fetal monitor usage. Fetal monitors hurt the way you labor, as they make it impossible for you to move around and squat - they force you instead to lay on your back. Which brings me to...

2)Lying on your back for most if not all of labor.
How can you use gravity to your advantage with birth if you are on your back?!! I mean come on, our bodies weren't meant to give birth laying on our backs - for ages women have been squatting, and there's a reason for that. It helps the baby move through the birth canal. A midwife allows you to give birth in any position you feel best, unlike doctors in a hospital setting who have been trained to deliver in only one position - the worst one for the woman.

3) The immediate and ubiquitous IV.
The minute you so much as sneeze in any hospital for any reason, they hook you up to an IV. I remember going to the emergency room for severe back pain and cramps that would later prove to be a bad UTI and the nurse giving me an immediate IV. I asked her why and what was wrong with me and she said they didn't know but regardless, I needed the IV. There are two major things wrong with an IV during labor and birth. One, the adrenaline of getting an IV slows your labor, as adrenaline stops the flow of oxytocin, which makes labor possible. And two, an IV even filled with just electrolytes and water to hydrate you is going to affect the baby's blood sugar level when they're born. Many hospitals will say after a baby's born, if they're over 8 lbs, that they need formula because their blood sugar can't handle just breast milk. Not only is that not true, but the blood sugar level dips because of the IV the mom received during labor.


4)Breastfeeding is affected negatively
Two of the La Leche principles that demonstrate the connection between hospital births or births with any drugs and breastfeeding problems are as follows:

a)Mother and baby need to be together early and often to establish a satisfying relationship and an adequate milk supply.

b)Alert and active participation by the mother in childbirth is a help in getting breastfeeding off to a good start.

How can these two things be allowed to happen within the hospital setting of tests, drugs, and doctor intervention. As my good friend Liz once wrote, "I think it's no coincidence that a lot of the scary birth stories that ended in horrible breastfeeding problems were births with lots of medical intervention. The birth stories that end with maternal satisfaction are the ones with little to no intervention." And hospitals can do nothing but intervene. Liz goes on to write, " OBGYN's are surgeons. And if there's one thing I've learned from watching SCRUBS it's that surgeons LLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVEEEEEE to perform surgery." Well said. You don't go to a hardware store for flowers. Why go to a surgeon for a natural, intervention-free birth!

For my next birth, I am planning a midwife VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section) at HOME. This is just my personal choice. For me, I see now that birth is NOT a medical issue but a natural thing. I know that home births are scary to some, but having been through a birth where all control was stripped from me, lived through the horrible dysfunctional world of the hospital - even armed with lots of information beforehand - I see that no matter how wonderful a doctor is, they still exist within the western medical system that is founded on treating birth and pregnancy as illnesses and women as too weak to handle them. I am choosing a home birth because it:

1) Allows labor and birth freedom

2) Promotes family bonding

3) Allows mother and infant bonding

4) Allows the mother to be more comfortable

5) Allows the baby to be more comfortable

6) Prevents unnecessary medical intervention

7) Promotes a less painful labor

8) Produces emotional well-being

9) Provides as much as or more safety than a hospital

10) Is much more convenient!

(reference- http://www.nchomebirth.com/art-whatMakesHBdiff.html)


I know that a home birth for many will not be their option. The next best thing after that... a midwife in a birthing center, although, birthing centers are in hospitals and do have the hospital culture still embedded deep in their philosophies and practices. If you are set on a hospital birth, then I just urge you to really check into your hospital. What is their C-section rate, their policy on skin to skin between mother and baby immediately after birth, even with a C- section, their position on breastfeeding, etc.? And then after you have carefully selected your hospital, get yourself a great doula! No one thinks they need a doula but with a hospital birth, they're imperative, as they're the only way to have a liaison/advocate between you and the bureaucracy of the hospital. I thought my husband and my mom could be my doula, but they just didn't have the savvy and the experience of the hospital situation to be able to advocate for me in the way that I needed during that heighten moment in my life.

If I can write one thing that people will take away with them, regardless of where they choose to give birth or how, it is to TRUST your body. You can have a drug-free birth if you want it. I'm not going to tell you that labor is a picnic - it isn't. But the minute it's over, you forget the pain, biologically and chemically. Your body doesn't allow you to remember it. My first birth experience was not at all what I wanted and I am still, 14 months later, in a mourning period over it. I mourn the c-section, the 4 hours before the nurses and doctor would let me hold my son saying I was "too tired", and the sterile hospital environment and all the crappy things that were said to me like, "Oh relax, you have your whole life to hold your baby!" I think it's appropriate to have some anger over the desire of the medical establishment to control women and their bodies. My biggest hope and wish for any pregnant woman is that regardless of how difficult, painful, or complicated your birth may be, that you have no regrets. I think that is more possible with a midwife and/or a doula. Again the wisdom of my friend Liz needs to be shared here. She recently wrote, "I strongly believe that just being a mother is being an activist. The little choices we make every day do shape our world. It can be really empowering."




some reference to check out:

Websites-
http://www.llli.org/llleaderweb/LV/LVFebMar04p11.html
http://www.babycenter.com/refcap/pregnancy/childbirth/168.html
http://www.gentlebirth.org/ronnie/homesafe.html
http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/homebirthchoice.asp
http://www.mothering.com/articles/pregnancy_birth/pregnancy_birth_main.html

Books-
Immaculate Deception II by Suzanne Arms
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin
Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer
The Nature of Birth and Breastfeeding by Michel Odent
Silent Knife by Nancy Wainer Cohen & Lois J. Estner
The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding - La Leche League International