There is a wonderful novel I just read that explores the move of norma
birthing at home to a medicalized controlled environment. It is beautifully
written and set in Nova Scotia. The title is "The Birth House" by Ami McCay.
I hope that any of you that read it enjoy it as much as I did.
Loretta Porta, RN, IBCLC
Merced, CA

On Dec 30, 2007 9:37 PM, <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>  I find that most women who choose to birth normally do so b/c they were
> raised to see birth as normal (like my 15 yr old daughter who told me that
> she sees no point in discussing homebirth and breastfeeding b/c they are not
> "topics", they are just normal life) or b/c they had an "aha" moment--often
> after a brutal medicalized birth.
>
>
> Several things interest me--first that women who are brainwashed from
> birth (as several have described it--myself no less so) are supposed to know
> better than to "demand their epidurals in the parking lot". The very same
> medical system that has insulated itself through the very notion of its own
> necessity blames women for believing in it!!! If you were raised to believe
> drugs were necessary to birth and then you were placed into a situation
> where you were terrified, out of control and w/o resources, wouldn't you
> demand the very things you were told are necessary for the safety of your
> child? Even if you thought they were not necessary, as soon as you realized
> you had nothing else, wouldn't you still look to them for comfort and
> support?
>
> It is amazing to me that we expect women to become pregnant and suddenly
> know that they have the inner resources to give birth. When women do have
> these inner rumblings, they are immediately squelched---by the media, other
> mothers, the disease-care system, family, friends and all those invested in
> the fear-based model of birth. We imagine there is any childbirth "class"
> that will awaken the mother's knowing? Sometimes, of course, there is, but
> for the most part, childbirth educators, doulas and breastfeeding educators
> just reinforce the medical model.
>
>
>
> This is why I believe so firmly that infant feeding must not lose itself
> in the medical, disease-care model. It is the only area of normalcy that
> remains, even if it is only just hanging on by a thread. We still have the
> opportunity to speak the truth about birth and feeding and the biologic norm
> and we still have the opportunity to be protectors of that norm. I think we
> have an obligation to do so.
>
>
>
> I am so completely disgusted with the blaming of women for the
> medicalization of birth. First women are brainwashed, which leads them to
> collude in their own violation and that of their babies, so that they are
> even more invested in protecting the status quo and then, when they do speak
> up or have those "aha" moments, they are denigrated and vilified. Women who
> know that they were violated risk so much more than women who remain
> acquiescent. They lose the camaraderie of other women and find themselves
> needing to speak to those who will not hear. Healing is difficult to find
> when you are told that it is your awareness that is your dis-ease, not the
> things that were done to you.
>
> I cringe whenever I hear disease care providers telling each other that
> women just don't remember correctly, didn't hear correctly, misunderstood,
> misinterpreted, etc. At my mom's group recently, we had this exact
> conversation. I brought it up and asked two women how they felt when they
> tried to talk about their dis-abling first births after second empowering
> births. These moms are wounded twice--first by the experience that left them
> crushed and violated, secondly by the system that strains so hard to keep
> them from knowing their own experiences. Other mothers, still deeply
> invested in believing in their own need for interventions, further alienate
> these moms. It is much more difficult to seek healing around birth trauma
> than to remain traumatized. When women say that they felt raped by birth,
> women who are utterly invested in believing in their need for drugs and
> dependency feel defensive. Where does that leave the woman who is trying to
> make sense of her experience and find a path to healing and claiming her own
> power?
>
> I try to suggest that women think about it this way. If the cesarean
> section rate is 40%, but only 5% of women need cesareans, then 80% of the
> women who have cesareans did not need them. Yet, do we hear 80% of these
> moms pitching a fit about their completely unnecessary invasive births? In a
> broader way, if less than 10% of women need medical intervention to birth
> safely and 95% of women in the west have medical intervention (these are
> close, but not exact numbers), then 95% of those who have the interventions
> do not need them. So, what are the chances that you are one of the 5% or 10%
> who did or that you are one of the 80% or 95% who did not? How is it that we
> manage to keep these women quiet? Only by reinforcing the false perception
> that she in particular was saved by her experience.
>
> I think it is a specious argument to claim that birth is inherently
> dangerous and that medicalization has saved more women than it has harmed.
> The implication is that those of us who feel interventive birth is dangerous
> and brutal have no understanding of the benefits of modern medicine. Not
> true. My father's first wife did die from an infection contracted during
> birth and died a few weeks later, leaving him a young, devastated father
> with two babies to raise. This story deeply instructed my own intrinsic
> fears about birth from early childhood. I was lucky, though--I had Gyns
> treat
> me so badly before ever even deciding to have a child that when I did
> decide, I was going nowhere near them. I so deeply appreciate the
> energy that led me to birth my babies at home.
>
> In reading a history of the medicalization of birth, one comes to
> understand that lack of handwashing on the part of doctors (NOT on the part
> of midwives, however) caused more deaths than lack of abx.  How many women
> are dying today in developing nations due to the exportation of medical
> equipment such as EFMs and vacuum devices? In the west, we can save women
> and babies from our own aggressive practices--not so in many countries. In
> the past, poor nutrition was the cause of many deaths in industrialized
> countries (as it is today in developing countries), Today, overfed,
> malnourished women are having more and more premature births. Yet,
> disease-care practitioners do not have even a basic knowledge of good
> nutrition with which to educate women.?
>
> Yes, there are a few women who will need interventions, but that is no
> reason to normalize such practices. It is so easy now to blame insurance
> companies for the medicalization of birth, but it was an intentional,
> concerted and organized effort on the part of male doctors in the US to
> discredit midwives through lies and deception that normalized the fear-based
> model of birth. I wonder how we can say that any woman who does not know
> this is making an informed decision?
>
> Lest anyone think I personally have no regard for medicine, my 19 yr old
> son would have absolutely died at the age of 5 w/o rapid and highly invasive
> medical intervention. When he was 7, I took abx to treat a uterine infection
> caused by retained placenta after a miscarriage at 12 weeks. I had no
> interest in risking infertility, but I am grateful that I knew to use a
> whole lot of probiotics and liquid chlorophyll, too. I am grateful that
> there was a fabulous OB to do my D&C, w/o drugs, as I requested. Yes, I
> think there is a valid and important role in women's health for OBs--just
> not as primary caregivers in normal birth.
>
> The other bit that interests me so much is that the invasive, fear-based
> model we know so well makes no accommodation for the fact that a human being
> is experiencing his incarnation with complete disrespect for his very
> nature, for his consciousness, for his humanity. We have so focused on the
> rights of the mother to "informed" violation that we forget about the rights
> of the baby altogether.
>
> I am certain that we will never have a peaceful world while babies are
> routinely born in hospitals. In a broader, esoteric way, I also believe that
> this process in human birthing is necessary for our evolution as a species.
> We can no longer birth normally, unconsciously .We have to choose it. We
> cannot "return" to an earlier way of birthing in which uninterrupted birth
> was just the only way there was, no matter what the physical or emotional
> condition of the mother or her baby. It has to be the way we choose it to be
> and the utter contradiction of medicalized birth with our very nature is
> probably the only motivation for that to happen.
>
>
>
> Jennifer Tow, IBCLC, CT, USA
>
> Intuitive Parenting Network LLC
>
> Peace begins at home--with homebirth.
>
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-- 
Loretta
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