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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