Homebirthing & Its Opponents

After reading this article today on Care2.com, I really felt the need to blog about a specific comment I found.. I'm not re-posting the comment, but let me paraphrase, as I've heard this so many times. "Women who would rather have a child at home instead of in a hospital are selfish and aren't thinking about their baby, because what would happen if that baby were to have problems while at home? Isn't that a lot to be risking just so you can have your birth your way?" My response is this: aren't women entitled to be able to choose their own birth experience? Sure, the "norms" of the times tell us to try to cut out the woman's participation in her own body's birth, normally by handing over the reigns to a doctor.. but is this right? Shouldn't a woman have the option to do what her body was made to do, instead of being ridiculed and criticized for going against the grain? Especially in the United States' healthcare and socialized perceptions of pregnancy, we try to make women think that they absolutely can not give birth without the assistance of a doctor. Women are browbeaten by pregnancy shows and other media into thinking that pregnancy is a painful procedure that someone must "deliver" them from. Women are incapable of doing it themselves. Women are told that pregnancy is too painful for them to endure, even though before the medicalization of birth, women had no option but to endure the pain. I for one am tired of being told by the media that my body doesn't know how to give birth and that I am too weak to be able to withstand the pain, even though my foremothers did. If those women hadn't been giving birth without the assistance of someone with a PhD degree, I wouldn't be here today! Pain is our body's response to what is going wrong. If you stepped on glass, your body's response is pain. You stop walking on it and you check to get the glass out, bandage up your foot, and away you go. For some reason, we don't allow that to happen in childbirth. Because we assume that ALL pain is "bad", we want to immediately anesthetize and sterilize the mother's experience. Yes, childbirth is painful, I have no doubt. However, if something is going wrong with your birth experience, you would have a different kind of pain. A kind of pain that would give you that gut feeling, that intuition, that something is wrong in this situation. So, sure, at that point, you would need a doctor.

But before I ramble on and go off on a branch I don't wish to explore at the moment in writing, my question is why would we deny and criticize a woman for wanting to change her own birthing experience? Many other countries around the worlds don't have - or don't WANT - to medicalize their childbirth and do even BETTER than we do with infant and maternal mortality. Perhaps this is a good indication of how our society has effectively brainwashed our women - and men, apparently - into thinking that the only way is to medicalize childbirth. The majority of childbirths do not need a doctor's aid, but because we live in a time of elective c-sections and a time where we believe that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, we believe we must cover every "what if" possible. Yes, its a good idea to go over such things with your midwife, but what a lot of people don't recognize is that midwives aren't just milkmaids that are completely unqualified. A lot of midwives now are nurses and must pass certification to be able to practice in most states. They can check to see if you have any conditions that would make you more high-risk, which in that case, they would refer you to a doctor. They also have plans in place for if something does go wrong during your birth and you need to be taken to the hospital. If that's too big of a fear, you could always give birth in a birthing center instead that has doctors on staff, just in case something goes wrong. They won't intervene otherwise, which will allow the woman to give birth at her own pace, instead of the doctor's schedule.

The "moral of my story" is that women need to realize that their power is so much more than what they have been told all their lives. Education is key for both prospective mothers and fathers. Question what is being told to you and don't allow others' judgements to cloud your opinion. Women have been giving birth since the very beginning, and medicalized practice has been around for how long? Sure, some people may be more comfortable in a hospital, which is great for that person.. but no one should deny their own birthing experience, just because people say that it is "selfish" to put themselves before their baby. Women have always had to put themselves last on their list. Birth is one of the biggest life experiences ever and the woman's participation and experience should also be valued, instead of fit into someone else's ideals.