I found
this article by Niki Kangas online today and think it is an excellent summation of why, despite some of the most advanced technology in the world, the US lags other developed countries in lowering infant and maternal mortality rates. The piece is an interview between her and Claudia Breglia, a certified nurse midwife, President of the California Association of Midwives, and owner of Born at Home.
Here's a quick quote from the article:
Niki: Why does the rest of the developed world, in terms of delivering babies, use technology as a last option but have lower infant and maternal mortality rates?
Claudia: The rest of the world uses midwives, who are trained to deliver babies vaginally, whereas the United States uses obstetricians largely, who are trained to be surgeons. Surgeons do surgery. So if you don’t want surgery, you shouldn’t go to a surgeon.
It also provides some caution to expecting parents about where they get their ideas about labor and birth. I find it fascinating that so many women in the US today fear the pain of labor, but in cultures such as the Amish, as Claudia discusses, or on
The Farm, where women are raised in a culture of understanding and acceptance that childbirth is a natural, normal part of life, they are able to go into the experience without fear, and have less pain and complications than those whose primary images of birth are from the artifical drama of television shows and cinema.
Most of us in the US, unfortunately, have had a negative image of labor throughout our lives. As labor moved out of our homes and into hospitals, as our mothers and grandmothers were knocked out during labor, erasing their knowledge of the experience, we had no real-life, positive examples on which to base our understanding of the process. As our labor was turned over to surgeons and doctors, hospitals and operating rooms, we forgot to trust our instincts and instead began to fear them. Instead of anticipating the BIRTH of our child, we instead began to anticipate the completion of our child's birth. The process itself became this painful, dreadful experience that we were forced to endure to gain the prize of holding our child in our arms.
And, along the way, I think we have lost so much. So many women today that I know don't understand why someone would want to "struggle through" a natural birth, when there are medications that will numb us, knock us out, help us forget and not feel, help us to 'endure' this excruciating process. Before you fire up the comments button, please know that I don't knock technology and it's place in helping mothers and babies have safer, healthier births - WHEN IT'S NEEDED. Unfortunately, I feel that technology and medicine have waaaaay overstepped the line, and now expect a place in each and every labor. When a mother is laboring well, why stick an IV in her arm? When she is comfortable walking around and all indications are that she and baby are fine, why strap her to a bed for half an hour at a time to confirm what her body is already telling us? Why strip her of her clothes and put her in a sterile gown and treat her like a patient when she's not sick at all, she's just becoming a mother? When there are medical emergencies that indicate interventions are necessary, I thank God that those are there and available today. They save so many lives! When they are not called for medically, and are instead implemented as a matter of routine, they cost lives. Plain and simple. They increase the risk to mother and baby, and they do so under the guise of 'playing it safe'. Scaring women into submission is an abominable practice.
As a doula, I have been able to do the research myself. Lots of research. I have talked to, read books and articles by, and listened to countless birth professionals. I have the power of information, and I am able to share that with my clients. Not power to convince them that they should give birth in a particular way, or not give birth in a particular way. That's not what I do. No, I offer clients information when and how they need it - unbiased, multi-resource information that they can then be empowered with to make the right decisions for their birth and their situation. Because for all the general information in the world, all the statistics and evidence and antecdotes out there, no one but the mother can truly make the decision of what is right for her and her baby. And no one else should.
Tell me, what are your thoughts about US birth practices? What do you think about how birth is treated and portrayed by our media, our doctors, our families? I'd love to hear what you think!
