It all started when my friend Erica told me that I needed to get a copy of The Business of Being Born and watch it. (If you’re unfamiliar, view the trailer.) This was an odd request, I thought, because Erica and her husband are pretty firmly CFers.
Though I certainly want to be a mother someday, I couldn’t imagine why I’d be interested in this film. Childbirth, to me, was a standardized process of O.B. visits followed by a hospital birth. I didn’t see where there could be alternatives or options.
Erica assured me the film was well worth the 87-minute viewing time. So I rented a copy from Netflix and watched it.
One of the early scenes in the documentary is footage of a home birth. We watch as a beautiful African-American woman in a long dress, swaying as if dancing to music only she could hear, works through her labor by pacing around her home. All the while, we see her toddler playing in the background. It’s striking how calm and serene the entire setting is. Eventually, we see her in a birthing tub, set up in her living room. She delivers a beautiful, healthy baby in near-silence. She moans slightly and reaches down, with the help of her midwife, to deliver and then cradle her newborn. Meanwhile, her toddler is beside the tub, holding onto his mother’s arm and eagerly waiting to meet his new sibling.
It was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen: a birth without horror-filled screams and beeping monitors and nurses shouting directions. It was a truly beautiful. It moved me to tears.
I am not exaggerating when I say this movie changed everything I ever thought I knew about childbirth. It opened my eyes and made me hungry to know more. It also made me passionate for the causes of women who desire the opportunity to have a say in their birthing experience: women who want to be allowed to say “no” to Pitocin and have a natural birth experience, women who want to give birth with a midwife at home or in a birthing center, or women who have had cesarean-sections in the past and want the chance to attempt a vaginal birth (VBAC).
I then picked up a copy of Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care.
While I’ll admit this book is heavily biased in the direction of encouraging home birth, it is also very well researched and presents a lot of startling statistics. It lays out the various reasons why medically-managed births and cesarean-sections have have grown to epidemic proportions in the United States today. It also compares our system to those of other industrialized nations around the globe. Frighteningly, the United States does not rank well at all for infant and maternal mortality rates compared with countries that tend toward more natural birthing practices.
I’ll be the first to concede that both these sources are only one side of the coin. However, I think they both present a valuable perspective. My own mindset prior to this exposure is a prime example: I didn’t realize other options existed. I only knew that the birth stories I’d heard in recent years almost always included the words “had to be induced” and quite often “c-section” as well … and I found that absolutely frightening. Now I know there are other options to be explored if and when I’m blessed with the opportunity to become a mother, and I think mothers-to-be should all be educated on those options as well.
