THE BUSINESS OF BEING BORN: A Labor Worth Seeing
.jpg) When I speed my way to a restroom at a crowded venue –say a stadium or theater – I invariably turn to the long line of women and tell them how lucky they are. We men don’t get the opportunity to experience the miracle of child birth. Somehow that doesn’t cheer them up. Now I know why.
THE BUSINESS OF BEING BORN is about that miracle and how it is being subverted
The idea for the project came after Lake’s first child was born. Though she wanted a natural childbirth, the doctors pushed unnecessary interventions on her, prompting her interest in the subject. So she investigated alternatives.
In natural vaginal childbirth, mothers release special endorphins that not only help them deal with the pain, but also create a bonding experience with their babies. It is also an empowering experience for the moms. As one woman said, “If I can do that I can do anything,” and that is being taken away from them.
What’s the problem? According to the film, it’s the medical establishment. It no longer spreads the theory that the pain of childbirth is the curse of Eve, payback for her dalliance with a certain snake in the grass, I mean tree. But physicians still argue that midwifery is New Age B.S. In fact, even Lake, when looking at photos of midwives selects one that looks “granoley.”
Doctors also say hospital births are safer than home births. What if something goes wrong? What do you then, a young ob/gyn doctor asks. She didn’t know because she’d never seen a home or natural birth in her career. But the statistics beg to differ.
Home births with a trained midwife are statistically as safe and in many cases safer than hospital births. And in countries where midwifery (it rhymes with trickery) is more prevalent than in the U.S., both infant and mother mortality rates are lower than ours. The U.S. has the second worst newborn death rate (5 per 1,000) in the developed world, tying us with Hungary, Poland, Malta and Slovakia. In the countries with the lowest infant mortality rates – Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Norway and Finland – 70% of pregnant women use midwives.
Part of the problem seems to be the lack of information available to American women. Most are unaware of how safe midwife births are and (as all of us are to a certain extent) are programmed to trust and believe whatever our doctors tell us. But physicians don’t make money when women use midwives. Neither do hospitals, who do all they can to encourage fast turnover. Rather than wait for the mother and child to be ready, they give her drugs to induce pregnancy. A woman screaming in agony is unlikely to argue. But these drugs increase the pain requiring an epidural, which reduces the effectiveness of the drug that speeds contractions. So women then need more of that followed
And the drugs counteract the body’s own hormones and interfere with the bonding process. No one knows what the effects will be over the long term. In the 1930s, doctors routinely performed pelvic X-rays that resulted in an increase in the cancer rate among babies. For about three decades, the standard was to use a drug called scopolamine, which often resulted in post-traumatic-type stress after childbirth.
Thalidomide, which caused birth defects, was commonly used in the ‘70s and more recently Cytotec, used to stimulate contractions, was found to cause ruptured uteruses and contributed to a high infant mortality rate. History shows that those involved in obstetrics don’t spend a lot of time studying the long-term effects before they introduce practices. So who knows what will happen as a result of the current round of drugs.
Doctors also use Cesareans for their own convenience than out of the patient’s necessity. Studies have shown that a large percentage of C-sections take place at 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. – hours when a doctor might want to get home to his family rather than hang around waiting for his or her patient to be ready to give birth.
C-sections are major surgery and always carry with them the danger of complications. So as one doctor pointed out, “If you really want a humanized birth, the best thing to do is get the hell out of the hospital.”
Several women including Ricki Lake have natural childbirth on camera. Ricki does it in her bath tub and there is something awe-inspiring when the midwife asks her to reach down and pick up her ba
This is an important film and every woman of child bearing age and all those who love them should see it. It’s opened in New York and will open in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle in the coming weeks. But it will be available via Netflix in February.
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