dispatches from quilt city

Birth

Birth: A Surprising History of How We Are Born should really be titled Birth: An Infuriating History of How We Are Born. Chapter after chapter author Tina Cassidy chronicles the way in which laboring women have been mistreated, ignored, experimented on, and even killed. What makes the history even more enraging is that most often the people doing the maiming, torturing, or whatever were there to "help." Most often those there to help were male doctors trying to take that care away from female midwives - and doing a large amount of damage in the process.

Here's one of my favorite examples, where Cassidy quotes a mid-nieteenth century doctor complaining about the midwife and women helpers who were still present at the birth, even if they were forced to call in a doctor.
"Nothing is more common than for the patient's friends to object to [bloodletting], urging as a reason, that 'she has lost enough blood.' Of this they are in no respect suitable judges."

And if they weren't blaming the women in the room, they were blaming the actual laboring mother:
When doctors were spreading infection in the late 1700's before sanitary practices, the "blamed the mother for creating her own infection...a woman, upset because her husband was abroad she went into labor at the Rotunda, became infected. The head of the hospital blamed her fretting."

The entire time I was reading about how doctors intimidated women and bullied them out of their own better instincts I couldn't help but think of a recent conversation with my aunt. I mentioned that I was interested in a home birth with a midwife and she told me that her female OB-GYN had told her she gets so upset when she sees "smart, educated women doing something stupid like having their baby at home."

So, let's settle this once and for all:
- "In America, those women attended by midwives ultimately have lower cesarean rates, fewer interventions such as labor induction and episiotomies, and lower infant mortality, than those attended by doctors."

- "Deliveries at home and in birth centers have been statistically proven to be as safe as those in hospitals, where, not incidentally, one's chance of having a cesarean soar just because you walk through the door."

- "One study has shown that epidurals increase the likelihood of the baby presenting in the posterior position - in other words, not fully rotated. Such a presentation does lead to higher cesarean rates."

You're not a dumb hippie because you want to have natural childbirth, even in your own home, and I just wish in 2007 most people understood that. It's not the answer for everyone - but if I learned anything from this books, it's that every woman should have the right to figure out that answer for herself.