It has been on my mind for a while to offer my thoughts and a link regarding The Business of Being Born, but somehow i've avoided it or have been understandably really busy. today i find myself in front of the computer with a slight dizzy thing going on but i've come to the moment to tell you about it.
The Business of Being Born is the brain child of Ricki Lake, famous TV talk show host. She had a difficult birth experience with her first child and decided before her second child to educate herself much more about the birth process. She ended up deciding to have a home birth with her second child and ended up with a much more rewarding birth experience. out of that process she made the decision to produce a documentary about the state of birth in this country.
So she recruited her friend, filmmaker Abby Epstein, to follow a midwife around for two years in NYC as she attended to home births. they also talk to OB/GYNs practicing in 'normal' hospital settings. in the process the filmmaker becomes pregnant and delivers as well.
The documentary is not meant to convince everyone to run out and have a home birth but more to get people thinking about how they see birth and what they'd like birth to be.
to see a great trailer for it and to read more you can visit the WEBSITE.
OK so i knew that going in. Somehow i thought it would be LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of home births. with LOTS of blood and moaning/yelling women, and some pretty graphic close-ups of babies being born. i am happy to report that is NOT the case. Max was able to sit through the whole thing with me, only covering his eyes once or twice for a brief moment.
And i think for me it just reinforces what i've already been thinking about. it gives a lot of statistical information that is pretty scary... like the number of C-sections in this nation, and the amount maternal or infant death in this country... both of which are terrible and have us ranked very low among industrialized nations. they talk about how in so many other nations of the world midwives are the primary care providers for normal pregnancies and women only go to OB/GYNs if there is a problem... because OB/GYNs are specialists, they are taught to look for problems, and they are surgeons so if there is a problem C-section is always the answer. and there is a moment when they ask the OB/GYN residents at a hospital how many times they've ever seen a natural birth and they say almost never. (!) so those are some of the scary things that make me want to run away from a hospital.
what i liked was that Ricki Lake said at one point something about women in this country not having a good image of birth. that all we're shown on TV is pain and agony and that it is some horrible thing that is like "going wrong" in our bodies that should be "fixed" with medication. and this documentary gives some images of women who are empowered by the experience. women who don't run from the experience just because it is hard work and it is painful. and in the moment when the baby is delivered they are supremely rewarded with not only the newborn but also a real sense of accomplishment that nothing else can give. i kept thinking that if a woman knew she can withstand hours of painful labor to deliver this infant it would surely empower her as a mother to be able to withstand hours of crying from that newborn, or to withstand the other challenges of motherhood. and to see the JOY on the faces of the women was really remarkable.
and i guess i never realized how odd it is that i have a pretty empowering healthy vision of birth and i can be grateful to my mom and my aunt marty and the people around them for that.
some other things that stood out. the midwife they followed shared her birth video which was really funny because she had a long emotional home birth and she's supposed to be the expert right? ricki lake showed her birth video and i saw her on rachel ray saying she'd have had better lighting for it if she knew she was going to share it with the world. they also show a home birth that ends up needing to change location and move to a hospital. and they show a water birth that is so amazing, the woman is so calm you don't even know she is delivering until the baby is out of the water!
nancy shared that they never show all the stuff that the midwife carries in with her. they show it in her apartment getting ready but she doesn't arrive at home births with just a backpack which is what it looks like. they also never show her monitoring the baby during the birthing process which midwives do quite often (nancy said it happens with every position change). nancy's other thought is that they did a little overkill on the scary hospital stuff. they show the 'twilight sleep' faze of birthing practice (1950s or 1960s?) and show women being tied to the bed and she said she was practicing then (so probably 1960s) and that was very rare to tie someone to a bed. she said the film was not meant to scare people out of hospitals but just open eyes and show some of what is going on these days. hmmmm......
but all in all, very worthwhile. i recommend this movie to any woman in general just to have a picture of what the healthcare in this country is like for women and babies. and i do mean ANY woman even those who aren't having babies any time soon. i also recommend this movie to any of our friends/family who are wondering what this home birth thing is all about. yes some nudity and some babies coming out but it's tastefully done. you can get it on Netflix. and there's also somewhere you can get it online for free and watch it over the web, but you'll have to figure that one out on your own. if you're not going to watch the whole thing, at least watch the trailer on the website and see what it's all about. very interesting.
if you do watch i'd love to hear your comments. : )
2 comments:
We found it online and watched it for free no problem, so thanks for the link!! This way I could watch it ASAP. I actually thought it was strikingly similar to Ina May Gaskins's work, if you have read that. Incidentally, Ina May was in the movie a bit and was referenced in the beginning of the movie as the "impressive" woman who was "a bit granola" by Rikki Lake who showed Ina May's picture to her friend in a book. Ironically, I had just finished Ina May's book Friday morning and watched the documentary Friday night. I think that it had a lot of truths in it, but that you always have to understand that most documentaries are edited to prove a point, so they are completely biased. I do think that it was a good source of information, though, especially for non-readers. I just hope that I can prove it wrong in that hospitals and OBs are complete intervention mongers with no respect for the family's wishes....
Did you see the articles recently about ACOG and the AMA trying to vilify this movie? If only we could find the middle ground between only having natural methods accepted at home and the safety of being in a hospital if emergencies occur... I have seen on TV some birth centers attended only by midwives that are either attached or very close to hospitals... why can't we just all have those places where we can give birth? blergh....
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