The stories are of the births and the parents experiences and are timeless. I wrote a piece there that is well worth reading since it responds to some of your questions, actually, although it is probably about 25 years old. Again: the process of birth in a woman's body does not change, the environment, the culture around her and around birth has changed enormously not just in my lifetime, but yours. The book is called, Hearts Open Wide and I would send you a copy but by the time you get it, you will be well onto another part of your studies. When I wrote that the US had one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world, although our infant mortality rate was on the rise. It continues to be and we have an alarming maternal mortality rate. Most of the babies born in the US are born medicated....their mothers are medicated and so are the babies, through the maternal bloodstream and the placenta. We have lots of rationales for this intervention, but the fact remains we have the most pharmaceuticalized newborns on the planet. Wonder if that contributes to the chemical dependencies that are so rampant a little later in American lives?
When I was pregnant with Devlin, I intended to deliver at home. There were no midwives here around at that time. I received prenatal care at the local hospital where the doctors told me nothing at all. I did find an old public health nurse who took an interest in my wanting a "natural childbirth"...one without medications, but cautioned against having my baby at home. She worked with me as I did breathing exercises and relaxation techniques we found in the very rare books that addressed the subject. When I went into labor a woman who had had a baby and my friend acted as my "midwives". The baby's father and other friends made food and waited around me, watching. One friend put on the only pair of sterile gloves we had as soon as my contractions started so she couldn't touch me. I felt very on display and after several hours, they all got really worried...it was a dark and stormy November night and they insisted I go into the hospital....put me in the back of a van and hauled me out of there. At the hospital this small crowd of frightened people and a very pregnant laboring woman arrived setting the hospital staff into a flurry of fear and fury. They put me into a small room, by myself. All my friends were in a waiting room feeling guilty while very cold and alone, I contracted away...The doctor came in with a nurse and a piece of paper, they were going to do a caesarian section since they were certain I had been pushing in labor for many hours. Actually, I never had pushed and was only in labor for about six hours by this time...but who asked me? I refused to sign the paper...asking instead for an oxygen tank and mask(!) and to be left alone. I breathed into the mask and relaxed and felt my body open....and Devlin move down inside me. When they returned a little later, they took me into the delivery room and he was born vaginally. I always felt blessed that there was some voice inside me that knew more than I did and took control at that very difficult moment and that I trusted it and spoke out.
Spending much of the next fifteen years learning midwifery and attending births as well as becoming a licensed PA with a specialty in ObGyn and a midwifery license and practicing at home and at that same hospital...and practicing and believing in family planning, I was once again pregnant...consciously and by choice. Determined to deliver at home, and be in control I was probably a little too controlling....but I did give birth to ElizaGrace, surrounded by numerous loving friends and family..(including the boy who had came out that cold and clear November morning fifteen years earlier, holding my hand) and her daddy....giving me sips of water. She slipped out with a deep strong almost orgasmic push into a warm bath and swam wide-eyed up onto my belly....ready for the world.
Who could say which was better? We birth the way we live. It is the curse and blessing of being a woman in culture. Most babies are not born into a cultural vacuum and their mothers don't give birth that way. Midwives say "Birth is as Safe as Life Gets"...and many women/people do not feel safe in their bodies, their world or their planet. Until that changes, we will continue to have frightened women choosing (not necessarily truly informed choices) to give over the incredible power that is inherent in their reproductive bodies. Whether we explain it away or not, whether women recognize it or not....most have missed out. They are left with a gaping hole in their deeply primal creative selves. We have built an industry based on denial...denying that this is true...finding many, often very articulate, "unassailable" arguments as to why each woman has had to have her particular method of intervention....But without doubt, most healthy women who reach full term pregnancies and left to labor in her own ways, with assistance from an experienced, skilled caregiver will deliver, vaginally, healthy, unmedicated babies more than 95% of the time. Birth is essentially (at it's essence) a social event.....not a medical event. We as a culture, for many, many, well documented, some studied and some generally unacknowledged, reasons, have over the generations made it a medical event. As a culture, as a species, I believe we are lesser for that.
Oh what were your other questions? Midwifery accounts for between 1% and 3% of all births in the US, I think. Could be up to 5%. I haven't kept up on the numbers, but I think those are them. Many midwifery attended births over the past 10 15 years are medical births within a hospital setting. Midwives have become part of the health care "system"..
Still midwives are basically trained in "normal birth" They know that birth is normal. Hospital settings do not create a place for that so these days a normal birth most often includes an IV at the very least when a woman arrives in labor....and the interventions go on from there.
There is a great dvd called "The Business of Being Born" made in NYC about the different aspects of birthing in America...very well done, by an actress who most people know, but whose name escapes me at the moment. Well worth seeing, Again I could send it to you but would arrive too late. Could find it online, I am very sure.
In many underdeveloped countries, more than 95% of all births occur under the care of some form of midwife....or at least an experienced birth attendant. In many developed countries, especially in Europe and Canada.....midwives attend most normal births. Most of the Obstetricians in Denmark as of several years ago, had been born at home, attended by midwives...so their attitude towards birth is much different than the attitudes of an obstetrician trained to see pregnancy and birth as problem oriented. In the US most women will think of seeing an ObGyn for their prenatal care....whereas the reality is the woman herself is the primary, day to day, caregiver in her pregnancy and her medical provider is a witness and expert if something is off....Someone the pregnant woman may see only a few minutes once a month through her pregnancy. An ObGyn is a surgeon....surgeons are trained to do surgery.....They are not geared towards normal....From the start, a woman is on a path toward intervention, away from trusting her body and it's determination to serve her well.
