After watching the first part of the film yesterday I realized that birth was just the first part of a chain of authority placed on a person. In the hospital giving birth, the mother does not have that much of a say in what happens during her birth. Like one of the doctors said, birth was something that he could do on his time. The mother's priorities aren't taken into account, it's just getting the baby out one way or another. I also noticed how during the home birth, the mother was usually the first person to touch the baby AND she was the first to hold it. There wasn't the typical rush of taking the baby away from the mother, cleaning it, and then handing it back all neatly bundled. I'm not going to play psychologist, but I feel like taking the baby away from a mother does some psychological to the mother apart from what they discussed and called hormones. When people question the safety of a midwife, I think they are forgetting all the pre-natal care that women have now and how many defects they can detect before the baby is even born. Although I don't think that every birth should be a home birth and ultimately it is the choice of the mother and father, there should be more information about midwives available and they should be accepted as a medical entity for whatever insurance companies need to pay them. As the United States healthcare system is changing, I can see that midwives may disappear altogether with few exceptions. Not one option is better than the other but without proper education the right individual decision cannot be properly made.
-Lindsay Rynders
My post was also a reaction to the documentary. I agree with your point about the proper education of options for the mother. I wrote how Americans feel like they must rely on the medical health system because "they know best" and they are often misinformed about other available options. The degree hanging on our doctor's wall provides us with a sense of security almost as if they can never err. I think this is a major problem with not only birthing, but all medical conditions in our country today.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I think pregnant mothers should be educated on the option of midwives. I think at first it may be scary to be out of the hospital to have a baby. But like you said, today many defects can be detected early and if a problem were to arise, the midwives are professionaly trained. In our society the hospital is an institution that we have grown accustomed to and making a change to have a baby elsewhere seems unheard of in most parts of the U.S. But from the video there seemed to be a lot of positive aspects to having a midwife.
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