Waiting for the birth of our 3rd baby
I have 3 weeks to go until my due date but I’m already 1 1/2cm dilated and 80% effaced. I was induced with our last 2. First time due to toximia. 2nd time because I was already 3 cm dilated and I can’t feel contractions. This time I’m going to wait and see what happens. I’m very excited to feel how a real birth process starts. I delivered the last 2 naturally and I’m going to do the same with this baby. My body is just weird because during labor, I can’t feel contractions even when I’ve been induced with pitocin. I can somehow block the feeling and I won’t feel anything until the head comes out. Needless to say it makes delivering naturally easy. Now I’m excited to wait and see how labor will go and feel with this baby.
The controversy of the movie Business of Being Born
There is an interesting discussion going on here about this film. The author of the Xblog is questioning the motives of the film maker and the facts being presented in the film. This is what I wrote as a response to the discussion: This is a very interesting discussion. I’m a European living in America and I’ve delivered 2 kids here so I can speak from my point of view having 2 very different hospital births. In Europe it’s very common for women to give birth without pain medication for example. Here in America, the first option given to you is pain medication with very little regard to how it can and does affect the outcome of the birth. It’s been proven that epidurals and c-sections go hand in hand and one doesn’t have to be a doctor to see the correlation there. Women’s bodies are build to give birth to babies not lay in the bed under pain medication not being able to feel your body working during labor. The baby has trouble coming through the birth canal because the hormonal/pain censors in the brain has been blocked by pain medication. All of sudden the baby is in distress and off we go in the surgery room. How many times have you heard a woman giving birth naturally meaning without any pain medication, needing a c-section? I gave birth naturally without any pain medication and the hospital staff on both occasion were horrified and actually amused because they thought they knew I couldn’t do it and also because they didn’t see the point why anyone would want to. After those reactions coming from 2 different hospitals and hospital staffs I got a good idea of the current medical mentality here in American and I’ve since learn how much the insurance companies and hospitals control the birthing process and are in it together. If you get the automatic epidural being offered, your hospital bill goes way up because now you’ve got the anestesiologist to involved and you have to pay that person as well. I wanted to get out of the hospital the next day after having my delivery but my request was denied by the hospital and was bullied in staying by the hospital staff claiming that if I leave, the insurance company might not pay for my delivery. Now please tell me why a hospital would want me to stay for 2 days instead of 1 when me and my baby were perfectly fine. The only answer I can come up with is money. They were going to get more money from me and my insurance company. I can’t believed that I was so stupid and caved into staying. I’ve since learned that this is common practice by the hospitals. If I had known that, I would have walked out with our baby in our hands. After my own experienced with child birth here and American and knowing how different things work in Europe and the country I’m from, I’m so glad to see this film being put out to make people think. I haven’t seen this film myself so I shouldn’t fully comment but I hope to see it soon. One more point, I’d like to make is that from the many years that I’ve lived here and can see how many americans are brainwashed by the drug companies to need a medication for everything. The drug companies have such a powerful hold on the American society due to the money spend on advertising and lobbying on Capitol Hill. In Europe people are encouraged not to use medications unless completely necessary including over the counter medications. A good latest example of the over usage of medications is the cold medications being banned for young kids and babies because parent’s couldn’t be trusted to properly use them and because there wasn’t enough testing done on the side effects of the kids, yet these medications have been on the market for years without any regard to the responsibility of the drug companies and the FDA to make sure these medicines are safe to the age group they are intended to.
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Child Birth in America is not as safe as you would think – Business of Being Born sheds light on this issue
Finally someone is exposing the fact that Americans have a lot to learn from other countries when it comes to child birth. The USA has the 2nd highest infant mortality rate amongst the developing nations and yet we are suppose to be so medically advanced. I think the over medical advancement place a major part in what is wrong today in so many hospitals when child birth is concerned. Since I’m European (born and raised in Finland), I come from a different culture where child birth is looked at as natural as can be. Midwifes play a huge part and natural births are encouraged. Women bodies were made to deliver babies the natural way as long as you let nature do it’s work. Once you start disrupting the natural process with medication etc, things start to go wrong. I delivered both of my children here in the US without pain medication because I wanted to have a natural birth, and I was looked at like I was from Mars. I delivered both times at the hospital and the staff was amazed that I didn’t want any pain medication and kept offering it. They did the typical pitocin type of birthing to speed up the process to keep the assembly line going but I was still able to deliver without pain medication. I’m so glad I did! The only mistake I made was not to have a midwife present at the birth and letting them give me pitocin. If I would ever do it again, I would definitely have a midwife and I might also consider home birth so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the hospital bullying.
Ricki Lake has made this amazing documentary, exposing the whole problem of current birthing process in the US. I can’t wait to see the whole movie. All women should see this so that they can be more educated about what really goes on when you go to deliver a baby. Here is the website address to his document.
