The fight regarding home birth and it’s safety continues

There was a great article in LA times regarding the issue of the American College of Obstetrics attacking the movie “The Business of Being Born” by Ricki Lake and they are trying to make home births illegal. This is outrageous and really shows what certain groups are about and what their true agenda is. Clearly American College of Obstetrics is not interested in the safety of the mother and the unborn child if they want to enforce the american hospital birth mentality with interventions such as induction, breaking of waters, giving pain medication etc which all have been proven to lead to unnecessary C-sections and is the opposite of how birthing is handled in Europe by midwifes. In Europe, home birthing is encouraged and practices commonly yet the newborn death rate is higher in America than in most European countries. Now what does that tell you? Do you believe the American College of Obstetrics who clearly have their own professional agenda in mind or do you believe that women were meant to give birth the natural way and should have the power to choose their own birthing style and the place?

Please read here for more details regarding this issue. There is an excellent book written about this by Jennifer Block called “Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care”. I highly recommend reading it. I really hope that American College of Obstetrics loses their fight to make home births illegal because if they succeed, it will mean that this country is going way backwards and it’s very unfortunately for the women of this country. I’ve given birth twice here in America and I can tell you that both times I had to fight to give birth naturally at a hospital. It was such a nightmare that I don’t wish that for anyone. If I had known better, I had delivered at home with a midwife. 

 

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.