What Babies and Mothers Want
Amanda and I went to see the movie "What Babies Want" presented by the Friends of Missouri Midwives last night. The movie started off pretty good ... they talked about how important it can be to use rituals to celebrate the transition to motherhood and that you should treat your baby as a feeling, sentient creature right from the beginning. They discussed that it is important to help smooth your baby's transition into the world by trying to cuddle her right away and spending time with her and not letting them take her away to the nursery or elsewhere right away unless absolutely necessary. I was completely with them up through that point. Then they started showing interviews of people who had less than idyllic births - C-section births, they were separated from their mothers right away, they suffered trauma - and these people claimed that these birth traumas were responsible for a whole host of ailments they suffered as an adult, ranging from neck pain to a personal inability to love. One memorable guy claimed that his feelings of unlovableness and rejection were directly traceable to the fact that his father tried to push him back in when he was being born when he started to arrived on the drive to the hospital. He said that at that moment he felt rejected, like his parents and the world didn't want him, and it has caused emotional issues ever since. I will agree that this guy clearly had a wide ranging set of personal problems, but I doubt that a less-than-ideal birth experience was truly the cause of them. It was somewhere around that point in the movie when I started to snort audibly and roll my eyes. They also had a section of the movie where fathers discussed how much the experience of watching birth affected them emotionally. I was with them during most of this part ... until they got to the interview with the guy who said when he saw his baby arrive all mucus and blood covered that he suddenly had the urge to lick the baby clean. That was the point where I laughed out loud. Amanda noted that she was glad someone had restrained him from fulfilling his urge to lick the baby.
After the movie we had an interesting discussion with the other movie-goers. They brought up a lot of issues that I've been dealing with regarding just how difficult it can be to get the doctors and hospitals to hear and respect your birth preferences. For example, you may say you want to avoid being induced with Pitocin, but if your waters break many doctors have a policy of inducing if you don't go into labor within 12 hours. So, what do you do then? Lie about when your waters broke? Or go along with your doctor's wishes?
St. Louis is a particularly bad place to try to have an unmedicated, low-intervention birth. We have no birthing centers, and the profession of midwifery is very endangered here (which explains why there are no midwives within a 500 mile radius on my insurance). I think someone needs to put together a website where people can post reviews of their obstetrician with regard to how well he or she supports low medical intervention birth so that at the very least there is a good resource for determining which ob is likely to respect your wishes. I like my obstetrician pretty well so far - but we haven't had the big discussion yet about my birth preferences. We have in a general sense discussed that I am interested in an unmedicated birth with fewer interventions, and she has agreed to support that and has indicated that she is generally for fewer interventioned (she mentioned an episiotomy rate of 10%, which is low). I am hopeful that Barnes will be a good place for the birth since they obviously have taken a modern view of the value of labor support and alternate methods of pain relief -- they offer a doula to all laboring mothers, and have birthing pools, squat bars, and birthing balls available. I feel like there's really not a lot I can do beforehand, though, other than educate myself -- ultimately I just have to hope things go the way I would like them to.
posted by Robin @ 5:05 PM
8 Comments:
Y'know, I went out the next day and bought "The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth," by Henci Goer. This was the least hippie of all the books, but still has a "squat out your kid in a kiddie-pool" bias. At least it doesn't have pictures of kiddie pools, which is more than I can say for several books shelved in the same area. The book also has nearly 150 pages of appendices, including literature summaries, medical studies, etc., so I'm looking forward to getting into all the nitty gritty. Funny, I've expended much thought on the pre-, during and post-pregnancy options, but really nothing indepth for the 36-hour period of actual labor. (Although I am 100% certain that I am anti-kiddie pool.)
I think your arbitrary kiddie-pool bias is very amusing. I am not personally planning on using the birthing pool, but there are good reasons for using it - there's evidence that immersion in water works pretty well for pain relief. And there are some hospitals (Barnes, I know) that even have birthing pools available for use there.
Talk to your OB ASAP about what kind of birth experience you want. From the general "I want low intervention" chats we had, I thought my OB and I were on the same page and once we had the nitty gritty discussion at like 36 weeks I found out we were NOT on the same page AT ALL. At that time we were all paid up and ready to go and so finding a new OB for the birth was really not an option. She was very pushy about getting an epidural. During crowning, ie ring of fire, she said "if you'd had an epidural you wouldn't be feeling this." The nurse said something along the lines of "that's in the past now." Bob and I were both pissed about that comment. One of the positives about my OB was lowest c-section rate in the county. Which with 20-25% of women getting cut wide open was a big concern for me. But she also does an epis on 98% of first time moms. When I presented the reasons I didn't want that she said, too bad you are not getting out of it. Like I was being grounded, not like I was an informed patient trying to plan my birth experience. And let me tell you the recovery from the cut was THE worst part of recovery. I could have been running around the block the next day if not for the stitches.
I would have loved to have options like a tub or hell, even walking around or using the shower. I'm glad I'm not giving birth in the backwater of Decatur again.
I suppose you're going to tease me for not wanting to eat the placenta, too?
when i read the "eat the placenta" comment, I thought it was a joke. But then I looked it up and people actually do that huh? I had no idea that every other mammal except humans did that! It helps with post partum depression,hemmoraging,and incereased flow of breast milk they say. Then again, being able to do it without being grossed out is a whole different story.:)
I am taking a birthing class here at school for my major and I think I might use that for a paper topic.
Sounds like that was an interesting movie. I am no sure about licking the mucas, that gave me goose bumps....ugggh gross. I dont know much about the effects of pitocin, but I have heard the reason they dont want you to go too long after your water breaks, is due to not having a dry birth. If you go too long you would have a dry birth and apparently that is 10 times worse than normal.
There's apparently a theory that vegetarians are supposed to spend pretty much their whole lives waiting around to give birth so they can eat the placenta, since it's meat that doesn't involve the suffering and killing of animals. I have heard this theory (online) more than once. I can tell you right now that at least in this case it is NOT true.
Now, if they made soy placenta, that would be a different story!! :)
My understanding is that they want to induce you if your waters break because there is some small chance you and the baby may get an infection (since the baby isn't sealed up in the sac any more). I wouldn't think a dry birth would be a problem since ALL of the amniotic fluid doesn't usually come out at once (just a little bit) and the body replaces the amniotic fluid.
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