How come no one wants to just give birth? (As a rule…)

You know…I read a lot about birth. I read blogs. I read magazines. I read books. I read pamphlets. I am a reader anyway, always have been, but when it comes to birth, the fascination has yet to end. So I read.

Many times while reading birthing stories or info or what-have-you (is that how you spell that?) I come across the “I had to because…” scenario.

As in, “I had to have a hospital birth because…” Or, “I had to have the epidural because…” Or, “I had to have an emergency c-section because…” Or, “I had to give up breastfeeding because…” Or, “I had to be induced because…” Okay, okay, enough. You’re smart. You get it.

Many times I scratch my head at these statements because in my mind, there always seems to be a missing piece to the puzzle. It’s like, what is the question before the question?

Allow me to elaborate…lucky you…

One such miraculous story I read a couple days ago was about a woman who went into cardiac arrest while delivering her baby (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/30/health/main6036883.shtml). Said mama ‘died’, the baby was born via emergency c-section, and ten minutes later, mama came back to life. Baby and mama are fine. Everyone is praising the heavens (not that there’s anything wrong with that), worshipping the doctors, and talking about miracles (which, for the record, I too am deliriously happy that the pair is healthy and alive, cynicism aside, but…)

The first thought that came to my skeptical mind was whether this mama had had drugs or not; i.e. epidural, pitocin, stadol, etc. and whether or not it was possible that a drug sent her into cardiac arrest. Because let’s face it, as a rule, to have a heart attack while giving birth unmedicated is so rare…Mother Nature didn’t design us to die while bringing our babies into the world. There just wouldn’t be all that many people here if she did.

It seems like these kinds of things happen predominately when interventions are involved…Why do I feel this way? Ina May Gaskin (www.inamay.com).

Ina May’s stats on unmedicated, intervention-free, physiological births support my thinking that Mother Nature designed us and our babies almost quite perfectly to give birth and not to die while in the throes of physiological labor. (It’s a big secret though…no one wants you to know this!)

Is that a big enough can of worms for ya?

Okay. Settle (me, not you).

So then the whole, “I had to have a c-section because…” scenario.

What precipitated the need for the emergency c-section? What were the conditions before the surgery? Scheduled induction? Failed induction? Failure to progress after induction? Failure to birth your baby within twenty-four hours upon induction or arrival to the hospital? Failure to birth the baby while laying flat on your back, knees to your ears, chin to chest, pushing uphill, as hospital staff shout at you when to push, all the while being numb from the waist down because of the epidural? Was it a Tuesday? Was it nearing dinner time? Bed time? Hmm….

What’s going on here?

How about the story I just read about a hospital in Ogden, Utah with a brand spanking new c-section wing? Not a room.  An entire wing (http://ogden.test1.ehc.com/our-services/service-detail.dot?id=38273)!

That’s right. An entire wing of the building dedicated to surgical delivery. (Which, consequently, the hospital is also proudly advertising its state-of-the-art, new and improved NICU, which unfortunately makes perfect sense simply because more babies born via surgery enter the NICU.)

While the article made me want to pull my eyelashes out, I can’t say that I was all that shocked.

Why?

Because a fancy, shmancy hospital a mere three or four miles from my humble home just opened up in October.  And yep, you guessed it…it boasts about having not one operating room (like the old, dippy hospital), but two glorious operating rooms in the labor and delivery ward (is that what we call it these days? Maternity ward? I don’t know…).  All county residents received a glossy mailing about this hospital and all its wondrous amenities. (When did hospitals become so glamorous anyway?)

Which brings to my mind, how are these hospitals going to pay for these gleaming operating rooms, err, wings, or um, err, units or whateverthehellyoucallit….who is going to fund these? Insert Jeopardy theme music….(Man, I used to be so good at Jeopardy…)

The consumer. You got it.

That means you.

Because, let’s face it, if we haven’t already, a hospital is a business. They have bills to pay, staff to keep, and profits to turn. It’s basic business (I think…I’m a science major and only had to take Econ 101…let me confer with my source…my brother).

So how many more instances of “I had to have an emergency c-section because…” will we begin to hear, especially in these glorious new facilities?

Will the c-section rates there rise? Will they decrease (as the World Health Organization begs for)? Will these lovely life saving institutions say, “Come here for your natural, drug-free, vaginal birth. We have state of the art birthing balls, squatting bars, birthing tubs, and midwives and lactation consultants ready to help you achieve your goal of an intervention free birth!” (Which always makes me wonder, do women even want that in the first place? Or do they want the surgical birth and I should just shut up about it already and go back to my Cosmo magazine like I devoured when I was 19?…but I digress).

What was I talking about?

Right. Birth stuff. Got it.

So in my mind, once again, the question before the question is, “What do women want while giving birth?” Do they want Wi-fi, plasma TVs, and mahogany hardwood floors? Do they want state-of-the-art operating wings, NICUs, and free formula samples, just in case?

How come no one wants to just give birth? (As a rule…)

Breastfeeding…are we supportive or just lip service?

I’m reading a wonderful book called “So That’s What They’re For” and as you may have guessed, it’s all about breastfeeding. It’s informative, non-threatening, approachable, and so gosh darn funny.  I love this line… “By the way, I hope I’m not the first to tell you that babies are a little work in general.”

Good stuff.

This sensible, intelligent author (Janet Tamaro) humorously points out all the ins and outs of breastfeeding in a way I find so easy to digest. I think it may be my new book recommendation for new breastfeeding mamas.

So of course, this book is making me think, along with making me laugh (“We’ll have you breastfeeding your baby while standing on your head in no time!”…I guess you had to read it).

It’s making me think about the whole big picture of breastfeeding in this grand old country of ours.

For starters, go with your knee jerk reaction to this question: Do you think we live in a bottle feeding society or a breastfeeding society?

What was your answer? What’d you think? If you said breastfeeding, ask yourself this question again and think.

Think about the women getting kicked off airplanes for breastfeeding. Think of the nursing couples (eh-hem, mama and baby that is) being not-so-politely asked to leave ginormous box stores with a red bullseye logo for breastfeeding or to exit that national coffee chain whose original Seattle-based logo had the glorious mermaid baring her breasts (per my favorite uncle on my dad’s side*, a man who spent the better part of 25 years in that city, so he should know) all for breastfeeding.

And lest we recall any number of other establishments that blatantly choose to exclude breastfeeding mothers and babies.

Okay, okay, I hear ya…these are the exceptions, not the rules. So that may be true, I’ll give you that. But I can’t help but wonder, does this make it okay?

What about breastfeeding in a bathroom stall of some huge chain store (I’ve done it)? Would you need to do this if bottle feeding? Or exiting any public place to hole up in your car to nurse (I’ve done this, too)? Again, do any bottle feeders do this? (Disclaimer: Not a dig, just a pondering question. Insert Jeopardy theme music if you like.)

What was the original question?

Do you think we are a nation supportive of breastfeeding or bottle feeding? Do we truly support the nursing mother-infant pair or only pay it lip service?

As you may have guessed, I can’t help but think the latter. You’re shocked, I know.

Our county’s support of breastfeeding is bullshit. It sucks. Lousy. It blows. What a bunch of lip service. Seriously.

The current statistic of birth locale for USA is the almighty hospital. Ninety nine percent of children born to American women are born in the hospital.

While I am one-hundred percent certain that there are wonderful hospitals with excellent breastfeeding initiation rates and higher than normal rates of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, I am also purdy darn sure that is the exception.

Why are so many American women struggling to breastfeed? Why are they not succeeding at a process that is deemed the most natural of natural human activities?

Are we a bottle feeding nation or breast?

We are bottle. The end.

Our public is comfortable with the bottle. We love the bottle. We are used to the bottle. We see the bottle everywhere (see my earlier blog about bottles everywhere!)…on clothes, baby knickknacks, gift bags, wrapping paper, “Congratulations, you had a baby” greeting cards, nursery decor, and on the flippin bottles themselves…bottles on bottles.

They are everywhere, but that’s only part of our culture.

I recently watched the trailer for a new documentary, “Formula Fed America.” Should cause a pretty good-sized uproar.

One stat shout out at me….artificial milk is a four billion dollar industry. Not million, BILLION. Not one or two, but four. Four big ones.

Billions!!!!!!!!

I wonder how much money breast pumps bring in? Hmmm…

Again, how is this happening? Back to my birth-in-hospital stat…

Or maybe I’ll start with a personal stat…

When I birthed my two children at home, I had uninterrupted skin on skin time with them. The umbilical cord was not even cut until about twenty to thirty minutes after they were born, simply because that’s when the placenta was born. First came the baby, then we hung out, cooed, cried, bonded (oh noooooo, not the ‘b’ word), checked on all the baby’s pieces parts, about 20 minutes into postpartum, some mild contractions came then out came the jelly-like placenta, slithering like a snake.

So my baby went nowhere but on my person for the first thirty minutes, easy.

After my children’s cords were cut, we hung out some more. About two hours more to be precise. Not doing too much. Talking, cooing, crying…oh wait, I covered that…and we nursed.

I wasn’t instructed to nurse. I wasn’t told to nurse. I wasn’t monitored by Nervous Nurse Nellie telling me how to position, latch, and hold…I just nursed my baby. It was as normal as looking at her. Up to the breast she went (same goes for #2, my son).

There was no whisking the baby away to be weighed, measured, cleaned, diapered, swaddled, capped, and presented to me. My baby never left me.

We just hung out for a couple hours getting to know each other. Oh gosh, can’t believe I’m going to say this, but get out the rag to wipe the upcoming sap off of the monitor…the whole thing was kinda beautiful.

I was jarred from my ear to ear grin, hazy oxytocin (i.e. love hormone) high by my midwife some 120 minutes later asking me if I wanted to weigh the baby.

Huh? Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah, let’s see how much this kid weighs. Oh yeah, let’s do the length. Oh yeah, we can put a diaper on, I guess? Let’s just hold off on the bath thing though and lay around some more.

And nurse some more. And more and more and more…

We nursed uninterrupted. We nursed on demand. We figured it out together and away we went. (Disclaimer: I know there are things that make nursing a challenge, such as cleft lip, cleft palate and being tongue-tied. These are exceptions, in my opinion. I’m talking about run of the mill stuff here. Thank you.)

When the midwife was confident my baby and I had the hang of it, some time later (maybe another hour or more?), home she went and off we went, nursing and getting to know each other (and making a bazillion phone calls). There was never any separation into a nursery for observation at any point. I observed my baby from the moment she was born (as did everyone else who visited).

Disclaimer, I am sure that this exact scenario happens in at least one or two hospitals in this country, but as a ruuuuullllllleeeeeeee……I can’t help but wonder….

Is this why so many American women are struggling to breastfeed? Too many hospital rules? Policies on milk intake? Regulations on postpartum procedures (suctioning, early cord cutting, bathing, weighing, weighing, and more weighing…you can fill in the rest…). And all those freebies of artificial milk they give you, “Just in case breastfeeding doesn’t work out.”

Is the difference between home and hospital birthing procedures to blame for the low success rate of breastfed babies? Couple that with the aforementioned culture and societal feelings toward breastfeeding and look what we have…

I simply cannot help but wonder.

And read and read and read.

*Yes, he’s my only uncle on my dad’s side…and I heart him!