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…)
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