the beauty of birth.

i've been hesitant to post this blog for a while now. it's something that in the last 2 years has become very near and dear to my heart, and so i decided to go out on a limb and share that part of me.

i have always had a passion for justice, and when i found out i was pregnant with porter, my mind was open to an array of injustices that women and babies have suffered, and still suffer today at the time of birth. when i first began to learn about pregnancy and birth, it stemmed from the excitement to welcome my first son into the world, but has since gone way beyond that. something i have learned however, is that my approach in this situation is that in order to be able to communicate effectively, i have to be sensitive and less of my usual, harsh, brash, black and white self when it comes to matters of injustice. so with that being said, i am always nervous to post my experience and opinions on the matter of birth in our culture because i want to be sensitive to all mothers who have different opinions, or who have had different (particularly unwilling or unplanned) experiences at the time of birth. so i'm offering this blog, not as judgement against those loving mommies i just mentioned, but as a huge piece of my heart to see God's design fulfilled and realized in each of our lives and experience with bringing new life into the world.

when i started learning about the medical versus midwifery model of care in prenatal care, i was extremely shocked to see how completely opposite they were, and i couldn't figure out why the medical model was so appealing to our society. Before I was pregnant I started educating myself on women's reproduction and cycles...I read alot about it and was amazed at how little women actually know about their own bodies, and how little the doctors we typically go to know. It was my opinion that we are effectively trained and schooled in the thought that "we, as women, don't know what is best for our bodies or how to control our reproduction. Our doctors do". Often, OB/GYN's and doctors consider you "infertile" or challenged at concieving if you haven't become pregnant after a year of trying - typically, they then suggest that you start fertility drugs. However, there are multiple tiny little reasons that a woman cannot conceive...sometimes as simple as having sex one day too early or late in her cycle. Don't misunderstand - I believe that we need doctors and OB's, and that some women do struggle to conceive or are unable to conceive and am extremely thankful for the capable professionals help in these situations...however, my point is that I was shocked at the misinformation that is often provided to women about their own bodies. My first question was, why don't all women and girls know this? Why aren't we taught this at a young age??? After learning more and more about the history of women's care in our culture, i now understand why women and girls do not know this.

I began my search by reading literature on the two types of care, and quickly was convinced that I wanted to deliver with a midwife. If I hadn't had access to such a great birth center at a hospital, I would have definitely tried to convince my husband that I wanted a home birth since I had such a healthy pregnancy with no complications. My childbirthing experience was incredible. It was the biggest life defining, life changing day for me. Going through the process of delivering my baby, I felt like my eyes were opened to the miraculousness of how God designed us. Everything from the physical contractions to the hormonal symphony that occurs during labor and birth was amazing to me. What was also amazing to me was working with my midwife as if it was a perfectly healthy, normal event that happens every day, every where, but is also unique to every single woman. I once heard that birth changes a woman, whether you want it to or not...it is either an incredibly empowering experience, one that makes you scale a wall that you thought was impassable, or it is an incredibly scarring and terrifying experience.

In contrast with my experience, I am extremely frustrated by the perception of pregnancy and childbirth that I think has been directly fabricated over the past 200 years in Western medicine by doctors and leaders to make women believe that we cannot do what our bodies are designed to do. In 1900 more than 99% of all births took place at home, by 1940 only 50% of births took place in hospital, and today - only .5% take place in the home in the US. Since 1900 more and more doctors were trained as OB/GYNS and needed jobs...in the 1920's, doctors in essence launched a Smear Campaign against midwives calling their methods "dirty" and ancient, and promoting hospitals as clean and prestine...when in fact at the time it was MUCH safer to deliver at home than in a hospital because at the time they had not discovered a way to stop the spread of bacteria from patient to patient. By the 1940's and 50's, women were routinely given drugs to make them unconscious, put in straight jackets and tied down with lambs wool in order not to interfere with the doctor's "delivery", and the baby was typically pulled out forcefully with forceps. Women were also put on all sorts of pills and medicines throughout their pregnancy which at the time, were thought to prevent complications, but in the end ended up causing much bigger complications such as babies to be born without arms and legs. Keep in mind that many of the predominant thinking in obstetrics today still stems from teachers and dominant thought during this era. Things like "24 hour delivery within membrane rupture" (because of infection), the "average" amount of time women need to labor and birth before it is necessary to intervene, early umbilical cord clamping, routine episiotomy, suctioning the newborns lungs, and whisking them off to "clean" the baby before letting them bond and breastfeed were all established during the 1960's. This not only occured in the beginning the 1900's - in the 1990's women were given a drug (without being tested at all or FDA approved for labor induction, it was used off label) called Cytotec which ended up causing hundreds of ruptured uteruses and death in infants and mothers. This link wasn't researched and discovered until 1999. Now days - women are commonly given the drug Pitocin, a synthetic version of Oxytocin, to speed up delivery - often unnecessarily, and an array of other drugs...epidurals, narcotics, etc etc. Many people argue that these advances and interventions are some of the best and most developed in the world, thus why they are so widely used....yet, the united states is ranked as one of the worst in maternal death rates in the developed world - of which is at it's highest point that it has been in decades. Not to mention that our C-Section rate is THE highest in the developed world - 1 in 3. I am not arguing that progression in medicine is a bad thing and that there are in fact women who do not need these things...there ARE and they HAVE saved mothers and babies lives. However, 90% of all pregnancy and birth are normal and healthy events, only 10% of pregnancies need the interventions so commonly given today. I think we need to stop and reevaluate, and ask: is what we are doing improving the outcomes on the lives of women, or hindering the optimum for them?

My problem is this: 1) the history of ob/childbearing interventions in the united states over the last 100 years has time and time again proved that there is little research done on prenatal drugs, diagnostic tests, and birth intervention until it is too late and too many lives have been affected, and 2) that it is NOT woman and child centered. I think when a woman enters the typical hospital there are issues after issues stacked up against her, preventing her from the natural birth that is best for her and her child - even beginning with dealing with insurance, making it impossible for her to deliver her child how she needs or wants to, not how money dictates, a doctor wants to, or what is most convenient for other people. Why don't people ask the most basic question "what are women's needs in labor?" Why don't people recognize the results of cheating women in the process of their birth? Women do not need to be treated like they are sick, strapped into beds with IV's, unable to move around to progress their labor...they need to be empowered and loved, made to feel strong and capable, and a part of the miraculous event that their bodies are perfectly capable of.

When I hear stories of women who have felt completely helpless at their births, or those who had an idea of the miracle moment that would occur at birth and were robbed because of an unnecessary c-section, or see babies on a table with bright lights surrounded by strangers, desperately seeking the comfort of their mother, it breaks my heart and i just want to be a part of fixing the broken system. I want to be a part of empowering women and creating joy and life and confidence at their births. It is amazing what a woman can accomplish when she is surrounded by people who believe in her, and i think it's time we all stepped up together and demanded more from our hospitals, our health care providers, our law makers, and our system of belief.