Has it ever occurred to you what the process of your birth was like for your mother? Did you ever ask her? Or how about your grandmother, or her mother? Birth isn’t something to be taken lightly.
As a woman, I’m barely sure how I feel about its process, let alone how a man could comprehend all the complexities of the formation of life and the physical and emotional transformations that take place. As I’ve learned more about the process of birth, I’ve found myself continually intrigued; however, I’ve found some facts to be disconcerting.
As a pre-med student with a passion for alternative medicine, I find it annoying, yet typical, that modern doctors today treat pregnancy as an illness, rather than a natural progression. More than one would think, woman very often do not have a choice in the process of their delivery.
As one woman put it, “I felt as though I had no control. I was lying on my back, surrounded by nurses and looking up at a doctor who was saying things I could barely comprehend. All I could do was nod my head.”
Giving birth can be an intimidating process, but I’m curious to know if it has to be this way.
The history of birth gives the medicinal practice of it a skeptical reputation. When I asked my grandmother what it was like for her, she incredulously said, “I was strapped to a table and left alone for hours!” That’s probably what it was like for your grandmother, too.
Genevieve Damaschi, who bore three girls in the 1940’s and ‘50’s, explained how she was gassed during the birth of her first daughter, slipping in and out of consciousness on a stretcher in the hallway of Hartford Hospital. She screamed. The nurses told her to “shut up.” She didn’t see the baby for three days, per standard hospital infection-prevention policy. Her husband was barred from the room while she labored.
At first I was shocked to hear of stories like this, where women are treated so horribly and where pregnancy is treated as a taboo.
The more I learned, the more questions I had: How did midwives go from being burned as witches to vaunted by the rich? Who let men in the room? Were cesarean sections really named after Julius Caesar? Could it possibly be true that even in the early twentieth-century America, women delivering in hospitals were more likely to die there than if they had given birth at home? That poor women were used as obstetrical guinea pigs? That doctors use drugs to confine deliveries to banker’s hours? And, that some women have orgasms during vaginal births? (Yes!)
The answers – the surprising, frustrating, tantalizing answers – helped me realize that the childbearing experience was merely a reflection of its time and place. How then, is America second in infant mortality rates for industrialized nations? We rank forty-first in maternal health. More than half a million women die in childbirth every year, a figure that has changed little in twenty years, despite the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. It appalls me that 90 percent of those deaths are preventable. How is this possible?
The only conclusion I can assert: we must be doing something wrong.
From my investigation on the topic, it seems that women are treated as though they don’t know what they’re doing. Women may be nervous about a birth they know will be painful and scary, with possibilities of complications, birth defects, prolonged recovery, etc.
But in reality, women have been birthing babies for thousands of years. When women succumb to the natural and sacred experience of their pregnancy, they will find their body really does know, all on its own, when to push, when to relax, when to contract, and when to lay motionless from exhaustion. So thank you, doctor, but really, I’ll take it from here.
Midwives, actually, have a remarkable history; mostly they’ve been exiled for speculation of witchcraft, but in spite of it all, midwives have maintained a higher survival rate for their patients (mother and baby) than the OBGYN’s at the big, fancy hospitals.
The American society has been taught to think of them as dirty and unqualified, but midwives have delivered most of Europe, which even has superior postpartum support; In Sweden, mothers are given a two-year maternity leave. I suppose that is because their government understands the importance of family.
So, to understand this phenomenon of pregnancy as the equivalent of illness, I had hoped to really delve into this conceived topic of pregnancy and give birth to a new way of thinking. I aspire to create an exuberant amount of support for women and the process of birth. For many women here on Conn’s campus, pregnancy is much closer than we think. But it doesn’t seem to be on any of our minds; most college girls are on birth control so there is little worry, anxiety or thought involved. The college campus, though, is an important factor in shaping how we perceive sexuality and pregnancy. Our concerns seem limited to finding someone in Cro on a Saturday night and not contracting an STD.
The reality is, however, that we are at the age where our bodies are trying their hardest to conceive. College students give pregnancy little thought unless it’s focused on the desire to avoid it, but let’s think about it; rather, let’s care about it.
So to halt this nonsense before I really become unable to fathom it all, I encourage you: ask your mother about your birth; ask your grandmother. Not only will they be happy to tell you, it will instill within you a remarkable appreciation for the true beauty of life and the first nine months of its process.
Women and society have traversed many a milestone, but there is much more to be accomplished. Maybe it doesn’t seem important to you now, but I implore you to ponder the future nativity of your own precious child and the measures you can take to ensure it is a gentle and holistic process.
