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Last night my hubby graciously sat through the new Ricky Lake documentary “The Business of Being Born.” It was wonderful (I cried at every birth!). I highly recommend this movie to anyone of child bearing age of who knows someone of child bearing age.
Here is a preview on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8h0SkPcs2U
You can “live stream” the whole movie from netflex:
http://www.netflix.com/MemberHome
there is some nudity (hard to show birth without it) but nothing sexual. Also nothing “New Age-y.” Just the simple truth about the birth industry in America.
America has the best emergency care system in the world and spends more than any other nation on pre-natal care and birth. So of course the safest place in the world to give birth is……Sweden (followed closely by Japan.) America is the 28th safest place to give birth. All the other countries that do better than we do have high rates of midwife delivery (Scandinavia and Japan=70%, America= less than 4%). Home births are as much as 50% in these other countries. We have twice as many mommies die and become injured during birth and three times as many babies as these top scoring countries do. Something is very wrong.
Did you know that 80% of American births are induced? And it just so happens that America has the most considerate babies in the world. Where in most of the world births are evenly spaced throughout the day and the week, in America the majority of our babies are born Monday through Friday, between 9 and 5. How very nice of our babies to keep their births in the business hours.
Doctors don’t have a very good track record where birth is concerned: from not washing their hands in the 1800’s (and losing more than half of their women to infection)) to x-raying every pregnant woman to drugs that made babies be born without arms and legs or with two uteri, they just don’t have a lot of credibility. The thing is they used these things on women for years BEFORE it was discovered they were bad. Ultra sounds, pitocin, cytotec, epidurals etc. are all just too new for us to really know if they will cause problems long term.
What we do know is that God invented birth. He designed the woman’s body to give birth naturally and without medicine’s help. Women have been doing just that for thousands of years. We can trust the natural process.
Yes, due to the fall, sometimes there are problems. But in these other countries (that have fewer babies and mamas DIE remember) 70-80% of their women birth without a doctor (though they have a trained midwife) and their c-section rate is less than 10% (ours is more than 30%). Many studies have shown that a trained midwife at home is the safest way for 90% of women to birth.
Oh, and c-sections are major. Abdominal surgery, remember. They carry all the negative side effects and potential problems that other major surgeries carry. I am thankful we have the technology for those very few who really need it, but it is being used way too often.
I have an article I wrote on the subject a few years ago here: http://homeschoolwwh.com/family/homebirth.html
Here is a preview on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8h0SkPcs2U
You can “live stream” the whole movie from netflex:
http://www.netflix.com/MemberHome
there is some nudity (hard to show birth without it) but nothing sexual. Also nothing “New Age-y.” Just the simple truth about the birth industry in America.
America has the best emergency care system in the world and spends more than any other nation on pre-natal care and birth. So of course the safest place in the world to give birth is……Sweden (followed closely by Japan.) America is the 28th safest place to give birth. All the other countries that do better than we do have high rates of midwife delivery (Scandinavia and Japan=70%, America= less than 4%). Home births are as much as 50% in these other countries. We have twice as many mommies die and become injured during birth and three times as many babies as these top scoring countries do. Something is very wrong.
Did you know that 80% of American births are induced? And it just so happens that America has the most considerate babies in the world. Where in most of the world births are evenly spaced throughout the day and the week, in America the majority of our babies are born Monday through Friday, between 9 and 5. How very nice of our babies to keep their births in the business hours.
Doctors don’t have a very good track record where birth is concerned: from not washing their hands in the 1800’s (and losing more than half of their women to infection)) to x-raying every pregnant woman to drugs that made babies be born without arms and legs or with two uteri, they just don’t have a lot of credibility. The thing is they used these things on women for years BEFORE it was discovered they were bad. Ultra sounds, pitocin, cytotec, epidurals etc. are all just too new for us to really know if they will cause problems long term.
What we do know is that God invented birth. He designed the woman’s body to give birth naturally and without medicine’s help. Women have been doing just that for thousands of years. We can trust the natural process.
Yes, due to the fall, sometimes there are problems. But in these other countries (that have fewer babies and mamas DIE remember) 70-80% of their women birth without a doctor (though they have a trained midwife) and their c-section rate is less than 10% (ours is more than 30%). Many studies have shown that a trained midwife at home is the safest way for 90% of women to birth.
Oh, and c-sections are major. Abdominal surgery, remember. They carry all the negative side effects and potential problems that other major surgeries carry. I am thankful we have the technology for those very few who really need it, but it is being used way too often.
I have an article I wrote on the subject a few years ago here: http://homeschoolwwh.com/family/homebirth.html
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