The Business Of Being Born Documentary

NOTE: Just something I researched while I was pregnant. Its not meant to scare or offend anyone. This information is from the documentary "The Business of Being Born" which I watched long before I was ever pregnant. I will also say, births don't always go as planned. I, personally, had an unexpected labor and did have drugs like Pitocin and I did have the epidural. I would have liked to not have them, but things happen. I did not feel pressured to have the epidural, but it was my absolute last choice. 

Midwives attend over 70% of births in Europe and Japan.
In the USA they attend less than 8%.

The United States has one of the highest infant mortality rates among all the industrialized countries.

In 1900 95% of the births in the US took place at home.
In 1938 50% of the births in the US took place at home.
In 1955 less than 1% of the births in the US took place at home.

"Hospitals are businesses, they want those beds filled and emptied. They don't want women hanging around in the labor room."
Patricia Burkhardt - Clinical Associate Professor, NYU Midwifery Program

"Medical decisions are being made for monetary and legal reasons, not because they're good for the mother and the baby."

"If we don't quickly take a hold of this, we're gonna lose normal birth."

"There is something going on in the nature of care in the United States that's troublesome. Women, they've been told for years now, that they're not responsible for their own birth process."

"A woman for as long as she lives, will remember, how she was made to feel at her birth."

"People in our culture spend more time and effort researching what kind of stereo system, a car, a camera then they do checkin out what their choices are for birth!"

"Maternity Care in the United States is in Crisis. Its in many ways, a disaster. Everywhere else in the world, that's what they do...You can go to Great Britain, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, all the highly developed countries where they are losing fewer women and fewer babies around the time of birth, and what do you see? You see midwives attending 70% or 80% of all the births and the Doctors are there to take care of the small percent that develop complications. That is the proven system everywhere in the world and the United States stands alone.
Marsden Wagner, M.D. - Former Director, Women's and Children's Health - World Health Organization

"We should constantly be asking ourselves 'Is this an improvement or are we making things worse?' "
Tina Cassidy - Journalist and Author of " Birth"

"There is little understanding about how incredibly important this process is to a woman. Women expect a traumatic birth, that's why they're all havin' epidurals, because they're terrified."
Elan Vital McAllister - President, Choices in Childbirth

"Basically what the medical profession has done over the last 40 - 50 years is convince the vast majority of women that they don't know how to birth."
Nadine Goodman - Public Health Specialist


"Today most obstetricians have no idea of what a birth can be like.
We are completely lost and we have forgotten to raise the most simple questions...'What are the basic needs of women in labor?' The fact that midwives have disappeared is a symptom of lack of understanding the basic needs of women in labor. Like a travel you can suddenly realize that you took a wrong way. The best thing to do in this case is to go back to square one and take another direction. Today what we have to rediscover is how easy birth can be. When we don't try to make things too complicated, when ideally there is no one around but an experienced, motherly, low profile midwife.
In many medical circles there are people who claim that in the future most women will prefer an elective c-section. But when you talk about that with certain women who still have a sort of intuitive knowledge of the importance of what's happening when a baby is born, they cannot accept c-sections are the future. They cannot accept it."
Dr. Michel Odent - French OB/GYN & Research
 
"Very few Doctors have observed a normal birth in the medical school or in the hospital. Its almost an oxymoron."
Susan Hodges - President, Citizens of Midwifery 
 
"I almost think that midwives do a better job at the normal deliveries than we do. For a normal low risk woman, its overkill going to a Doctor, its just too much. The Doctors not really excited about things when they're normal.
When you look at our data, the amount of money we spend versus the outcomes we get...it sucks. There are countries that spend a third of what we do and have lower infant mortality. So more doesn't mean more in this case, and maybe less is more."
Dr. Jaques Moritz - OB/GYN, Saint Luke's Roosevelt Hospital 


Some quotes on intervention:  
"In the hospital you're not allowed to have very long labors, so if you're not dilating rapidly, which you're likely not to do once you get an epidural early in labor, you will be given Pitocin. They put the Pitocin in the IV and it will flow into your veins. Pitocin makes contractions longer, and stronger, and closer together. So then the pain of labor is much worse. So you go with that for awhile because you have the epidural, but eventually the pain of the contractions is overwhelming the epidural, so you need to up the epidural and then labor slows down more because of that, so then you need more Pitocin. Now you're not feeling the pain of the extra Pitocin because you've got the epidural, but your baby is being compressed and getting less oxygen supply because Pitocin contractions last so long and are so strong the blood and oxygen flow to the baby is compromised. So then the baby is likely to go into distress and then you're sent off for an emergency c-section because the baby is in distress from contractions induced by the Pitocin which was necessitated by the epidural."
Robbie Davis-Floyd, Ph.D.- Medical Anthropologist

"Step by step, one intervention leads to a series of interventions and then end result is that the mother finally ends up with a c-section and everybody says 'Thanks God we were able to do all those interventions to save the baby!' The fact of the matter is, if they didn't start the cascade interventions none of that would have been necessary."
Eugene Declero, Ph.D. - Professor, Maternal & Fetal Health, Boston University School of Public Health

Quotes on the position of a woman in labor: 
"For the doctor, this position (on her back) is much more easy, but for the woman its nearly impossible for the baby to come out on its own in this position. Now if she was squatting, I'd have to sit on this little seat. If the mother is active and participating, that's very important. When she is laying down the doctor is telling her to "push," "push harder!" There's no need for this. The vertical birth is on her own time and the baby will slide down on its own."
Dr. Robert Cortes - OB/GYN

Laying flat on your back is the most dysfunctional position ever invented for birth. Putting the mother flat on her back, literally makes her pelvis smaller. It makes it much more difficult for her to use her stomach muscles to push and therefore makes it much more likely that an episiotomy will be cut, or forceps will be used, or the vacuum will be needed."
Robbie Davis-Floyd, Ph.D.- Medical Anthropologist