The trouble with the article is that the headline was not something like, "Ill-Equipped Birth Clinic in Cuzco Leaves Women Screaming in Pain." The article instead was about an "Old World Practice in the Modern Age."
I was mortified by paragraphs like this one:
"On the second day of the story, an obstetrician named Guido told me that this was the night of a full moon, and that there would be many births so I should stay overnight. He was right. I was fortunate to witness four births that night. Just being there was a privilege, as well as an exhausting and hallucinating experience. These births are natural, without anesthesia. The pre-labor room, where the women endure the pains before actually giving birth, is really a chamber of terror in which the women scream out their pain, lying on the floor or pacing. They suffer, endure and survive in spite of not receiving anything for the pain."
Later she wrote this:
"They tried lying her down on a bed to cut her perineum because she wouldn’t dilate enough to allow more than the head to be seen. Amidst an atmosphere of butchery, with the blunt instruments that wouldn’t cut and the lack of anesthesia, there was a blackout. The clinic had neither candles nor flashlights, not to mention a generator. Guido, the obstetrician, very calmly requested a light of any kind, even if it was from a cell phone"
Yes, it's awful that there was a blackout, that it seems their instruments were "blunt," but this is an issue having to do with an underfunded and staffed medical center, not with the safety or efficacy of birthing in a position other than flat on your back. What this article ends up being about is what happens when you bring "modern" birthing practices into a traditional setting or conclude that traditional birthing as "dangerous" and "excruciating," when in fact it has been thoroughly adulterated by the interventions and "management" of birth that we have come to consider as normal in our culture.
Nancy's Recipe for Pain in Birth:
* Artificially induce labor because the timing works better for the healthcare providers or because the woman is tired of being pregant.
* Remove the woman from any surroundings familiar to her. Put her in a place that is almost universally frightening.
* Hook her up to a variety of machines that require her to lie on her back, remain still, or in a certain position
* Have some knives and other sharp instruments close by, and make sure she knows they're there, in case she "can't do it" or she takes too long
* start the clock running
* Make her start pushing before she is fully dilated or before she feels an urge to push. If the baby doesn't come out or this hurts the mother, make a big slice near her vagina
* Make sure plenty of people come in the room where the mother is birthing. Maybe some medical residents who haven't seen this before, and especially haven't seen someone "doing it naturally," a shift-change of nurses, and, better yet, a reporter from another country with a camera who wants to show how "backwards" persons like yourselves give birth using their indigenous wisdom.
* Remind the mother that there are other women waiting to give birth behind her, and they're getting antsy in the next room. Let her listen to them scream in pain as they are "prepped" to give birth themselves or told that no, they can't push now--it's not their turn because they have to wait for you.
* Be sure that the mother knows that her birth will represent to the world what birth is like using what her family has used for generations. Her birth will prove whether this works or not.
* If "minutes seem like hours" while she's in transition or pushing, concur with her and make her feel like it really it an eternity and that this means something is wrong and you need to cut something.
* Do all of this without medication and call it a "natural childbirth." Hey, you let her stand up, and it didn't work out. See, there's a lot of risk in "going naturally." Natural childbirth hurts!
* Conclude from the trial that "natural practices" used by indigenous people leave women in a lot of pain
Even standing up, you can't push and the baby will not be birthed if the woman is not fully dilated. Episiotomy or other forms of force, cannot make something happen when the body is not yet ready. "Butchery" is what happens when we punish a body for not having the timing that is convenient to the medical staff. And the very normal process of birth is not aided by the stressful atmosphere of a busy and poorly appointed hospital or clinic, with its instruments of torture (the article repeatedly referred to how blunt the scissors and instruments were and how they could not cut) waiting to be used as soon as anything appeared to be going too slowly. In this particular article, the women were described as being lined up in a waiting area, awaiting their turn to for "vertical birth" in the room full of lights, blunt knives, and Western photographers. Women should not be "waiting in line" for birth--I assume they were induced or somehow managed so that the evening would move in an orderly procession, and those left alone "screaming in agony" in the pre-birth room were, alas, left alone to labor in an unfamiliar and hostile environment with nothing to look forward to but a rush and anything but a 'natural' delivery.
Articles like this anger me because they serve only to reconfirm to those who are not familiar with the experience of normal birth that birth without all of our Western medical interventions is horrible, risky, and like being "butchered, " but they fail to see how often well-intentioned medical providers create the very situation they are saying is so horrific. How unlike butchering is it that 30% or more of women in our country give birth in a room filled with knives, scalpels, and the tools of opening flesh? Having your perineum cut because you are not dilated and can't push out your baby when you are told to stand and deliver is butchering wherever it occurs, including in America.
Here is the full text of the article: http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2008/07/12/old-birthing-in-the-new-world/
There is an alternative! "Vertical birthing" is the best way to work with your body and is safe for your baby. Having had two "vertical" births and one horizontal one, including all that 'wonderful' pain relief, I can hands down say that birth is far more comfortable, faster, and works in harmony with the work your body is doing when you are standing, squatting, or otherwise in a position where gravity is assisting your baby and the action of your muscles. And as Ina May Gaskin so aptly puts it, sphincters don't like to open when other people are watching, shining lights at them, or shouting at them.
The two most incredible moments of my life were the power and strength I felt at the moment when Frances and Rutledge were born. Frances was born in a hospital, and there were lights and monitors and unfamiliar faces. But having been largely left alone, having labored in my own home (and own car...at least it was familiar to me!) with only those people around me who would support my birth, relax me, and give me strength, and having surrounded myself with information and affirmation that birth is normal, intervention is risky, and that I could do this, I was in a strong position to not only have my baby without anesthesia, medication to augment my labor, or IVs, but also to experience the joy that our bodies are designed to feel when we bring forth a new life into the world. There were moments of discomfort, moments when I felt like I couldn't go on another minute, but any "pain" was with a purpose and a result of my body's hard work (I love the phrase "powerful sensations that can not be ignored"), not pain inflicted by another person or object. With Rutledge, I was in my own most comfortable environment, again with the privacy and support of loving people around me and not self-conscious about being with strangers. I knew I would not be pressured to move at any pace other than the one that was happening on its own. When I felt out of control, when I was saying I couldn't do it, I not only had people reminding me that I really could and that it was almost over and I was "doing it," but they offered whatever they had to help me through what I was feeling. I was never left to do it on my own, never left in a "prep" room where I had to wait for someone else to hurry up and finish what they were doing.
What is sad about our culture when it comes to birth is that we are so hasty to form conclusions that match our biases. We are so blind to how our actions and what we consider a "norm" or "progress" contribute to the negative or unpleasant outcomes we see.
"On the second day of the story, an obstetrician named Guido told me that this was the night of a full moon, and that there would be many births so I should stay overnight. He was right. I was fortunate to witness four births that night. Just being there was a privilege, as well as an exhausting and hallucinating experience. These births are natural, without anesthesia. The pre-labor room, where the women endure the pains before actually giving birth, is really a chamber of terror in which the women scream out their pain, lying on the floor or pacing. They suffer, endure and survive in spite of not receiving anything for the pain."
Later she wrote this:
"They tried lying her down on a bed to cut her perineum because she wouldn’t dilate enough to allow more than the head to be seen. Amidst an atmosphere of butchery, with the blunt instruments that wouldn’t cut and the lack of anesthesia, there was a blackout. The clinic had neither candles nor flashlights, not to mention a generator. Guido, the obstetrician, very calmly requested a light of any kind, even if it was from a cell phone"
Yes, it's awful that there was a blackout, that it seems their instruments were "blunt," but this is an issue having to do with an underfunded and staffed medical center, not with the safety or efficacy of birthing in a position other than flat on your back. What this article ends up being about is what happens when you bring "modern" birthing practices into a traditional setting or conclude that traditional birthing as "dangerous" and "excruciating," when in fact it has been thoroughly adulterated by the interventions and "management" of birth that we have come to consider as normal in our culture.
Nancy's Recipe for Pain in Birth:
* Artificially induce labor because the timing works better for the healthcare providers or because the woman is tired of being pregant.
* Remove the woman from any surroundings familiar to her. Put her in a place that is almost universally frightening.
* Hook her up to a variety of machines that require her to lie on her back, remain still, or in a certain position
* Have some knives and other sharp instruments close by, and make sure she knows they're there, in case she "can't do it" or she takes too long
* start the clock running
* Make her start pushing before she is fully dilated or before she feels an urge to push. If the baby doesn't come out or this hurts the mother, make a big slice near her vagina
* Make sure plenty of people come in the room where the mother is birthing. Maybe some medical residents who haven't seen this before, and especially haven't seen someone "doing it naturally," a shift-change of nurses, and, better yet, a reporter from another country with a camera who wants to show how "backwards" persons like yourselves give birth using their indigenous wisdom.
* Remind the mother that there are other women waiting to give birth behind her, and they're getting antsy in the next room. Let her listen to them scream in pain as they are "prepped" to give birth themselves or told that no, they can't push now--it's not their turn because they have to wait for you.
* Be sure that the mother knows that her birth will represent to the world what birth is like using what her family has used for generations. Her birth will prove whether this works or not.
* If "minutes seem like hours" while she's in transition or pushing, concur with her and make her feel like it really it an eternity and that this means something is wrong and you need to cut something.
* Do all of this without medication and call it a "natural childbirth." Hey, you let her stand up, and it didn't work out. See, there's a lot of risk in "going naturally." Natural childbirth hurts!
* Conclude from the trial that "natural practices" used by indigenous people leave women in a lot of pain
Even standing up, you can't push and the baby will not be birthed if the woman is not fully dilated. Episiotomy or other forms of force, cannot make something happen when the body is not yet ready. "Butchery" is what happens when we punish a body for not having the timing that is convenient to the medical staff. And the very normal process of birth is not aided by the stressful atmosphere of a busy and poorly appointed hospital or clinic, with its instruments of torture (the article repeatedly referred to how blunt the scissors and instruments were and how they could not cut) waiting to be used as soon as anything appeared to be going too slowly. In this particular article, the women were described as being lined up in a waiting area, awaiting their turn to for "vertical birth" in the room full of lights, blunt knives, and Western photographers. Women should not be "waiting in line" for birth--I assume they were induced or somehow managed so that the evening would move in an orderly procession, and those left alone "screaming in agony" in the pre-birth room were, alas, left alone to labor in an unfamiliar and hostile environment with nothing to look forward to but a rush and anything but a 'natural' delivery.
Articles like this anger me because they serve only to reconfirm to those who are not familiar with the experience of normal birth that birth without all of our Western medical interventions is horrible, risky, and like being "butchered, " but they fail to see how often well-intentioned medical providers create the very situation they are saying is so horrific. How unlike butchering is it that 30% or more of women in our country give birth in a room filled with knives, scalpels, and the tools of opening flesh? Having your perineum cut because you are not dilated and can't push out your baby when you are told to stand and deliver is butchering wherever it occurs, including in America.
Here is the full text of the article: http://blogs.reuters.com/photo/2008/07/12/old-birthing-in-the-new-world/
There is an alternative! "Vertical birthing" is the best way to work with your body and is safe for your baby. Having had two "vertical" births and one horizontal one, including all that 'wonderful' pain relief, I can hands down say that birth is far more comfortable, faster, and works in harmony with the work your body is doing when you are standing, squatting, or otherwise in a position where gravity is assisting your baby and the action of your muscles. And as Ina May Gaskin so aptly puts it, sphincters don't like to open when other people are watching, shining lights at them, or shouting at them.
The two most incredible moments of my life were the power and strength I felt at the moment when Frances and Rutledge were born. Frances was born in a hospital, and there were lights and monitors and unfamiliar faces. But having been largely left alone, having labored in my own home (and own car...at least it was familiar to me!) with only those people around me who would support my birth, relax me, and give me strength, and having surrounded myself with information and affirmation that birth is normal, intervention is risky, and that I could do this, I was in a strong position to not only have my baby without anesthesia, medication to augment my labor, or IVs, but also to experience the joy that our bodies are designed to feel when we bring forth a new life into the world. There were moments of discomfort, moments when I felt like I couldn't go on another minute, but any "pain" was with a purpose and a result of my body's hard work (I love the phrase "powerful sensations that can not be ignored"), not pain inflicted by another person or object. With Rutledge, I was in my own most comfortable environment, again with the privacy and support of loving people around me and not self-conscious about being with strangers. I knew I would not be pressured to move at any pace other than the one that was happening on its own. When I felt out of control, when I was saying I couldn't do it, I not only had people reminding me that I really could and that it was almost over and I was "doing it," but they offered whatever they had to help me through what I was feeling. I was never left to do it on my own, never left in a "prep" room where I had to wait for someone else to hurry up and finish what they were doing.
What is sad about our culture when it comes to birth is that we are so hasty to form conclusions that match our biases. We are so blind to how our actions and what we consider a "norm" or "progress" contribute to the negative or unpleasant outcomes we see.
No comments:
Post a Comment