The Business of Being Born

Over dinner a few nights ago, a friend of ours mentioned a documentary about babies that featured Ricki Lake. Remember her talk show? Or her role in Mrs. Winterbourne? Anyway, that's what I remember her in. We checked out The Business of Being Born on Netflix recently. Lake and filmmaker Abby Epstein set out to explore the rising number of births in hospitals that involve medical intervention (Caesareans, inducing, drugs, etc.) contrasted with midwifery care and homebirths. Who knew that around dinner time, the number of inducements or C-sections rises (because the doctors want to go home for a meal with their family)? Or that in some cities, almost half of women give birth by C-section?

There's some disturbing things in the movie. How in the '60s, women used to be given a drug to help them forget the pain and experience of childbirth but which led to complications. To deal with the thrashing and banging of their heads, they strapped the women down with wool restraints so they wouldn't bruise and their husbands wouldn't know any better. Even nowadays, for business and scheduling reasons, the drug Pitocin is given to induce labor. It generates powerful contractions in the pregnant woman but sometimes distresses the baby, so a cascading series of interventions is necessary (additional drugs). Even the position of the woman doesn't have her best interests in mind: lying on her back with legs up is a great position for the hospital doctor to see and catch the baby, but doesn't take advantage of gravity to help the baby come out.

Flick and I chose a midwife for a number of reasons, a major one being the level of care you get is far more personalized and extensive than going with an obstetrician. We are fortunate that our provincial health plan covers the services of midwives, and that our midwifery training is rigorous and includes a lot of hands-on, practical experience. While we haven't decided whether we're having a home birth (and we won't have to until the last minute), we're glad that whatever our decision is, our midwife team will be supportive and be advocates on our behalf.