Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

We finally picked our midwife today: Rosanna Davis from Town & Country Midwifery. She’ll be delivering our baby, some seven months from now, in our home. Rosanna shares our views on childbirth, favouring a holistic and natural approach, free from medical procedures and interventions.

Oddly enough, midwives are not terribly common in this part of the world. Back home in The Netherlands, however, they are the norm. Most births there are performed at home, whilst here in the USA, most women choose to give birth in the hospital. Why is that?

Well, first of all, choose isn’t a very accurate word to use here, as most women in the US simply aren’t offered the choice. Sliding into obstetrical care is completely automatic once you’re pregnant. The word midwife won’t even come up during your visits to the doctor unless you are the one who utters it.

But why would anyone want a midwife in this day and age? After all, hospitals are full of medical experts, who are trained to deal with any emergency, right? Don’t you want the best for your baby? Besides, the doctors are the experts in pain management, right? You don’t like pain, do you? Why not just have an epidural and make it easy on yourself?

This article by Shelley Girard goes some way to explain why Sarah and I are choosing to have an unmanaged home birth instead.

We don’t believe that pregnancy is an illness. We therefore think it’s odd to treat it in hospital. Those are for sick people.

Women who give birth in hospital are strapped up to foetal monitoring machines, which impede their ability to move around. The supine position they are forced to assume for the convenience of the medical staff causes narrowing of the birth canal, which makes labour that much more difficult. Food and drink is usually not on hand, even though the woman needs to keep up her energy and stay hydrated.

Research has shown — and women will tell you — that labour is much easier when the woman is allowed to move around, stand, lean, squat and generally do whatever it is that her body tells her to do. She does not need to be told when to push; her own body will do that.

A woman who feels uncomfortable in her surroundings may find her labour does not progress. This can have many root causes, such as the unfamiliar and inhospitable delivery room, strangers walking in and out of the room, a complete stranger delivering the baby in many cases, or a lack of confidence in herself and a fear of pain, often inspired by positive reinforcement that she needs the medical staff and their technology in order to give birth.

To make matters worse, non-progressive labour is often treated with Pitocin, a drug that can lead to unnaturally heavy contractions, which, in turn, can lead to foetal distress.

Babies born in hospital are susceptible to infections, as hospitals are full of germs, germs that the baby has no resistance to. If the mother gives birth at home, the baby will still enter an environment full of germs, but they are germs that the mother has been subjected to for a long time. In turn, she has passed immunity to those germs on to her baby via the placenta.

In the US, 24% of births result in a Caesarian section, compared to 8% in The Netherlands. The mortality rate of babies born by C-section is 3 to 4 times higher than those born vaginally. The morbidity rate is 20 times higher. The mortality rate is also much higher in the US than it is in The Netherlands, as is the mortality rate of babies born in the hospital vs. babies born at home. Coincidence?

Sticking with the statistics, an episiotomy is performed on more than 90% of American woman during labour. In The Netherlands, that figure is only 8%. Is the northern European vagina anatomically different to its American counterpart? I think not.

Malpractice suits are common in the US and damages run high, so fear of such suits is a genuine concern amongst physicians, including obstetricians. Add to this the fact that hospitals can charge a woman’s health insurance company more money if they perform more interventions and the picture starts to get very ugly, indeed.

These are just a few of the reasons we don’t want a hospital birth. Believe it or not, there are many more, ranging from child/parent separation issues to a differing belief on when to cut the umbilical cord.

As is the case with any subject one cares about, it pays to have educated yourself when it comes to making the best choice for yourself and your loved ones.

Sarah and I paid our first visit to the obstetrician today. Although we plan to use a midwife for a natural delivery at home, we also hope to gain from the obstetrical system the few benefits we feel it offers. One such benefit is ultrasound.

Thanks to this, we were able to take our first look at our fledgling progeny today. The ultrasound equipment measured the embryo and estimated its age at 8 weeks, 4 days ± 3 days. We know the exact age to be 8 weeks and 6 days, so that was a pretty good estimate by the machine.

As the obstetrician levered the probe, the embryo twisted into view and a few pulsating pixels revealed the location of the heart. My eyes filled with tears at the sight of this tiny person, amorphous and scarely bigger than my little toe, but somehow already imposingly real and a huge part of my world and feelings.

I’ve been sure all along that I’m completely ready to become a father, but my reaction to the ultrasonic sight of my future child was another emotional confirmation. I already feel so much love for this tiny miracle growing in Sarah’s womb that it’s hard to imagine what will take hold of me when he or she joins us in the corporeal world.

Our next ultrasound is scheduled for 14th December. I can hardly wait.