Welcome to my final blog post about the book Get Me Out A History of childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank by Randi Hutter Epstein though part four to five about advances in technology. Do doctors know what’s best for us, or do we know what’s best for us? Maybe we as women need to know what we actually can handle rather than some doctor tell us percentages of all women, after all, we are all different. There are women that strive for a vaginal birth and believe that they can do it yet doctors lean on surgery. I understand that if anything goes wrong, surgery is necessary, although I also believe that just because you hear a blip on a monitoring screen does not mean they will die. Are women being told the truth about vaginal vs. cesarean births? I mean doctors make it seem like if you have a vaginal birth you and your baby will die and that you will have the best life with a healthy baby by taking a cesarean. Many studies have said that as the rate of cesarean operations grow, so do the problems both in a mother and the baby both short term and long term.
“Cesarean section rates have increased by 46 percent in the past 10 years without a comparable drop in maternal mortality”(167.)
And yes, we stabled the maternal mortality and were not making things worse, but, we are also not advancing, we’ve stayed the same just with more surgeries. According to the freebirthers, they have had the most incredible, relaxing and overall successful birthing experience they could have hoped for. When women are with people they have a strong loving connection with rather than 4 nurses around her, it calms them making the labor period shorter along with fewer complications.
“…stress screws up the birthing process…”(180.)
Which I truly believe, it’s like when you’re singing to yourself, you feel good and confident about the high note you just hit because you’re alone but when they’re people around you stop singing since you can get stressed and feel like they are judging you. Many people don’t like the idea of giving birth by yourself and it can be very dangerous if anything goes wrong, but hospitals and people poking and giving you drugs is also dangerous. Whatever a woman may choose, whether it be a c-section, free birth, or vaginal birth, women should be aware of what they are doing and feel educated enough to choose the method of birth rather than being scared into one and then possibly regret it. Women need to pay more attention to what doctors do to them whether it be a birthing method, advice, check ups and new technology. There’s always new innovations rising to help us help each other and have a better understanding of pregnancy and labor, for example, sperm donors, freezing
eggs, and ultrasounds. With new innovations there is also trial and error, the error is the scary part because you never really know what can happen once it’s used on the object it’s made for. But many only see the pros of new devices and not the cons. We became dependent on technology changing the way we thought about the natural part in pregnancy. Women will do anything as long as she’s promised a beautiful healthy baby.
“…women feel as if they were ‘no longer capable of safely carrying birthing babies without a lot of machines, tests, and interventions.’ ”(196.)
Basically, the less natural the process is, the safer it must be, it’s crazy to think that such a natural thing has been shaped into something unnatural.
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