Response to the Business of Being Born

I really enjoyed “The Business of Being Born;” it helped to give further insight into the world of birth in America. It would be pointless for me to reiterate all the points brought up throughout the film, but what I got from the film was, “we, as Americans, seriously need to revise the normal way of birth because if we don’t people will miss out on the beautiful experience of birth.” I agreed with most of what was said, there were however a few points that I thought could use some revision. The whole film was more or less, anti-hospital, anti-doctor…except for when it’s an emergency. This seemed to me a case of cognitive dissonance; mothers are still just as reliant on these supposedly evil, money-grubbing hospitals. They look to the very people that attempt to remove them from their birth proceze for mid pregnancy checkups, amniocentesis’, and other such treatments/check-ups. This is not to say that I believe these proceze to be unimportant, I just think that if one must have a baby, they should be accompanied by someone who has been trained in medicine, like a doctor, but with the care and compassion that often comes with a midwife. Call me an idealist, but I believe that if people want to continue giving healthy natural birth that we should have doctors who actually care about their patients. Even though this new form of doctor/midwife has a position similar to that of the standard doctor, the patient should be kept as an important role in the birth process and not treated like a leper.
Just as we educate teens about practicing safe sex, I believe we should educate mothers about birth. Women’s subservience to doctors is largely due to the fact that they have no clue what they are doing. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies get filthy rich off of mothers who haven’t been properly advised of the many basics of birth. Doctors have, according to the video, tricked women into believing the lithotomy position is the best to give birth in, that they shouldn’t move around, and that they should take drugs like pitocin, and darvon to aid them in giving birth. Women need to be able to see through the “cascade of interventions,” and make the right decisions for themselves; if you don’t care about the birth process and just want your baby, then give birth in a hospital, but if you do care you should be informed enough to be able to make such a decision.
I would have to argue that ignorance to the process of giving birth devalues the entire life of ones child for birth is one of the most important experiences of one’s child’s life. Within the first few moments after giving birth, the mom and her baby are attached to one another through this “cocktail of love hormones,” and without them there is a divorce between mother and baby. Any mother who cares about their child would have as loving and natural a birth as possible.