Educate2Liberate

I find it heart wrenching that the wonderful experience of pregnancy, labor and delivery is misrepresented in the media. The mother-to-be is tricked to being scared, to doubt her own body and its capabilities. The media rarely shows women who have drug free, natural, vaginal deliveries. I recall watching TLC’s “A Baby Story” when I was pregnant with my daughter. I recorded them everyday and of all the episodes but one were situations where the mother is in horrible pain lying in bed. She gets the epidural to help with the pain. She lies there, unable to move. The labor does not progress. They start pitocin. You get the picture. It almost always ends in a situation where the scared mother is whisked off into the operating room to do an emergency cesarean section because the baby’s vitals “drop” and the baby is stressed. It’s no wonder why ....America....’s cesarean section rate is over 30%. Almost a third of all births in the ....US.... end in c-sections! What is wrong with this picture? I am sick of our citizens being misinformed or not informed at all.

So where this all stems from is a couple of weeks ago, the hubs was watching the show “Kendra” on E! and it was the episode when Kendra is told by her OB/GYN that she needed to be induced early because her son was “big”. This was the first thing that ticked me off. So they head into the hospital and the procedure begins. Of course she gets the epidural because of the pain and is stuck in bed. Typical intervention story, she doesn’t progress at all. So her OB comes in 24 hours later and says something along the lines that she isn’t progressing at all (go figure) and that the baby’s vitals are FINE, BUT we should go ahead and do a cesarean section any way. WTF?!? So she goes along with it.

Why on Earth is someone who has access to all of the wonderful resources to help with natural childbirth end up in such a typical situation? She could have had a midwife, a doula, access to all books and even Hypnobirthing, yet she chooses a measly ..OB.. and the path that most uninformed Americans are taking.

The sad thing is that it probably isn’t her fault. Today, more and more Americans are following the social “norm” of using obstetricians, hospitals and interventions out of fear. The fears are any where from the health of the newborn, the health of the mother, pain, and the “just in cases” or “what ifs”.

It is such an honor to say that ....America.... has the technology that is able to prevent and save newborns and mothers that are in need of such technologies, but it has gotten out of control. Women now fear everything about pregnancy, labor and delivery. Instead of having constant emotional, physical and psychological support, women are left alone in their hospital room to deal with labor. Often they have no clue what is going on, what is ahead or what to do. They become overwhelmed with fear and begin to have pain. The partner, if there is one, is often scared. The partner begins to have a rollercoaster of emotions. They are not sure how they can help. The woman decides to have interventions to help deal with the pain and relax her and it all crumbles from there.

How did we get to this point and how do we go back? You would think that because we have all of these wonderful medical technologies, more would attempt natural, drug free childbirths knowing that if there truly were a medical emergency that they have the resources available. This opens a whole other can of worms that I will get into in another blog. Doctors take advantage of their patients. They scare their patients, make the situation seem worse and take advantage of their patients’ ignorance and lack of education.

It is going to take years before we can make significant changes for there to be social change and the norm of interventions disappear. This is only one of the many reasons I decided I wanted to complete my doula certification and eventually would like to become a childbirth educator. Even this will not be enough. One person cannot change the world. I lay in bed every night trying to think of how to change it. How can I do it? Where do I start? It would take years before we would start seeing improvements. I am going to become a doula and offer my services on a sliding fee scale. I am going to volunteer my services to women who cannot afford a doula. I am going to volunteer my services to single mothers and to teenage mothers. I am going to offer free childbirth classes to those who cannot afford it. It is to the point where this change is so important to me that I feel like volunteering my time to everyone. The money is really not important to me. I feel it is every woman’s right to a drug free, natural, but most of all an INFORMED childbirth.

I just had a really good idea. I have to go for now. Until tomorrow… peace & love!