At Least You Have a Healthy Baby

"At least you have a healthy baby..." How many times have you heard this? While in the case of an emergency, we would all do whatever was needed to protect our babies, why should this be the standard of care? Why should we expect to undergo interventions that cause our babies stress, violating exams and have to be a spectacle to whoever wants to peek into the hospital room? Why should 1/3 of us expect to be cut open to deliver out babies?

REACHE (Regional Association of Childbirth Educators) of Washington State is presenting a conference called "At Least You Have A Healthy Baby: Exploring the Forces Behind the Cesarean Epidemic" on April 18, 2009. For more information, check out their website at http://www.reache.info.

The Other Side of the Glass

I watched the trailer for this incredible new movie that will be coming out called "The Other Side of the Glass." This follows in the footsteps of some of the other recent films that highlight what birth could be and the problems with our current birthing care. "The Other Side of the Glass" however, talks about dads. That's right... our poor partners who sit on the sidelines worrying about the pain we're suffering through while birthing babies. At last, someone is giving dads the chance to talk about how our country's birth routines make them feel. I feel it is high time that dads got to weigh in on this.

Several of the men interviewed talked about how helpless they felt in the hospital while the doctors and nurses were doing unspeakable things to their wives and babies... how difficult this must be! I know my husband feels the need to protect me... yet during our hospital births he was forced to step aside as they tied me to machines, attached me to lines pumping me full of pitocin (without my knowledge or consent), and gave me injections of medications that ultimately led to a cesarean. He had to stand there and watch as they sliced me open to extract our oldest child. He followed her to the nursery for tests knowing that I had not even seen a glimpse of her yet... I had only heard her cry. How hard must that have been?

"The Other Side of the Glass" is going to open this door so we can hear how men feel about being forced to remain helpless to protect their nearest and dearest. I feel that fathers deserve as much respect as mothers. We are still having to fight for the right of mothers to birth the manner that is best for them and their babies. Now it is time for us to also fight for the rights of fathers to protect their families from unnecessary interventions and indignities.

Our accepted form of childbirth needs a massive overhaul to honor the rights and feelings of the parents and the child. Birth should be about them, after all... not about the doctors and nurses who are running the assembly line.