The Business of Being Born

We just got back from watching a movie full of naked women moaning, including talk show phenom Ricki Lake. Unfortunately, they were all giving birth, so it wasn't as titillating as it sounds. Yes, Lorein dragged me to "The Business of Being Born". It's supposedly been heralded as "The Inconvenient Truth" of the birthing industry, and I'll admit, it was pretty eye-opening (which is saying something since there were a lot of scenes where I wanted to close my eyes). The movie's agenda was to show how the birthing industry has stolen the birth experience from the mother by controlling how the birth occurs. It was unabashedly pro-midwifery (which they pronounced "mid-whiff-ery"), but still recognized the need for specialized birthing procedures and technology. I think the thesis was that the vast majority of births do not require advanced care, which can be dangerous (after all, a Cesarean section is still a major surgery), but that hospitals have made such care part of their routine operating procedures and it takes an informed, assertive woman to overcome those procedures. Here are some of the moments from the movie I felt were most interesting:

• They asked a group of three NYU Ob/Gyn students "How many natural births have you witnessed as part of your schooling?" The students just stared at the camera and then, after a few seconds, smiled sheepishly. Apparently, the soon to be birth doctors had little experience with a non-doctor-driven birth.

• They interviewed a doctor who admitted there is a direct correlation between induced births and C-sections. What happens is the Pitocin greatly increases the pain by strengthening and lengthening contractions, which causes the woman to get an epidural, which slows down the labor, which forces the doctors to administer more Pitocin, which leads to even stronger contractions that cut off the baby's air flow, which makes the doctor fear for the baby, which causes the doctor to perform a C-section.

• Another doctor mentioned a study which showed an uptick in C-sections at 4 pm and 10 pm. In other words, an uptick in C-sections when the doctors realize it's time for them to go home.

• To be fair, many doctors argued the reason for the increase in C-sections is because of litigation. With a C-section, the doctor can say "I did all I could to save the baby". Those dang lawyers.
  

• The U.S. has the highest costs per birth of all industrialized countries, yet has the second highest infant mortality rate among those countries.
  

• In Japan and Europe, midwifes attend over 70% of births. In the U.S., that number is under 8%.
  

One of the pro-midwife people they interviewed summed the movie up: "Giving birth can be an incredible, uplifting, and empowering experience, or it can be a traumatic and scarring experience". Interestingly enough, the film ended with one of the would-be mothers it had been following requiring a C-section because of complications. The ironic twist, though, just seemed to demonstrate the point the movie was trying to make -- it is good we have advanced medical procedures, we just need to make sure we don't go crazy with them.
I don't know how much I believe all of their claims, but they were pretty convincing and the movie was definitely worth seeing. Here's the website: www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com

Now, for those of you who actually read this entire post, you deserve to know that Lorein is three months pregnant.