In the early 1900s the hospitals started setting up smear campaigns against midwives saying that these women were dirty nad ignorant. Hospitals were offered as clean and safe places to give birth. The reality was that it was far more dangerous to give birth in the hospital than it was at home, because doctors were coming out of med school and many of them had never even seen a live birth before starting to practice.
In 1900, 95% of births in the us took place at home. In 1938, half of all births took place at home.By 1955, less than 1% of births took place at home. It has not changed since then.
The hospital is set up for one kind of birth and women get put through that system. You have to fight to get the birth you want. Once they start one intervention, it's like the domino effect. You may just end up with them all.
Pitocin is synthetic oxytocin which causes contractions to become longer and stronger. The contractions are so intense and painful, that you end up with an epidural. The epidural slows down the contractions causing more pitocin to be needed. Even though you may not feel the stronger contractions, your baby does. The longer stronger contractions cut of the flow of blood and oxygen to the baby, putting it into distress. It becomes a victious cycle that ends in cesarean delivery. If the interventions had not been done in the first place, the need for cesarean would not have occured.
Lying flat on your back with your legs up in the air actually makes your pelvis smaller. Your stomach muscles have to work harder to push and makes episiotomy and forceps alot more likely.
Doctors don't care about the mother's wants. They are focused on thier schedules and how fast can I get this baby out. When you start to ask questions, they get defensive and use the "it's to save the baby" line and you are bullied into giving in because you don't want to be the "bad mom".
Birth is not the place to be rescued, it's the place for every women to face her darkest moment and lay claim to her victory. Birth is a life altering experience. It can be a beautiful and empowering experience or it can be traumatic and scarring.
We are completely lost. We have forgotten to ask the most simple questions. What are the basic needs of a women in labor? And the fact that the midwives have disappeared is a symptom of the lack of understanding of the basic needs of the women in labor. Today, what we have to rediscover is how easy birth can be when we don't try to make things too complicated. When, ideally, there is nobody around but an experienced, motherly, and silent, low-prolife midwife. During the 1920s, a german scientist,
In the 1930s, they were giving every women x-rays to measure her pelvis. Then, in the 40's they discovered that this was causing the babies to have cancer. In the 1960s, they had another drugs called Folidomide, which caused babies to be born without arms and legs. In every case, they stopped using it after the fact. In the 1990s, they were giving Cytotec as means to induce labor in women who had already had a previous cesarean. They ended up with hundreds and hundreds of ruptured uteruses and dead babies before they found out that they shouldn't do that. These drugs are not carefully studied before they are used and no one has studied the long term effects of drugs given during pregnancy and labor.
During the 1960s, midwives and home birth started to come back as reaction against the Scopolamine era. People started leaving the hospitals once again until technology caught up again. In the 1970s, the electronic fetal monitor was introduced and by the end of the decade, the rate of cesarean went from 4% to 23% and has continued to rise.
Today, one in three women give birth by cesarean. This is not because women have changed, but because it is extremely doctor friendly. Instead of a women being in labor for 12 hours or more, it's 20 minutes and the doctor can make it home for dinner. During a 24 hour period, the peak times cesareans are performed is at 4pm and 10pm, just in time for dinner and bed time. Also, the current thinking is "Oh, we don't want to get sued, so let's just section them."
Hospitals are not up front with thier patients about birth procedures even though it's the law. People spend more time researching purchases like a camera than they do about birth. There really is not informed consent given, when talking about procedures. Nobody talks about the side effects or risks. When asked what the risks of a certain procedure or drug is, the most common response given is "minimal". In most cases, this is a big fat lie.
In the US, we know that there is an increase in neurological disorders like autism, ADD, ADHD, etc. Likewise, the number of interventions that take place during birth have been rapidly on the rise. The thing is, we don't know how these interventions are affecting children in the long term. I do believe that we're going to realize in the next decade, that these problems could have been prevented if intervention during birth had not occurred.
One of things that happens during labor is the body starts producing oxytocin (the love hormone) to cause contractions. That's when the "mommy brain" gets turned on, that strong desire to love, nurture and protect your baby. Pitocin is a synthetic form of oxytocin given in hospitals to speed up contractions, however it does not act like natural oxytocin does. It actually inhibbets the brain's abilitiy to develop this natural maternal intsinct to protect and care for your baby.
The time immediatly following birth, is most important to the bonding of mother and baby. It is very short and irreplaceable. When mother and baby are close to eachother, they are able to be bound together by a complex cocktail of love hormones. Today, most women give birth without this flow of hormones. In animals, if you disturb the hormonal balance in giving birth, the mother does not take care of her baby. The most common example in humans is what we call "post-partum depression". If women are not allowed to produce these hormones, what does that say about the future of our society?Albert Ladenburg , created a drug known as Scopolamine, which was used on women during labor to take away pain. American women, at the time, heard of this drug and started demanding it. Women were taught that child birth had to be painful because of Eve, so the modern, liberated women decided "I don't have to go through pain, give me drugs!" What they didn't know is that the drug wasn't actually taking away the pain, but only the memory of it. This was called "twighlight sleep". Not only did it take away memory, but also self-control, and self awareness. Women would scream, spit at people, and try to claw the face of the doctor or nurse, so they began to strap women to the beds with lambs wool, because if you used anything else, it would leave marks and the husbands would start asking questions. Women would be strapped down and left there for days.
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