More On Midwives

Awhile back, I posted on a fascinating documentary that Ricki Lake had done called 'The Business of Being Born.' The film looked at the birthing industry, the trends of rising C-Sections and asked some fairly pointed questions about whether or not shoving mothers into hospital rooms with assembly line efficiency is a good thing.

Well, (via Feministing) apparently this documentary got some trees shaking at the AMA- who have passed a resolution seeking to ban home births altogether and confine birthing to either a 'hospital or a birthing center within a hospital complex.' There's some reaction here- and some comments that seem to suggest that the issue is in fact, the difference between certified nurse midwives and direct entry midwives- the former having more training and more certification than the latter, as the commentary seems to suggest. If that's so, then more training can only be a good thing and maybe creating a standard for midwives to meet isn't a bad thing either: but the AMA's resolution didn't mention a thing about increased training for D.E.Ms.

This is a total crock- first of all, the AMA should do well to remember that it's a customer service based industry- and it's got no right to dictate to women how exactly they should have their babies. Second of all, if the AMA watched the documentary, they'd learn that it was pretty standard practice for midwives to assess the pregnancy for possible complications to see if home birth is the right option. Plus, they have a doctor as back up. A DOCTOR! To me this documentary was brilliant and made perfect sense: hospitals are there for major surgeries and interventions and they are wonderful at doing that- but if you don't need it, as long as you have a trained professional (which midwives are) at your side and a hospital nearby, do what seems right for you and what you want for your birth.

I'm not sure how popular home birth will become, but it seemed like a pretty empowering option to me. I don't have a vagina, so I'm not even going to try and imagine what it'd be like to push a child into this world- but I'd imagine a lot of women might bless the existence of pain-killing drugs. But like I said, watch the documentary! You'll learn a lot- and check these two sites for more information:

RHRealityCheck
Big Push For Midwives

I'll put them in the blog roll, so even if this post moves on you can just link to them whenever you're on the site.