Reinventing the Wheel
Sep 19th, 2008 at 7:43 am by Susie
The conclusion of this study is not new. And as a former lay midwife and childbirth educator, I can’t tell you how disheartening it is to see history repeat itself. The 1970s were a time when researchers were finally waking up to the idea that childbirth with minimal medical intervention was much better for mother and child, both physically and psychologically, and now we’ve somehow morphed into a society where women schedule C-sections because they’re more convenient. Oy.
ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2008) — The bonds that tie a mother to her newborn may be stronger in women who deliver naturally than in those who deliver by cesarean section, according to a study published by Yale School of Medicine researchers in the October issue of Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
Susie - I know where you’re coming from, still… I’ve seen both sides of this question up close. Birthing can go bad or it can succeed in any setting. Our kids were born in hospital birthing centers, natural delivery. But there were come danger signs during birth and the docs/nurses were ready for it. I was very happy to be in the hospital.
On the other side we had friends in the 70’s who attempted to deliver by midwife in a rural location. After 24 hours of labor they rushed the mother to a hospital fifty miles away. She gave birth to a brain damaged child. It was an unnecessary tragedy: The midwife didn’t realize that her client was dehydrated which evidently blocked delivery.
What kind of midwife is not making her client drink during labor? Sounds like an untrained hippie earth mother.
I don’t count these anecdotes as scientific data - for every story like that about a bad home birth, I can swap you a dozen hospital horror stories, including my own: Unnecessary induction of labor, premature birth, hyaline membrane disease and a baby who almost died. (And yes, has learning disabilities.) That experience was in one of the best hospitals in the city, with a feminist doctor and a nurse-midwife.
There are only a handful of high-risk situations that can arise without any prior warning. I’ve seen bad hospital births that resulted from inattentive prenatal care.
The bottom line is, medicalizing normal birth carries a higher degree of risk for mother and child.
Every generalization is over-broad. Both my children were born by (medically necessary) C-section, and I beg the researchers’ rotten pardons, but our bonds are just fine, thank you. I also couldn’t breast feed and I resented at the time the deluge of conventional wisdom that my babies would therefore over the long run be less healthy emotionally and physically. It’s all too complicated for simple, often ideologically-based, party-line received truths. There’s more in heaven and earth, as they say.
I agree that the whole process is over-medicalized. But then again, life for humans isn’t a controlled experiment. But then again, my daughter decided to be born the day I was scheduled to go in to be induced. But then again, they still gave me pitocin, and treated me like dirt for whatever reason, and I ended up with a c-section, with the doctor saying, “What! she’s not typed and cross-matched?!!?”
If I had to do it all over again, I would have called my friend who was training to be a midwife, to at least have someone advocating for me.