MovieChat Forums > The Business of Being Born (2008) Discussion > Mans perspective

Mans perspective

posted 15 years ago by mosl31
12 replies | jump to latest

When she was pregnant my wife starting doing research and quickly realized that as a healthy woman, home birth was the way to go, in order to give her full control, and not let hospital regulations and procedures overrun the way she wanted things to be.
I was horrified. I thought, why not do it in a hospital where things are controlled?
I watched this powerful film and my opinion changed 180 degrees on the spot. I realized home birth was the safest way to go. Eight months later we had a home birth and the experience was incredible. The mid-wife was fantastic and everything went perfect. The mid-wife told me that for a healthy women, taking drugs during birth is like getting drunk for your wedding. Yeah, you can do it, but why not experience things the way they should be? We also took Bradley classes and that helped. We learned that fear of pain/birth process activates adrenalin. Adrenalin is the enemy. When a woman embraces the process, things are far easier.
We had to pay $2800 as our insurance does not cover home birth, (even though homebirth/mid-wives would save the medical system a fortune), but it was worth every penny. Believe me, when a baby is born without drugs, they are SO aware when they come out, they look around, they look at you they are not groggy at all! No one tries to take the baby away, they go right on mothers chest where they belong.

[–] Flashbacks_of_A_Girl 15 years ago

That was beautiful Mosl and I am so glad you had that kind of experience.

It's staggering to think about $2800 for care that was available round the clock, from someone who grew to know you and care for you and your wife and was really essentially part of one of the most beautiful experiences you will ever have verses in a lot of cases $14,000 for 20 strangers, pushing and pulling, swaying your decisions, rushing around, being impatient, trying to drug you, sometimes sneakily drugging you, (PIC! Jeeze!) not following your bring plan, certainly not trying to get to know you or ease your pain through massage or meditation but through hormones and sedatives...

I mean I know I could go on and on.

It's a repulsive process and I wish everyone who is, will, or even has had a baby watched this film. Not to change their whole life course but just to THINK!

Anyway I know this is generalized and I know not everyone has a bad experience in the hospital and through birth, but...there is a huge difference.

Be safe.

_________________________
*Human After All*

[–] princethomas 15 years ago

Almost word for word what happened to me. We decided to have a baby. We hadn't given much thought to the delivery until after we found out my wife was pregnant. She watched this movie she did a ton of research and began to talk seriously about home birth/birth center delievery. I was scared. Very scared. The idea just seemed so sketchy. But I listened. I watched the film. I researched. I called our local hospital her in Northern Virginia. INOVA Alexandria. I found out that the C-Section rate was 40%!!!!!! You have to be kidding me!!!!! My wife was a healthy 28 year old woman. We went with a birth center. Our insurance would cover that, but not home birth.

All I can say is that it was probably the best decision we've ever made. It was an incredible experience. My wife had no drugs of any kind. She was alert and awake to hold and nurse our baby within minutes after his birth.

I will never do it any other way.

-T

[–] kb01 13 years ago

"I called our local hospital her in Northern Virginia. INOVA Alexandria. I found out that the C-Section rate was 40%!!!!!!"

That rate definitely sounds high but you have to remember that there is an inherent sampling bias when comparing facilities. I wouldn't be surprised if our county hospital has a startling rate of complications. It has the only NICU within a 3 or 4 hour drive. If an OB has concerns regarding a mother already in delivery, s/he will transfer the patient from the other facility to county. If other issues are identified in the third trimester, the OB will likely deliver at county even if s/he also has privileges at other local hospitals.

Also, being a public hospital in a very economically depressed region, they have obligations to deliver all babies, regardless of level of prenatal care, drug addiction, or any other factors that aren't conducive to a healthy delivery. No birthing center would touch these women with a 10 foot pole but a hospital is under legal obligations to treat anyone who walks in the doors.

I think midwifes and birthing centers are great but just for different reasons than most of the other posters here. In all honesty (my wife has done both), a routine vaginal delivery isn't much different in a modern hospital vs. a birthing center. The delivery rooms are more akin to hotel rooms than operating rooms and the experience is essentially the same.

[–] aisling101 14 years ago

I am happy for you. But what if you were unlucky and there was a complication that needed a crash C Section. What could your midwife do?

[–] princethomas 14 years ago

Call an ambulance, or rush to the hospital just 2 miles away. Keep in mind, its not like no one has thought of that before. There are numerous precautions put in place. Not to mention that the midwives are nurses and state licensed and trained for those kinds of emergencies.

[–] sherrybear 14 years ago

Didn't you watch the movie ?? It said that the trained midwives always were ready to transfer the mother to the hospital if things got bad and they carried around a big medical kit too just in case.

"Don't milk the cat!"

[–] leahpeavy 13 years ago

People watch dramatic movies where suddenly the mother is rushed into the operating room with nurses and doctors running by her side and then 2 seconds later the baby is delivered. This is very rare. Most hospitals have a standard called "decision to incision" time and their goal is typically 45 minutes.

[–] sherrybear 13 years ago

If only that was real life! :)

"Don't milk the cat!"

[–] kb01 13 years ago

That sounds about right. For many expectant mothers, it can be a several day long process.

The thing that scares me is how quickly things can go from a perfectly normal pregnancy to a life threatening emergency. When my wife had our youngest, she had a perfectly normal, low risk pregnancy up until the very end. Within a few minutes, she went from a regular blood pressure to it shooting up until she was at risk for a seizure and stroke. She developed very severe pre-eclampsia and within minutes went from normal to life threatening.

If she hadn't been at the hospital when it happened, it is unlikely that both her and our daughter would have survived. Thankfully, they had the capabilities of preventing the seizures, got her in for a c-section, and our baby into a NICU.

[–] rebeccacharlton1031 12 years ago

That is very frightening, kb01, but it's also very rare. I have a friend of mine who's placental abruption was caught only because she happened to be at the hospital for a non-stress test, and her daughter would almost surely have died if she had waited to go until she had symptoms.

However, we need to step back and realize that those things do happen, but I think we'd be over estimating how often life threatening things like that come up if we said they happened 1% of the time. Most women do not need the interventions at hospitals. Most women can manage to give birth at home with little assistance. Even if things do come up, most women who have to be transferred to hospitals have ample time to do so before things become emergent. And that's the problem. Our society in North America has been led to believe that birth is a medical event if not an outright emergency and in most cases it's really not. That's why movies like this one are so important. Yes it's biased, but it does get people thinking. The hospital may not be the best place to birth for all women - it's almost a novel concept.

You'll never hear me say that a cesarian section is a bad thing. It saved my friend's baby, and very likely my friend as well. But I do think that it gets jumped to way too often in non-emergent situations. That is what we need to re-examine.

[–] kb01 12 years ago

It may be very rare (7% of pregnancies result in pre-eclampsia) but when it happens to a family member, it is a very real concern. My wife and child would have been dead if we had been anywhere besides a hospital. She was considered low risk until the day it happened. She literally went from 120/80 to 200/100 BP within a matter of minutes and had no visible symptoms. It was about as horrifying as anything I've ever seen.

Everyone has different tolerances to risk and if we were to have another child, we would make sure to be somewhere with an ICU and NICU.

When we had our first child, we went to a birthing center because it was significantly cheaper than a hospital and it was a decent experience for us. Looking back, if she had developed pre-eclampsia during the first childbirth, it would have taken at least 45 minutes to be taken to the nearest hospital by ambulance.

In practice, giving birth in a hospital wasn't much different. It felt more like a nice hotel with medical staff than a regular hospital admission.

[–] bribear2u 12 years ago

My blood pressure ran at 210/105 for over an hour while I was in labor and no one suggested a c-section. That is the dysfunction of the medical community as a whole, what is an emergency to one doctor is more commonplace to another. Mind you, I am not saying in any way that your wife wasn't in a dangerous situation, this situation just happens to relate to my own enough to show the variables.

I had a decent hospital birth in the sense that they did not require an IV at admittance and only required 20 minutes a monitoring every few hours. So I was able to walk around and progress my labor. However, at the suggestion of my midwife's doctor, I allowed them to break my water. Little did I know that that put me on a time limit. I had 18 hours to get the baby out and then they required a c-section. In the end, I ended up with pitocin and an epidural in an effort to avoid a c-section. My 9lbs monkey was born a few hours later. Little did I know that, as long as precautions are taken, you can go with your waters broken for days with no risk to the baby...

My friend delivered in a different hospital and had a horrific experience. Her doctors were pushing for a c-section at week 20 because of her weight, but she put her foot down on that. Instead, they scheduled an induction when she was 38 weeks and it had almost no chance of working. Why? Because she was going to have a "huge" baby and "women can't deliver babies over 9lbs naturally without huge risks." She had an IV from the get-go, was only allowed out of the bed for 20 minutes every three hours. Aafter 3 days of cervical ripening, even though her cervix still wasn't ready for it, they used pitocin. It was during that time that I overheard the nurses saying that they needed to everything they could to push a cesarean because the "doctor needs this one". Needless to say, the cranked the pitocin to fast, the baby's heart rate dropped and she delivered her 6lbs baby via c-section an hour later...

There are risks to everything. Babies die in the hospital all the time, oddly enough, far more than at home or in birth centers. Though that could be because high-risk cases are almost never excepted by midwives for home or birth center deliveries.

In the end though, it is up to the individual. You are either risking being away from the hospital or risking that your doctor has an agenda. I say people do what feels best to them and what they are comfortable with. And leave the judgement at the door, because there truly is no "right" choice. I'll be having my next baby in a birth center that is less than 5 minutes from their back-up hospital. I figure, if something goes wrong, it takes roughly that amount of time to prep the OR. :)