Dealing with those who follow the techno-medical model

I am realizing more and more that people in the United States have been completely brainwashed by the techno-medical model of maternity care which has existed for less than 200 years. Did you know that the whole laying back with your legs spread to have the baby is fairly new in the history of the world. People want to know what the big deal is. Why are some people so upset with the hospital model of maternity care? Because it is not focused on the health of the mother and the baby. It's all about economics. Around the turn of the century, the medical community launched a smear campaign against midwives because they wanted women to start having their babies in the hospital. The hospital model of care is very male centered. It's about a patriarchal system telling women that their bodies are naturally incapable of giving birth. It's about stripping the power from women when in fact women have been supporting other women in the beautiful life event that is the birth of a child since the beginning of time. People think that technology has to be part of it. In the techno-medical model of maternity care, pregnancy is classified as a disease and childbirth is a medical emergency. In the midwifery model of care, pregnancy and childbirth is not something that just happens to women; birth is what women do and have done for years. Midwives assume that a woman's body is built for and is capable of delivering a baby naturally and normally. And if you look at the statistics, homebirths that end up in hospital transfer are very low and the amount of infant mortality in homebirths versus hospital births are even lower. Did you know that out of the 23 richest nations in the world, the US is NUMBER ONE in infant mortality??? And apparently Memphis has the highest rate of infant mortality in the US. A baby dies there every 43 hours. I mean that is similar to developing world statistics. And there are so many families who can not afford to bury their deceased infants so the health department has to do mass burials of these babies in a potter's field also referred to as "Babyland". If the US maternity care is working so well, than why are things like this happening in 2008???

"When we give the mother drugs to help her deal with pain, we destroy these natural coping hormones and more importantly, the baby now has no pain-relieving hormones available. The drugs for inducing labor, for pain and anesthesia all go to the baby and eventually interfere, sometimes in a big ways, with how easy it will be for the baby to be born and attach to a breast"- Waterbirth: The Heart and Soul of Gentle Birth, Barbara Harper

To me if you are a low risk pregnancy with no serious preexisting health conditions, choosing medical intervention is pretty selfish. You are putting your baby at risk. Of course emergencies come up and I am glad that in these cases the innovations are available. But when a woman is just left to labor naturally with really good support from her partners, midwives, doulas, family, etc...the outcome is normally fine if not great. Our society has turned childbirth into a medical event. There is nothing emotional or holistic about being stuck on a bed during labor and birth because you can't move around with your epidural. Or being so wacked out by narcotics that you don't even know what's going on while your baby is being born. I don't know if I am going to have anymore children so for me, I am treating this birth like it is the first and last. People act like natural birth means that you just take the pain. That's not it at all. There are so many non-narcotic ways of coping with labor pain: massage, water therapy, different positions, breathing techniques, meditation, acupuncture, visualization, etc... These things don't have possible side effects. People are just not educated. We tell pregnant women not to take drugs or alcohol during their pregnancy YET it is totally acceptable to take strong narcotics during labor that pass right through the placenta directly to the baby. Epidurals pretty much paralyze you from the waist down. Often you don't even feel the urge to push or pee for that matter. Of course if a woman is in a hospital bed in the throes of labor and she is given the option of epidural to the numb the pain or just taking the pain, she is going to choose an epidural. She is not being given any alternative options. And one medical intervention in labor usually leads to another, which can snowball into the mother of all intervention, cesarean section. The rate of c-sections in the US is sky high. It's really a shame. But sometimes I think ignorance is a choice. I did not just wake up knowing what all my childbirth options were; it's been a journey of education that I gladly took not just for my sake, but for the sake of my child. I think the love of your unborn baby is universal across race, class and religion.