Natural Childbirth

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I am very thankful for upcoming baby Zola.

As I said a few posts ago, we are going the route of natural childbirth, having the birth at a birth center.  I know 90% of people probably think that it's crazy to go the route of no pain medication.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of things that people just don't know about what goes on in the hospital and why it's not ideal.  There are some documentaries out there, such as "The Business of Being Born", that help to explain the situation.  We've also been listening to a bunch of natural childbirth podcasts on our commutes together.  One common misconception is that people think you are screwed if there is an emergency by being at home or a birthing center.  In reality, almost always the midwife can see problems coming and you can be transferred to the hospital within 30 minutes.  Also, a lot of the drugs used during pregnancy, such as pitocin for inducing labor and the epidural for pain control,  have been shown to usually be unnecessary and potential harmful.  There are a lot of extra things that a hospital does that aren't necessary and can lead to more interventions, such as IVs and continuous fetal monitoring.

Part of the problem with hospitals is that they're taking something totally natural and making it an emergency, when in reality only about 5% of births require the level of medical technology that a hospital has.  Of course, money and convenience for the doctors/nurses plays a big role.  Pitocin is convenient for the doctor because they can hurry and get the mom through labor so that the doctor can catch an afternoon round of golf.  Plus, time is money for the hospital.  Also, the use of more drugs, surgery, and intervention is money for the hospital (pitocin, epidural, C-section, IVs).  There is a lot of research out there that shows that pitocin, epidurals, and C-sections are not ideal solutions.  Of course, common sense would tell you that cutting a huge gash in your stomach is not good.

That's enough for now.  I realize a lot of the things I mentioned are totally foreign to a lot of you.  After all, why not take advantage of all the medical wizardry that a hospital offers?  Well, it's not quite that simple, and we didn't realize it wasn't that simple until we started doing a lot of research.