I'm sure everyone heard the news story about the Manhattan mom, Polly McCourt, who gave birth on a sidewalk a week ago. I wasn't going to say anything about it, but that story has been bothering me so much and I just need to do (another) blog post rant. I'm sure most people who read the story thought the woman who stole the taxi was a ***** and/or that it was wonderful that the baby and mother did so well concerning the circumstances of the birth. But my reaction was disgust of what the culture of fear surrounding childbirth has done to her and other women. People can talk crap about my homebirth or homebirthing in general, but wouldn't it have been better for Mrs. McCourt to have her baby in the comfort of her own home instead of on a sidewalk in thirty-degree weather? Wouldn't it have been better for the baby born in the car in the Atlanta snowstorm to have been born at home?
I have nothing against women who want to or need to birth in hospitals, obviously it's their choice, and I had Jackson in a hospital so I'm not casting stones here. But what if women in America weren't brainwashed with this culture of subordinating women to the knowledge of the Hospital Gods instead of being embraced in a culture of knowledge and empowerment? From the moment we are born in a hospital, we are being brainwashed that it is the ONLY way to have a child. We are taken as children to visit siblings, relatives, or friends in the hospital. We watch medical emergency shows that feature frantic parents accidentally birthing at home begging 911 operators for help. We watch movies that show everyone in the house going into a panic the second the first contraction hits. We read news stories about women preferring to risk birthing their children in cars on the side of the road instead of just birthing at home and calling an ambulance. We watch shows about birth on TV that only feature hospital births. We make sure we sign up for the hospital tour so we know where to rush the second we go into labor. The culture of fear has made childbirth seem so complex and dangerous, when actually a low-risk pregnancy and birth is very simple.
"Mind control (also known as brainwashing, coercive persuasion, thought control, or thought reform) refers to an indoctrination process which results in "an impairment of autonomy, an inability to think independently, and a disruption of beliefs and affiliations. In this context, brainwashing refers to the involuntary reeducation of basic beliefs and values"[1] The term has been applied to any tactic, psychological or otherwise, which can be seen as subverting an individual's sense of control over their own thinking, behavior, emotions or decision making."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_control
(Don't act like Wikipedia isn't a good source for information when you used it to write every paper in college.)
Those women who gave birth outside the home and hospital, and indeed most women in this country, do not have an ability to think independently and be autonomous during birth. We have been indoctrinated to get to the hospital at all costs, even if it means your child may be born in freezing weather or your whole family could be stuck in a car in a snowstorm with possibly no food, heat, or help. We need to get to the hospital because we are not competent enough to birth our child. We need the Hospital Gods to do everything for us and just hand us our neatly wrapped bundle of joy.
Maybe if we all decided to start to understand how we are being brainwashed and seek more knowledge about childbirth, then we wouldn't have to panic if we knew we should probably stay home because we can't get to the hospital in time. Maybe we would know that there is usually no need for panic or interventions in low-risk pregnancies, and that all we need to do is make sure the mother and baby are warm, fed, make sure mother isn't hemorrhaging, and make sure baby is responsive. Maybe we would know the baby won't spontaneously combust if we can't find that shoestring RIGHT NOW to cut the umbilical cord. Maybe we could want to birth with assistance, yet birth without fear when none is available.
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