Scoff if you wish, but I think it qualifies as an addiction. Poor Alan has to hear about it all the time, especially when I tear up at little things like Playskool commercials or clips of babies on AFV.
I was watching a documentary the other day called The Business of being Born, and I can honestly say it's one of the best "alternative birth" (watch the documentary and you'll see how ironic that term is) documentaries I have ever seen. Sadly, that's probably because it's the ONLY one that is publicly available.
As a warning, this is a documentary about birth, so there are naked women giving birth everywhere, and you should not watch it if you have objections to boobs, bellies, butts, and baby heads. Netflix totally has it in their instant queue, so if anyone doesn't want to spend the $8 for the DVD from amazon.com you can totally come over to my house and watch it with me for the 5th time (seriously, it never gets old, and I learn so much every time I watch it).
I really really wish that I could find a doctor and a midwife as good as the ones Abby Epstein had in the documentary. I have NEVER seen a doctor that is that enlightened about birth. He admits that most births have no need for a doctor's intervention, and that outcomes for the vast majority of women (above 90%) who do not have serious complications, are BETTER outside of a hospital. Doctors are wonderful and necessary for those that need the medical intervention, and I wouldn't give them up for the world, but I do agree that medical intervention has gone too far.
I am so grateful for the wonderful advancements that medicine has made over the past few years. Lets face it, C-sections have saved a bunch of women and babies that would have not survived without that medical intervention, but they are actually part of the cause of our high infant and mother mortality rate. In the developed world (England, Germany, New Zealand, ect.) the US has the second to worst infant and mother mortality rate. In Europe and Japan, midwives deliver 70 percent of all births; in the U.S. midwives deliver a mere 8 percent of births. Coincidence? I think not!
Some may ridicule me for speaking out about this, having never had a baby myself, and yet, I have more experience than most first year medical students. I have been in attendance at 1 hospital birth and 3 home births, and I can honestly say that the atmosphere was so incredibly different. In one, there was screaming, yelling, medical malpractice, major bleeding, anxiety, exhaustion, and panic. In the other, calmness, peace, comfort, and better care for the infant and mother. Can you guess which one was which? In my experience, the home births were by far a better environment to bring a baby into the world.
Kind of a roundabout way of getting to it, but I am looking for a midwife. Because of the lack of demand for them, there are relatively few of them that can remain in practice for long enough to gain much experience, and the ones that do usually have mega long waiting lists, hence the looking before I'm pregnant. I'm also looking for a doctor who would be ok being my backup if something does happen to go wrong, so if you know one I would be happy to hear about them as well!
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