I finally got around to watching Ricki Lake's documentary, "The Business of Being Born" on Saturday night. I know, I know, a little late to the party, right? I was super excited to see that it is now on Netflix and couldn't wait to get it in the mail so my husband and I watched it on our laptop in bed.

It was everything I thought it would be and have to say that during the duration of the film I ran through just about every emotion possible; total joy, total anger, elation, let down, sadness, optimism, but most of all I came away from it feeling like it was a very necessary documentary. Our country needs to be exposed to the issues that it brings up so that we can begin the healing process of our maternity care system and American mothers and babies can start to experience birth the way they deserve, in safety first of all, and with joy and empowerment.

One of my favorite parts of the film was listening to Michel Odent talk about the "love cocktail" of hormones that surges through us during labor and birth and how even the smallest of interventions disrupts it's natural course. I completely agree with so much of what this man says about our society, it's ability to love, give love and experience love and how it's extremely effected by our birth experiences.

I also really appreciated the cartoon explanation of how interventions so often lead right into a c-section. One intervention such as an epidural or pitocin can lead to another which leads to another which leads to another which then leads to babies heart rate becoming erratic, mom's blood pressure sky-rocketing, or dragging, baby getting stuck in a malposition {or any other possible outcomes of pushing a laboring woman too fast too soon} then *poof*! C-section time! And then, "Oh I'm so glad we where in a hospital!" *Oi* Sigh...if only everyone in this entire country would watch this documentary.

Let's see, other favorite parts...oh yes. Just the pure fact that Ricki Lake was willing to nationally broadcast herself at full pregnancy bloom, naked in a bath...birthing, such a private moment, such a personal event for such a public figure, this spoke volumes to me and really made my heart leap. It told me that this woman believes so strongly in what she's aiming to tell other women that she is willing to put all modesty and celebrity-status on the back burner in order to convey her point. That's a pretty big statement. How many other celebrities would be willing to put themselves out there like that, so raw and vulnerable, for what they believe in? It just says that the cause, homebirth and birth safety awareness, is an extremely important one and so many women feel strongly committed to it.

As for the placement of Meteo's birth {eeek..was that his name?!} towards the end of the documentary {I'd heard some discussion as to whether it should have been there or not}, I didn't mind it at all. And really, it wasn't at the end end, because wasn't the last scene outside an apartment door with a homebirth going on in inside? Anyway, I could be wrong, but the placement of Meteo's c-section didn't bother me. I felt like it was actually a good testament to the fact that sometimes birth is safer under the care of a trained surgeon like an Ob/Gyn, and for some moms and babies this is where they should be, in a hospital with medical intervention. For some. And thank goodness we have hospitals for those that need them. But for the vast majority of birthing women and babies, a hospital is not a place for normal birth to occur.

Which brings me to the other thing I really liked about this documentary. A big emphasis was placed on the fact that Ob/Gyn's are NOT trained in normal birth. Most ob's have never seen a
normal birth. They don't know what it looks like, they don't know what it sounds like, they don't don't how to facilitate one. I liked that it reiterated over and over again the fact that Ob's are trained surgeons, they know how to operate on people, manage people's sicknesses, disabilities, their physical problems, emergencies...but not a normal, low-risk birth. Because normal, low-risk birth does not need managing. And when it is managed or treated like an illness, all sorts of unnecessary interventions and procedures are implemented upon it, then it BECOMES high-risk. Then things go wrong, go strange, head down the c-section path. Not saying that things can't go wrong on their own, definitely they can, and this is when you would transfer to a person like an Ob/Gyn. When they're needed. That's why it's important to have a hospital near by, so if and when a specialist is needed, they can be accessed. But how many unnecessarily dangerous situations are we putting ourselves and our babies in by putting ourselves in the care of people who only know how to medically manage labor and birth?

Many people would say, "Better safe than sorry." And I agree one hundred percent. The biggest fact that came out of this documentary I think is to get out the word to the American people that birth is not safe in this country in the current maternity system! Like the film points out, the U.S. has THE SECOND HIGHEST INFANT MORTALITY RATE in the industrialized world, second only to Latvia. LATVIA people!

So who's at the top of the list? Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. What is the birth environment in these countries? In these countries, 34 % of women give birth at home with a midwife. This is compared to less than 1% in the United States. The other 66% of women in these countries give birth in a hospital with an autonomous midwife who is employed by national health services {http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8492190}. Ob/Gyn's do not manage normal birth in these countries. They are reserved for only high-risk or emergency situations and Dutch women and babies are much healthier because of it. Midwives attend almost all births in these countries, and they are enjoying the lowest infant mortality rate in the world.

"Better safe than sorry"...so go get a midwife!!!

Back to the documentary, these were the things I liked most about it. I think it's an essential film. It was made in a way that it could speak to everyone from homebirth enthusiast to homebirth opponents, and everyone in between. I say, if you haven't already seen it, go watch it on Netflix. It will change the way you view birth in this country.