For those of you who know me, I’ve been passionate in educating women about childbirth options for fifteen years. When I first began this journey, my energy was focused on teen and at-risk women. I had a vision of all women, regardless of race, economic means, or family background, having access to empowering care. In my young and idealistic mind it didn’t seem impossible - after all, midwives are cheaper than obstetricians and are more likely to serve disadvantaged populations. But, what I did not understand in the beginning were the huge political and economic forces at play. Not to mention the continued stream of misinformation in popular culture (think: ER).
Those of us who have been advocating for women for decades, know well the frustration of a slowly changing paradigm of birth in our communities. So, why do we persist? It’s very simple, really. Most of us have experienced birth on our terms, with nurturing and respectful care and incredible outcomes. We KNOW that all women can have this. And, we care about our neighbors, our friends, our relatives - even the women we have yet to meet that we pass as strangers on the street. The vision of all women receiving the same level of care we received is powerful. The sense of accomplishment, personal power, and intimate bonding with our little ones set us down a road we would not traveled otherwise. Imagine if that were occurring as the majority?
Instead, the stories we hear in our communities are heartbreaking. Whenever I share that I had a home birth, or that I wrote a book about childbirth, women share their stories with me. They are often still raw with the pain of how they were treated and how differently their experience of birth was from what they wanted. I end up thinking, if we could just capture all of those stories and harness that pain into a movement of change, we could change the landscape of birth for our daughters, once and for all. This unacceptable treatment of women during one the most sacred times of their lives has been going on too long. It’s ironic that we live in a time of unlimited information at our finger tips, when women are filling university seats at the largest numbers ever, and the numbers of women filling higher positions in corporate and government businesses is at it’s all time high, and yet, women are still being treated as second class citizens when having their babies.
So, what I really want to say is this: it’s going to take the women - all women, regardless of their birth experiences - standing up and demanding more from the standard of care to change obstetrics in our country. We should be outraged, really. That more than a third of our pregnant sisters are going through major abdominal surgery. Hospitals with 24 hour anesthesia have epidural rates of 90%. Both of these medical procedures carry with them major risks. How is it that physicians are practicing in this way? Is there no oversight? No consequence? What is it going to take to change this harmful system? Unless, we as women stand up and demand more - more labor support, more compassion, more birthing options, more alternatives to surgery or spinal paralysis as a means of pain relief, more physicians learning about the process of labor and how to support us through this sacred passage - it will not change. We have to unite.
Submitted by Sheryl Rivett