Review of The Business of Being Born (2008) by Chris D — 09 Jan 2011

The statistic on C-sections startled me, and it was interesting to look into an alternative to hospital births. However, I wasn't very convinced, especially when the director herself (closing out the film) abandoned her midwife in order to be rushed to the hospital. There had been problems with the baby that required professional medical attention. That's where the film fails: it doesn't do a very good job of showing concrete evidence of WHY home births are somehow superior.

The statistics of higher mortality rates at hospitals are left unexplained: perhaps it is because there's a much smaller chance that women with high-risk pregnancy will attempt a midwife birth, and those are the same pregnancies that are more likely to lead to higher infant mortality. No one would argue that the state of medicine in the U.S. is a mess, but I think measures to improve the experience in a hospital environment would be preferable to moving it out of the hospital. The film does a good job of explaining its side of the story, although (on a minor note) I don't think we really needed to see so many up-close shots of women giving birth. Regardless of the setting, its a difficult and painful process, and the audience certainly gets that picture even after Rikki Lake's home birth.