Review of The Business of Being Born (2008) by Jimmy K — 11 Jul 2010

Brilliant movie.

Shares the facts-70% of births in other industrial countries are with midwives and they have lower deaths while US spends more and have worse results and less than 8% are midwife births.

Then shares lots of stories, from the past (scary scenes from 'twilight sleep' births) from other places and lots from New York.

And guess what, I am just like Ricki Lake (except that I won't be filmed in the buff during my birth) because I had an over-inventioned unsatisfactory hospital birth with my first, then got smart (though I was 27 with Lydia and had traveled the world and thought I was communicating with the doctor what I wanted) and had my second with a midwife (not at home which I am still glad about because I didn't want to see the dust in my corners and didn't want my too young to remember first born around and though I know midwives are good at cleaning, birth is messy so I am glad I did it at the birthing center). Yes they address that there is a need for good doctors....in the small percentage of pregnancies that are high risk.

Ironically having crappy medical insurance helped this decision and we just paid out of pocket, and now since insurance no longer even pays for preventive care, I now will be seeing a midwife for well woman visits too.

I liked the honesty at the end of the director who (spoiler alert) had a C-section after wanting a home birth, got to talk about it.

Yes the goal is a healthy baby, but there is so much more to all of it. What are we doing to our society that treats birth as a sickness instead of a natural miracle. What are we doing to our bodies (would I have some issues that I now have without the episiotomy? I don't know). What are we doing tuning out during the hours of labor? My natural childbirth experience was actually less painful that the one with an epidural...

A lot of people say, yes you can do that (meaning nonhospital birth) with your second but I have two friends who did with their first and I want to shout to the world-You Don't Have to Have a Bad Experience First!

I was in a ladies' Bible study and the teacher was talking about her sister who was all for natural births and how wonderful they are and better for the baby and the teacher who was making the analogy that we can't always talk people into what we KNOW is better and real in terms of life with Christ, said Yes but I still just want my epidural. So we can' talk people into this but hopefully in America, the lies will be exposed, the true stories shared and we can reserve this horrible trend we are on.

Okay the end :).