Industrialization of Birth

I’m a bit late commenting on this post from the New Yorker. In the middle of a tale of one woman’s birth, the narrator gives us a view how far we’ve come in birth.

He talks about the APGAR score and how they are working on a surgical score – after all, it’s not just good enough to take the mother’s well being or death as the only way to tell if she’s okay with the experience. There has to be an emotional factor as well as a “wounded” category, the I’m alive but not whole or well. (Like the Optimality Score I heard Amy Romano, CNM, discuss at a CIMS meeting last year.)

It was sad to watch this mother in the story get railroaded, at least from an emotional standpoint. She seems to fit my category above so well. Though the real tragedy is that she is led to believe that she can’t be happy she’s got a health, beautiful baby and still upset about the process…