Monthly Archives: June 2008

I’ve had several conversations over the last few days about the notion of responsibility for birth. The conclusion I’ve come to is that until women are willing to take responsibility for their actions regarding birth choices – they won’t get the empowerment.

So let’s say you have a particularly awesome birth. You had nearly every one of the desires met from your birth plan and you were in charge of the decisions. (Notice this does not say how or with whom you gave birth – but it was your choice.) You feel the empowerment because you took the responsibility.

But so many times women abdicate this responsibility by handing over the decision making ability to their care provider or make decisions that lead to a place they don’t want to be and rather than accept the responsibility for that decision – they blame someone else. That person can be their practitioner, their husband/partner, their doula, the labor nurse… the list goes on.

For example, a woman says “The doctor saved my baby!” Great! I mean that’s why we pay doctors and midwives – to be the life guards of birth. But a question that is often asked is – Why do we hear this statement so much? Are babies really needing to be “saved” that often?

The problem is two fold.

1) Women aren’t as often standing up and making choices for themselves as well as making choices and then not accepting the responsibility for the outcome.

2) We have care provider who set up situations where they go from life guard to life saver. (Think of the arsonist who starts a fire only to rush in and save everyone and become the hero…)

The system is broken in many ways. This is but one angle. But it really points out the need for careful selection of your practitioner as well as the mental and emotional energy to delve into the decisions that you need to make as a parent wholeheartedly.

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