Cesarean Section Childbirth Education General Homebirth Hospital Birth Labor and Birth Midwifery Natural Childbirth Obstetricial Interventions Obstetrics Pregnancy Prenatal Care Unassisted Birth
by Danielle
Why Our Women are Afraid of Birth
It is Tuesday, at 10pm while I settle in after getting my little ones to bed. I flip through the channels and settle on discovery healthy which is a personal favorite of mine, but it really has only recently become a favorite because of shows like I didn’t know I was pregnant. It fascinates me that women could make it though a full term pregnancy and not know they were pregnant, but that is just me, and the experiences that I had with my children is what makes me wonder how the heck women could not know they were pregnant. But that is completely besides my point today.
So as I watch this show, I am noticing a trend. High risk, high risk, high risk, previous cesarean section, scheduled cesarean section, high risk, healthy first time mother, scheduled cesarean, high risk. Well I mean, that is how it is in Los Angeles right? You would think so! But apparently because only these crazy, scary, uncommon births make something called ratings, that is all they are going to feature on TV. Because in reality, no one wants to watch a natural birth or a home birth because no one is running around with a scalpel screaming about the emergency that childbirth is. Nor is the mother screaming for her epidural because she just cant deal with the pain of the 3 hours of labor so far.
But what we should be thinking about most importantly is the message this is sending. What is this teaching first time mothers or even young women that may not be planning on having children soon but will some day? It is teaching them how scary, dangerous, and medical birth is supposed to be. But is that really how birth is? Of course not. Anyone who has taken the time to read the studies, and just not follow what mainstream society thinks is the right way to handle pregnancy will know that birth is not scary or dangerous or a huge emergency. While it can be in some cases, in most cases it can and will be beautiful when just left alone.
When a woman becomes pregnant today, if they do not already have an Obstetrician they have been seeing for well women care since 16, or whatever age their parent decided it was the right them for them, what is the first thing that they do? They ask around their circle of female friends for the best Doctor out there because isn’t that what we all want? We want the one who is the BMW of pre natal care. Little do women know that they are really going to end up with the 1990 Dodge Dynasty when they take this route because hands off is better.
But because our society has told us this is the way things should be, they run off like lemmings right off the cliff of medical interventions landing in the valley of cesarean sections.
Maybe if the television channels like Discovery health followed a dozen home births or even aired The Business of Being Born they could get a popular, and controversial other side to what they are constantly airing. Maybe it will boost their ratings even more, maybe not? But what it will do is give the other side of the whole issue. Let’s get Marsden Wagner to do a half hour special on Birth in The United States and see how many women run off to the midwives. Instead they air these disgustingly inaccurate “Freebirthing” shows. They find the one idiot who is going to make women who choose unassisted birth look like a bunch of uneducated yokels. Which is exactly what they did with their special on Unassisted birth.
I guess in the end, like anything else the television airs, it is biased and we shouldn’t expect much different.
You are right about the fear factor. Women are anxious about labor and birth. Obstetricians order amniotic fluid level tests, encourage women to deliver at 39 weeks, offer elective cesarean
sections–in pursuit of the the perfect outcome. Doctors say fearful things–they are afraid of lawsuits.
It is not only TV that portrays childbirth in a fear inducing way.The novel, Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian tells a frightful story about a midwife. This was an Oprah book club selection.
A careful search of literature turns up honest appraisal of physiologic birth, midwife attended birth. The diary of Martha Ballard (18th century midwife) developed into a story by Laurel T. Ulrich is solid in support of normal birth. The title of the book is A Midwife’s Tale. The memoir of an English midwife is another good read, The Midwife by Jennifer Worth.
In promoting physiologic birth we need to get the message out in letters to the editor (newspapers), magazine articles and story.
I too have been wishing for TV shows that portray normal birth. Here is a petition that I’m hoping gets signatures showing cable channels that the interest is there:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/TVbirth/petition.html
Thanks for writing this; it is much needed. Yes, in Hypnobabies we do advise that *all* expectant mothers avoid watching the TV “birth” shows which show almost exclusively negative and frightening portrayals of childbirth, and there is much more to the story than just the scariness factor. The mind literally becomes *imprinted* with what it sees when we are watching a screen of any kind; we enter a state of much greater suggestiveness - an actual state of hypnosis, when we have been reading a book, a web page or watching a screen of any kind for even a short while.
In this state, when an expectant woman watches these shows, her inner mind which is responsible for collecting data and creating her belief systems about childbirth, is flooded with images, sounds and emotional responses that are frightening, misleading and detrimental to a positive belief system about *normal* childbirth. (What is shown on TV is *not* normal childbirth; it is sensationalism at its best…or worst.)
The subconscious then reacts in a very literal way, accepting what is shown to it (over and over) as the truth, and will not only produce fear, from watching all of the inductions, C-sections, other unnecessary procedures and drama, it also imprints what it is seeing, actually *creating* similar situations in the expectant mother who is watching all this silliness, and the cycle goes on and on. Women are literally re-creating negative birthing scenarios in themselves by watching ridiculous TV shows. Our minds are extremely powerful, and we can use them in a negative way or a positive way. For childbirth, we need to take responsibility for our own births and use our minds in a positive way if we want to produce the best and safest experience for mom and baby.
I doubt it if any of the shows would be taken off of the air if the producers knew about these negative effects, but I would love for them to understand what they are doing anyway. Please pass this information on to any expectant mothers you know!
Thanks,
Kerry Tuschhoff
Founder/Director of Hypnobabies
I so agree with everything you said. It is a shame that many women never take a childbirth class, but watch these shows daily and feel that they are ready for birth.
I wrote something on my blog along the same lines…couldn’t agree with you more! Just the TITLE of the show, “Deliver Me” is offfensive…as if we all need doctors to deliever us from the pain and angst of birthing!
here’s my blog entry if you are interested. http://www.3doulas.com/3doulas/television/
I appreciate this blog. I am a newly graduated midwife and will soon be certified (a nice New Year’s gift to myself….and my husband!). I was watching these shows this morning in the gym and just became furious. The worst things about them all is the commentary (ex: “when her mother’s touch could no longer ease her pain at 7 cm, she finally begged for the epidural to take her pain away”, or “the baby had the cord around its neck but I was able to easily reduce it so there was no emergency” - as if nuchal cords didn’t happen ALL THE TIME!) and the music -the piano that sounds like you are watching a slasher movie and someone/something is about to die (isn’t it though?).
I am glad that there are so many women in the birthing community speaking out for honest reporesentation of the natural processes of life. Thank you! I hope that someday there will be an honest show about pregnancy and birth.
I used Hypnobabies (successfully!) for my daughter’s birth. One of the “rules” of the program is to avoid all pregnancy-related TV shows like “A Baby Story” and “Deliver Me” because they only show such negative, high risk, intervention-heavy births. Hypnobabies believes that if you watch enough, you’ll lose sight of your goal of natural childbirth and start believing that the births on those TV shows are what all births look like. Even now, several months after my daughter’s birth, I flip by those shows and just cringe at what kind of messages they’re sending to their audience.