This particular event was definitely a rousing round of preaching to the choir. Women who have scheduled home births and a lot of homebirth doulas sitting around nodding sagely. And a few of us who have done it wrong sitting around with a big fake smile.
This comment really resonates with me, did I mention that?
This speaker I just listened to has supposedly spoken to large groups of doctors before (like 200 in Japan with a translator at one point), and I can imagine THAT being helpful.
I actually just spent a huge long time talking with my sister about how change has to come from the upper levels; educating individual women has value in those individual womens' lives, SOMETIMES, but overall it is about changing policies because people DON'T GET IMMERSED IN THIS CRAP UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE. Generally speaking, you don't read books about birth choices until you're already a couple of months pregnant with your first baby, if not later. And that is way too late for a radical paradigm shift to really take hold of you. THe problem is that when well meaning, excited new moms find out their pregnant, everything about our society immediately guides them in the wrong direction...and yes, everything you said about trying to approach birth as a battleground while IN LABOR WITH A BABY is definitely true.
Pushing for a midwifery and birth center model of care is also important, I think, as well as normalizing homebirth in uncomplicated situations... the numbers really are there for those things.
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Date: 2009-08-11 12:26 pm (UTC)This particular event was definitely a rousing round of preaching to the choir. Women who have scheduled home births and a lot of homebirth doulas sitting around nodding sagely. And a few of us who have done it wrong sitting around with a big fake smile.
This comment really resonates with me, did I mention that?
This speaker I just listened to has supposedly spoken to large groups of doctors before (like 200 in Japan with a translator at one point), and I can imagine THAT being helpful.
I actually just spent a huge long time talking with my sister about how change has to come from the upper levels; educating individual women has value in those individual womens' lives, SOMETIMES, but overall it is about changing policies because people DON'T GET IMMERSED IN THIS CRAP UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE. Generally speaking, you don't read books about birth choices until you're already a couple of months pregnant with your first baby, if not later. And that is way too late for a radical paradigm shift to really take hold of you. THe problem is that when well meaning, excited new moms find out their pregnant, everything about our society immediately guides them in the wrong direction...and yes, everything you said about trying to approach birth as a battleground while IN LABOR WITH A BABY is definitely true.
Pushing for a midwifery and birth center model of care is also important, I think, as well as normalizing homebirth in uncomplicated situations... the numbers really are there for those things.