Home Births Continue to Resist “Peer Pressure”

A year ago the CDC reported that home births were on the rise with a twenty percent increase. I wrote a  post in response, sharing my belief that home births are not a “trend”, but a permanent response to a broken health care system. This year, the report is that home births are steadily increasing to 30 percent.  Here’s a portion of what I wrote last year…

Many are calling this a trend. I've also heard the term savvy moms” applied to these group of women who have chosen home birth. The increase of 20 percent in home births hardly makes it popular, in fact home births still make up for one percent  of births.  Calling this a trend, in any instance, implies that it is temporary and I truly don’t think it is. I think the term savvy moms is the defining light of home birth. Savvy, which means to understand, is  the element behind the increase in home births.  This is not an over night trend.  This trend is a effect of a cause, and the cause is the broken health care system that has monetized birth into a industry, by which women have become baby machines.
And I bet, five more years down the line, you’ll see this trend” alive and well. Women have had enough. It’s bad enough we have to birth, such an intimate act by the way, in accordance to policy”, but we have to pay for it too! A LOT of money at that!  Home Births Rising, Trend or Enlightment?

At a ten percent increase from last year, it does look like the attitude towards a home birth has definitely changed. Although the majority of moms still birth in a hospital setting, they are not dismissing home births as easily as they may have had a few years ago. Home births are being viewed as a safe alternative, despite the constant attacks on the safety of home births. I truly believe this change will continue to grow even further, as more and more women come to understand that they do not need to sacrifice their dignity in order to have, what’s believed as a “safe” birth.

This upward movement should speak to modern maternity care everywhere…we are tired of a model of care that fashions itself towards the protection of the dollar.  We are reclaiming our uteri from a system that herds our bodies as cattle.
From The Rituals of American Hospital Births….

Why is childbirth, which should be such a unique and individual experience for the woman, treated in such a highly standardized way in the United States? No matter how long or short, how easy or hard their labors, the vast majority of American women are hooked up to an electronic fetal monitor and an IV (intravenously administered fluids and/or medication), are encouraged to use pain-relieving drugs, receive an episiotomy (a surgical incision in the vagina to widen the birth outlet in order to prevent tearing) at the moment of birth, and are separated from their babies shortly after birth. Most of them also receive doses of the synthetic hormone pitocin to speed their labors, and give birth flat on their backs. Nearly one quarter of them are delivered by Cesarean section.
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Many Americans, including most of the doctors and nurses who attend birth, view these procedures as medical necessities. Yet anthropologists regularly describe other, less technological ways to give birth. For example, the Mayan Indians of Highland Chiapas hold onto a rope while squatting for birth, a position that is far more physiologically efficacious than the flat-on-your-back-with-your-feet-in-stirrups (lithotomy) position. Mothers in many low-technology cultures give birth sitting, squatting, semi-reclining in their hammocks, or on their hands and knees, and are nurtured through the pain of labor by experienced midwives and supportive female relatives. What then might explain the standardization and technical elaboration of the American birthing process?

One answer emerges from the field of symbolic anthropology. Early in this century, Arnold van Gennep noticed that in many societies around the world, major life transitions are ritualized. These cultural rites of passage make it appear that society itself effects the transformation of the individual. Could this explain the standardization of American birth? I believe the answer is yes. Read More.

Society itself affects the transformation of the individual - No doubt…it’s what we call “peer pressure”. Seemingly, we are resisting the pressure of our peers to confirm home births as a solid, valid option.

Source:
NaturalNews.com – Home Births Have Increased…
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