HW # 38 - Insights from pregnancy & birth book - part 1

Pushed by Jennifer Block


1. The first chapter - Arranged Birth - talks about the speeding up the birth process by doctors and hospitals using artificial hormones and painkillers and gadgets instead of waiting for spontaneous labor. The second chapter – The Short Cut – is about cesarean births and how common they are even when they aren’t emergency births. The third chapter – Denied Birth – is about babies in the breach position (feet down instead of head) and how they are almost all born by C sections and about VBAC (vaginal births after cesarean births) which are mostly discouraged.

2. “Why (the American birth experience) is far from optimal, how it came to be this way, and what it means for women, families, and society at large.”

3. “We are in the midst of an epidemic of patently unnatural birth: most labors are started or propelled by artificial hormones, and nearly one-third of American women are giving birth by major abdominal surgery. The norm is moving very far away from what’s normal.” “ We know if we take our otherwise healthy patient…release her cuffs, and bands, unplug the probes and sensors, and turn off the Pitocin and morphine, 9 times out of 10 her body will birth a baby with minimal interference or injury, especially if she has the one-on-one support of a skilled caregiver.”

4. Having breach babies born the natural way with legs hanging out sounds more dangerous than having them by C-section. Giving women in labor Pitocin sounds as though it is getting way out of hand. The idea that the pain that the Pitocin causes is the reason a lot of women want drugs to kill the pain makes sense. Are fetal heart monitors really not that useful? (I think one saved my life.)
Unassisted births sound too dangerous. (I would hate to be there.)


5. The author uses all kinds of evidence to back up her thesis that there is too much invasiveness with births. There is a very long “Notes” section in the back documenting all the points made in the chapters. The evidence of practices not based on the statistics is the most interesting, for example, the fact that women have to sign a consent form to have VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarian), but not a double cesarean, which can be more dangerous.