Oh fine yes I'd do a Home Birth if I had to.

I feel uncomfortable talking about home births. Not because I find the subject disgusting- shoving a baby out of your reproductive parts is just part of being a placental mammal- but because sometimes I worry that I’m going to be dragged into a debate that has not much to do with home birthing and more to do with abandoning “western medicine” for alternative medicine. So let’s unpack that.

I trust science to give me a way to find correct information on medical topics.

Thus, I trust medical professionals, who have more knowledge in their field than I do, to help me make good decisions about my health.

But I know that there are serious problems with the American medical system.

More after the jump.

The Middle Ground

So before our class on Friday I had considered using a midwife instead of going to the hospital if I do in fact have a baby one day. I was still a little leary about the idea though. My thoughts are that if anything bad happened during the birth I would like to be in a hospital so they could take care of the issue right away. But like others I have been brought up to believe that the only place that can help you in an emergency is the hospital, and it is very difficult to change the way we think about this. Society jams it down our throats that the hospital is the only safe place for a birth, or any injury for that matter. Little do we know the things that happen behind the scenes. The documentary on friday really opened my eye's to the corruption and negitive atmosphere that surrounds the births done in hospitals. It mentioned in the documentary that a hospital is a business, it's just looking to get patience in and out as quickly as possible. For a mother trying to do what's best for her baby, this decision can be very difficult. Which is why I think its important to cosider a middle ground. There was an article in The Washington Post earlier this year discussing the growing middle ground between the midwife and the hospital. For instance Washington Hospital Center has certified nurses/midwives in their hospital. The patients are offered an unmedicated experience without the typical stirrups. Also the woman have free range of motions, are offered snacks and other things to make them feel at home. The midwives are their with the mother's talking them through the mental and physical aspects of pregnancy. The great part about all this is if the baby or mother does go into distress the hospital steps in to deliver the baby safely. There are a lot of positives to this process. The downfall right now is that the team of nurses only take low risk or no risk pregnancys, but the idea is growing and can hopefully become a norm in society soon!

Gretchen

Midwives vs. Hospitals

Before this week I never gave much thought on the topic of midwives vs. hospitals. I honestly did not know that midwives were relevant in the United States in this day and age. After learning about the mishaps that take place in hospitals and the pressure that can come from doctors to perform cesarean sections or other unplanned procedures, I now understand why women may want to have a natural birth with a midwife. While going through the natural birthing process, a woman will be able to stick with her plan of action for her child's birth and not feel pressured to take on an alternative route. In my opinion, the process of a natural birth makes more sense to me. A woman should have the right to decide when and how she gives birth, and should not feel that the fate of her newborn child is in the hands of a stranger.

Midwives & Hospitals

      I found that when first starting the film, Business of Being Born I had never really thought of  midwives and the whole system of childbirth in hospitals. This film completely opened my eyes to the matter, with startling statistics and information, some consisting of women who know first-hand how the hospitals treats childbirth. I find it unnatural to pick a date for the child's birth, and the position the hospital normally wants women to lie down in when giving birth since it does a lot of damage to the woman's body. Not to mention the endless cycle of pitocin pushed on women- until it's the end of the day and it's simply a good time for doctor's to clock out; the Caesarian section "comes in handy".
      The film expressed how the rate of caesarian section's in the U.S has sky rocketed and even once mentioned that now the average is up to one out of every three women having the chance of receiving one. The hospital is a big business and for some people it does not irk them how quickly they are brought in and pushed out without much care. I believe this ties into the power deprived struggle women have today when it comes to labor, they're not always given much say in the matter, especially when a doctor states something like, "it's in the best interest in the child".
       I've thought about how amazing it is that some cultures view the experience of childbirth as something that revolves much less around the pain, but the beauty. In the past midwives have been stereotyped as "dirty", but realistically they are bold, helpful people just looking out for the wellbeing of someone who may have no idea what they are getting into. I do think that hospitals are highly equipped with their drugs, some state-of-the-art tools and doctors but I feel more women nowadays should consider having a midwife beside them in labor and for some alternative advice along the way to maintain a more natural body, and the for the wellbeing of their future child.

Midwife Stereotypes

Going off from the discussion we had on Wednesday in class, I'd like to address another common stereotype of midwives. When I asked the people around me what they thought of when I said"midwife" most of them said, hippie or free spirit. We see this a lot in movies; whenever a midwife is in a movie they are usually depicted as a woman who wears long skirts, tye dye shirts and crazy hair. They talk about how everything should be natural and that "herbs" is all what woman need. I'm not sure where this idea came from, possibly because being a midwife is somewhat of a traditional thing. If being a midwife is traditional and an "old" way of thinking, does that mean going to the doctors is modern and "new"?
I felt like I needed to see what an older generation thought about it so while I was home this weekend I talked to both my parents and grandparents. When I asked them what they thought when I said "midwife" they all said they thought of a woman who has a lot of knowlege about birth who helps families have a safe birthing experience at home. They said they didn't see them as any stereotypical person, such as a hippie. Which got me thinking, is the idea of stereotyping people a newer way of thinking when it comes to midwives? Or is it just because they are older and it doesn't seem like a different, or weird,  way of having birth like several other people do.

The Social Construction of Race

The readings from Section Three of Grewal and Kaplan about the formation of race were very eye opening for me. I thought that the divisions of race were always around and never considered them to be constructed. These essays revealed to me that races were often malicously created to promote the selfish gains of other races and to bring down those who were considered different. The creation of races even brought about scientific experiments studying "skin color, hair texture, facial angle, jaw size" and many other insignificant charecteristics to deferenciate types of people and give reason to discrimination.
Fortunately, there have been break throughs which have altered the societal norms surrounding race. For example, in 1950, the New York Times published an article called "No Scientific Basis for Race Bias by World Pannel of Experts" which described UNESCO's statement that there was "no scientific justification for race discrimination". Also, other articles such as "What Color is Black?" have had an extremely positive impact, causing people to rethink their definition of race.
Thought these publishings have made radical changes in our current intepretation of race, I feel it will be a very long time before these categories and the stereotypes that go with them will be illiminated. It is very difficult to imagine a world without defined races, but I believe it is possible.

Midwives vs. Hospitals

Before watching The Business of Being Born I had never thought I would ever consider using a midwife when it came time to have my own child. I have had a couple friends who have used a midwife during their pregnancies and I thought they were completely insane. But after watching the movie I would seriously consider using a midwife instead of going to the hospital. I never realized that all the different interventions done at the hospital were the cause of more interventions which ultimately ends up with having surgery. I know that this is not always the case but even the thought of going in with a specific birth plan and having the doctors change that to make it easier on themselves scares the hell out of me. During the movie it was made clear the doctors will almost scare you into doing what they want you to by saying, "Well it's better for your baby", the fact that doctors do that is morally wrong. I think that every women should have to see this movie so they can make a more informed decision about their birthing plan, most women are not even aware midwifery still exists. And the women who do know about it like me will be shocked to see how their perspective on it will change after seeing this movie.

Midwives and The Business of Being Born

Though we've only watched part of The Business of Being Born, my opinion on midwifery has already begun to change. "Exorcising the Midwives" was an interesting article when read on it's own. Since it focused mainly on the history of midwifery in the United States and how almost one hundred years ago this vital part of childbirth was being intentionally wiped out by hospitals and doctors, it didn't really engage my views on midwifery's place in today's world. The authors included important points, making it clear how "women lost their last autonomous role as healers" when they lost their right to become midwives or have a midwife present during labor. Upon first reading this article was important solely because it furthered my understanding on the history of women in the United States and how they have either been deprived of power or simply never given power in the first place. My views changed after we started The Business of Being Born in class.
To be honest, some parts of the movie were difficult for me to watch because hospital scenes, especially scenes of women in labor, freak me out. It was really funny when the movie actually discussed how many women are scared of childbirth because of how sensationalized it is in movies and television. I really can't remember the last time I watched a natural, healthy birth in a movie or tv show. Probably the last time was in eighth grade health, when everyone screamed in shock when an actual vagina was showed on the screen during school. Other than the shock of a naked woman on the screen, the birth was pretty boring. Just a lot of pushing and yelling and sweat, and then the baby popped out and that was that. Anyways, back to the point of this! Once I calmed down and realized that hey, for centuries women have been giving birth naturally (I mean, for as long as the human race has existed, women have been there popping out babies without hospitals), the documentary started to really engage me. The horror of how many drugs a woman can be administered during a hospital birth was crazy. "Exorcising the Midwife" began to make sense when I reread the article and it said "The day of totally medicalized childbirth- hazardously overdrugged and overtreated- was on it's way." The movie proves that we've reached the point in history where the amount of interference a hospital has in the natural process of childbirth is horrific. Most births are unnatural; a woman's body can no longer be trusted to give birth to a child itself.
I believe I'll have a lot more to add to this, but I'd like to finish the documentary before I do!

The Business of Being Born Reaction

After watching The Business of Being Born in class on friday I can say that my whole perspective on child birth has changed drastically. Before watching this video I figured giving birth in a general hospital wasn't nearly as traumatic as it was projected in this film. Women are almost forced to take a variety of different drugs in order to trigger contractions , which can cause intense pain and stress.  After that if the labor process is taking to long doctors pressure women to resort to getting cesarian sections to deliver the baby. Its almost as if a woman has no say in the delivering of her own child, which brings up the idea of Midwifery. Based on the film  it allows women to have a relatively stress and drug free child birth in the comfort of their  own home. Personally after seeing this film I can seriously question if I would be comfortable with my spouse giving birth in a hospital. Especially if the process is going to have the same affect as it did on the women in the film , where they felt almost cheated of what is supposed to be one of life's most magical moments. Ultimately its up to the mother of the child to decide how she wants to bring it into this world but The Business of Being Born has definitely made me question the system and beliefs about child labor in the United States.  

Addicted to the Knife

  In "The Business of Being Born" it is brought up how our society has a sort of obsession with surgeries. Women in New York will schedule their C-sections and then have a tummy tuck immediately after. Women are given epidurals, which slow down labor, so they need a drug to speed up labor, which makes the epidural wear off so they need more of that, and eventually they have to go in for a c-section because all the drugs ruin their natural labor. It also brings up the point of 18 year olds going in to get plastic surgery procedures done. Our society is obsessed with drugs, making the pain go away, doing things as fast possible.
  This whole mentality reminds me of a favorite movie of mine "REPO! The Genetic Opera". The main plot is that a disease spreads the world and starts causing organ failure as an epidemic. Geneco is able to devise a way to create organs and then transplant them into people. People are able to then upgrade their "second class heredity" and surgeries become something of a fashion statement. There is an obsession with drugs and changing who you are from the inside out. It makes me think of the women who use drugs to alter their labor and birth. I feel like while maybe the whole movie isn't completely plausible, the future with an obsession with drugs and surgery is already upon us. It scares me because soon there will be a surgery for everything and you will be pushed into things you don't really need to "fix" your body. I want no part in it.

Midwifery

Hanna Neumann


I was very interested in learning more about midwifery. I have always been extremely excited about having children, but I have always been fearful of the birthing process. In all honesty, I wasn't even aware that midwifes still were in practice. I never EVER hear about them. I think that the problem is that we only hear about hospitals, and most people aren't even aware that there are other alternatives. The movie, The Business of Being Born, that we watched in class really showed me how much midwifery can benefit a pregnancy. I find myself wanting to look more into it, especially once I start having children. A natural birth is absolutely a path that I would like to take. I am very uninterested in the use of drugs and the rushing of the birthing process that comes within a hospital setting. Even referring back to the reading that we did for class Wednesday, Exorcising the Midwives, Ehrenreich and English talked about the stereotype for midwifes as being "dirty and ignorant". I feel like the media definitely wanted these midwifes to have this negative stigma on them because they wanted to attract people toward hospitals, which, in fact, it worked. I am very glad that I have been able to view different, more beneficial alternatives, and I feel a lot less fearful of the birthing process.

The Sexual Freedom of Women

In my dorm building an RA put on a program called “Sex in the Dark” where both male and female residents could sit in a dark room and ask the opposite sex any question they had, in hopes to get a truthful response. The questions ranged from, “What’s your favorite sex position?” to “How many partners have you had?” One question asked by a female, was about how often the boys in the room masturbated. This was one of the questions that boys were not uncomfortable when answering. I did not think anything of it until I read for class on Wednesday.

When reading Sexual Surgery in Late-Nineteenth-Century America (Section Four, Reading D) by Ben Barker-Benfield, I found out how doctors use to mutilate women’s genitals so they could not enjoy their own sexual pleasure. Men feared that women would lose their sexual appetite if they were allowed their own sexual freedom.  The surgery was even performed to cure women’s mental disorders. The discrimination against women is very evident by males restraining women’s sexual freedom.  This article also highlights how even though women’s masturbation is frowned upon, men’s masturbation is seen as being the norm. Although we do not perform these surgeries in our culture today, women’s masturbation is still being repressed while men’s masturbation is not unheard of topic.

I do think the RA’s had good intentions when creating this program. It opened the doors for new discussions and conversations that maybe wouldn’t have happened otherwise.  But at the same time, I saw women hesitating when it wasn’t necessary. During “Sex in the Dark”, the conversation was centralized on the guys and their sexual experiences. The females of the group spoke very little and when they did they often got judging looks for being so open. Although women and men are seen more as being equals than back in the days of genital mutilations, women still feel the need to repress their opinions about sexual situations for fear of judgment.

 

The Medical World v.s. Midwifery

Ehreneich and English discuss the supposed "midwife problem" of the 1900's and make midwifery sound so unnecessary, considering they were working so hard to get rid of it. However, I find it significant that today midwifery is still highly practiced and implemented in childbirth even with efforts to diminish it. The article goes as far as to call midwives "dirty" and "imcompetent". I feel that these authors are further perpetuating the stereotypes associated with midwifery and therefore the mindset related to the practice only focuses on that 19th century view of what a midwife was like. 

While this article is encouraging the move to medical doctors and births that take place at a hospital, I feel it is unfair of the authors to only discuss medical science in a positive light and midwifery in a negative one. If the article could give a view of both sides more evenly then I feel that the audience would be better informed about both practices and not have to feel forced to take one side or only have one opinion in the matter.

Personally, I feel strongly about the medicalization of birth and how hospital births can reduce the personal and emotional aspects of birthing (not necessarily in all cases). Birth is an individual experience and I feel it is important to realize what I think or what someone else thinks about childbirth is not the right or wrong answer. The different options are just something to consider when thinking about having a child and how you want that experience to play out for you and whoever else may be involved. 

Race

The social construction of race has allowed us as a people to fear and label each other. Reading the class readings told me that scientifically there is no difference among people that can genetically define us as certain races. People have coined this term and defined it. Race, although it has been socially constructed, is very important to people. Everyone identifies themselves with a race and a culture. Both are sometimes interchangeable and I think that many people enjoy these constructs. It is important to appreciate our race and our background but also important to not deminish others based on their race. We could never grow to understand everything about people but if we try not to infer information the world could be a much better place.

Race schemas- Kate Rapp

To further our class discussion that we had today I wanted to write this weeks blog post on the complex topic of race. I especially like the sentences in our reading when Lopez describes how people see race in not a biological form, but rather a physical/social form. "Rather, the notion that humankind can be divided along White, Black, and Yellow lines reveals the social rather than the scientific origin of race... Nevertheless, the history of science has long been the history of failed efforts to justify these social beliefs" (Grewal & Kaplan 52). Now because we have established that race is seen in a social way, it brings me to believe that that's why people make a schema. What I mean by schema is that people characterize other people into what they believe as to be the general overview of who that person is. Say you see a older male driving a truck down the road and that man passes you in a very aggressive way- you would say that person acted that way because he owns a truck- therefore he believes he owns the whole road, so that's why he pasted you. Only with a schema comes with a reason to justify how another that person may act. So you see a teenage boy coming into a drug store your already in, that boy is of Latino descent who has tattoos all over his body. What's your reaction being a white male? Probably that the kid will shoot up the drug store for drugs because he's a gang member. This is the sad truth that a human automatically does when observing another human- making characteristics and assumptions of why that person acted the way they did. The example that we were talking about in class was about that Colorado shootings while viewing Batman. Right after that event took place there was a meme that was floating around Facebook talking about how because he was a white male- he shot those people because of a mental illness, and saying how if he was anything else that these were he following reasons on why he shot those people (above photo). There is also a really interesting video on the website where I found the picture about a Muslim asking why he wasn't labeled as a terrorist which i highly encourage you to watch! :) blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/13005/batman-shooter-mentally-ill-not-a-terrorist/

"The Doctor Knows Best"

Part 1 in our woman studies books discusses the idea that western science has taken over the role of woman being the healers of the household. In today's culture western science is seen as the end all, be all. Science is believed to be fact and know one can question it's theories. The medicine woman used to  heal their patience was suddenly seen as to be irrational and untrue. In my opinion, intelligent woman that used their skills to heal could have been viewed as a huge threat to men. So western science was a way to devalue woman and their healing abilities. Woman to this day still don't have a real place in western science/medicine. While looking at articles online about woman's history I came across a somewhat recent article called A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English. In this article it states how the only real way woman can make a difference in medicine these days is if they become a nurse. It's very unlikely for woman to become doctors, hence why the majority of nurses are woman. Though I think this article is a little extreme I do agree with some of the points that are made just from personal experience. Every time I have ever gone to the doctor's office I have always had a woman as my nurses and a man as my doctor. I mean really how often are you going to go to a doctor's office and a man is going to be your nurse. The profession of a nurse is completely feminized. The idea that nurse's are not supposed to question the doctor is another pointed that is stated in the article. The doctor is the unchallenged science, whereas the nurse is the nurturing healer. In our society I don't think its impossible to become a woman doctor. I just think it's made harder for woman to become one. And going back to the idea that it is viewed as a huge threat to men. 

Gretchen

gay gene

I fully believe that we should look into whether there is or isn't a gene for determining sexual orientation for two reasons.  My first reason being science, I believe that we should strive to know as much as we can know.  Yes there will be the potential to do harm but i think that comes with most knowledge and all though there are those out there who would try and use it in a negative way, i have faith that there are enough forward thinking people in the world to prevent it from actually happening.  And the second reason has more to do with raising the child.  I think it would be wonderful for a parent to know from the time the child is young so they can provide as much support as a child would need given their orientation.  I feel like the potentials always there and some parents end up just being too surprised and don't know how to approach it when they find out if their child gay, not even that but children feel pressured to be one way to keep it from their parents because they are afraid of their reaction.  Wouldn't it be great if we could remove all that pressure from the beginning of a child's life.  Also i feel like if you found out and you didn't want a gay child there's always the option of finding someone to adopt them who will love and support them their entire life instead of just until they come out.  I just feel that there are some positive out comes to finding out that were ignored in class.