The Industrial Revolution convinced people that the best way for anything to be done was to find an expert, and then have that person figure out a way for man to engineer the process. For example, when I lived in Hong Kong, I was always struck by how they built parks: First they would find a beautiful, unspoiled, serene piece of property, overlooking the ocean. Then they would remove all grass, trees, and vegetation of any kind. Then they would flatten it and pave over it. Then they would try to come up with a plan to make it a good place for children to play and for adults to wander. This could involve putting down rubber to make the ground soft (like grass might have been before they paved it) and putting up structures to shade people (like trees might have done before they were cut down). The whole concept seemed bizarre to me at the time. Why would anyone want to destroy a beautiful and natural landscape when it could just be modified for the kiddies to play? It was the experts of course. It was men in suits in the government, and their contractors, that decided how parks should be created. "Let's start by getting rid of all this vegetation, Stan. Then we'll be able to see our canvas."
The modern birthing process has evolved in a similar way. A group of medical experts (hospital administrators, doctors, etc.) decided that the best way for women to give birth was to put them in a hospital room and to develop drugs and surgery that would enable said experts to get to their golf games on time. Here's something you probably didn't know: Cesarean births go up markedly on Friday afternoons. The trend is even stronger if it's a long weekend. And you can forget about a conventional birth for days preceding your OB's ski holiday in Utah.
Birth has evolved to suit doctors and hospitals and administrators and insurance companies. Nature's role has been minimized. Women are taught, via movies and television, that birth is painful and that doctors are there to professionally and systematically control the process so that the baby is popped out on schedule and in an orderly, and technologically-correct, fashion. Doctors, on the other hand, are taught that using machines and drugs and surgery is not only high-tech and fun, but it also lives up to the standard of care in the community, avoids tort claims, and minimizes malpractice insurance premiums and deductibles. Win-win-win, right?
Doctors that work in hospitals traditionally treat people who have medical problems. Sometimes the patients have broken bones or missing limbs or perhaps it's just some disgusting disease that no one wants to be around. But that's what hospitals are set up for. So it's a bit of a stretch to have perfectly healthy women and perfectly healthy utero-dwellers suddenly occupying beds in such a place. An expert (doctor) would argue that it's a good idea to do all this birthing stuff in a place built for sick people in case there are complications. Well, in that case, it's also a good idea for college students who binge drink to do so in a hospital. But I hear frat houses are even more popular than hospitals for getting naked and hazing people in drunken stupors.
Woman have been giving birth for quite a few years now. They were, in fact, giving birth even before men wore suits. Now, I'm not suggesting that men in suits have done nothing for birth. Men in suits developed hygiene, for example. Hygiene is a wonderful invention. It has saved countless lives. It has made it possible for us all to live healthier, longer, more securely. And it has improved our sex lives immeasurably.
I am not certainly not an expert on HypnoBirthing. In fact, I had never heard of it 2 weeks ago. But after 2 sessions with Carol, our HypnoBirthing teacher, and after doing some reading and watching videos (you wouldn't believe what we have seen), I am brainwashed. I mean, I am convinced: The medical establishment has made a mess out of what has become de rigeur in hospital birthing.
This isn't to say that we are not going to have a hospital birth. We are going to be in the hospital, replete with doctors and nurses and contraction-inducing drugs and epidurals and forceps and machines that monitor everything in the room that moves, gives off heat, or conducts electricity. But we are going to have the baby in accordance with what is best for Karin and our baby... and not necessarily what is best for the OB's reservation at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. I have nothing at all against the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club but why would we want that to have any influence over how a doctor determines the best course of action for Karin and our baby? And why would we want to follow what learned experts in the late 19th century dreamed up to be the basis of our birthing process?
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