A coworker asked me today what I planned on doing after grad school. I told him I wanted to open a birth center. He asked me what that was and I said it was a place where women go to have babies (duh, hence the BIRTH thing). He looked at me funny and said “Isn’t that called the hospital?” I said “Hospitals are where sick people go.” He asked why women would go to a birth center, saying he worked L&D for a while (and you’ve never heard of a birth center?). I explained to him about lower interventions and better outcomes, the ridiculous C-section rate in this country, etc, using specific examples of routine interventions (like lithotomy, epidurals, episiotomies, and rupturing the membranes) and their risks and the WHO’s 10-15% C-section recommendation.
Next he wanted to know why I’d want to do that and I talked about changing the climate of birth in this country and empowering women – how so many women are forced or coerced into doing things that are bad for them and/or their baby because the doctor’s afraid or he wants to go home or he’s used to doing it that way.
He didn’t seem to listen very much, he was rifling though his paperwork and not really looking at me, but he had a very serious look on his face and I hope I got him to thinking. It’s so frustrating when people are so used to the automatic “birth = hospital” idea that they can’t even comprehend why in the world someone would “deliver” anywhere else.
I hope I handled this ok. This certainly isn't the first time people have been shocked or baffled by the idea of birth outside the hospital. How do you react when people assume that all births are in the hospital, or it’s always the safer place to be, or the doctor only does what’s absolutely necessary to ensure a safe birth, or any of that?
Next he wanted to know why I’d want to do that and I talked about changing the climate of birth in this country and empowering women – how so many women are forced or coerced into doing things that are bad for them and/or their baby because the doctor’s afraid or he wants to go home or he’s used to doing it that way.
He didn’t seem to listen very much, he was rifling though his paperwork and not really looking at me, but he had a very serious look on his face and I hope I got him to thinking. It’s so frustrating when people are so used to the automatic “birth = hospital” idea that they can’t even comprehend why in the world someone would “deliver” anywhere else.
I hope I handled this ok. This certainly isn't the first time people have been shocked or baffled by the idea of birth outside the hospital. How do you react when people assume that all births are in the hospital, or it’s always the safer place to be, or the doctor only does what’s absolutely necessary to ensure a safe birth, or any of that?
