Business of Being Born: Reflection

After watching this movie in class, I feel that I have been able to reach a full understanding of the natural and home birth process, while on the other hand, I feel like I was misinformed in some way, due to the blatant bias of the film. Before watching this movie, I had thought of hospital birth as the only real option for women giving birth in this day & age. By watching this film, I became informed about what is in reality a world of options for how to, and where, you can give birth other than a hospital bed. While the movie followed a few women (including the filmmaker) in the days and weeks before they gave birth, the film discussed how we got to where we are in America today with birth methods and procedures and the history of this in America. The position of the film was highly in favor of natural and home births, and as a result the majority of the film was about home birth and the advantages of it over a hospital birth. The people interviewed and what was discussed about hospital birth, was almost all negative, and clearly intended to frame it as an evil and inhumane process. Because the film used such a contrast between good and evil; home birth and hospital birth, I feel like I wasn't able to completely accept what the film said as truth. An example of the contrast, was how the history of hospital birth was shown through black and white photo's, and set to creepy music, but the history of home birth was shown through colorful film clips, and rock music. The people interviewed about home birth were happy looking and energetic people, while interviews in favor of hospital births were done with people who seemed much less kind and caring than their home birth counterparts.

For me, I found the evolution of where births took place to be very interesting. According to the film, in 1900, 95% of births were at home, in 1938, 50% were at home, and since 1987 home births have accounted for about 1% of all births in the United States. The historical context that these figures reflect, was the result of a smear campaign on home birth and midwives, by the medical industry which presented hospitals as a "clean alternative" to your home, and medically trained doctors over "dirty, ill-educated" midwives. By the public accepting this propaganda as fact so quickly, it became commonly accepted fact that it was safer and a better choice to have a hospital birth than a home birth. Before watching this movie, and learning what we have about home birth in class, I saw nothing wrong with this idea that hospital birth was preferable over home birth. After watching it, I felt more inclined to suggest a home or natural birth to my wife, over a hospital birth. I think that what seems better about home birth, is the fact that in the movie, all of the women seemed to have quick and semi-painless births, which they were overjoyed about when they had pushed the baby out. What i had always known about, was hospital births, where the norm appeared to be intense pain and being miserable until finally the baby came out and the joy was more from being done with the labor and pain than the child itself.

The real problem that I saw with hospital birth, was that the medical field has become the medical industry, which is run more like a business than anything else. By charging up to $15,000 per birth, as a business, hospitals would want to maximize their profits, which could be done by speeding up the time of each birth. Because of this, the C- section and various medications have gone from being used occasionally, to virtually every birth with the intent of speeding the process up and making birth fit a schedule which suited the doctor and may be detrimental or even dangerous to the health of the patient. When business is introduced to medicine, the interests of the hospital tend to overshadow and surpass that of the patient. As c- sections are used more and more (up 46% from 1996), they are becoming accepted as the norm and what is an improvement from traditional birth, much like hospitals became accepted over homes as a better, cleaner solution for giving birth. The problem with C-sections is that it is a serious surgery which causes a large amount of harm to your body, and for this to become the norm would be dangerous to the health of the mother and child, while benefiting the hospital by cutting down the time of births significantly.