Of the four books I borrowed from the libraries, one was about doulas, one was Husband Coached Childbirth (the Bradley method), and one was The Official Lamaze Guide. I have not read all of the Bradley book, but I read the first few chapters. As I said earlier, I wasn’t too thrilled with the tone of the book. Bradley states several times that “If you aren’t willing to do X, you shouldn’t even try.” Maybe not in those same words, but that was exactly what he meant. I did find a lot of the history interesting, and as I said, I do think the method itself is extremely useful.

The Lamaze book is giving me a very different vibe. It doesn’t have that preachy tone to it. It does have an obvious agenda in promoting “normal childbirth” – intervention-free, medication-free. Although, given the stats and research to back it up, I think it’s justified. But to me what I like about it is that so far a particular method hasn’t been stressed or even brought up to be honest. It talks about choosing your care provider, choosing where you’re going to give birth (again, it’s very clear in stating that giving birth at home is the best place to be, unless you have complications), but most of all it’s talking about how empowering childbirth can be. That childbirth is natural, that our bodies are built to birth babies, that we are capable. That we should be treated with respect during labor, not drugged up and left all alone for hours strapped to a table. I just like the tone of it.

It’s funny, because both books promote basically the same thing. Maybe the difference is that one is written by a male, the other by females! (And Den can scoff all he wants at that… but there’s a reason women tend to go for other women for comfort! The men in your life so frequently try to “fix” it, they lack that female empathy. Yes, even husbands.)

I am certainly not basing my choice of birth “method” on the tone of the books, just to clarify. I’ll choose what classes to take based on what they teach at the classes and how that fits with what I want out of my birth. This is all just reviewing these particular books. ;)

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I want to put in some quotes here from the book about the history of childbirth and the changes that happened over the last hundred+ years. It makes me very, very glad I am giving birth now.

(The early 1900’s)
“Medical science had negative effects on mothers and babies during this time, too. To hasten delivery, doctors used procedures and instruments that often harmed mother and baby. Studies showe that in the United States, obstetric interference in hospitals was associated with a large increase in baby deaths from birth injuries.”

They talked about all the benefits of science during that time – antibiotics and blood transfusions, and of course the better water treatment, housing and sanitation that made overall standard of life better and descreased the mortality rate of women and infants. But at the same time, doctors were taking over from midwives (and not very nicely, I might add – the midwife was made out to be a dirty, unclean, unknowledgeable person) and all that intervention they did to “fix” labor, to hurry it up, to make it conform to expectations, caused a whole lot of problems. And yet societal expectations continued to follow that way, moving from midwife-attended homebirths to male-doctor attended hospital births.

“By the mid-1930’s, most births were happening in hospitals. … From here on, the home was deemed an unfit palce for birth, and birthing women ‘required’ outside help and such ‘improvements’ as twilight sleep (morphine and scopolamine injection), which heavily drugged a laboring woman and erased her memory of birth.”

“If you could step into a 1950’s American hospital, you’d see women left to labor alone — often drugged and confined to bed — then moved to loud, bright delivery rooms and strapped onto sterile tables, lying on their backs with their feet pressed high overhead in metal stirrups. Gowned and masked doctors and nurses directed these births and typically forbade mothers to have family present and to hold or sometimes even see their babies right after birth.

… By the 1960’s, medicalized birth was so common in the United States that most women didn’t know there was any other kind. They routinely labored without support, were given enemas, had their genitals shaved and disinfected, and gave birth on their backs, draped with sterile sheets to prevent them from touching (and possibly infecting) their newborns. Hospital staff whisked the babies away … and put them on display in nurseries far from their mothers.”

:shock: :shakehead I mean, seriously, can you imagine???? I think people now take for granted being able to have their husband with them, to be able to remember giving birth, being able to hold your own child after you give birth. I know I sure did for a long time… I mean, that’s just how it is, right? I really just cannot imagine giving birth in the 50’s or 60’s. My MIL was mentioning giving birth to my husband… she was stuck on her back on a table, unable to move because she was drugged up, alone and frightened. For hours. Just the thought of that stuns me! How could they DO that to women?

I am very, very lucky to be born when I was, to be giving birth now instead of 50 years ago. I am just very thankful to be given all the options I have now.