The Business of Being Born

I think that I am pretty highly susceptible to movies like this because right after I saw this documentary I was pretty convinced that if I ever had children, I was definitely going to want a home birth with a midwife instead of going to the hospital. I told my friends this and they were not as convinced. They were still pretty sure that if they ever had children they would go to a hospital. Which is fine, to each their own, but their largest reason was "what if something happens?"

And I think that the point of the documentary is that like 98% of the time, for those who choose midwives and are healthy, nothing will happen (that is not a real statistic, there is a real statistic in the movie that I can't remember, so don't quote me on that). Okay just got a stat  from the American Pregnancy Association: 60-80% of pregnancies are low risk and in these pregnancies there is no advantage to going to a hospital over having a midwife. We have come to an age where women have been convinced that something bad will happen to them during birth; so they go to hospitals, listen to doctors, and are partially removed from making their own choices regarding their own birth. 

It's interesting. When the documentary began and it started by telling the audience that hospitals are all a business to make money, I was pretty skeptical (partially due to the fact that for a period of my life I wanted to be a doctor and I currently have like 4 or 5 friends who are going to med school). But it all makes sense. Ambulance rides are expensive, the ER is expensive, everything is expensive. Granted this high expense is partially due to the high risks and expense of being a doctor (who have to have like the highest malpractice insurance fees), but it partially seems ridiculous. 

Back to birthing babies though. When women go to hospitals they have their autonomy removed regarding their body when it really isn't necessary and that bugs me. I guess that is largely the message I got pertaining to the documentary. Ugh, maybe I just won't ever have kids.