Primarily Women are responsible for the chaotic childbirth message to each other and to ourselves.
What is our goal as Women?
1) Individually this is simple. Each of us wants a safe birth and for our baby and ourselves to be healthy. We also want a positive birth experience.
2) Collectively this is harder. We really don’t care about anyone else’s birth.
When the Voice of The Natural Birth Movement grew in the late 1970s from a local, regional, National to an International discussion, it took over the whole childbirth conversation. I was there. I know.
What was the Natural Childbirth Movement Message?
1) Doctors were blamed for everything. The Natural Birth Movement from then to today is still anti-medical.
2) An assumption was made about Women that because we fall pregnant then we know how to birth (both have a healthy and safe birth for ourselves and baby and have a positive experience).
What was the Natural Childbirth Movement’s goal?
1) That a spontaneous labor and delivery occur without medical care, preferably at home, in water with a midwife
2) Women know what birth they want and should have the right to ‘choose’ the birth they want and birth providers should try to give them the birth they want.
Since the 1980s, have we achieved those goals?
1) Are more Women having the birth they want?
2) Are there more spontaneous labors and deliveries occurring at home without medical care, in water and with a midwife?
What happens to Women who don’t achieve those goals? What happened to you? Did you have that ideal birth or not?
Do you feel empowered by your birth or not? Do you feel shame, blame, guilt, disappointment, frustration, anger and even emotional birth trauma from your birth experience?
Any IDEA, WORDS, ACTIONS that do not achieve the GOALS needs to be tweaked. We’ve had over one generation of birthing women to know the goals have not been met … even in a country like New Zealand that put in place the ‘ideal’ Midwifery Led Maternity System in 1990.
Why has the Natural Birth Movement been so confusing to Women? It’s simple.
1) Too many Women are left out
2) And just too hard for Women to meet the stringer requirements put forth by the Natural Birth Movement.