2011 - Talk Birth

and corporate world. Giving birth is just one of many things women can do. But now is the time
to add childbirth to the women’s health agenda; it is because of the lack of informed decision
making that birth should be added to that agenda, lack of information, misinformation, and even
disinformation. The time is now.
...What really matters is attitudes and beliefs, which are much more difficult to change than
putting away the scissors and hanging some plants. These are systemic issues. (emphasis mine)
It is all about anxiety and fear. The doctors are afraid...The women are afraid...Society is afraid
and averse to risk.
So how can you make a revolution when so few individuals are unhappy with current maternity
care practices? The most unhappy and well-informed women select midwives, if available.
The most fearful women select obstetricians. Providers are not going to initiate the revolution
to make childbirth a normal rather than high-risk, industrialized activity...Women are going to
have to take the lead...
The problem is not that obstetricians are surgeons. They are. The problem is that society
has invested surgeons with control over normal childbirth.
I keep wanting to write an article called, ”is evidence-based care enough?” because we see this phrase used
so often in birth advocacy work. It is kind of the companion phrase to the, ”women just need to educate
themselves” line of thought, that, quite frankly, is also just not enough. And, I think the reason it isn’t
enough—all of our education, all of our books, and all of our evidence—is because it isn’t information
itself that really needs to change, it is women’s feelings and beliefs about birth (and the medical system’s
feelings and beliefs about it too, in addition to their practices) and changing those sometimes feel like an
insurmountable task. As I’ve [2]written before, much of the time it isn’t that we actually want women to
know more, we want them to act differently. And, a choice made in a context of fear is not an informed
choice at all.
1. http://www.facebook.com/PortraitsAndPaws
2. http://talkbirth.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/women-and-knowing/
Full Moon Calendar Mandala (2011-11-15 16:23)
I drew this full moon calendar mandala as part of an assignment for one of the classes I’m taking (we are
working on our ”wheel of the year” and holidays, etc.). While it was not specifically part of the assignment
to do so, I found that drawing this mandala image helped me to explore and express my ideas. It contains
the dates of all the full moons in 2012, as well as representations of the waxing and waning moons for the
entire year. I initially set this to post as private, so it wouldn’t be visible to my blog readers and would only
be available to my class, but then I reconsidered and thought other people might be interested in seeing it
as well:
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