Birth Around The World

I’ve always known that someday I would want to have kids. Although I don’t plan on this happening for approximately ten more years, I know that it is part of my future. This is evident to my friends and family by the videos of laughing babies that I show them whenever someone is feeling down. I alternate between those and “Sail Cat.” But I digress. So yes, I have thought about the fact that I want to have children and how that is undoubtedly a hope of mine. What I haven’t put much thought into is exactly how I want to have kids. My mom had me in a hospital and I always thought of that as the “normal” thing to do. I hadn’t put much thought into home births, or even how people outside the U.S. give birth. Until now.

It is first important to look at the social aspect of why I have always considered giving birth in a hospital with a barrage of doctors and nurses present in the off chance that anything doesn’t go exactly according to plan to be normal. When I heard about births growing up, I always heard about them taking place in a hospital. This is also how birthing was portrayed in my favorite T.V. shows such as the emotional episode of Full House where Becky gave birth to twin boys on Michelle’s birthday and Uncle Jesse had his appendix removed at the same time. While reading the article Medicine As An Institution Of Social Control by Irving Kenneth Zola, I started to think about how society normalizes certain health practices and places taboo on others. Culturally, we are the ones who decide that it is ok to call in sick to work because of a stomach bug, but it is not acceptable to call in sick because you are having panic attacks and can’t get yourself to calm down. We are the ones who decide what is shareable when it comes to health and wellness, and what is taboo. If a woman shares that her birthing plan is to be in a hospital, people will think that is normal. If she shares that she wants to have birth at home in the presence of just her husband with a midwife in the other room, people will call her reckless and irresponsible. But that is only because our society has groomed us to believe that all births should take place in medical care facilities.

Take a look at the Hmong people. In their culture, birthing is an individual process that a woman goes through mostly alone, with occasional help from her husband. The mother gives birth silently, laboring in quiet and then catching the baby in her hands as it slides out of the birth canal. When I picture someone giving birth, I picture a lot of screaming, but for the Hmong this is against their beliefs (Fadiman, 1). So while to us Americans giving birth alone in a hut and not being allowed to make a peep sounds completely insane, to the Hmong this is normal.

The United States also culturally has the tradition of sharing pregnancy with loved ones, the internet, and complete strangers. One day I was at work and a woman came in, clearly VERY pregnant. I asked her when she was due and she said, “today.” While that response in itself is amusing, my point is that it was totally acceptable for me to ask when she was expecting to have her baby. She was clearly delighted to share in her excitement. In Liberia, there is much secrecy surrounding pregnancy. It would be unlikely that women would openly talk about when they were due, what their birthing plan was, or if they were expecting a boy or a girl. While in the U.S. we very openly talk about pregnancy and birthing, in Liberia these are taboo subjects, and this unfortunately leads to high rates of maternal and infant deaths because women do not feel comfortable seeking the pre and postnatal care that they need (Lori and Boyle, 465).

In the Netherlands, births only take place in hospitals if they are considered to be high-risk pregnancies. For births with little risk involved, most mothers give birth at home in the presence of professional midwives (Johnson, et al, 174). This allows for the process to feel more natural and (let’s be honest) it is probably pretty nice not to give birth surrounded by bright lights and doctors telling you to hurry up because there is another woman in the waiting room whose turn it is to experience the miracle of life. For something that emotional and precious and life changing, I can imagine that it would be preferred to do it in your own home, on your own time. For thousands and thousands of years people gave birth without being in a hospital, but suddenly these high tech medical facilities came into play and it became the definition of insanity to have birth in a place anywhere other than that. I hate to break it to you, America, but people were successfully having babies long before hospitals came along.

So what is all this saying? I believe that what we can draw from these readings is that there is no right way to give birth. It is a personal and individual experience, and so much of our perception on how we should give birth is shaped by cultural expectations. This same idea applies to more than just childbirth. While it may not be something that we consciously think about, we are constantly adjusting the narrative of our health to fit what we believe is acceptable. Maybe if there was not so much pressure to fit into a societal mold that in itself would make people healthier. But once again, I digress.