Health Club Analogy

I am re-reading a book called Mother's Intention: How Belief Shapes Birth, by Kim Wildner. One of the things I enjoy about this book is how straightforward, matter-of-fact and unapologetic the author is when exploring concepts, realities, facts, and beliefs about birth. In a section addressing perceived risk and birth, she shares an effective analogy about health clubs and heart disease paralleling the accident-waiting-to-happen mentality of modern obstetrics:

A multitude of things CAN go wrong with any system in the body, but seldom DO. Take the heart/circulatory system for example. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US. 873 per 100,000 die of heart disease (CDC). (Remember, natural birth is between 6 and 14 per 100,000 in the US, depending on the population.) Some of arteries on the verge of clogging. Some of heart defects they are unaware of. Some have damage they don't know about. Something could go wrong at any minute and immediately available surgery can undoubtedly save lives.

Using the logic of obstetrics, all health clubs should be in hospitals and all fitness trainers should be cardiac surgeons. Any independent health club with 'lay' trainers would be 'practicing medicine without a license,' subject to prosecution. It's for your own good.

In fact, in order to know if a problem is developing, close monitoring and 'management' is required. We will need to place straps on the muscles to measure the intensity of the workout. of course, it will be restrictive, but we need to know how hard the muscles are working to know if the heart can take it. We'll need to monitor heart rate, blood pressure, fluid output. We'll need to give an IV because with sweat excreted, you could dehydrate, and of course, we simply can't take the risk of letting you drink anything lest you need emergency surgery....

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Molly
CfM Blogger

Birth & Politics

Just a quick quote this week from the book Homebirth by Sheila Kitzinger:

"Fathers' sharing in the birth experience can be a stimulus for men's freedom to nurture, and a sign of changing relationships between men and women. In the same way, women's freedom to give birth at home is a political decision, an assertion of determination to reclaim the experience of birth. Birth at home is about changing society." (emphasis mine)

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Molly
CfM Blogger

Love & Birth

Given the day, I'm prompted to share two quotes related to love and birth.

From the book Childbirth with Insight by Elizabeth Noble:

"Birth, like love, is an energy and a process, happening within a relationship. Both unfold with their own timing, with a uniqueness that can never be anticipated, with a power that can never be controlled, but with an exquisite mystery to be appreciated."

Then, from a beautiful article called The Origin of Love written by a father in LLLI's magazine New Beginnings:

"...instead comes a gesture: a small wave of the hand and caressing of the fingers as she slowly soothes our baby and he falls back to sleep. I do not think words are possible to explain this moment to any person who has never seen it. It is a moment in which after having given birth to life, a woman gives birth to love. A woman does not read this kind of expression in a book or hear it in an aria. This moment is the birth of love from eons of pressure that have been building. This one gesture in the darkness suggests the origins of love, for love is not just the opposite of something. Love is born of a mother's self-restraint. Love is the product of the pressure that builds in a woman at 3 am. For, at that moment, one could almost hear the carbon molecules slipping into position in some bedrock hundreds of miles beneath the earth's surface, creating the diamond that is every woman and is my wife." (emphasis mine)

Happy Valentine's Day!

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Molly Remer
CfM Blogger