My review of The Business of Being Born

Over the weekend I saw a screening of Ricki Lake's film about birth, The Business of Being Born.

I was hoping it would be a fairly educational film about harmful hospital practices and routines, and ways of circumventing the system to have the birth you want. It partially fulfilled my requirements.

The film was lovely. Most of the births were just beautiful. They made me want to be in labor.

Much of the information was accurate and poignant. They cited the high cesarean section rate in this country and talked about the snowball effect of hospital interventions and how rarely medical staff see births that proceed naturally, on their own, without augmentation or interference.

Good stuff. If you haven't heard it before, it makes you think.

Interviews with Dr. Michel Odent, Ina May Gaskin, and Robbie Davis-Floyd were wonderful. They seemed like old friends and I wanted to hug them. Dr. Odent is amazing.

However...

There is an obvious bias throughout the film, and because of this I no longer call it a documentary. It is more like propaganda, and while I do not disagree with the basic message it's trying to promote, I find its tactics dishonest enough to be objectionable. It ends up portraying that "home births are always good and hospital births are always terrible," which is not true.

Home births are generally safe; I'm not arguing that here.

But they can be scary, too. Not every woman is able to or should have a home birth. Women should be where they feel safe; otherwise they won't labor as effectively.

Hospital births are not evil. You must understand what is happening, seek a care provider who will meet your needs and work with you, and fight harder to have things the way you want. But being in the hospital, all by itself, is not a bad thing. I believe we've come to a point of crisis in childbirth because of something else in the culture:

The greatest evil, one that was not addressed in the film, is the profound lack of education among women about birth.

It isn't for lack of educational opportunities. It's a dangerous complacency, a feeling of laziness and unwillingness to learn. Without knowing your options, not knowing the risks and benefits of common procedures, you are potentially like a lamb going to slaughter, no matter where you birth. You will not know what to expect or understand the kinds of effects anything might have, good or bad, on you and your baby.

It's not a good situation for anyone.

But I digress. This problem wasn't mentioned in the film. (Neither were doulas, which was personally discouraging for me.)

Instead, OBs claimed that c-sections were safer for all women, midwives talked about being too empathetic to he helpful to laboring moms, and the film ended with the emergency transport and c-section of the film's director for a rare complication. How many women left that night feeling more anxious about labor?

It isn't as simplistic as the film portrayed. Place of birth matters, but what matters more is education. If you aren't educated, you won't be able to make any decisions with confidence. And birth, no matter what happens, no matter how it proceeds, will deeply affect you. You will always remember how you gave birth.

It's a film worth seeing, for the things it gives women to consider. It will be available on Netflix in February. But keep in mind that these things aren't quite as simple as portrayed.