hw 38 insights from birth book

The book I am reading is called Ina May's guide to childbirth. The structure of the book is that in which it is a book that is sort of like a journal. It reminds me of an email. Peple send her stories about their experiences and they are all in this book. This book is not really a guide but more of a journal of all her favorite births, or at least the ones that were significant to her.

The major question that this book tries to answer is why is having a natural birth at a farm/ village looed down upon? It makes women feel closer to the earth and more spiritually connected to their child, so why is it so bad? I feel like the answer to that question is as easy as saying that having midwives and farms where women give birth really are not as profitable to that institution and to America in the way that hospitals are. Childbirth is a business where every cut, and every word and action a doctor makes costs money. Childbirth can cost less to the parents if they do natural birthing but of course institutions such as hospitals tend to make an argument saying that having a home/ natural birth is undafe and dangerous because god forbid something goes wron, then both the baby and mother are in jeopardy.

The main insight in the first 100 pages is that midwives and natural birth is a very surreal experience for everyone involved. The methods that these natural births follow are methods that humankind have followed for centuries. The insight is that hospital births take away from the beauty of birth. Hospitals take away from the spirituality and extacy that a mother can feel. Hospitals just take the regular approach which is to put you in a bed and inject you if you are hurting. Natural birth invloves a lot of participation and emotion that the drugs hospitals give would take away.

5 interesting aspects of birth that deserve public attention.
1. Midwives in general. They should be more popularized and women should experience natural births more often
2. the way that doctors tell you to do something because it will make them money. The truth behind why doctors tell moms to get c sections or to feed their babies formula. That should be adressed.
3. The way that some women find birth to be orgasmic. Not many people know this about having natural births. It should be said that taking the steps that a midwife tells you can make your birth more pleasurable.
4.How some drugs you take can endagner the baby and drug up your baby. The doctors use these pain killing drugs on the mother but the baby can get some of it too which means the baby will come out being under the influence kind of. Not a good way to enter this world.
5. The way how most doctors have never sat in to witness a real birth session so they really don't know what it is like to see a baby coming out, where as for the midwife, they see all of that so they can tell when something is wrong.

Ina May uses a lot to support her claim that natural birth is the way to go. The whole book is her evidence i think. In every story there may be a part that is scaring or akes the reader make a face, but at the end the person always says how beautiful and happy they were to have a natural birth, so her clain is that what people think about these nightmarish midwives and their atrocious ways really is not true.