Freebirthing

Yesterday I stumbled upon this show on Discovery Channel aboutFreebirthing. I was curious to see what it was about and after watching it, I had mixed emotions. The crew followed 3 women in the US & UK who chose to give birth without prenatal care or medical help. Apparently a growing number of women in the US and in the UK are giving birth with no drugs, no midwife,no doctors,and no medical support and this movement is called Freebirthing. One of them said that:

"If you listen to your body and you are healthy there should be no reason why you can’t have an unassisted birth, We need to go back to the old days, pregnancy and birth are not illnesses".

However, doctors say 'freebirthing'has terrible risks. We can't ignore that there are circumstances which are capable of changing an everyday ‘natural’ event into a life threatening emergency. Childbirth scares the hell out of me! I always close my eyes when I'm watching pregnancy or maternity shows, so just thinking that someone would deliberately choose to have a baby without any assistance is mind-blogging. What are the reasons these women choose freebirthing?


Physical control. The mother is free to birth in whatever position she feels comfortable in. She can eat and drink whenever she wants. She can walk around, lie down, watch TV, clean, or do anything else she feels

Mental control. During an unassisted birth, the mother stays in control.This allows her to labor how her body knows is best, rather than being in more pain because an attendant told her to do something she knew was wrong for her body.

Spiritual control. Some women believe unassisted birth is one stop on their path to self-empowerment, self-actualization, and also gives them more confidence and higher self-esteem. They also beleive that they're sharing an intimate bonding moment with their baby and have a stronger bond with the baby than they would've had if it was an assisted birth.

So how hip was the birth of your baby? Was it a c-section? Shame. That's very 1980s, you know. A water birth? A little retro - but still cool. Are you a freebirther? You are more in than Marc Jacobs' spring/summer 2009 collection! What's the world coming into if we're choosing the way to give birth according to what's in and trendy while ignoring every medical warnings? Is it fair to the child? Is it fair to the mother? I think women choosing freebirthing should realize that when a complication arises during a birth, death can occur within a matter of minutes. This means that the unborn baby and/or mother may die during a freebirthing simply because trained medical help was not immediately available as it would have been, had the birth taken place under the supervision of a nurse midwife or in the setting of a hospital.I don’t think I’d ever forgive myself if I lost a child or my child developed a disability because of a choice I made. But, that’s just me.

So, I am curious, what do you think about freebirthing? Would you choose to give birth alone?