For those of you without cable or not in the market for birth shows, let me tell you what can quickly become an obsession for a pregnant woman-- birth shows. A friend suggested i watch some to get a sense of how things actually work in labor and birth. And i do think they've been extremely educational. I'd never seen a birth before (live or taped) and once you watch a number of them you start to see in general how things go and what can happen-- good and bad. I'm now prepared (at least in my mind) for 24 hours of labor as not out of the ordinary.
However, i'm starting to firmly believe that there's a real agenda behind the production of these shows. 90% of them are people that have planned c-sections or planned epidurals. I've watched probably 100 episodes of these shows and in all but one, the women that were planning for natural childbirth wound up with the epidural. I know from watching the shows that the pain was extremely intense and that's why women went for the epidural-- but for someone that is planning on natural childbirth, it would be nice to see a few more "success" stories-- i know they happen in America.
2 comments:
Hi,
I think you might be right or I think that maybe for some women, the process is difficult to watch back and maybe they did not want it on TV. But I think that it also depends on what channel you watch. Discovery health shows a lot of hospital births which were mostly high risk pregnancy's which require epi's or c-section. Oxygen channel will show more home births and birthing center births without intervention if I remember correctly. And TLC is very cleaned up, I think most of them are in the hospital too. I saw a few home births and water births and birthing center births and a few at a hospital with doulas and no medical intervention. But, in the time that I was pg, I think I watched over a 1,000. They are out there and you have many more months to obsess over them. Also, there are a lot of written birth stories from Moms who went without pain meds or intervention. You could do a birth story search or something like that and find them or read the birth stories on the various pg websites. There are stories out there to encourage you and give you a realistic picture of what to expect.
It's Jessica from the 04 Playgroup... just wanted to say I JUST sent you and email and then just quickly looked at your website.
I'll try to send you an email tomorrow-- I just read an article in Mothering-- it had a resource list for the best 'natural' videos. Maybe that would be helpful.
Take care,
Jessica
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