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<\/a><\/p>\nWhen I wrote my birth story<\/a> about 3 months postpartum I thought it was a positive story. I thought that it had all of the things a good American birth story was supposed to have. Lots of drama, pain, drugs, blood. All of the birth stories I had heard from friends and family were similar to mine. They generally had a beginning of things going wrong, a middle of drugs and finally an end with doctors swooping in to intervene and save the day. It ended with a healthy baby; that\u2019s the point, right?<\/p>\n As I struggled with breastfeeding and began to find my way as an attached\/gentle parent I started a blog. I shared these transitions of my new life as a mother and began to attract readers who were going through the same thing or had already embraced the values I was beginning to embrace. People started to comment on my birth story things like \u201cI\u2019m so sorry you went through this,\u201d and \u201cI hope your next birth is a healing birth.\u201d Hmm, what did these people see in my birth story that I did not?<\/p>\n More than 2 years have passed since the birth of Jack. It is difficult to put in one blog post the changes I have gone through as a woman since having my son. I attribute all of these changes to my struggles with breastfeeding. I pushed through those struggles with a fierceness I didn\u2019t know was in me. While doing that an entire world opened up to me about breastfeeding, birth and parenting. I discovered that I had been exposed to a staggering amount of misinformation that undermined the power of my body to naturally do what it was supposed to do to give birth to, breastfeed and care for my young.<\/p>\n ***These are just a few quotes from doctors and nurses from Jack\u2019s birth. <\/i><\/p>\n As I started to learn about the power of my body I began to think back to all of the interventions and professionals that undermined this power. I don\u2019t blame the individuals. They were simply doing what they have been trained to do and operating within hospital protocol. I do believe that the culture of birth in America has reached a crisis point, that the overuse of medical intervention can be harmful and undermines and interferes with the natural power of a mother giving birth, and that hospital policy and protocol can devalue a woman\u2019s wishes for her own birth plan.<\/p>\n Hospitals have only existed for a short period of time (and thank goodness they exist!). As birth transitioned from midwives to doctors in hospitals it was taken over by timelines, schedules, protocols, policies, etc. It became a business. Hospitals offer a ton of wonderful things that save lives all the time. But not all births can be expected to go the same way, to happen within a certain time frame, to be void of surprises. Every woman labors in her own way. Sometimes it happens that medical intervention is used when a normal birth is not progressing according to the hospital expectations or when a woman\u2019s birth plan is not within traditional hospital protocol. These are the times where healthy mothers and babies are put at risk.<\/p>\n I underwent tests at 1 week post due. The tests were all negative, meaning my baby and body were doing just fine. But due to the hospital\u2019s protocol I was admitted for induction. (So why bother with the tests? $$$). When medical intervention is used on healthy pregnant women it often leads to more unnecessary medical interventions. My induction led to erratic contractions which led to the Epidural which led to labor stopping which led to Pitocin which led to an episiotomy.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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