Birth in Bolivia

From an article on the state of childbirth in Bolivia:

Health Ministry estimates attribute the major causes of maternal mortality in Bolivia to haemorrhaging (23 percent), birth-related infections (14 percent), complications from unsafe abortions (16 percent), and eclampsia (12 percent).

All of these are largely preventable from the medical perspective, with the exception of unsafe abortions, which falls outside the scope of health measures, as it is a direct consequence of the country's laws against terminating pregnancies.

The infant mortality rate has also improved, but government projections show that it is unlikely to reach the MDG objective of a two-thirds reduction. From 1989 to 2003, the infant mortality rate was almost halved, falling from 120 deaths to 54 per 1,000 live births. Projections for 2015 are for 34 per 1,000 live births.

Infections? Complications from unsafe abortions? Eclampsia?

I feel the desire to jump on a plane and get over there and try to help make conditions safer. It seems that it would be simple to do.

Education, cleanliness, and good prenatal care.

We have all of these things here in the US, and I fear we seldom appreciate or take good advantage of them. We have education abounding, in various classes, the internet, books from Amazon, so many sources. And we have the ability to choose how well we take care of ourselves. We can eat good foods and get exercise. We can breathe good air (usually). We know there is a small risk of something going wrong in pregnancy and birth, but for us, it is very small. We usually don't fear that we will lose our own lives in the process.

Birth means something completely different to us.

While the birth of a child generally represents joy and life, in Bolivia, new motherhood is all too often plagued with fear, uncertainty and even death of mothers and newborns, report organisations dedicated to maternal and child health.

I feel that having a birth embody joy and life should be a basic right. I am deeply saddened that it is not, and I wish I could do something to change it and make it better for these women and their babies.

This is as extreme as I get

Navelgazing Midwife writes about the problem of rampant c-sections, and the media spin that they're less painful than vaginal birth. What is most startling to me is not that this is being reported as fact, but that women are believing it - they actually believe that major abdominal surgery is less painful than childbirth. Oh, women, sisters, how far we have come, and how backwards we still are. I don't understand your rejection of birth.

Here's another thing I don't understand: Britney Spears as a role model. Especially since she did the one thing that I think is a tragic mistake for someone in her specific situation: she had an elective c-section, because she didn't want to feel a single labor contraction. That's just fantastic. What a way to prepare for motherhood, to demonstrate your womanly strength, and to set yourself up to be a wonderful, self-sacrificing, patient, child-centered parent. The temptation to vilify her is great, but I'll stick to the facts.

The fact is that I disdain the women's movement that brought power to women and left out the education, that brought choice without responsibility, that turned the focus from what is natural and - ok, I'll say it - divinely appointed and, perhaps most importantly, is truly best for the child, and allowed women to become self-centered, self-serving, lazy, and weak. "Laaabor hurrrts" has become women's battle whine. Childbirth is the last area we need to reclaim. No one else can give birth to babies - it's up to us women. I believe that we need to learn more about it and, where we can, embrace the miracle that is ours to give, to ourselves and our babies, to let our bodies do what they are meant to and are completely capable of doing. There is no other place to gain this knowledge and this trust in ourselves and in nature, God, the universe, whatever it is you believe in - this is where you find it, where it's proven.

I'm just extreme enough to believe that it is no accident of evolution that birth is so difficult for humans, that we have to stretch and strain to give birth to our babies. There is no other creature that works so hard at childbirth as we do, that grows a baby so large compared to the size of the birth passage. I believe that is intentional, perhaps because we have so much to learn from the experience and are capable of perceiving and feeling so much. We need to learn to trust. We need to learn to sacrifice. We need to do hard things to prove our strength - we are indelibly strong and tough. That is what we have to gain from childbirth.

Back to feminism. Why feminism has been touted as a cause that encourages women while rejecting what makes them unique and strong is baffling to me. Thanks to the offsprung branches of this well-intentioned movement, many women have learned to disdain their bodies as weak, their vaginas as unfit for their purposes, and have mistaken their own loveliness for mere frailty.

Now, more than ever, women need to reclaim the process that will bring them face to face with the bare truth of their femininity: childbirth. In bringing a child into the world, a woman is tough and tender, is uncertain and perfectly capable, determined, loving, forceful, sexy, and instinctive. This is the core of what it means to be feminine and womanly.

I believe that women who reject birth for being dirty, difficult, or unnecessary, are buying into the notion that male-controlled is still better. There. I said it. Cesareans are the tool of a male culture that does not understand childbirth. I am not saying that sections are brought forth by men and imposed on women, but that women have been convinced that their bodies are flawed, their processes for giving birth are unnecessary, that they are inferior. It looks like misogyny to me.

I will admit my bias:
The very first person I knew who had a c-section, had her nerve leading to her sexual parts accidentally cut, and has since had no sexual sensations. It was her first baby. She was 27. I got interested in natural birth in the first place to avoid a cesarean. 1 in 4 seemed like far too great, and the ratio among my friends was much higher than that. It never seemed right.

So now, when I hear women say that they want to schedule a cesarean to avoid the pain of labor, I want to jump out of my skin. When I read in a book on childbirth that women should "ask your doctor if a VBAC is right for you", I want to yell in protest that it was the cesarean that was wrong in the first place, and that all of you women, you childbearing women, need to be so much better educated than you are.