I found a fantastic review by Jennifer Block on the movie, The Business of Being Born:
“The film has celebrity backing from Ricki Lake, whose bathtub home birth is one of several beautifully shot for the big screen. The women walk around nude or nearly so. They moan, groan, and sing through contractions. They hold on to their partners or their midwife, and then they squat, sit, kneel, or even stand–and deliver. Glistening babies slide out almost silently from beneath, oftentimes into their mothers’ own hands, and come-to on their mothers bellies, at last on the other side.

The audience almost giggled with delight and what I think was surprise at each of these otherworldly moments–did that baby really just come out of her? Right there in the living room? Why is nobody screaming?

Early in reporting for my forthcoming book Pushed, I had a similar conversion experience. I was in El Paso, Texas, interviewing the midwives at Maternidad la Luz, a birth center/midwifery school. Picking up on the depth of my curiosity, the midwives invited me to “work a shift.” This entailed following the crew around the clock, from 8 a.m. to 8 a.m., and they all but guaranteed I’d see a birth.

I arrived early and eager. I wanted to understand the mechanics of childbirth; wanted to learn if this was something I could handle as a reporter, something I’d want to spend the next couple of years of my life reading and writing about.

What was so striking to me at the time was its simplicity. A strange word to describe such a magnificent feat of biology, one that is now so fraught with fear and enshrined in medical technology in our culture. And yet, there it was. The midwives barely did anything; Perla’s body knew what to do all by itself.

The way maternity care is going in the U.S., you’d hardly know the female body is capable of this. More than half of labors today are started or sped up with artificial hormones; nearly all mothers give birth in a hospital bed with their knees at their armpits and someone shouting at them to push; and nearly one-third of babies are extracted via major abdominal surgery, the cesarean section.

Was Perla just incredibly lucky, or is something terribly amiss with standard maternity care?

Lake’s documentary poses this question as well through various experts and activists. More importantly though, the births speak for themselves. You get the lasting impression that this act of giving birth — in the active, full-body sense — is something exhilarating, extraordinary; something that, if possible, is not to be missed, and certainly not to be mishandled.

It’s not something we tend to think about on Mother’s Day — how women become mothers — but maybe it’s a good day to start.”

I am REALLY looking forward to seeing this movie! Help to spread the word!

Posted in activism, birthing & written by Niki —