We are so used to what happens in a hospital when we go with our partners to give birth that we have normalized it, and if we do not know it, because we have never gone, we think it is the best way to be treated because we trust the future of our babies and moms who are supposed to know the most about births.
However, it has been a while since the evidence is ahead of the practice and some of the things that are done in a hospital have become so obsolete that they even grimace. Knowing that the best birth is one that runs naturally in intimacy, as it is natural to make love in intimacy, a video has wanted to show us how ridiculous some hospital protocols are by comparing sex with childbirth: What if we made love in hospitals with the same attention given to birth?
"Don't turn on the light"
The greater the intimacy, the greater the calm and the lower the light, the greater the chances that the woman will disconnect from her reality and get carried away by the hormonal changes that occur during childbirth and that help to facilitate it. If instead there is a lot of light, noises and everyone speaks to you, well no, hey, it seems that costs more, how can it cost you to have to be thinking things while making love. What if you were in the act of sex and someone asked you something? First: "What the hell are you doing here!" and the second "Excuse me, have you not seen that we are busy !?".
Let them talk about you being present
It's pretty weird and annoying to talk about you as if you weren't, but being present, how weird and annoying is that do things to you without explaining what they are going to do. In the video they look at the temperature and take other constants without asking what this is for or for what purpose: "Look, I don't need you to look at the constants to make love" ... and if necessary, "explain it to me, for God's sake" . Well, in the same way, childbirth is an intimate act of the woman and it is necessary to bother her as little as possible. If you think you have to do something, explain in a low voice what you are going to do, slowly, but above all do it because there is a reason to do it: the best deliveries are those in which professionals are only in case something fails and their attention is required. An excess of control and restricting women's freedom to move and decide how to give birth makes it difficult, sometimes until they have to end up in caesarean section.
"If you don't let me give birth, it's normal for you to have to help me"
They have been bothering the couple for a while, who cannot have quiet relationships. It is normal that they cannot pull forward, as it is normal that if they knock you down, if they put you on a monitor and tell you to be still, the delivery can be stopped.
And then how it hurts because you are in an unnatural position you end up asking for epidural anesthesia, and then, as the delivery slows down a bit, you get synthetic oxytocin, and then many babies don't tolerate it and the escalation of interventions reaches caesarean section, which is the furthest from what is considered the best possible birth and also far from what a woman had surely thought when going to give birth.
And the fight has to go on
The video is made in Italy, but I think it can be extrapolated to practically the entire western world. In Spain many years ago new protocols were published and now a study has recently been published to see how far they have penetrated, what has been their influence in clinical practice. The result is quite bleak. As we read in El Parto es Nuestro:
- There are twice as many induced deliveries (19.4%) of the percentage recommended by the EAPN (<10%).
- Three times more episiotomies (41.9%) are made in eutocic deliveries of those considered to be optimal (<15%).
- Instrumental deliveries are about 20% of the total when they should not exceed 15%.
- Vaginal deliveries after caesarean section are only 44.2% when it is considered that they should be between 60 and 80%.
- Early contact between mother and newborn occurs only in 50.2% of births, when it should happen in more than 80%.
So women, future mothers, and men, future fathers, we must continue to fight so that in hospitals you are treated with respect and so that you do not do more things than are essential and necessary: childbirth is not a disease and, in consecuense, a woman giving birth should not be treated like a sick woman as long as everything develops normally.
Video | José Calderón of the original Freedom for Birth
In Babies and more | Normal vaginal delivery, A vaginal birth is not the same as a natural birth, vaginal delivery or caesarean section ?: Immune differences
