BIRTH AS A "TECHNO-MEDICAL" EVENT: 

The Need to Remember the Spiritual Nature of Birth

"...the female body, with its unique architecture...is primed for opportunities of heightened experiences of the sacred.  There is an obvious discrepancy between his female spirituality and a male-derived model of obstetrics where spirituality is seen as irrelevant. 

Because is it so normative in our culture to experience birth as a techno-medical event managed by professional experts, no one guesses that the depression and spiritual distress which often follow, re reflective of a system at odds with women's physiology and needs.   Many women experience this as a crushing sense of personal failure." 

THE MIDWIFERY MODEL

The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee, is a renowned midwifery center founded by Ina May Gaskin, hailed by Midwifery Today as the "mother of authentic midwifery."The birth statistics for The Farm are outstanding.  From 1970 to 2000:

* Its cesarean rate was just 1.4 percent.

* Its labor induction rate was 5.1 percent.

* The infant loss rate has been less than .5 percent

* It has had no maternal deaths in 30 years. 

 In addition, the midwives at The Farm have delivered 15 sets of twins, all born vaginally, and they routinely deliver breech babies vaginally as well.            

~Mothering Magazine, No. 125, July-Aug. 2004

THE OBSTETRIC MODEL

Surgical Births

Preliminary data indicates that the cesarean delivery rate rose 2 percent in 2007, to 31.8 percent, marking the 11th consecutive year of increase and another record high for the United States. This rate has climbed by more than 50 percent over the last decade (20.7 percent in 1996).  The rise in the total cesarean delivery rate in recent years has been shown to result from higher rates of both first and repeat cesareans.

SOURCE: National Vital Statistics System, annual files, 1989--2003. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/births.htm.

Infant Mortality

In 2005, the latest year that the international ranking is available for, the United States ranked 30th in the world in infant mortality, behind most European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Israel (5).

The United States international ranking in infant mortality fell from 12th in the world in 1960, to 23rd in 1990 to 29th in 2004 and 30th in 2005.