Five years ago last month, my son, Adam, was born at the Madison Birth Center. And although Adam is my third child, his birth was a first all around: Adam was the first baby in Wisconsin born at a freestanding birth center.
What's a freestanding birth center? Quite simply, it's a place unassociated with a hospital, where women can go to give birth. Birth centers strive for a homelike atmosphere and celebrate birth as a normal, natural event. Women in labor are monitored and comforted by people, not machines. Hands and warm water are the tools of choice at a birth center, not electronic fetal monitors and epidurals.
If you're used to the American way of giving birth, that might sound primitive to you. After all, almost all babies today are born in hospitals, and most people expect electronic fetal monitoring and pain medication on request. You may, in fact, consider such interventions the hallmarks of good care.
But guess what? Despite our highly technical approach to birth, the United States has some of the worst infant and maternal mortality rates in the developed world, according to a Save the Children analysis reported in 2006.
Actress Rikki Lake's new documentary, "The Business of Being Born," calls attention to this discrepancy. In most of the developed world, midwives - experts in normal birth - attend the majority of births. In our country, obstetricians - trained surgeons - attend the majority of births. Is it any surprise, then, that the Caesarean section rate, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, in the U.S. is above 30%? In Wisconsin, it's about 25%, according to CDC figures.
Think about that for a moment: One in four Wisconsin babies is born via scalpel. While some babies surely are saved by C-section, think of the others who are cut from their mothers' wombs before their time. Think of the mothers who spend their early days of motherhood recovering from major surgery.
Think also of the mothers whose labors are started by artificial means. Wisconsin's induction rate is 41.6%, the highest in the nation, according to the Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey. Surreal, isn't it? Almost half of all Wisconsin labors begin when someone says they should begin, rather than when nature intends.
This is not what childbirth is meant to be. Childbirth is meant to be a joyous right of passage. Hard work, yes, but a life-affirming, absolutely empowering experience. Yet in Wisconsin, our birth stories include labor induction, incisions and incubators far more often than they include confidence, companionship and collaboration.
Thank God for women like Aszani Kunkler, a certified nurse midwife and founder of the Madison Birth Center. Kunkler and others like her remind us that childbirth is a natural event and that women's bodies are designed to give birth.
They teach women (and men) to trust the female body and the birthing process. They alleviate fear, replacing it with quiet confidence. Slowly, they are revolutionizing birth by returning to its roots.
In the five years since Adam's birth, the national C-section rate has grown from 26% to 31.1%, as reported by the American Medical Association. The Madison Birth Center's C-section rate is 3.2%. Some of that is self-selection; the birth center can only accept women with low-risk pregnancies. But the rest of the difference, I think, is due to the outstanding care delivered by the birth center midwives.
Study after study has demonstrated the safety and efficacy of midwifery care, yet most pregnant women automatically seek an obstetrician for their maternity care. We in Wisconsin - and in the U.S. - need more women like Kunkler to help us reclaim the art of birth.
Jennifer L.W. Fink of Mayville is a freelance writer specializing in parenting
and health.
REPRINTED FROM:
Milwaukee Journal Sentinal
April 1, 2008
