In reading Birth as an American Rite of Passage By Robbie E. Davis-Floyd - I came across this fascinating passage following a fact filled chapter on the debate between Home Birth and Hospital Birth. I feel her conclusion best sums up the debate:
Birth is an amazingly resilient natural process. It can be technocratically de- and reconstructed in the the hospital, or protected and nurtured at the home, and it will still turn out well almost all of the time. "Safety" is the disguise worn by technocratic ideology. The real issue in the home versus hospital debate is not safety but the conflict between radically opposed systems of value and belief.
Well done Davis-Floyd. Well done.
This is a great debate and one I have often as a doula and natural birth advocate. I was that mother - 'We will be safer in the hospital, they have what we need should anything go wrong'. But nothing did go wrong.
But it's not my birth experience I am worried about. It's all of the future birth experiences being pre-determined by scientific studies that have been dissected and in some cases disproven. Why can't the mother and her partner make this choice? Why do we leave it up to society to choose what is safest for the ones we love?
I think these are such important questions to ask. If a hospital makes one feel safer, if that is a haven for them - I understand. It was for us. But if home is that place of safety - the warmth and comfort of one's own surroundings allows for a safe and loving birth - then why is it quickly questioned and discouraged?
what are your thoughts on home birth? have you thought/or had a home birth experience of your own?