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Giving Birth
Featuring Obstetrician/Gynecologist Christiane Northrup, MD, FACOG, and author of the bestselling "Women's Bodies: Women's Wisdom."
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Giving Birth is a 35-minute video designed to inspire and educate. It shows the model for normal birth and why it is important for mothers and babies. It contrasts the two different models for birth ~ the medical model vs. the midwifery model and explains the risks of routine obstetric practices. You will learn what scientific evidence has discovered about birth and hear it from three obstetricians (including best selling author and PBS television host Dr. Christiane Northrup), a labor and delivery nurse, and a doula. You will learn why doulas are important if you birth in a hospital. You will also hear from a cesarean mother and you will see two births. You will experience a woman giving birth in her own home, attended by a midwife, and see images of a water birth. This video explores common misconceptions about pain in labor, epidural anesthesia, cesarean, and many routine hospital procedures. Giving Birth presents what midwifery care is all about.
Time
Listening
Relationship
Knowing the birthing woman's history and values
Addressing women's real concerns, fears and doubts
Helping her trust her body's wisdom
Providing continuity of care
Supporting and trusting the natural process
Protecting the woman's delicate tissues
Providing for continuity of care
Protecting the mother-baby relationship
What you WILL see:
How empowering birth can be for a woman
What a healthy, full-term newborn looks like who's mother has not had drugs or anesthesia
What a midwife-style prenatal visit looks/feels like (with a toddler sibling present)
What true support looks like in labor
A midwife-attended labor and natural birth (with a middle class couple, in an modern home)
Active birth: upright, active positions in labor, use of a birthing stool, the mother feeling her baby's head as it emerges and helping draw her baby out and up onto her chest
Extraordinary joy a woman feels after completing the hard work of birth without drugs or anesthesia
Active father support in labor and during delivery
Still photos of a water birth
What you will NOT see:
Full-frontal nudity ~ the birthing woman wears an open silk kimono all during birth
Vaginal shots ~ because the woman gives birth seated on a modern birthing stool rather than lying on her back
The typical hospital gowns, IVs, episiotomy, and separation of mother and baby
What you will NOT hear:
Criticizing hospitals or physicians ~ however, you will hear three obstetricians, a labor and delivery nurse and a doula, including Dr. Christiane Northrup, speaking honestly about the way in which standard contemporary hospital and physician practices are not based upon scientific evidence
That home birth is best ~ instead, the home is shown as the most normal, natural setting and the place where a woman is most likely to be unhurried or pressured in labor.