09/12/2023
We’re helping women dig in and find the power they’ve always had within, they just haven’t been shown how in a long while. We’re giving women back an Empowered Birth!!!
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How do we demystify birth when it has been quite literally excised from the fabric of our culture?
Birth moved into the hospital carried by the promises of safety and comfort. Aseptic techniques were still fledgling and therefore “en vogue,” as was the twilight sleep procedure that was meant to ensure a pain-free, memory-free birth. Prior to these changes, most women, both rich and poor, gave birth at home attended by midwives. The hospital was a place that people went to die, and even then only when they had no one to care for them so they could pass away at home.
The dangers of twilight sleep and the rising infection rates due to a poor understanding and/or application of asepsis were both hidden by doctors and hospitals. Articles were written in women’s magazines playing up the attractiveness of cleanliness, painlessness, and a reprieve from the duties of homemaking that came from hospital birth. Waiting rooms were created so husbands weren’t witness to the twilight sleep that was often anything but peaceful.
The last several decades, and particularly the last few years, have ushered in a slow renaissance of community-based birth both in birth centers and at home. We are once again refocusing on birth as a rite of passage, a natural function of physiology, and a sacred family event. Midwives are both the protectors and champions of natural, undisturbed birth. Through our furtherance of the community-based birth movement, we have the opportunity to return birth to the home and the family, to banish the mystery and preserve only the magic.
Words by
Reposted from Why Home Birth
