HW 39

Cassidy, Tina. Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born. New York: Grove Press, 2006.
Topics the book has taught me about are: cesarean sections, the role of doctors in birth over time, and tools and procedures of getting babies out.
A major insight the book tries to communicate in the second 100 pages I think is how over time birth has became more of a medical procedure, it is like a surgery now opposed to how it used to be more natural. I definitely agree with this, I understand why it has become this medical procedure because of complications it is good to have help from doctors if needed. I think that people should be allowed to have more control over how they want to have their birth when they're in hospitals. The hospital should not push drugs on the woman giving birth or force them into anything they don't want. I think people should be allowed to do their own birth their own way in the hospital so that way they don't feel pressured and they know there is help from doctors only if they need it.
Some interesting aspects of pregnancy and birth discussed in the second hundred pages that I agree deserve wider attention are the roles of doctors in birth, and what the mother wants to do. I feel like the doctors have taken over the process of birth they are deciding what the woman should do and pressuring women into doing things they don't want to. I think the mother should be able to decide how she wants to give birth and do it that way and then if there are any problems the doctor can come in and help opposed to going to the hospital and the doctors try to give you drugs and trying to make you do an epidural. Also the procedures in hospitals should be looked further into for example shaving a woman right before birth is supposed to be more "clean" but in the book it says the statistics really show that there is a higher chance of an infection.
"Doctors are likely to induce mother who are past their forty week 'due date' out of concern that the baby might get too big for an uncomplicated delivery. But statistics show that half of all healthy first-time mothers have pregnancies that last longer than forty-one weeks, and their births are fine", (Page 178). This was a quote that also applies to what I said earlier about how statistics contradict some of the things that the doctors do. I looked this up and could not find that exact statistic but I found: "the average length of a pregnancy was about 40 weeks + 8 days for first time mothers," (http://www.birth.com.au/Induction-for-being-overdue/When-is-my-baby-due) this shows that average pregnancy length of is already longer than 41 weeks yet doctors want to induce women who pass 40 weeks.