HW 40

Jasper: Hey Tina Cassidy thanks for writing the book Birth! Your main idea about how pregnancy and birth has changed and came to what it is today moved me and made me rethink pregnancy and birth.

Tina: Oh Really, which parts were most effective or important for you?

Jasper: Well, since I just finished the book I'll talk about the last third of the book. You focused on the position of the father during pregnancy and birth and after the baby is born, which added another angle to how birth has changed over time because you went into things like what the fathers role has been in birth over time and what it is now, so this further developed ideas in the first 2/3rds of the book. But let me be more specific. For example on page 207 you wrote: "At the end of the 1960s, only 15 percent of men were attending the births of their children. By the late 1970s, a majority of men were participating right up until the cord cutting. They had to. It was now their duty." This quote presents how you show the change over time. On page 209 you wrote: "A 1992 study asked fathers in the San Francisco area who were present for birth: Were they coaches, teammates, or witnesses? Most men said they ended up being witnesses. Being anything more, at a time of so much turmoil, was too much to ask". This quote shows what this aspect of birth is like today and brings up problems we have with birth now. Something new that I was exposed to towards the end of the book was the things that people do with placentas. I had no idea that placentas were eaten. "They considered the placenta to be sacred, and, of course, because the organ gave life and nothing was killed to put it on the table, it was considered an honor to consume it", (page 218). Before I thought that the placenta was just thrown away after birth, but I learned that the placenta could be used for many reasons, and not just eating, it is used for medicinal purposes in other places too. Overall I got many insights about pregnancy and birth and learned a lot of new things that I had no idea about before reading the book.

Tina: But what could I have done to make this a better book - that would more effectively fulfill its mission?

Jasper: Well, let's be clear, your text sought to provide narratives, historical analysis, journalistic analysis, policy analysis from the perspective of a woman for the book-reading-public to better understand pregnancy & birth in our culture. Given that aim, and your book, the best advice I would give for a 2nd edition of the text would be, to figure out the typical reasons women decide to give birth in a hospital and then confront those ideas and prove them wrong that way women won't fear giving birth at home, or in a birthing center. But I don't want you to feel like I'm criticizing. I appreciate the immense amount of labor you dedicated to this important issue and particularly for making me think about all the different aspects of pregnancy and birth and how they got to be the way they are. In fact, I'm likely to tell other's about the things I learned about in your book so maybe I can one day help someone out that is going through the pregnancy and birth process!

Tina: Thanks! Talking to you gives me hope about our future as a society!