In 1988, exactly 21 years ago, I was expecting my first baby. We had taken a Lamaze Hospital Childbirth class and was feeling nervous and unprepared to give birth. I prayed and asked specifically for guidance to some information that would help me with my upcoming birth.
I felt guided to a library across town that I had not been to since I was a teen. I still had a valid library card and upon entering, headed straight for the childbirth books.
The title Husband Coached Childbirth caught my eye and I snatched it up. Little did I understand how significantly my life was about to change upon reading that book. Dr. Robert Bradley, the OB who wrote it, was the first to introduce me to the idea that Childbirth can not only be painless, it can also be ecstatically sexual and pleasurable as well.
At that point in my life, I was content to seek out a painless birth and, upon mastering all of the skills presented in his book, three weeks after reading it, I gave birth to my oldest daughter...painlessly, naturally, and in a hospital with a 50% C-section rate on December 1st, 1988.
My daughter will become an adult in a few weeks, and as I take a realistic look at what has happened to birth in the past two decades, frankly, I shudder with horror when I think about my daughters and grandaughters giving birth in this day and age.
As I've been writing this article, I just checked the status of the House Health Care bill that is going to be voted on tomorrow. The most recent report from the AP says that the lawmakers are still fighting over abortion funding and providing illegal immigrants access to health care.
While words like "death panels", "taxpayer funded abortion", and "pull the plug on Grandma" have been tossed around during the debate these past few months, no one has mentioned childbirth and what a National Health Plan will mean for those of us welcoming our children and grandchildren during the next few decades.
When the Bradley Method of Childbirth helped me achieve a natural, spontaneous, surgery free birth in 1988, I was so excited by what I had learned that my husband and I trained to become Bradley Childbirth Educators. For eight years we taught Husband Coached Childbirth in our home here in Boulder, Colorado. During this happy time we welcomed three additional children into our family.
As I lived through the ups and downs of a breach surgical birth for my second child, a hospital VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Ceasarean) with my third, and finally an unassisted childbirth at home with my fourth, the Obstetric World in America decided to pass some rules and set in place a few guidelines that truly made medical birth a harrowing experience for the four million women giving birth every year in America.
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