Bianca: Hey - thanks for writing Birth. The main of idea of Birth that focuses on the culture, politics, religion, physical aspects, and anthropological aspects of birth and how all these aspects influence how a woman brings new life into the world honestly made me rethink about birth and pregnancy. The practices and morals of hospitals today change based on the successes and failures of developments and new fads in the birth industry and it has revealed, to me, the gruesome things that women have had to endure in history. Had I not read Birth, I would assume that when it came time for me to give birth, I would have jumped to comply with any suggestions and unnecessary interventions my OB/GYN would have offered, having in mind "doctor knows best." The rights of women, both emotional and physical, have been denied and ignored in light of whose preferences and desires reign above that of an another. Birth has become a system where new advances are either made to make the process of birth easier for the OB/GYN or for the mother. Because the latter is more ignored, I feel the need to educate my peers with the same knowledge that I received from reading your book.
Tina: Really, which parts were most effective or important for you?
Bianca: Having finished Birth recently, I find it more preferable to talk about the last third of the book. In the last third of the book you focused on the father's place, as a social construct and a biological figure, in the process of birth and the postpartum period a woman experiences after birth. The latter was especially revealing and shocking because no one had ever brought up the topic, involving the emotional psychology of a woman after birth, to me. The topic stands a problem that a lot of people ignore when in actuality, such topic deserves as much attention as when a mother decides how she wants to give birth. The last third of the book really furthered your goal, as a writer, to bring forth the most important information a woman or rather, a human being, should know. You chose to end the book with a rather neat summary of your entire thesis, which was extremely helpful to readers like myself. The fact such influential aspect after birth isn't brought up as much as it should be is questionable. You make readers question how important the postpartum period and the father's place in birth by bringing up insights:
- "Fathers were not always disengaged: They had their own rituals and chores...Among the Huichol tribe of Mexico, in order to make the father a partner in the mother's pain, a string would be tied around his testicles; the mother would pull the tether as each contraction peaked." (201)
- "Throughout the 1970s and even into the 1990s, men said they were happy to experience something as profound as birth. But they increasingly found they weren't just coaches. They also were protectors, referees, helping to ensure that the birth played out the ay the woman wanted it to." (208)
- "The lack of immediate contact between mothers and preemies had long-term, deleterious implications. Contact is good for babies - and their parents - right from the beginning. And it improves not just their relationship. Allowing time to bond helps increat chilhood IQ scores, keeps families intact, and reduces the likelihood of child abuse...the research helped convinced hospitals to change their nursery practices." (229)
Tina: But, what could I have done to make this a better book - that would more effectively fulfill its mission?
Bianca: I think your book did an excellent job of completing its mission in educating and making people re-think the birth industry and how it has come to be. Your text sought to provide both shocking and heart-wrenching narratives, historical analysis of certain statistics that reveal the good and bad effects of our society's decisions to perhaps deviate from or further a practice, and journalistic analysis from the perspective of both an educator and a mother to better understand pregnancy and birth in our culture. Given that you have succeeded to educate me and influence the birth decisions I will make when I am older to the extent that I want to recommend this book to others, your book proves to be one of the most important reads in my life. The best advice I would give for a 2nd edition of the text would be to focus on how birth and pregnancy are limited experiences for mothers in this generation because I feel as if this focus would make a reader less reluctant to view Birth as merely an historical reference and a bounty of statistics. Focusing on this topic would allow you to better touch on the process of birth in the perspective of mothers rather than that of those working in hospitals. I find that what I am saying may pose to you as a criticism but let me reassure you that it is far from criticism. I appreciate how much you have delved into the depths of birth and made it a mission to educate. Your dedication to this important issue certainly shows through and has made me think about how a lack of knowledge of birth can lead to numerous bad scenarios that would mean certain death and how looking at birth as a "consumer movement"(154) is important because distinguishing what is beneficial to the mother, not to the doctors, will better help progress an outcome a woman desires to have and is comfortable with. Having read your book, I'm inspired to do an experiential project on my own personal experiences with birth and document the insights I have picked up on through film-making differently as a result of your book. I have a strange urge to document what I think of my mother keeping a part of my dried-up umbilical cord in a rather strange plastic box.
Tina: Thanks! Talking to you gives me hope about our future as a society!
No comments:
Post a Comment