Women create
Event to raise funds for home birth advocacy group
By Michel Cicero 12/03/2009
It doesn’t really get warmer and fuzzier than newborn babies in swaddling clothes, but childbirth — how to birth, where to birth and who will deliver — is a contentious subject rife with controversy. In her documentary film The Business of Being Born, actress Rikki Lake advocates home birthing, much to the chagrin of the American Medical Association, which publicly scolded her for doing so.
It’s not that Lake and other proponents of midwifery and home birthing are against hospital delivery, it’s just that they like having options and they think all women should at least be informed about those options — women, after all, have been giving birth for a pretty long time and their bodies are designed to do so. Home birth proponents believe that while advances in medicine have done much to make birth safe and comfortable for mother and baby, somewhere along the line, the needs of the mother became partially eclipsed by the bottom line.
Sunrise Birthing Center in Ventura will hold a holiday boutique this weekend to celebrate the female gender’s unique ability to create and also to benefit the Birth Action Coalition (BAC), a local birthing advocacy group.
Sunrise owner Karni Seymour Brown, a midwife for 30 years, is concerned by the increase in Caesarean sections performed somewhat routinely in hospitals and would like women to know that while the hospital environment can play a crucial role in a woman’s overall birth experience, it’s not the only way.
One of the issues in the birthing debate that’s top of mind for BAC et al. is vaginal birth after Caesarean, or VBAC.
For the better part of two years, Ventura County hospitals, save for two doctors at Los Robles Medical Center, have refused to perform VBACS, claiming that they’re unsafe. But midwives have had success with VBACS, especially in the United Kingdom where midwifery and home birthing are much more the norm than in the United States.
The idea that giving birth is dangerous business is just one of many misconceptions that contribute to confusion about the midwifery and home birth option. According to Brown, “statistically, it’s been proven, with good experienced care-providers that it’s just as safe. We do the same clinical assessment, evaluation and testing that an OB/GYN does.
We work in conjunction with them.” Midwives, she says, attend birth very prepared and fully supplied with IV therapy, drugs for hemorrhaging if needed, Dopplers, etc. “We’re not just there lighting candles and incense and wearing Birkenstocks.” she says. “That’s the myth.”
The BAC’s goal is not to replace hospital births with home births but, ultimately, to create synergistic relationships between providers and patients that foster supportive, nurturing birth environments and experiences rather than fear-ridden ones that can make the mother feel powerless over what is a very natural process. According to its mission statement, it believes, “The birth journey is an essential expression of human dignity that requires informed, empowered partnership between women’s families and health care providers.”
To that end, a number of female artists and artisans will gather on the grounds of Sunrise Birthing Center for a day of beauty, creativity, friendship and learning by candlelight. In addition to unique gift items for sale, there will be a Red Tent Gallery (historically, women have taken refuge in red tents during menstruation, while giving birth or just for support and encouragement), where women share, through a variety of mediums, their stories about the birth journey and the experience of being female. All are welcome.
Women Create, Saturday, Dec. 5, 4-8 p.m. at the Sunrise Birthing Center, 12 N. Ash St., Ventura. For additional information, please visit www.womencreateboutique.org.
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