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Buy bread and milk, check. Take dog for a walk, check. Have baby, check.
For many women in the United States, giving birth is now one more thing on the to-do list. With the rise of cesarean sections, many of them elective, less and less children are being born the natural way every year. A recent study put the c-section rate in the U.S. at nearly 1 in every 3 babies. In just 1996, this rate was 1 in 5 babies.
Why is this alarming, and what does it mean for women and babies? C-sections, where a mother’s abdomen is cut open and the baby removed, are major surgery. Infant and mother mortality rates are significantly higher for women who undergo c-sections, rather than a normal vaginal delivery.
This naturally leads to the question of why so many c-sections are performed, if they statistically have worse outcomes for mom and baby. And, why, as one of the most developed nations on earth, does the U.S. have a truly terrible infant mortality rate—in 2003, it was listed behind 27 other developed nations. Yet, the U.S. spends nearly twice as much on healthcare as these other nations with better health, some 1.9 trillion, or 16% of its gross domestic product. One study set out to determine just what made the U.S. maternal care system so much worse than the rest of the world, and it came to some pretty interesting answers.
To summarize it, the deteriorating care, rising costs, and increased interventions like c-sections, can all be linked to one thing: the medicalization of birth. As the healthcare complex has developed, birth has come to be treated as a medical problem to be fixed, instead of a natural process. In the hospital, doctors and others must treat women in labor as a liability—if they don’t intervene to do “everything possible,” they face litigation in the event of an adverse outcome. This leads to many unnecessary interventions, like c-sections, that actually decrease the safety of mother and baby.
This then led these researchers to ask another interesting question, one that struck me, and will probably strike many other Americans as strange: why are most women giving birth in a hospital with a doctor to begin with? After all, if 70-80% of births go perfectly fine, why do 99% of them have to happen in a hospital? At this question most Americans would blink their eyes, and wonder what the alternative to a doctor-assisted hospital birth could possibly be.
The alternative, which is currently being practiced in most other developed nations around the world, is midwife-assisted birth, which often doesn’t involve an obstetrician at all. 50-75% of births in industrialized nations outside the U.S. are attended by a midwife, not a doctor; these are precisely the countries that rank higher than the U.S. in mother-baby health. According to one study, women in the U.S. attended by Certified Nurse Midwifes have excellent birth outcomes, as well as satisfying, cost-effective care and less unnecessary interventions.
The marginalization of midwifes in the United States is tied up in the history of the U.S. medical system and the professionalization of medicine. As hospitals rose in prominence in the early 1900s, they were promoted as the clean, safe place to give birth. Women were told that doctors were professionals and better equipped to deliver their babies. Hospitals and doctors, of course, had it in their interest to deliver as many babies as possible, since more deliveries equaled more income.
Unfortunately, the current state of our maternal care system shows that the hospital is no longer the safer, more satisfying place to give birth, if it ever was. With the current high costs of healthcare and the huge number of Americans who still lack insurance, it’s time to rethink the birthing process and to promote what is actually safest and most cost effective for mothers.
This post was originally hosted on An Apple A Day, a health and nutrition blog.
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Sign in nowI think us flatlanders from Florida may be more susceptible! Or at least that’s what I told myself after my first trip to Denver – only 5000 feet – and acted like an angry drunk after going right to work setting up a trade show booth after getting off the plane.
Thanks for the tips!
I agree with you completely that we need to reexamine food and our relationship with food as Americans. Food is more than “fuel.” Eating should be an experience, a way in which to feed our minds, our emotions and our bodies. You make an interesting point when you say that good food habits should be taught in schools. As a public school teacher at a low income school, I constantly reinforce the importance of healthy and mindful eating. Low-income groups are most at risk for chronic diseases as a result of poor nutrition. In my classroom, I become a snack-Nazi, running around between the desks in the fourth grade and confiscating anything crunchy that comes in a bag (besides baby carrots, of course). I make the kids check the labels for high-fructose, Yellow 5, and words they can’t pronounce. What I find, however, is that families continue to send food to school that is anything but food. To be honest, sometimes I simply pretend like I don’t see the kids cramming hot Cheetos in their mouths under their desks before I can get to them. While I can lecture and explain and reinforce, what needs to happen in our country is access to good food for poor people.
Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!
Excellent post – and of course WHO’s ‘emergency committee’ is claiming that the pandemic threat is “not yet over!” because that’s the message that Big Pharma is paying for.
The WHO guidelines were pepared in collaboration with a group called the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI). But what this committee did not disclose is that ESWI is funded entirely by the drug company Roche and other influenza drug and flu vaccine manufacturers.
The H1N1 scare was very good for business last year. J.P. Morgan reported that the pharmaceutical companies did very nicely during this health scare, profiting to the tune of $7 billion from the sale of vaccines alone.
While WHO may have not disclosed the entire committee’s identities, the British Medical Journal investigation revealed that two of the identified “experts” (René Snacken and Daniel Lavanchy) were not only on Big Pharma payrolls, but had actually participated in Roche marketing events.
Why would WHO even consider touching these guys with a 10-foot pole – never mind accepting credible scientific counsel from them?
More at “Did Big Pharma Fund The Swine Flu Panic?” at: THE ETHICAL NAG: MARKETING ETHICS FOR THE EASILY SWAYED – http://www.ethicalnag.org/2010/06/21/h1n1-flu-panic/
Good information here – and yet it should come as no surprise given what we already know about the devastating psychological effects of any disaster on human beings. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has been widely studied and linked with virtually every catastrophic life event on us.
PTSD is a debilitating emotional illness that can develop when you experience or even witness a dangerous, terrifying, or possibly life-threatening stressful event – an event that is outside the range of what’s considered to be a normal human experience. About 7-8% of the general population will develop PTSD, but for military veterans, rape victims and heart attack survivors, this number can go up to an astonishing 30%.
As your article reminds us, PTSD can also strike both survivors and relief workers at natural or terrorist disasters, as well as anyone who has either experienced or witnessed this kind of trauma.
New York City’s World Trade Center Health Registry reported that 20% of New Yorkers who lived below Canal Street (close to the World Trade Center) were estimated to suffer from PTSD following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, compared to 11% of all New York City residents. About 5% of trained relief workers were diagnosed with PTSD as a result of just listening to stories from survivors of the attacks.
Hardest hit among 9/11 relief workers were those who were pulled off their regular jobs to perform tasks they were not prepared for – like the city’s sanitation workers who were assigned to help with search and rescue, or relief workers who spent more than 90 days at Ground Zero. Most relief workers showed no further symptoms six months later, but Twin Tower survivors themselves reported suffering PTSD symptoms up to five years after the attacks.
A Harvard Medical School study of survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans found ‘delayed onset’ PTSD symptoms that actually increased over the first two years following. The worst-affected Katrina survivors were both close to the epicentre of the tragedy as well as abandoned on their own without help for far too long – both extremely dangerous PTSD risk factors.
“Abandoned on their own without help for far too long” sounds like an apt description of those impacted by the horrific events in the Gulf day after day, week after week while the oil continued to spew.
More on PTSD after a catastrophic life event at: “Not Just For Soldiers Anymore: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder After A Heart Attack” — http://www.myheartsisters.org/2009/08/25/ptsd/
Dengue is a Killer. My close friend’s mother pass away due to Dengue Fever.
nice article, keep the posts coming
Good show. Interesting info too about anaphylaxis.
I just signed up to your blogs rss feed. Will you post more on this subject?
Very good post. Anticipating the next one.
One can’t help but wonder if disasters like this are the cause of cancer and other illnesses. After all, we all become affected by the contaminated water & dust eventually.
Thanks for a wonderful and informative post. As a vegetarian traveler, I know how difficult it can be to find meals in some countries! I had no idea about Trinidad & Tobago – I will have to add that to my travel list.
I didn’t realize people of mixed heritage had a more difficult time finding bone marrow donors.
I can’t wait to try finding basic recipes for some of these dishes and “veganizing” them! Great post.
I’ve heard that vegetarianism is unknown in Japan. If you say you are a vegetarian there, for example, they will just give you more vegetables with your meals (along with meat).
Haha, love that the clip has Spanish subtitles.
Sometimes I’m not sure what to think when pain is involved in anything. Medical experts say to expect pain in certain situations, but for the most part, I thought pain was indicator that something is wrong in your body.
Does sitting on a bouncy ball help at all?