The headline was sufficiently intriguing that I watched almost the entire hour of news, waiting to see what angle this article would take and it actually turned out to be different than I thought it would.

Any woman who has given birth and hears a man say that birthing women should “toughen up” would be tempted to give him a good knee to his private parts and then tell him to toughen up. Well, that was my first reaction anyway, until I watched the entire article, then my view of his comments changed completely.

If you haven’t seen or read an article about this then search for Dr Denis Walsh on Google – plenty there to choose from.

The basic angle of the story was that Dr Walsh (a midwife who has a PhD, not a medical doctor) believes women today are overly reliant on pain relief during birth (particularly in the form of epidurals) and that this administration of pain relief may impair bonding between mother and child.

I must admit, it was very brave of Dr Walsh to make such a bold statement given he is a man who never has and never will experience childbirth and the associated pain – in reading some of the articles on the internet and the comments left by many mothers, the views range from the predictable outrage that a man could say such a thing about the “sacred” event that is childbirth having never experienced it himself, right through to complete agreement with his views.

And I have to say that I agree with him too.

Now I’m not a doctor or a midwife (you can read one midwifes’ perspective of epidurals here) so I can’t comment on the medical aspect of his point of view. What I can comment on though is my perspective having had two different extremes of birthing experiences.

My first birth (8 years ago) was in a private hospital, complete with obstetrician, an induced birth, gas, pethidine, epidural, ventouse extraction of my daughter, an episiotomy, initial difficulties with breastfeeding and then a cascade of bad events during her short life, culminating in my daughter passing away well before her time at only 13 1/2 months of age.

In terms of pain relief, the epidural was not completely effective in eliminating the pain and because the majority of the bottom half of me was numb, pushing was inefective and this required the ventouse (vacuum extraction). Once you start down the path of intervention, it’s a self perpetuating cascade of events that can have a negative impact on the mother and baby.

On the other side, last year I gave birth to my son, at home. There was no obstetrician, only two midwives that I saw for all of my appointments, both of whom attended the birth. There were no drugs during the labour (which lasted only 4 hours), I used a birthing pool, (although my baby wasn’t born in the pool) and the only hiccup was that the placenta was stubborn and eventually required a trip to hospital and a general anaesthetic for it’s removal. I was in hospital for just under 24 hours and that short period of time certainly reminded me why I chose to birth at home.

My little boy has now passed that anxious 13 1/2 month mark (the age my daughter died), he is still breast-feeding and growing in leaps and bounds.

In my mind, this is a great outcome.

Birthing Choices

My decision to have a home-birth for my second child initially came about because of the nauseatingly bad experiences I had with mainstream medicine every step of the way with my daughter. You could almost say it was a knee jerk reaction that I never wanted to step foot in a hospital again or place my trust in a doctor ever again after Isabella died.

The experience of losing my first child was so traumatic that the only way I could move forward to even contemplate having another child was to do everything I possibly could completely differently to the first time around. For me this meant a home-birth, with midwives as my primary care givers and the barest minimum of appointments with a general practitioner (for essential blood tests).

Because I had chosen a home-birth and midwives to be in attendance, the option of pain relief via drugs was simply not an option – I would just deal with the pain. A friend of mine had used “Hypno-birthing” during her labour and while I had intended to give this a go, I never got around to it – I figured that I was a Master NLP practitioner, I could use the tools I had from my training and manage the pain myself. Looking back now, I wish I had done the Hypno-birthing classes & will definitely be doing them next time around.

Half way through the pregnancy I was fortunate enough to see the movie documentary “The Business of Being Born” – it confirmed my distaste for the medical system and their view of birth as a medical procedure. If you have an opportunity to see this movie, I highly recommend it. While the premise of the movie wasn’t new to me, what I did find very interesting was the shock and disbelief from a lot of the members of the audience who were in their first pregnancy and were not aware of how fear based the medical system really is. This wasn’t new to me – I’d experienced it first hand.

At this particular screening of the movie in Melbourne, we were lucky enough to have respected midwife Rhea Dempsey provide a brief introduction to the movie.

She explained the complex and miraculous hormonal processes that occur during pregnancy and labour and how essential these are to the entire birth process. Here are some of the things I learnt from her talk:

• being fearful and in a strange environment (such as a hospital) can drastically slow down labour,
• extending labour is detrimental to both mother and baby and may lead to unwanted interventions such as the administration of pain relieving drugs and even c-section,
• birth is increasingly being viewed as a medical procedure that needs to be managed in hospitals only,
• pain relieving drugs actually interfere with the delicate hormonal balance present during labour which ultimately does impact on bonding between the new baby and the mother (and father),
• women have been giving birth for centuries and it’s time for them to be encouraged to view the birthing process as miraculous and something that we do have the strength to participate in fully (without drugs),
• all drugs administered to the mother affect the baby.

Interestingly there were comments by doctors in response to Dr Walsh that there are no studies that prove bonding is adversely impacted by administering drugs during birth. Surely the increased number of cases of depression in children and adolescents, teenage suicides, increased teenage use of drugs and binge drinking all reflects that there is some breakdown in the relationship between children and their parents (parents’ ability to influence their children positively seems to be decreasing while negative peer influence is increasing). Is there is a correlation between the increased number of caesarians & the use of pain relief and decreased bonding and this increase in parent/child relationships later in life?

Some doctors also expressed concern that Dr Walsh’s comments were “dangerous”. I don’t quite know what they mean by dangerous, but what is more dangerous is women believing that the drugs are safe. No drugs are safe. When you agree to have drugs administered, you believe that the benefits outweigh the risks as per the information provided to you by your doctor. While a doctor may be able to provide you with advice on the risks, remember that ultimately you are signing a form that releases the doctor from any blame should an adverse event happen.

So basically, the doctor provides you with information about the drug (which has been provided to them by a pharmaceutical company representative in an attempt to “sell” the doctor on how fantastic this drug is), but ultimately takes no responsibility if something goes wrong.

Now I believe that each person should have the right to choose the care that they deem is best for them, and this choice should be made with all of the information available, not just the side the doctor wants to promote.

I think this is the whole crux of the viewpoint Dr Walsh has expressed. Women and in fact the majority of our society, have come to a point where they believe that pain relieving drugs and caesarians are the norm for childbirth, because this is what doctors promote as the “safest” birthing option and they downplay the negative aspects of this type of “interventionist” medicine.

Clearly there are life threatening situations where medical intervention is necessary – but this certainly doesn’t equal the current 30% caesarian rate Australia currently has. If women really understood the repercussions of choosing such heavy intervention when it isn’t truly necessary, I believe there would be a lot more women deciding on a more natural approach to the birthing experience.

What experiences did you had during birth?

If you have older children, do you think the type of birth you had has influenced the relationship you have between you and your child?

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