The Business of Being Born

I finally watched Ricki Lake’s documentary “The Business of Being Born” and I wanted to write about it, even though its been out for almost a year now.  I heard a lot about this movie when it first came out and I was excited that it is more accessible to the mainstream than a lot of information about natural birth.  It definitely makes its point well – most births are a normal, natural process that don’t need to take place inside a hospital.  Since I am the choir, I agreed with just about everything it said, especially the point that once interventions in a hospital like pitocin start, its almost impossible to stop them.  Many times one intervention leads to needing another and another to control the side effects of the previous ones and those are leading increasingly to c-sections.  Now, thank goodness all these things exist for when they are needed, but I just don’t believe that more than a third of births in the US require major surgery.  Some hospitals have rates as high as 45-50%.  Yikes!

The only thing that disappointed me about the movie was that I didn’t really learn anything new.  I guess the movie isn’t really directed at me since I’m already a believer, but it had a lot of the same information you can find in a birth class, on the Internet or any of the many books on the topic.  At the same time, it didn’t really give any actionable to-do’s out of it for someone who is new to the topic.  It didn’t discuss all the prep parents to be go through to be ready for a natural birth and the topic of doulas never comes up except in a passing comment at the very end.

It;s a good introduction to the topic and very accessible, but still requires the interested to do more research and reading about the basics in order to have enough information to make an informed decision about what kind of birth she wants to have.  It’s very cool of Ricki Lake to make this movie and include film of her own labor and baby’s home birth.  Brave!