The Business of Being Born

A couple nights ago Keely and I watched a screening at our favorite Westchester theater, Jacob Burns Film Center, of "The Business of Being Born". BBB is an intense documentary of childbirth in America by Abby Epstein (actor, director) and Ricki Lake (actor, producer), yes, of The Ricki Lake Show. The movie was just released in New York yesterday at the IFC and is running for a couple weeks there. There is also a recent review in the New York Times. And there are screenings happening all over the country this month including New Jersey, Seattle and Indiana, in other words, near my family. After the Jacob Burns screening Ricki and Abby answered questions from an audience that was dominated by the Hudson Valley Birth Network, which means a bunch of doulas and midwives. It was amazing to see so many strong confident women in one little theater. The house was packed with people turned away and the back hall full of standers. And the film was great. I loved it. It was incredible to see live home births that are so wholesome and loving. I've learned so many things in the last few months, but I learned still more in this film. The film is obviously targeting the broad American public since the perception of all the birth and pregnancy professionals we've talked to is that most people just don't know much about home births and what midwives do.

There were a number of criticisms of the film by the midwives and doulas in the audience at Jacob Burns. I wasn't really surprised since the film is directly representing midwives by showing in explicit detail midwife assisted births. You would expect this particular audience to be more sensitive than your average movie goer. For example, the director Abby, plans a home birth in the film but has a series of complications that require a hospital transfer and a C-section. The audience all thought that event was critical to include because it shows that midwives can make good judgment calls on when a hospital birth is necessary and facilitate a speedy transfer. However, one midwife questioned the placement of this event as the closure to the film. It has the potential to mar the overall message because in this rare case of a necessary medical intervention, the white man (Abby's very nice and gentle backup doctor) comes through as a knight in shining armor (instead of the midwife). However, I personally think the main point of the film, that midwives provide safe, affordable, enjoyable births, came through perfectly.

We've been exploring the various issues affecting birth for months as we've gone from a doctor, to a home birth midwife, to a group of birth center midwives at Full Circle (which means birthing in a hospital with midwives instead of doctors) and back to a home birth midwife. We are big fans of our Full Circle midwives, but the real reason we went to see the film is because we decided to try to have Oona at home instead of at Phelps Memorial with our Full Circle midwife (even though Phelps has decent statistics compared to other hospitals). Because of malpractice insurance issues, our midwives in the Hudson Valley can't do both home births and hospital births. Malpractice insurance is just too expensive. So, we had to leave Full Circle for the birth and are now back with Anne Margolis, where we started after deciding to leave Keely's former OB/GYN. Anne is great and just delivered our friend's, Jack and Shannon's, new son, Ojiah, at their home a few weeks ago (he is doing great). We are certainly interested in a natural home birth with little to no medical intervention, but of course we'll have to see how it goes. As long as Oona and Keel come through it ok, then I'm happy.