40

Me:"Wow! Your Tina Cassidy aren’t you? I actually just read your book, how wonderful to bump into you at the airport like this! Thanks so much for writing “Birth the Surprising History of how we are born.” The way you portrayed birth throughout history as constantly changing persuaded me to believe that even today with the technology our culture has we shouldn’t trust our practices.

Tina:"Really, what led you to read the book; it was the cute baby on the cover that attracted you wasn’t it? So which parts were most relevant and memorable to you?"

Me: "Well, in the last third of the book you focused on the history of modern day controversies in the birth discourse, which helped strengthen the relevance of the first 2/3rds of the book, examples of these are…

1. The role of the father in pregnancy.  pg 200

2. What happens to the after birth and the ingestion of the placenta pg 220

3. The bonding process between mother and baby and how it can affect their relationship down the road pg 228

Tina: that’s wonderful that you were able to get so much insight out of the book, most people I talk to can’t recite such depth. Is there anything that could have been done to make the book better or possibly more effective to fulfill its mission?

Me:"Well, let's be clear your writing aimed to provide historical analysis from the perspective of a person who has an intro level knowledge of birth, for the book-reading-public to better understand pregnancy & birth in our culture. Given that, the best advice I would give for a 2nd edition of the text would be to incorporate modern-day birth stories in order to maintain relevance and share your opinion of the historical evidence after sharing a non biased excerpt in order to maintain controversy or possibly, instead of stating your own opinion you could offer an outrageous alternative view point to the block of history that was previously presented. Even with these criticisms I appreciate the work you put in to your book because it uncovers the nightmarish history of childbirth and shows how it is correlated with how birth is dealt with now in this day and age. Particularly your book has made me think more about if having a water birth is the right choice for me & if I should take up a career in midwifery in low income areas. In fact, I'm likely to try to make pregnant women I know aware of you book, “The Surprising History of how we are Born" as a result of your book."

Tina: "Thanks! Talking to you made me realize how helpful my book was to others, it makes me proud that my personal interest was able to cause such a positive effect on others.

HW 39 - Insights from Book - Part 2

Cassidy, Tina. The Surprising History of How we are Born: Birth. New York: Grove Press, 2006. Print.

1)

a. Women who have self administered cesarean sections.

b. The “save the baby but risk death of the mother” debate

c. The theory that male midwives dressed as women to trick their clients into thinking they were being treated by a woman.

d. Male doctors constantly thinking they are doing more good than harm.

2)

Every generation of doctors, midwives and patients thought that the way they were handling birth was the correct, most convenient and safest way, turns out some of them were wrong.

Reading about all the tools used and drugs experimented with in order to ease birth and the outcomes of their use are shocking because it leads me to question if what is currently being done today is the safest methods. Its mind blowing that through industrialization the American culture and many other cultures have birthed such a deep whole; technology doesn’t seem to be working to improve the situation.

3)

a. Having planed cesarean sections because women are “too posh to push” pg 123

b. Putting a cloth over a women was to “preserve their modesty” why still use it today? Pg 132

c. Dick-Reads (1900) point of view for why Child birth doesn’t need as much outside interference as our culture applies to it. pg 144

d. Friedman’s “cervimetric curve’s” misuse, there is a wide range of normal in birth. Pg157

e. Water births are safe and effective, but doctors create obstacles in order to keep their practice alive. Pg 190

4)

 Authors claim: Freidman created the “cirvimetric curve” which tracked the average length of time of the three stages of labor. I found supporting evidence in “Dewhurst's Textbook of Obstetrics and Gynecology for Postgraduates” the quote I found is, “the graphic analysis of labour’ (Friedman 1954) was the first of a series of classical contributions whereby the science of partoghray was established to become the corner stone of clinical evaluation of progress in labour. The sigmoid nature of Friedman’s curve is a source of some interest. The gradual rise in the latent phase is followed by the steep slope of the active phase and then a short less steep curve to full dilation.” Based on the evidence, it seems as if Tina Cassidy did an accurate job for portraying who Freidman was and what he contributed to the birthing discourse. I think it was important for Cassidy to include how the curve affects today’s births and the misuse of the graph.

http://books.google.com/books?id=5VsQJl6pBRUC&pg=PA247&lpg=PA247&dq=cervimetric+curve&source=bl&ots=RswBiZKj4S&sig=QIxcBLvhkbAgqBZKJDRVwU_fQ5g&hl=en&ei=rz2JTYcYhd-BB-r66dUN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDMQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=cervimetric%20curve&f=false

HW 38 - Insights from book - part 1

1) In "The Surprising History of How We are Born: Birth" Tina Cassidy starts off by giving the reader background information about why birth is different for humans then it is for other mammals, this also explains the need for midwives and how they evolved throughout time. Chapter three gives explanation for why the location of birth has changed over the years and the fourth chapter gives information on why birth is so painful.

2) Tina Cassidy tries to answer: How "we can touch the moon and predict the weather, map the human genetic code and clone animals, digitize a photograph and send it from Tokyo to Tehran with the touch of a button, but we can’t figure out how to give birth that is --simultaneously and constantly--safe minimally painful, joyful and close to natures design"?
-I think Tina's question is important because birth is constant, and our population, survival and development are dependent on how we conduct births. But I don't think it’s an answerable question even if we were to analyze the history of birth, to find out why our culture can’t have consistent safe and happy births we would need to know what a safe and happy birth was and ultimately "the perfect" way to have birth.

3) The main insight is that "every culture has had a system of midwifery, usually informal, with mothers and grandmothers, neighbors, or extended members of the tribe helping women through birth...they welcomed new life ushered out the old and took care of practically everyone in between..." "Some [hospitals] created their own birthing rooms or suites...but still this was mostly standard maternity care in disguise."
-The first part of this insight didn't seem too surprising to me because I grew up surrounded by midwives but for people for who haven't even heard of midwifery it is eye opening. Tina is really saying that there has always been midwifery but it didn't always have a name. The second part of the insight was more interesting to me because it showed that hospitals have had a long track history of not genuinely caring about their patients.

4)
a. The human pelvis can’t get large enough to accommodate for an appropriately developed newborn brain, so women are forced to give birth to underdeveloped children. pg 17
b. women tend to begin laboring at night, and give birth in the morning; because of this babies born at night (2005) have a 16% higher chance of dying. pg 14
c. Dr. Lovejoy said that "given the rate of technology a hundred years from now no one will be giving birth, well make children up from artificially grown fetuses.”pg 26
d. two centenaries ago midwives would perform abortions. pg 27
e. malpractice insurance is higher for birthing centers, yet birthing centers have better birthing records. pg 72

5) One of the beautiful things about Tina Cassidy's writing is that she incorporates storytelling, statistics and logic to form a blend of persuasion. Through my eyes this makes her seem brilliant, as if she is truly educated on the history of birth and midwifery. She also incorporates her evidence so that it creates segue's for other thoughts and ideas.

Comments 37

comments on my blog:
my dad:
Amanda's interviews of 3 different women and their views on pregnancy and child birth were interesting and revealing. Margerita's view that hospitals are only for those who are sick, injured or dying is one I have never heard before. I have to agree with Rachael's observation that what the mother eats and drinks while she is pregnant can effect the health of the child. I also agree with Sam that many hospital interventions in childbirth in the USA are due to the mother's lack of knowledge of birth and the processes of pregnancy and childbirth. Regarding Amanda's curiosity about why people have babies, as a parent by design and choice it is my feeling that having children provides an opportunity for building a family.


Jasper classmate:
I like how you chose people with all different views and explored what the woman's knowledge of the pregnancy and birth giving process mattered. This is kind of off topic but my favorite part was: "but it did scare her because she had never felt another life insider her before." This idea of having another life inside of you made me think about how that must affect the way a female feels about being pregnant. I thought you did well on showing your own opinions for each of the views right after you talked about what they people being interviewed thought.


Javon classmate:
The best part about your post was the three different outlooks you had examined on birth. It was also good how you the you made the people being interviewed elaborate on their answers; giving insight to their ideas. The most significant part of your post in my opinion was ; ""Its important to be prepared, to an extent but it is more important to trust the process [of giving birth], because its natural." This connects to the dominate cultures view on birth. This quote help shows that most people believe having children is what we are all suppose to do and is a standard majority of people follow.


comments made on others blogs:


abdullah:
Hey Abdullah,
I think your best line is “I feel as if the only thing they could have done in the situation is hold the mother's hand or told the mother repeatedly how it would all be okay” this caused the most reaction out of all the other lines in your post, I think it certainly depends on the person father/spouse willingness to be in the delivery room. I know it would mean a hell of a lot for the father of my child to be in the room, yet to hold my hand maybe, but more so I know they had a closer to equal experience in the birthing process. Just because the man/woman isn’t the one giving birth doesn’t mean they should be allowed to be excluded from the process.
I found your post interesting because I enjoyed comparing and contrasting our interviews. when I first started to discuss birth and pregnancy with my interviewees I received a lot of information that I could have predicted such as, the couple attended birthing classes, or giving birth was difficult and it hurt, I also liked the line "All of the stories that my interviewees had told me just highlighted all the information that I already knew about birth and really did not give me any new insight." because I came across this problem early in my interviews, and enjoyed how you bluntly said I the interviews reaffirmed previous knowledge. You could possibly get past this in the future so you can gain deeper insight by asking the interviewees why they think they choose to go to a hospital.
Good work, Amanda.


Felipe: 

My favorite line was "we came to the conclusion that we would both like to have a child and raise him/her the way we would have liked to have been raised.” This for me gave me an alternative point of view for why people have babies. In this case it was to make up for the kind of parenting your parents wish they had had growing up. I liked how you used direct quotes to answer each question and added personal thoughts after the quotes, so basically i liked the format, because it allowed me to see the exact wording your mother used.

Nice work, Amanda