"Why won't you bitches help me?!?" The joy of labor in media...or not

We all know the formula for birth in movies and television-- the water breaks, everyone panics and rushes to the hospital, the woman screams at everyone around her (especially the father, if he's present), and the baby, usually looking like a  4-month old, is born within minutes. Those of us familiar with birth---whether from having children of our own, or supporting and attending to women in labor--know that real birth rarely follows this strict formula. I would love to see what a Hollywood producer would do with the birth of my first child--which took 36 hours from start to finish and didn't involve even one single taxi cab rushing anyone anywhere!

There is plenty of validity in critiques of the depiction of labor in the media. Children, teenagers, and even young adults are forming their ideas about pregnancy and birth based on these scenes in popular culture, scenes that tell girls that labor is nothing short of horrific, and demonstrates to birth partners that the only thing to do is stand there looking dumb or passing out. Women hoping for a natural birth are typically mocked and end up begging for drugs.

This treatment of labor affects us and our culture--it disempowers women and supports the sense that birth is a medical event that must be managed. At SQUAT, we're dedicated to publishing voices from the across the spectrum of birth experiences to demonstrate the pregnancy and birth can be beautiful, transformational, and empowering for women and families.

That said, these scenes are pretty funny. If you let yourself relax a little, they will make you laugh. So let's take a mid-week laugh break and look at some of the "best of" birth depictions compiled by the SQUAT t


Best Breaking Water: Amy Poehler and Tine Fey in Baby Mama. Complete with flood of water, mad-dash to the hospital, and angry screaming!

Angie's Water Breaks




Baby Mama

— MOVIECLIPS.com

Best Vagina Nick-Name: Dr. Bailey giving birth on Grey's Anatomy.



Best Squat: Comedienne Lauren Weedmen on Funnyordie.com, exploring labor positions and birth goo.

Our Bodies Myself: Childbirth - watch more funny videos

Best Music: Quinn has her baby on Glee. This clip's got it all--the rush to the hospital, yelling at the baby daddy, and... dancing! New York Times Magazine put it best, calling this "the most intense show choir/having a baby sequence in recent memory."




Best Pubic Hair: SNL's natural birth class, complete with a super-large VHS tape of a homebirth.



Best. Satire. Ever. : Monty Python. "What should I do?," asks the mother. "Nothing, my dear! You're not qualified!"

Keeping Your Baby Close After Birth

Written by Laura Schuerwegen

I could write about a million benefits of keeping your child close after birth, but I'll leave that up to the experts and stretch your imagination a little.

Imagine that you are an unborn child. You have been floating happily in lukewarm liquid for nine months now, you experienced taste through it. You felt vibrations and heard your mother speak, and you heard other, more muffled noises too. You sensed your mother's touch through the womb that hugs you. You have been really comfortable.

But right now, that womb, which is all you have know for all eternity, is getting a little tighter, you have little space left and it is getting harder to move. You may have engaged, you may not., anyway, you are ready for some change.

And so it happens, you start to feel hugged ever more tightly by that uterus, your home. Irregular at first, and short, but after a while, these sensations get more intense. Something is about to happen! You feel slightly pressed downward with every contraction. You are excited. You feel how your mother feels and you hear her voice, maybe she's a little frightened, should you be? Maybe she's excited too, and happy, so you feel happy too.

Let's just assume you are all well and she is indeed happy and excited to meet you - after all, she did wait nine months for this moment. Let's assume that this engaging thing and the contractions work well.

So you feel it's time to put in some effort of your own, after all, your mommy - who you have felt and heard and tasted all this time, but have yet to meet - is putting in so much effort.
So you twist and wriggle and turn. You feel really squeezed. Your head is a little sore, you feel like you can't take much of this for too long.

And then it happens...

[[[ I am sorry to take you out of the imaginative trip for a moment, but I just want to show you two possible scenarios and you pick the one you would like to have as the second half of this story ]]]

SCENARIO 1
The pressure on your head is relieved and you feel a rush of - what is this, it's fresh, cold even, and it smells so different - air on your face. A big human pulls you out rather rudely and holds you upside down. There are all these things around, and so many people and noises and smells and everything happens so quickly and you don't see well, but the light stings your eyes.

"Hey, why are they cutting off my lifeline? I like that, I played with it all this time! Don't take it away!"

You are being pulled away from the one smell and feel you knew to again another entirely different setting. They prick you and it hurts and they rub you down and put stuff in your eyes, it stings even more than the light! You are starting to feel very desperate, very helpless. Maybe this wasn't as exciting as you though it would be. Frankly, you wish you were back in that warm - albeit tight - uterus. You start to cry - "Hey what's this noise, it's loud and it hurts my ears, wait... it's me!" - you are kind of freaking out.

Someone else puts you on a cold metal thingy and starts measuring you. By this time you are tired and desperate.

But then they bring you over to the one creature you know. She looks kind of desperate too. And she's cold and tired, just as you are.

You want to look, you want to taste and smell. But you're still a little freaked out, scared, and very very tired. Will they come and take you away again?

SCENARIO 2
The pressure on your head is finally gone and you are in a lukewarm environment, just as you were in utero, but vast and less tasty, though it does taste and smells the same, just less pronounced. You open your eyes and see a beautiful face radiating love. You feel two strong but tired hands on your back.
 They pull you up - "Hey what is this? This smells great! I want to have a taste of this!!!" - and put you at the breast.

While you enjoy this liquid gold, you dare another glance. "Wow, mommy is really beautiful and look at how happy she is!"

You hear an emotion filled mutter, and look to the side. You've heard that voice before, but a lot more muffled. Hey, look at that, that's a totally different face than mommy's! A hand that belongs with the second face caresses your back and the face speaks gentle words to you, ever so softly. Mommy hums, and cries tears of joy.

"It was all worth it!" you think, as you doze off into a wonderful little slumber.

[[[ Take your time to wake up out of that soft dreamless sleep ]]]

Which one would you pick?

Laura Schuerwegen aka Mamapoekie is a Belgian mother, wife and writer who lives in Sub-Saharan Africa. Find her thought on birthing, parenting and living on Authentic Parenting. 

Medical Diagnosis in Pregnancy

Written by Laura Schuerwegen, previously published on Authentic Parenting

Image: Daquella Manera on Flickr

In obstetric care - which is still the main from of care pregnant women in the Western world are getting, and which more and more women in the world are being pushed into - it seems as if a pregnant woman is a disease waiting to happen. Obstetric care for pregnant women is indeed focused on seeking out deviant results in an otherwise symptom-free patient. That's why 'regular' care in pregnancy includes this huge battery of tests (well, that and the fact that these tests mean big business for hospitals).
This is quite different from any other medical speciality. Generally doctors don't seek out illnesses, unless they manifest. Most forms of medicine are diagnostic or curative... seldom is medicine explorative or preventative.

Preventative care can even be refused by your doctor (like taking out a completely healthy appendix, because it might someday get inflamed), and preventative drugs - profylaxia - are mostly given only when the treat of disease is real and the cure is hard or non-existent (at least this is how it should be in an ideal medical situation, but we see that with things like vaccines - big business again - this bird doesn't fly either).

So back to obstetrics. Obstetric care looks for diseases that don't present itself, and uses preventative treatment and procedures and sometimes even surgery, without necessity. And most often without informed consent. When necessity does arise, it is most often created by the very profession that cures it - again all very lucrative. All under the motto that "we should think about the baby too". I'm sure if they would ask those babies, most of them would prefer to just be able to gestate at their own pace, and be perfectly well with that.

Image: Euthman on Flickr

So I wonder where this attitude comes from - especially since it has been proven time and again that this approach to pregnancy causes more harm than anything else.

There are two reasons I can see for this approach. One is financial, as you could have guessed from the text above: labour wards are often indeed one of the only wings of a hospital who make a profit (that and radiology or laboratory facilities). The other one is that OB/GYN in fact practice defensive medicine and a diagnosis in pregnancy gives them a sort of 'get out of jail free card' to get out all the possible tests and procedures in the book, and afterwards - if all would fail - leaves them to say "we tried everything we could".

Either one of these reasons seem very unethical to me... Is all this even legal? And who regulates this?

Laura Schuerwegen aka Mamapoekie is a Belgian mother, wife and writer who lives in Sub-Saharan Africa. Find more of her thoughts on birthing, parenting and living at Authentic Parenting.

Orgasmic Hospital Birth? Tell us about it!

Have you had an ecstatic and/or orgasmic hospital or clinic birth experience?
We would love to hear about it- and print it! Spread the word!
The submission deadline for the winter issue is Nov 15th 2010!
submissionstosquat@gmail.com
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