“This is why we give birth in hospitals…”
The other day I spent a whole day with my son in his 4th grade class. I really got a newfound respect for teachers! I needed a nap that afternoon, I was exhausted by all the constant movement, talking, etc. total sensory overload!
One thing that stood out to me was something the teacher said during the history lesson. They were talking about the vikings and she said that during those times women frequently died during childbirth. “This is why we give birth i hospitals now and almost no one dies during childbirth.” I sat there and thought that it’s way more complex than that, but that was obviously not what the class was focusing on.
In Hypnobirthing class we talk about how what we have grown up hearing and seeing in media about birth affects how we think birth really is. If you hear your mother speaking about childbirth as the most painful, horrible experience of her life you will probably not grow up thinking childbirth seems like a pleasurable experience. I wonder how many times during our lives we hear comments, just like the one my son’s teacher made about birth? We don’t even remember all of them, but they go into our subconscious and create a “reality” of what childbirth is.
In Sweden the norm is to give birth in a hospital. This is communicated to us as the safest option from all areas of society: health care (especially paediatricians and OBGYNs), school, media, politicians, friends and family. Most Swedish people don’t know anyone who has given birth anywhere but in a hospital. Why would they? It’s the only government funded option in most places in Sweden.
Yes, less people die during childbirth now than when the vikings reigned in Sweden. But it’s not solely because we give birth in hospitals. We have better standards of living and access to food, we have medications that didn’t exist back then, we have access to information and an array of other things that people back then couldn’t even dream of. And one very essential thing that we have is Midwives. We care for people during pregnancy, out prenatal care is very well developed and functioning. We care from people during birth, regardless if they give birth at home or at a hospital (or in a birth center, BB Gårda). We care for the families postnatally. Swedish midwife training includes a lot of things and we have a lot of competence. And Midwives like us definitely didn’t exist during the times of the vikings. If we did, more people would definitely have survived childbirth back then.
Think back and remember, what’s your first memory connected to childbirth? How have those memories affected how you view birth?
