Searcher: "Natural" isn't natural

The documentary and reading for this week are on subjects that I have been delaying thinking about largely because the act of bearing children in general is terrifying to me. However, I’m realizing that what I was probably afraid of was the Westernized, dramatic, hospital child births I have seen on TV. Being able to see the other side (the more granola side as Ricki Lake calls it) is really enlightening.

The documentary throws into sharp contrast the Americanized form of birthing with the rest of the world and I believe that this carries through with mot Western ideas of birth. There is a constant rush to induce labor and get the baby out as soon as possible. It is strange then, that many women consider there to be “natural” ways to induce labor. I found a forum of women trading tips on  how to "naturally" induce labor. This begs the question if one has to induce labor is there anything natural about it? Not really. Even some of the women on the forum who claimed to be having a natural birth were desperately trying to induce labor. This comes from the Americanize thought that babies and expectant mothers are on a timeline. Granted, the gestation period for babies is 9 months but that is an average. Some babies will need more time and some will need less.

 

Some of these strange methods include eating unusual food, ingesting herbs, and body part stimulation. These methods are bizarre and the farthest thing from natural. Unless a pregnancy is majorly complicated babies should be born in their own good time.