SO, all i can say is that childbirth is messed. up. seriously. this book was completely fascinating and i found myself after every chapter staring out into space in utter shock and saying "wow". after learning just how screwy the human race has gotten over childbirth it really truly IS a miracle babies make it out alive. from the midwives in the middle ages telling women to "sit in cow manure to help with infertility" to the doctors injecting hormones into women now it comes out making you feel that in reality we are still ginny pigs when it comes to this stuff. here are some of the horrifying facts that i am privileged (i guess) to remember.1. men believed that their "seed" was all that was needed to make a baby. many doctors injected semen into vases thinking that a baby would grow. they did this for THOUSANDS of years. up to the 1800's.
2. the first forceps used were from a family of barbers (back then barbers and doctors were pretty much the same) who hid them from everyone in hopes of getting more business. even though the end results weren't that impressive (most babies died because of crushed skulls) they became famous among the wealthy. they were able to keep the forceps a family secret for generations. too bad it's still not a secret.
3. men just screwed everything up. holy crap did they have it ALL. WRONG. i can't even begin to list all the messed up things that they wanted and DID to pregnant women. CRAZY!
4. black slaves in the south "volunteered" for medical experiments on female related issues. medical advancements were made on vaginal wall tears, c-sections and forceps removal. don't get in a tizzy about that just yet. the slaves were used in the south while the irish immigrants in the north "volunteered" as well. yeah. it seems they really didn't like those irish as well.
5. the whole section on cesarean sections was disturbing. far to many stories of women giving themselves c-sections or the pictures from the 15th century of women getting c-sections on their death bed was pretty horrible. not to mention the huge debate as to the medical necessity now a days for the procedure. i honestly believe it's way over used.
6. then there are the drugs. holy cow, the drugs! from the twilight births (where you were put in a straight jacket to protect yourself, put in a padded bed and drugged until you had your baby. then you wake up with a perfect, clean little baby. yeah, that was a HUGE hit with women) to the whole DES scandal. (DES was a hormone that claimed to prevent miscarriages. it was really high doses of estrogen. so you were basically taking the equivalent of 900 packs of birth control pills in the 9 months of pregnancy. it later caused infertility, all sorts of cancer in the vagina and killed thousands of women who were the fetuses of mothers taking DES. the sick thing is, it was given to chickens to plump them up in the 50's but when the workers of the chicken factory who ate those chickens started getting larger breasts -in men and women- and became infertile, they banned it in chickens BUT it was still given to pregnant women until the 70's! what. the. crap.) not to mention X-ray machines that were used over and over and over during pregnancy leaving the mothers with cancer and the babies with deformities.
7. did i mention that we really are just ginny pigs to all these medical advancements? yeah, 'cause we are.
8. then there are the women who call themselves "free birthers". these are the women who have no medical intervention, deliver the babies themselves and then plant their placentas in the back yard. some of these women have had babies who have died at home during delivery yet they claim that their babies would have died anyway. medical help or not. that is another talk of controversy.
whatever the choice a woman makes about pregnancy it really has come out of some sort of influence, whether it's from the media, culture or family. childbirth, in my humble opinion, will always and forever be messed. up. the end.
