After a 32-hour labor-the first 20 at home, then 12 at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif.-Jill Dobkin, 35, finally gave birth to her first baby the way she had always imagined, naturally and without drugs.
“Sure, it was really painful,” she said in her Menlo Park, Calif., back yard, with 4 1/2-month-old Bennett on a knee. “But for some reason I just wasn’t nervous because I felt in control.”
Being in control meant knowing exactly what was going on, sending a birth plan to hospital staff in advance to make several points crystal clear: She didn’t want IV drugs or fluids, induction, episiotomy or medication.
In the last decade women have become more likely to opt for epidurals-anesthetic injected at the base of the spinal cord-and other strong medications to control pain, according to area health workers. Natural-birth proponents say the fear of pain symbolizes the materialism of the decade, which has produced a generation of selfish, wimpy mothers who are more concerned with their own comfort than with producing the healthiest baby possible.
“There are a lot of yuppies who have a materialistic approach to life,” said Cynthia Care, a Cupertino, Calif.-based teacher of the Bradley natural-childbirth method and birth assistant, whose two daughters were born without drugs. “It’s like, `How can I do this the easiest way possible?’ It’s a shallow attitude. They want to sit and do their nails and watch reruns.”
Natural childbirth became popular in the early ’70s, along with the early women’s movement, when women sought more control over their bodies.
Many natural-birth proponents believe women have handed control of their bodies back to the male-dominated medical establishment. They say medications are used to induce women to give birth on the schedules and whims of the medical establishment whose priorities are speed, efficiency and the threat of potential lawsuits and therefore are often at odds with the interests of the mother and her newborn.
Many doctors say advances in anesthesia, such as epidurals, have meant they are almost risk-free, so more women are willing to use them. They no longer feel the pressure of the early feminists to endure the pain because it was in some way ennobling.
“Something that bothered me (about the natural-birth movement) was that women considered themselves failures if they used medications,” said Roger Spencer, program director for residency, training, obstetrics and gynecology at Valley Medical Center.
“They were heavily invested in the idea of no drugs. But by and large these drugs have minimal impact on the fetus.”
Other health-care specialists say the epidural allows women more control in childbirth, not less. They say the natural-birth movement had an important influence on some more restrictive hospital procedures: Fathers are included in the delivery, and delivery rooms are more like homes.
But along with the feminization of the hospital rules and environment, doctors say, most women also want pain-free births. And while expectant parents still come to childbirth classes to learn breathing and relaxation techniques, the goal is no longer an unmedicated, natural birth.
Jill Dobkin chose to have Bennett in a hospital setting but felt she needed backup to stick to her no-medication guns. She took along Cynthia Care, her Bradley method instructor, as natural-birth advocate in the hospital setting, lest Dobkin be forced to take drugs when she was weak with pain.
“The technology is being used in an inappropriate way,” said Care, who, like Dobkin, believes that medications, although sometimes necessary, are overused and that this has detracted from women’s power and self-esteem.
Seventeen years ago, Carol Rudisill’s first son was delivered by Caesarean section. At home in May, Rudisill, 40, had a second son with no drugs and with the help of her husband, a midwife and several friends she had invited for the event. Eight-pound, 2-ounce Liam was born after seven hours of labor and a high-risk pregnancy.
The threat of rupture because of her previous C-section, her fight with multiple sclerosis, her age and a breech-position baby until a few days before delivery made doctors who examined her argue strongly for a medicated, hospital delivery. Instead, Rudisill hired a Palo Alto midwife who taught her to turn her breech baby into the correct position through exercise.
“It was just so natural to be at home,” said Rudisill, a San Jose quiltmaker. “I was squatting at the end of the bed when he came out. As soon as he was out, in one motion the midwife scooped him up and put him on my chest. I was amazed. I said, `Oh! There’s my baby!’
“A male doctor is like a god in the hospital. Here I have my power; no one is going to take it away from me.”
