I always maintain that the basis of a wise choice is information. A woman will not choose another type of childbirth she knows if she ignores that there are more options, just as in a restaurant we would not think of ordering a dish that is not on the menu.
I think that is largely what happens in terms of delivery care. We all assume that the way to give birth, the only one we know, is in a hospital, with shaving, enema, epidural, lying from the first moment, with artificial rupture of the amniotic bag, in many cases it will be produced by induction and in others there will be Many ballots end up in caesarean section. It is what is customary by routine, what Michael Odent calls "the industrialization of births."
According to a survey of 250 pregnant women by the Obstetrics service of the San Carlos Clinical Hospital in Madrid 80 percent of respondents prefer to have a medicalized delivery, with epidural anesthesia, before a natural one.
And it is that returning to the same as before, due to lack of information, natural childbirth is seen as an eccentricity of a few idealists and not as a more physiological way of bringing a baby into the world. Natural birth does not necessarily mean a home birth or give up epidural, one of the main concerns of pregnant women, but most do not know.
When I learned more about the survey, I explained the reason for such a high percentage in favor of medicalized delivery. Almost half of the country's pregnant women do not participate in any childbirth preparation course and one in four (24%) do not feel well informed by their gynecologist. In conclusion, they don't receive information about childbirth, they just get carried away.
They do not know that they can choose the position of birth, that there are ways to avoid episiotomy, that you can (and it is preferable) to walk during labor, that there are bathtubs to facilitate dilation and other issues on which you have the ability to choose how they want to give birth, or as they say, they can become the protagonists of their birth.
I do not intend to defenestrate medicalized delivery, in fact I would choose (in the case of giving birth again) the so-called humanized scientific birth, a more natural option, which occurs in a hospital with all medical guarantees but with the assurance that my wishes are respected.
Fortunately, there are more and more hospitals that join natural childbirth thanks to the new health plan for normal delivery care. But in any case, the pregnant woman will accept "whatever there is" if she is not informed that there are other alternatives. With an effective campaign, they will re-conduct the survey in a couple of years. Surely the results will be different.
Therefore, it is essential to start by providing complete information to the pregnant woman and the general population about the process and the essence of the birth. In it we are in Babies and more.
