The natural birthing community is feeling the oppressive weight of the technoreproductive tide that threatens to wash out all birth as nature designed it. I remember the Florida nurse that told me her hospital administrators told their doctors to get to a 50% cesarean rate and maintain it. Once there, the number will only rise. With these real economic pressures, medical doctors have been finding ways to lure women into agreeing on cesareans. The patient-driving rise in the cesarean rate is a myth. Its what happens in the prenatal appointment that erodes women’s confidence until agreement comes from the loss of other options.

Marketing is set up to justify these economic aims is soft served to mothers who then become convinced of the safety of surgery over nature.

Many dedicated people are trying to present the benefits of the physiological process of birth to families. Not just for the birth process, but for the making-of-a-mother process and the becoming-human process. There are hormones secreted in the brain of both mother and baby during labor that help activate our fore brains, where spiritual centers are, and when supported correctly reduce the activation of the reptilian, hind brain that operates from fear. Humanity starts with birth.

See more on birth hormones on the Childbirth Connection.
Read about the potential for estactic birth on Sarah Buckley’s blog.
See more on marketing cesareans at Shiela Kitzinger’s site.