By John Robbins

There is one subject that has been on my mind lately. As we look at the damage that the human species has been doing to itself and to the planet, the disconnection with the natural world and with our own nature isn't hard to see. Of course, anything we can do to alleviate that disconnection and restore our conscious involvement with the forces of the earth is critically important. Considering the immensity of the problem, I have been looking at where we have our leverage, and where can we make the most impact, given the limited resources we have in energy, time and so forth. One of the places my attention is drawn to is birth itself.

In the last few decades we've seen a tremendous technological take-over of the birth process. Instead of women baring their children at home, surrounded by family and midwife, ninety-seven percent of the births in this country take place in hospitals managed by obstetricians, 80% of whom are male. All of these "medical doctor technicians," have been trained by a system that guarantees they are going to be afraid something is going to go wrong. Instead of looking at birth as a natural event, and a natural expression of life, these medical doctor technicians view it as a medical procedure/problem, and possibly an extremely dangerous one. They then move in with all sorts of interventions and technologies that make the birth much more difficult for the mother and they also block the connection in the process of birth between the mother and the baby.

For example, birth is set in motion by a complex system of hormonal communication between the baby and the mother including the hormone Oxytocin, the love hormone. It's present in women during orgasm to a level of about 50 times greater than normal. It's also present during delivery and afterwards at a level of sometimes several hundred times greater than normal. It is this hormone that sets the labor in motion because it's involved in uterine contractions with orgasm and labor. What they do in hospital environments is offer a synthetic version of Oxytocin called Pitocin that is hardly the same. It does not bring the same feelings of connection, bonding, love, affection, and so forth. There is no desire to hug, or hold. Pitocin simply makes the uterus contract.

The resulting contractions with Pitocin are also quite different. They are very abrupt, and very strong, not naturally evolving in the relationship between mother and baby. Birth ceases to be something that the mother and baby do together. It's now something that happens to both of them, rather than a shared experience. The mother doesn't experience the birth as much. Since the contractions come on very suddenly and powerfully, she doesn't have a chance to get set for them--they are completely out of her control. So she feels helpless and disempowered.

I believe that technologies in the birth process serve to take away what can be a spiritual experience. It is certainly an experience that nature has designed to prepare mothers for motherhood. It is a culmination of the pregnancy, and the beginning of a new stage of the relationship between two beings, with a tremendous amount of bonding and connection in it. There is an evolutionary reason to this as well. The species wouldn't have survived if there wasn't this tremendous source of bonding so that a mother would do anything to take care of he baby. And newborns feel that. They feel protected and sustained by that. It's part of their connection with the earth. The mother still remains a symbol of the earth for us.

In modern, high-tech birth we are seeing the whole beauty of that destroyed. I seriously believe that this is one of the key places where our connection to the earth--our bodies, our souls, ourselves--has suffered tremendously.

Midwife-oriented births, and home births have vastly better statistics; infant mortality rates are far lower and maternal fatality rates are nil. They are better on every single measure...and they are safer. In high-tech births, everyone feels out of control with technology dominating.

In some hospitals they allow nurse midwives (hospital nurses who do training in midwifery), but they primary training is as a nurse which is the medical model, and they have learned to defer to the hospital schedule, and the doctor obstetrician. They have learned, most importantly, not to trust the body. They also have learned to see the body as a problem waiting to happen.

As a society, we need to take a look at how very important the birth process is in the evolution of this society. So, that's one of the things that's been on my mind.

©1996 New Frontier Magazine. All rights reserved. John Robbins is the author of the Pulitzer nominated book, Diet For A New America. He is currently writing a book on the medical profession. He is also the founder of Earth Save, Santa Cruz, CA.