The Business of Being Born

I just finally saw The Business of Being Born. Also known as “that movie that you can see Ricki Lake giving birth in.” There are about seven absolutely gorgeous natural births in the film… a must see for everyone. As I’m writing this in a coffee shop in the West Village I just overheard a woman in huge white fur boots say, “I had a friend who planned her C-section around her child’s horoscope, she didn’t want her kid born on the cusp of Taurus and Gemini!” That woman needs to see this movie.

My only fault with it was that I felt it didn’t give enough context for some of the experts. (Ina May Gaskin, the godmother of Midwifery, is in the film and I love her- Go buy her books!) Dr. Michel Odent who was also a pioneer in natural birthing (specifically water birth) is on camera a lot and goes on about at length about oxytocin being the hormone of love and I’m into that, but I didn’t like that filmmaker Abby Epstien, who had a premature birth in a hospital (as I did) in the film, is made to believe that she didn’t “bond” with her baby, whom she clearly adores, because it wasn’t a home birth. I call BS on that.

I was also happy to see in the film the amazing midwife Cara, who did the home births of almost all of my friends’ babies, including my friend C’s twins. Twins birthed at home- I am still in awe.

This is good quick doc about Natural Birth, with references:
ftp://ftp.uu.net/.vol/2/government/etext-poli/Spunk/texts/pubs/openeye/sp000946.txt