For the past year and a half since Mikey was born, I have pondered food. Today as I contemplate having a second child, I am seeing a similarity between the food industry and the birthing industry. Strange, I realized, but read on.
Mikey was born in a hospital by cesarean section. While in labor but before my surgery, I was given everything on the modern medicine's menu. I remember saying, "Look sweety, do you see that, the lights are rabbits."Before I started taking food seriously, I thought it was normal to feed children Gold Fish and Cheerios, but now I don't think that these foods are really food at all.
Like food, I am starting to question how normal it really is to give birth in a hospital. Having a baby isn't an illness. I am starting to question the whole concept of going to the hospital just like I started to question what I was feeding my baby.Our nation started having babies in the hospital around the same time we started eating processed food (early in the 20th century). How did my great grandmother give birth to my grandmother and all those women before her? And, are women better off in the hospitals today then they were before hospitals? Is there less infant mortality now or then? From what I've read, we are certainly not healthier eating chips, soda and other processed foods. Are we better off giving birth in a hospital or not?
Giving birth without a doctor or hospital wasn't even a consideration for me back when Mikey was born, but now that I have had the hospital experience, I am not sure that I want to repeat it. There are plenty of recent reputable studies out there saying we shouldn't be eating most of what is being sold to us in the grocery store, but it is still there ready to take our money. Are we just going to hospitals to give birth because that's just what we do or is it actually the right choice?Although it seems like it's a far fetched comparison, could giving birth in the hospital be equally unhealthy as buying processed foods at the store? Are hospitals, like food companies, taking the control from the mother and putting it in the hands of the so-called experts?
When I didn't know better, I thought, "Why would all this food be sold if it were harmful to my health?" Well, from the books that I’ve read, it's quite clear that no one is looking out for me. We are sicker as a nation then ever before and it is in short because of these replacement foods.Today, I think about hospitals the same way that I use to think about the aisles and aisles of industrialized food. Hospitals know best. They are first and foremost looking out for me and my interests. However, since the traumatizing birth of my son, I have started to doubt this unscrutinizing faith in hospitals. Why did the birth of my son take me five months to physically recover and two years to mentally recover?
Are hospitals becoming too big of a business to do what's in the best interest of us moms?