Outdoor homebirth is about to get a reality TV show. It’s a marriage made in heaven!
Homebirth advocates are narcissists and reality TV is made for narcissists who are so desperate for attention that they are willing to be ridiculed and/or humiliated on TV.
The only surprise is that it took this long.
Homebirth advocates like to pretend to themselves and others that this is how birth happens in nature (no, across all times, places and culture, birth was not outdoors and not attended by men), that birth is so deeply personal and “sexual” that a couple must experience it alone (really, then why are you broadcasting it for all the world to see?) and that it is safe. The entire practice would be nothing more than a punch line were it not for the fact that homebirth kills babies, increasing the risk of death anywhere from 3-9X higher than comparable risk hospital birth.
Homebirth is an affectation of the privileged and is also, in its own self-absorbed, narcissistic way, startlingly racist and classist. Homebirth advocates like to imagine that women in nature, particularly women of color, did not fear childbirth, simply squatted down by the Congo River to give birth, and immediately returned to their fabulously healthy paleo lifestyle.
It is an affectation of the privileged because you have to have easy access to hospital birth in order to give meaning to refusing it.
It is racist and classist because the producers of Born in the Wild could have gone to a myriad of destinations including parts of Africa and South East Asia to see what birth in the wild REALLY looks like. But those women are black and brown, and fear childbirth because they die in agony and in droves. Instead they filmed privileged white women in the faux “wild” complete with a medical team stage left, as well as a detailed transfer plan and hospitals on notice.
According to the World Bank, the life time risk of maternal death is the probability that a 15-year-old female will die eventually from a pregnancy related cause. In the US where modern obstetrics is available the risk of death due to pregnancy and childbirth over a lifetime is 1 in 1800. In contrast, a teenager in Cameroon has a 1 in 34 chance of dying of a pregnancy related cause over her lifetime and women in Chad have a 1 in 15 chance of dying.
You can bet that those women aren’t crowing about the virtues of birth in the wild.
Consider this rural Indian woman who braved a raging river in her 9th month of pregnancy in order to give birth in a hospital:
Yellavva used dried pumpkins and gourds as bouyancy aids to swim nearly a kilometre from her river island village to safety in southern Karnataka state.
She … wanted her baby born safely – there is no medical centre in her village and she did not want to give birth at home…
When Yellavva crossed the river last Wednesday, she says its swirling waters were rising 12 to 14 feet and even experienced swimmers would have hesitated to get into the water at the time.
“I was scared. But it was for my child that I got the determination to get over all my fear and cross the rising river waters,” she told BBC Hindi.
Yellavva was helped by her father, brother and cousins who swam with her.
“My brother went in front. I was next. My brother and cousins had tied dried hollowed pumpkin and bottle gourds around me so I was afloat,” she said.
Her brother Lakshman, who held on to the rope tied to the gourds and pumpkins, said: “My father was right behind her. Normally, the distance is a little more than half a kilometre. But, it took us about an hour to get her across. As we reached mid-point, the current was very very strong.”
The heavy current pushed them far downstream, making the distance they swam nearly one kilometre.
Birth in the wild (the real wild, not the made up fantasy of the TV show) is so deadly to babies that this desperate women risked her life, and her family risked their lives to give one baby the best chance of survival.
In contrast, Born in the Wild tells the stories of privileged, well off narcissists who RISK their babies’ lives for bragging rights and a chance to appear on TV. Born in the Wild is a racist, classist slap in the face, to the millions of women who have no choice but to give birth in the wild, and face the astronomical neonatal and maternal mortality that entails.
Born in the Wild is nothing more than an ugly and dangerous stunt.
Perfect for reality TV!
Parts of this piece first appeared in June 2014.
