Medicalization of Birth

I once was given the opportunity to ask my grandmother about pregnancy, labor, and childbirth. It was the medical treatment of her birth that I was most interested in, and I was forced to recall upon this event when reading about the medicalization of childbirth. I feel that her story truly demonstrates the essence of the treatment of childbirth as a medical event, the influences of physicians, medical instruments, and drugs in her childbirth experience.

My grandmother gave birth to her first child in the year 1955. On the night she gave birth, she had initially gone to the doctor’s earlier in the day, where she was told she wasn’t ready. Later that night, she went into labor. She and her mother arrived at the hospital, and every time the nurse would leave she would get up and walk around. She said, “It felt so much better when you were able to move around.” Within a small window of time she was (purportedly) put to sleep, but in reality the doctor had given her a drug called scopolamine. This drug actually does not put patients to sleep, but erases the memory of the incident, while the patient experiences a “twilight sleep.” This begs an unavoidable question:


If birth is proven to be an empowering, enriching experience, why steal that away from women?


In this nightmarish state, my grandmother remembered hearing voices saying "push," telling her not to scream because she’d "suck the baby back in." She also heard someone reply that she couldn't help it. She then saw the forceps which the doctor used to pull her daughter out. My grandmother said, “It was awful, and she had little red marks on her head from them for weeks.” When forceps are used without proper standard of care it can cause the baby great harm, such as nerve damage, brain damage, or a deformed head.

My grandmother regained consciousness and a nurse asked how she was feeling. She responded, “I feel as if I’m floating up to the ceiling.” I laughed at this thinking it was the side effects of the drug, until my grandmother said that the nurse checked her and had found that she was hemorrhaging. The nurse ran out of the room and called the doctor. My grandmother recalls how he came in and began screaming at the nurses, “You sons of bitches!”

My grandmother said that he called them more names than that, too. She ultimately received 5 pints of blood and was required to have a nurse massage her belly for 24 hrs. She remained in the hospital for about a week and then was instructed to remain in bed for 3 weeks.

I believe that my grandmother gave me the opportunity to examine what is considered normative medicine practice and to constantly ask "why?"

Angela