I went to the film because since I became a hypnotherapist I have realised that one of the most important and influential opportunities in my work is to help women have a peaceful, empowered and natural pregnancy and birth. In terms of feminism I think it is vital, and I could (and almost certainly will) dedicate a whole blog article to it at some point. Anyway, I want to tie this into my Women’s month project. I wanted to cover a woman famous to midwifery and obstetrics, but surprisingly there aren’t many. This is possibly because childbirth used to be considered, quite rightly, a completely natural bodily process that required little intervention. Midwifes were no more than local good ‘wives’, healers, herbalists and ‘wise women’ who would assist at births because they held knowledge that had been passed down through the generations about the natural workings of a woman’s body….
Then the Christian dark ages happened, sigh, and a lot of these women were accused of being witches and executed, or they lived in fear of practicing their craft. Women were now expected to suffer for 'Eve’s sin', often confined into dark rooms for their internment. An air of fear and grimness hung around childbirth and, without the old ways, deaths and complications were common. This fear grew, and soon the doctors of the age tried to come up with the cures and remedies of this ‘affliction’ of childbirth… from the middle ages to the 1950s everything was tried, from torturous birthing instruments to knocking women out with chloroform! Most of these doctors over this period were, of course, men. Once birth had become something requiring medical intervention, women were moved into hospitals to give birth, which were, until a hundred years ago, pretty unsanitary places to go. Infant and women mortality remained high, as it wasn’t until the medical industry learned of the importance of hand washing, that infection and disease could be spread at a great rate.
Fortunately things are coming back full circle and since the 1970s a more natural approach to childbirth is being accepted again. More and more women want to get control back over their own bodies and labour just as their bodies know how. Unfortunately a lot of that fear and anxiety remains, but that is something that the likes of me and my other natural birth comrades are trying to deal with!
So with not much room left, I am going to just pay a short homage to one of the first women to recognise that, in birth, going backwards in time was the way to go forwards, and that natural birth was best.
Elisabeth Bing (Born 1917)
Elisabeth Bing is of German- Jewish decent. She was educated in the UK and then fled to America during the Nazi uprising, settling in New York. She co-founded the American Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics (now Lamaze International) in 1960. Elisabeth was instrumental in bringing the Lamaze Method to the U.S. and a pioneer in educating parents for childbirth. Bing lived for many years at 164 West 79th St., and she operated a centre on the ground floor of the building, at which generations of Manhattanite parents prepared for the birth of their children under her tutelage. This grassroots organisation promoted a calmer, more mother-central approach to birth, with as little medical-management as possible; proving that medical intervention was not necessarily safer. She is quoted as saying “Physicians must learn to keep their hands in their pockets unless there are specific medical indications.” Her contribution to public health, pregnant women, safety of newborns, their partners and the family is monumental.
So this International Women's Day and Mother's Day on Sunday, give love and gratitude to the mums, mothers, midwifes, doctors and doulas who help us all all get into this world safely.
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