Executive Producer Ricki Lake and Filmmaker Abby Epstein follow their landmark documentary,'The Business of Being Born', | dG1fdkpUTjg4WnYwX00
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 As soon as I saw that video, I was like, oh, I'm having home
00:11 birth.
00:12 It's for me.
00:13 Outside of a hospital, how do you work with an obstetrician?
00:16 Do you have backup?
00:17 We made the business of being born,
00:18 and we found that there were still so many unanswered
00:21 basic questions.
00:23 People think about birth as this one day event.
00:27 When labor is a beautiful metaphor for life.
00:31 Women have been giving birth naturally
00:34 for gazillions of years.
00:35 I was like, I can do it.
00:36 If my mom can do it, I can totally do it.
00:38 I just believed in the strength of my own body.
00:41 It is the most empowering experience ever.
00:43 We were so excited to visit the farm.
00:45 Getting to meet Ayname, the pioneer midwife,
00:48 was like a dream come true for me.
00:50 And she just said, Alanis, I need you to reach down,
00:56 and I need you to pull up your baby.
00:57 And I said to her, I was like, no, no, no.
01:00 But see, the contractions have gotten a lot stronger.
01:03 She's like, oh, honey, this is nothing.
01:05 And all of a sudden, spontaneously, my water broke.
01:07 It just broke, and it was like, ah.
01:09 Like, you know, I mean, the heavens opened up.
01:11 I was like, this is amazing.
01:12 My husband whispers in my ear, you're 9 centimeters.
01:14 You're almost there.
01:15 They were like, too late for an epidural.
01:17 And I'm like, no.
01:19 In Brazil, the C-section rate is 93%.
01:22 Well, they're going to schedule it around their manicure,
01:24 and their pedicure, and their hair appointment.
01:25 I'm not joking.
01:26 1980, insurance companies insisted
01:29 that people do VBACs.
01:30 VBAC, VBAC, VBAC.
01:32 Then all of a sudden, no VBAC.
01:34 We went to my first appointment, and I said,
01:36 I'd like to VBAC.
01:37 And he looked at me, and he said, absolutely not.
01:39 Really makes you want to investigate.
01:42 How could people have let this happen?
01:45 The best way to stay empowered is
01:48 to avoid an unnecessary induction.
01:50 The presence of doulas using water during labor,
01:53 these things have been scientifically shown
01:55 to generate better outcomes.
01:58 My husband wasn't quite willing to go for the home birth.
02:01 We're lucky in that we live in New York City,
02:03 and there's a middle way.
02:04 It just keeps getting bigger.
02:06 That's what they do.
02:07 I want to have that experience as a woman.
02:09 I brought this life into the world, and I want to feel that.
02:13 There's no question about who had my baby.
02:15 I had my baby.
02:16 No one delivered my baby.
02:18 I delivered my baby.
02:19 You get to actually look at yourself and go, wow.
02:22 Look what I can do.
02:24 It's a woman's right to make that decision of how she's
02:28 going to give birth to her child.
02:29 And it's also her right to have the information available,
02:33 so she can make a conscious decision coming
02:35 from a place of awareness and not a place of fear.
02:40 Doulas do not deliver babies.
02:42 No, no, no.
02:42 The moms deliver babies.
02:43 The moms deliver babies.
02:44 The midwives.
02:45 Nobody delivers babies.
02:46 Pizzas are delivered.
02:48 The women birth babies.
02:50 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:54 [MUSIC ENDS]
02:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]