THE POPCORN REEL FILM REVIEW/"The Business Of
Being Born"
U.S. Childbirth in Hospitals:
Where A Woman's Delivery of a Baby Isn't
Owned or Experienced By Her
By Omar
P.L. Moore/January 9, 2008
Midwife Cara Muhlhahn guides Mayra through the
birthing process at Mayra's home in New Jersey with the assistance of her
significant other David Radzinski, in Abby Esptein's documentary "The Business
Of Being Born", which was a sensational hit at last year's Tribeca Film Festival
and opened in New York's IFC Center today. (Photo: Paulo Netto)
"What are the basic needs of women in labor?",
asks OB/GYN Dr. Michel Odent early on in Abby Epstein's documentary "The
Business Of Being Born", which opened today in New York City for an exclusive
one-week run at the IFC Center in Manhattan. Dr. Odent attributes the lack
of midwives in the U.S. as evidence that those basic needs for expecting mothers
are overlooked, ignored or not cared about by hospitals. And in Ms.
Epstein's beautiful and empowering film, statistics cite the percentage of
natural or home births in the United States drastically falling, from a peak of
95% in 1900 to just 1% in 1955, and 53 years later, home births are still all
but an anomaly, unchanged at 1%, as compared to Europe and Japan where more than
70% of home births occur. It is this imbalance that naturally prompts Ms.
Epstein to ask, "why?", and "Business" vigorously explores this and many other
thought-provoking questions with numerous experts like Dr. Odent and midwives
like Cara Muhlhahn, a certified midwife for over 1o years.
The film also tracks the pregnancies and birthing process for several women
living in New York City and New Jersey, with expecting mothers Mayra, Jen and La
Juana as they give voice to their hopes and fears about the process. Each
have supportive husbands who take an active role in assisting their wives as
they experience pains that men couldn't begin to have in their wildest
nightmares. Ricki Lake, who executive produced "Business", was the impetus
for the documentary as in it she reveals that her first delivery, at a hospital,
was full of interventions by doctors and other delivery staff, from being stoked
up with anesthetics and other sedative drugs that made her very uncomfortable,
painful and "crazy". She was determined, she says, never again to
experience the kind of trauma that came with her experience and wanted to seek a
quieter, home-based birth for her second delivery, a birth where she could have
a peaceful and unique experience in an environment not fraught with panic,
anxiety and several doctors barking commands at her. Ms. Lake's own home
birth is shown, and the director Epstein is encouraged by her friend Lake to do
the same after the filmmaker becomes pregnant during filming, which took place
over a two-year-period.
"The Business of Being Born" is strongest when investigating the myths used to
demonize midwives and the harm done to women and their soon-to-be-delivered
babies when the women lie in a prone position on their backs to give birth, and
when chronicling the history of birthing in the U.S. from the late 1900's
onwards and confronting the fears and stereotypes women endure in order to
justify having births in hospitals as opposed to at home. The film is
even-handed in its exploration, not demonizing hospitals in the way one might
expect in other documentaries, but calmly offering persuasive reasons why home
birthing should be more common again in the United States, citing among other
things, its far cheaper cost and more comfortable process for the woman
experiencing it. Inevitably as noted in "Business", birthing is a
billion-dollar business for hospitals and insurance companies, which the
filmmaker suggests through interviews is perhaps why the process of home
birthing via midwives is discouraged or under-funded or supported.
Parts of Ms. Epstein's documentary are disturbing but nonetheless indispensable to the process of educating women and men to birthing and the history of the drugs that women have been given when in U.S. hospitals over the centuries, with some of the most unsettling episodes featuring women in the early 20th century enduring what would amount to assaults on their person and by extension their babies. "Business" also offers eye-opening revelations about today's culture of birthing, and the "designer birth" syndrome, fueled primarily by those celebrities who have had unnecessary Caesarean-sections and instant tummy-tucks thereafter. "I don't have big enough parties to go to as those women do," says the expecting Mayra, or words to that effect, when she talks about the women in New York City who schedule their births, in the same way that Victoria Beckham scheduled both of hers around her world-famous husband's soccer season schedule, according to the film. One or two midwives comment about a disturbing fashion trend of sorts, which makes having a C-section seem like having "simple" plastic surgery, the kind many women have for breast augmentation or for increased fullness of the lips (via collagen injections.) "One C-section is fine, but it's three, four or five when significant injury and complications for the woman," says one midwife practitioner. The trivialization of giving birth -- treating it like assembly-line childbirth, or as a boutique notion is jarring, and "Business" depicts this phenomenon as misguided chic, shrouded in and by a profound lack of education of the woman, some of whom desire such a technique after birth, a keeping-up-with-the Beckhams game for all aspiring mothers to play. (Note: It would be interesting to see research and statistics on whether post-partum depression in women correlates more appreciably in relation to the Caesarean section birth or births in hospitals, versus births at home.)
For all the powerful and sometimes disconcerting facts, figures, experiences and revelations, "Business" is also uplifting and triumphant, with its fascinating facts giving rise to a belief that home births help restore the autonomy of the woman over her birth and claim the crucial initial bonding moments with her newborn that the hospital birth experience, with its doctors eager to move on to the next birth or to be "home in 20 minutes", doesn't afford. Madeleine Gavin edits Ms. Epstein's documentary (which has some twists) in a cheeky way at times, with inter-spliced stock footage of actual films on birthing techniques and John Cleese comedies which ridicule or satirize the approach to hospital birthing, with male doctors clamoring around a prone woman in the most invasive manner, providing or reinforcing further discomfort to the process of birthing for the woman. The editing tone and pace evokes that in films like "SiCKO" and other documentaries, but there is far less tongue-in-cheek in "Business", which is a vital, eye-opening education for all.
"The Business Of Being Born" is not rated.
It features scenes of childbirth, and the female nudity one would expect in a
child-birthing situation. The film also contains a brief, two-second
glimpse of a Caesarean section. The film's duration is one hour and 27
minutes. "Business" opens in Los Angeles on January 16, in San Francisco
on January 18, and in Seattle on February 29, for exclusive one-week theatrical
runs in each city.
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