Medicine vs. midwives

Switzerland's public hospitals have as many options for homeopathic remedies and natural birth as some US cities might have through birthing clinics. They tend to adhere strictly to UNICEF breastfeeding guidelines (meaning the baby goes straight to the mom to help establish feeding, no being cleaned or weighed first), where some of the private, swanky hospitals do not necessarily. There are midwives in charge of most of the birth process and doctors get to do something mostly when there are complications. You stay in hospital for a 3-5 days after a natural birth, get help with learning to take care of the baby, and then there are 5-7 more law-mandated days of a midwife coming to visit your home to keep helping and answering questions.

My point is, there is a lot of support for doing things with less medication, less surgical interventions, and less help from Nestle.

There is still, however, this divide between MDs and midwives. Some tension about who is in charge, who to believe, etc. It sort of runs along the "medical research says" vs. "hundreds of years of experience with women and with our own childbirth" divide. Which means there are often two differing viewpoints on what you should do about some problem or other.

Dang. Still no obvious right answer. :)

I like the midwife approach on may things, though. And I'm glad to get to take advantage of a system like this, where high-tech hospital doesn't have to mean grey walls and metal instruments. Where I can have aromatherapy and a tub in the birth room.

As a scientist, though, it amuses me how strongly I react to some of the literature from the midwife side. About the efficacy ("a strong effect has been shown") of Red Jasper Stones for contraction pain, or about the "energy imbalance" that the masseuse felt between my left and right sides. I bristle a little at these phrases at first. Really? What part of my energy? How do you define energy? And who has long known about the Jasper stone? How does that work exactly?
My inner skeptic comes out.

But then again, the wording is actually very similar to how medicine says things when referring to research. They use similar language to persuade you to listen to them. And on some issues, like breastfeeding vs. formula, medicine got it wrong, too in the past. And medicine hasn't done too much to explain certain things to us very well when we were having problems getting pregnant. So neither side gets my trust automatically.

And I realized that when it comes to my masseuse (probably not the Jasper stone, though!), I trust her, I like her sense of touch and body work, so maybe she does feel something that is different in my left and right sides that corresponds to the pain in my left and not right. And even if I wouldn't choose to call it energy, that doesn't mean she won't do well adjusting things. I trust her physical sense and don't need to agree with her vocabulary. That used to happen in dancing, too. I didn't necessarily see dance in the same way as a partner, but that didn't mean we didn't really connect on the dance floor.

So you can keep your baby formula (as a given better alternative) and your Red Jasper Stone, and I'll see what I can do about integrating some doctors and some midwives into this whole birthing experience.