Mayim Bialik, When is a Home Birth a Step Too Far?
In a thoughtful piece appearing in Selfmagazine (and online at MSNBC.com), writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner looks at her own experience with childbirth, and considers things she might do differently on her second try. She also speaks with Mayim Bialik (hello, Blossom!), who is a spokesperson for the nonprofit Holistic Moms Network. I won't recap the entire article, since it's well worth reading yourself. Instead, here's a snippet of what Bialik had to say, and the bit that's setting Twitter and Blogosphere tongues wagging:
Bialik has two sons, ages 4 and 2, and with her first, tried and failed to have a home birth (the boy ended up being born in the hospital when, after 3 days of labor, she wasn't dialated enough). Why was she so set on a home birth? "We wanted to do everything we could to reduce the possibility of intervention. A culture that encourages you to let someone else tell you when to push instead of feeling it yourself scared me. I wanted to have power over my experience. Not to be a martyr but because my body was made to do this."
But are all women's bodies made to do this? the author asks. Because for some women, without intervention, the baby or the mother would die. Bialik responded to the author by email:
