I will admit I haven’t watched One Born Every Minute yet. It is a new reality birth show on Lifetime. Honestly I don’t know if I will watch it. I have it set up to record, but I know if I watch it I will spend the majority of the time yelling at the TV.
How do I know this? Because these birth bloggers watched and posted about it.
- Gina from The Feminist Breeder posted about how it shows One Unnecessary Intervention a Minute!
- Then Birthing Beautiful Ideas posted about how the show makes Natural Childbirth look crazy. She tackles the question of, What does Natural Childbirth look like anyway.
- Then The Public Health Doula posted about how sadly what this show depicts is what we see as doulas all the time.
From reading their posts, I can tell I would be yelling at the TV, just as they did. I also know it would probably hit too close to home, as I often see unnecessary interventions during birth.
I am always SO HAPPY when my doula clients change care providers to ones I know are low intervention ones. When they do I find that I am usually a lot happier attending their births and the parents are a lot more happy too! 🙂
I hope that the women who watch these shows realize this is not what birth really looks like, or at least it SHOULDN’T look like this! That by watching it will inspire them to educate themselves more!
Maybe they will download my free book, The Top Three Tips to Enjoy Your Birth and empower themselves to make the best choices for their birth and have great births.
I get so fired up when I hear people talking about how much they love this show. I can’t help but think, “WHY?” I mean…is it the lack of empowerment the “patients” have , the general dismissive tone of the hospital staff, or just the overall fear it generates to the public at large? Honestly, I just don’t get it. Worst show ever!
I watched the episode “epidural or no epidural”. I think that’s what it’s called. They did make the natural mama look CRAZY. I was frustrated that they played it up to make her look like some earthy freak. She ended up having a long labor but was able to hold her guns and have her epidural free birth. That’s the only episode I’ve watched and it will be the last.
I actually emailed my friend your book! She is planning a VBAC and I sent her links to ICAN website (which I don’t know much about), I loaned her the dvd “The Business of Being Born”. She seemed really excited about all of it, and I think your book is such a great tool. Thanks for writing it!
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I feel the same way when I watch any medical shows – in particular “Babies Special Delivery,” a Discovery Health show about NICU births. They make everything far more dramatic than it is in real life, but that is what sells. The general public is generally uneducated about most things in life medicine and birth included. People sadly like to see drama in their TV shows, so the producers will deliver. The most we can do is try to educate people as best we can. 🙂 Keep up the good work.
Thanks! Indeed education is the key. The sad thing is Moms are skipping the Childbirth Classes thinking all they need to know they can learn on TV!
My favorite quote from that show was when the Natural Childbirth Couple’s nurse, Pam, says “I feel like she is running the show in there more than I am.” I am not sure if she was referring to the mother or the doula, but either way, that’s how it should be! Thank goodness that couple had their doula with them. I couldn’t imagine dealing with a nurse like that without support.