A Birthing Experience

I have never been able to witness a birth first-hand, so I am going to reflect on what I have been told by my parents about my own birth. I am the second child of my mother's and was carried full term. My older brother was born via cesarean after almost 12 hours of labor. My mother wanted to have a natural childbirth free of medications or surgeries if possible. I was born in a hospital in Baltimore, MD after almost 12 hours of labor. The main story my mother has told me over and over again is that she was very upset and scared towards the end of her labor because her doctor had to use forceps for me to be delivered. I also know that my mother was relived to find out I was "only" 10 pounds because my older brother was 12 pounds. My personal thoughts on childbirth are that everyone has a different experience. I think that every woman has to decide what is right for her body and her baby and should feel accepted by the people around her for her decisions. I think that childbirth a lot of times is the first glimpse into how a person will parent their child. I know for myself, my mother had as natural a childbirth as she could in the early 1980's and her parenting styled mimicked her births in that way.
I explored childbirth in the Philippines. I was interested in this country because I lived there for 3 years when I was in elementary and middle school. I always love to learn more about that country through adult eyes. What I read said that there is often a lot of superstition practices throughout a woman's pregnancy and also tied to the use of birth control in this country. There were two main options for the actual childbirth. The first was government run hospitals for the nearly 40% of urban poor or at home childbirth. I also read that childbirth can be seen as a family event and there is not much privacy for a laboring woman. Every female relative is usually present at a birth and throughout the labor. What I read of the government run hospitals for much of the urban poor is that you need to have cash and family members to care for you during your labor. The cash is so that you can pay for the materials that are needed for you labor or baby. I also read that in some government run hospitals, sanitary practices are not the same as those in the United States. One midwife described a doctor running surgical instruments under tap water before using them on a mother and having 4-5 mothers laboring in a group bed at the same time. Researching births in other countries is interesting to me because even though people birth different ways and may not have all the luxuries we have in the US, woman still have beautiful experiences that end with beautiful children.