Listening To Your Sisters

Have you all seen the Birth Survey? I think it's brilliant. I wish everyone had access to information about how women feel about health care providers, because that's a good indicator about how you will feel about your health care provider!

Yet, I also sort of wish that the Birth Survey did more. I worry that surveys like this will only collect people on the far ends of the spectrum. Those who had wonderful experiences and those who had terrible ones. I also worry that folks may feel good about their experiences, even when their experiences could have been far, far better. For example, most people don't even know that a newborn exam could be done while the baby is in a parent's arms. Most don't realize that you don't have to put a screaming baby on a scale immediately. Most don't get the option of food during labor. Most who receive medication don't have a nursing staff that helps with position changes to facilitate progress during an otherwise sedentary labor.

What I would like to see is accurate reporting by health care providers of their statistics. How many of their clients receive epidurals? How many have surgical births? How many VBACs? How many trials of labor? How many women show up later with complications from labor or surgery? What's the breastfeeding initiation rate of their clients? What is the rate at which their clients continue breastfeeding past 3 months?

These are the kinds of things that mattered to me when I was pregnant. I wanted to know what my health care provider would do in the event of surprises in my labor. I wanted to trust that I would be given honest options, that I would be in control of the decisions, that I would be given accurate information. And while this kind of care often leaves women feeling more satisfied with their birth experience, I also know that there are lots of women who don't even realize they can ask these questions or that options exist for them. I know that sometimes women feel like the frustrations they experience in their labors are their own fault - that their bodies don't work properly - rather than the result of a flawed system or a defensive health care provider.

So, bravo for The Birth Survey. And I hope that more can be done to create transparency in the health care system, so that women can truly be informed, and that they will have as much control as possible ove their reproductive lives.