The Myth that the hospital is necessary and helps a woman give birth is a fabrication. But, (almost) everyone believes it. It is profitable for the hospiital and reassures the woman that she is in good hands. Doctors, hospitals, and even nurses have used fear to perpetuate this and attain “compliance”. This idea has infiltrated our society from top to bottom. There is a deep fear among women about their ability to give birth to their babies. “Help! Someone help me navigate this unknown.” How soon should they get to the hospital, where someone else can take over? Are they going to do it “right?” Is it going to hurt? How soon can they get the epidural?

How is it that there are some women who instinctively understand that they CAN do it, with or without help? Where did these women get the idea that birth is NOT traumatic? Why aren’t they afraid to stay home and have their baby? Why would they want to do that? There are many reasons, way too many for this post to enumerate.
 Maybe “peace and quiet” are good enough reasons, or familiarity, and being among their own scents, their own belongings, their pets, their own safe spaces with no protocols to follow.

It is imperative that women be allowed to give birth in a way that makes them mentally comfortable. They need to feel safe above all. For most women, today, that means going to the hospital. Animal instincts for survival can cause the birth to slow down or stop if the mother feels too much stress from her environment. Mother animals do this when they feel danger is near. Therefore it has been very important for hospitals to ingrain the idea that women are safer there than at home, when in many cases that is the exact opposite of the truth. However the campaign to terrify women about home birth has been very successful. Most women give birth in hospitals in this country. It may be that they are actually at more risk there. But these statistics are hidden. As a result women have a skewed view of their relative risks at a home birth rather than at a hospital. Home is safest for healthy women.

Here is the result of a study done by Medical Care, the official journal of the medical care section, American Public Health Association. “Our a priori hypothesis was aligned with ACNM and the National Academy of Medicine; planned home births are just as safe as planned birth center births for low-risk pregnant individuals.” https://journals.lww.com/lww-medicalcare/fulltext/2024/12000/planned_home_births_in_the_united_states_have.7.aspx . For hospital statistics, the search is easy but flawed by their understandable desire to appear the safer choice.

Being pregnant is powerful and vulnerable at the same time. That is part of the package, but sometimes, women lose their power when authority figures tell them they must have their help to be safe. The vulnerable part leaps for aid. The powerful side fades into the background. When caregivers ask, “You don’t want to be responsible for something happening to your baby, do you?”
It takes a brave woman to say, “I will take responsibility for my baby and its well-being.”

Often the biggest fight begins with doctors wanting to induce labor. This is an “intervention” which often leads to a C-section. There is no denying this. In the 1960s the C-section rate was 5% in most hospitals, or sometimes even less. Now it is above 35% in many hospitals. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/cesarean_births/cesareans.htm

Even if all goes smoothly with the baby’s arrival, the next thing that happens is they take the baby away.
The idea of separating mother and baby, the lights, the shots, washing off a newborn (it is called cleaning them up), and destroying the peace of birth is wrong. It is hurtful and harmful.

Here is an article I found on Facebook: thank you, Graelynn Kolebri, for posting this thought-provoking piece, originally reposted by Kriyanna Feyalove Elumen,

“The truth about childbirth today:

Did you ever wonder why the baby’s taken across the room? Why the cord is clamped fast, the mother left shaking, the lights so bright it feels like judgment?
Did you ever feel the stillness—the eerie quiet when the father’s hands are empty, the grandmother’s not in the room, and the newborn is nowhere near a breast?
It’s not just medicine.
It’s not just policy.
It’s a ritual.
And it’s not ours.

They inject pig-derived Pitocin to mimic the hormone God designed to flood a woman’s brain in labor. But it doesn’t reach the brain. It only contracts the body.
The love doesn’t flow.
The imprint doesn’t land.
The bonding doesn’t seal.
Just pressure. Just force.

Synthetic love.

Counterfeit release.

Neurological silence.”

No wonder some mothers find it traumatizing. No wonder some babies have a hard time relaxing enough to latch on. Why has this medicalization of birth been allowed to become the norm? It is NOT normal and it is not good for the mother or baby. Sterile conditions, no familiar household germs, too much light, and unfamiliar surroundings are disorienting. Interfering with the natural rhythms of the body, such as inducing babies who are not ready to come, keeping family away, and inserting extra people who have no connection to the birthing mother are all upsetting and not conducive to a peaceful birth. If those extraneous people badger and bully her into submission to their rules and protocols, tension results.

More from the article quoted earlier:

“We are not looking at broken systems.
We are looking at precision-engineered fragmentation.
And you feel it. You’ve felt it all along.
That something was taken before you could name it.
That someone was missing even while you were being told you had “everything you need.”
But listen: the lie only wins if we let it.
And we won’t.
We are pulling the babies back to the breast.
We are restoring the mother’s voice in the birth room.
We are putting grandmothers back at the table.
We are praying over the placenta.
We are keeping them close at night.
We are burning the counterfeit and walking in the design.
This is not soft work.
It is a holy war”

• written upon the heart of almost every midwife
  THANK YOU, Kriyanna Feyalove Elumen, for posting this TRUTH from Cardinal Birth Midwifery Service https://www.facebook.com/Yourbirthmatters/ !

“Go ahead—call it extreme. History has always labeled the truth-tellers as dangerous before they were proven right.”

Keep reminding yourself of all the generations of women who have gone before you. Often these women birthed their babies alone or attended only by female relatives. They had no running water, no heating or air conditioning. They may have had to combat ants, or mosquitoes, or the elements in ways that are unheard of today, in the USA.

But one thing they did NOT have to worry about was being allowed to nurse their baby immediately. They were not separated from their infant, and no one tried to give that baby a shot of some foreign substance in the first hours after the birth. Bonding with the newborn was expected, enhanced, and encouraged. Skin-to-skin contact was the norm. Babies thrived on their mother’s milk, or failing that, some other nursing mother took on the job of feeding the baby.



May all your babies be as lucky. And may you have a memorably happy and empowering birth experience.

Copyright © 2025 Bonnie B. Matheson