It's Not Easy Being Green: A Mission to Shrink my Carbon Footprint

Last night I watched Ricki Lake's documentary, "The Business of Being Born."  Highly recommended for anyone who is ever going to have a baby, knows someone who might ever have a baby, or already had a baby but is interested in how the whole American birth thing has gotten pretty out of whack...

(I remember Ricki Lake back when she was new and fresh, in the pre-Springer days, when her talk show was just fun and happy and great to watch, before the entire genre went to hell in a handbasket and hell decided it didn't want them either and spat them out into some strange limbo existence...)

Lake has had two children--the first in the "typical" American hospital way, wherein she went in and didn't progress as the doctors hoped, got Pitocin, got epidural, got cascade upon cascade of intervention until she wound up with a highly medicalized delivery. Then her second time she went an entirely different route, home birth with a midwife.  She made a documentary about her research, a really good and balanced (okay, biased balance, but definitely fact-based and presenting differing opinions) look at what happens in hospitals in this country with the second worst maternal and infant mortality rate, and in this the only developed country where 70%+ of births aren't midwife-attended.  (With numerous interviews with my favorite birth activist, Robbie Davis-Floyd; check out her articles at davis-floyd.com/ShowPage.asp )

Put it in your Netflix queue, or rent it at thebusinessofbeingborn.com/ ...

peace,
J
Very good.