Unassisted Childbirth

Unassisted childbirth, or free birth, is gaining a following in America. Having an unassisted birth, abbreviated UC, means is having a natural birth without any outside help or hindrance. There are no doctors, no nurses, no midwives, no one except the mother and whomever she chooses to be with her guiding the birth of the child. The mother is free to follow her instincts, to move, to breath, and to push as she feels she needs to without any direction from an outside person. For many women choosing an UC gives them the freedom that they need to be able to bring a new life into the world in the best way for them. Most women who choose this are already in touch with their bodies, they are relaxed with the knowledge that their bodies can and will do what they are designed to do.

Some suggest that choosing an UC is not safe. But those who advocate for free birth say that it is just as safe, if not safer than having a medicalized childbirth. Childbirth itself is not inherently dangerous for a healthy pregnant woman and a healthy child. Even in the time when women died often during or after childbirth the causes were more poor living conditions and poor health due to lack of nutritious food and difficult work. Normal, healthy women rarely die due to childbirth. On the other hand the over medicalized births common in today's hospitals and some birthing centers can be dangerous for many mothers and infants. Time limits on labor, lack of food for energy, difficult positioning, and a constant storm of medical professionals and machines can cause stress on the laboring woman and prevent her from being able to relax. Interventions often have what is known as a waterfall effect, one causes the next which causes the next and so forth. The more interventions a laboring woman has the more dangerous her birth becomes and the more likely it is that she will have a cesarean section.

Choosing to turn away from the medical aspects that they feel are not needed for a normal and healthy birth many women are happy to have the option to give birth in freedom.