nursingforsocialjustice

I have four children. Two of them were born in hospital, and two of them were born at home. After my first experience of birthing a baby in a hospital, I made a very deliberate decision to never again birth a baby in a hospital. My success rate is 50%. What does this mean? 2 of them were born at home. My second and fourth child were birthed in the comfort of my home, attended by 2 midwives. My third child was pre-term, thus, the risk of medical issues requiring medical intervention led to a hospital birth. Also, a midwife, but with the additional support of clinicians in a hospital. My personal preference, home birth. That was my choice as my partner and I are autonomous decision-makers about our health.

At the time that I made this decision I recall putting my plans out to the universe. I put my plans out there to the big world of social media outlets and the outrage began to flow from people that I barely knew. A friend of a friend very publicly let me know the anger they felt that I would risk the health of my baby to reduce my discomfort of a terrible hospital experience. Memories can be fuzzy, especially 9 years later, but I can recall the words to the effect of, “this is a medical procedure, why would you risk doing it at home?” I recall my bewilderment and shock. I was taken aback by someone framing childbirth as a, “medical procedure”. How curious that birthing a child is considered a thing that I doctor does to a person. Isn’t it strange, I thought, that someone would view a natural human process, as a medical procedure. And, in reflection of that more than a decade later, I realize, there are many a human process that have been taken up and conceptualized as and defined by the medicine as a medical procedure.

The most recent human experience I have reflected on as being taken up by medicine is death and dying. Isn’t it interesting that a natural human process, something that will happen to all of us, something that has been happening to human beings forever and that will happen forevermore, has become medicalized? And so, I think about how this happens for health in general. I think about how this has happened for mental illness, within the context of trying to understanding the emergence of the anti-psychiatry movement and madness studies. I think about this within the context of pathology and the process of pathologizing, as a means of helping (maybe?) but as a means of capturing somethin as illness, to make it something that belongs to an individual and something treatable. Do you ever wonder about if we can escape neoliberal ideals of efficiency and individualization that very strongly and unwaveringly drive everything? I do.

What is the role of nursing (as a process) and nursing (as a discipline) in caring for people and populations as transitions happen in life? What other natural human processes have been taken up and medicalized? Are we in a better place as a society because of it? And, how can nursing perspectives change that?

Love,

Michelle D.