There was another extreme as well. In 1963, ‘66 and ‘69 when I had my babies, there was that incredible grassroots movement to be “awake and aware” and to allow fathers into the labor room. Where I gave birth, in Brooklyn, NY in ‘63, if you could produce a marriage license and a certificate showing that you had taken a Lamaze course, the dad could come into the labor room, but not into delivery, which was, of course, an operating suite. By my 2nd and 3rd babies, fathers could come to delivery as well. I know because I took the Lamaze course with one of only three “monitrices” (the Lamaze teachers of the day)in the NY area, of whom Elizabeth Bing was one. Had I not come across Marjorie Karmel’s famous book “Thank You, Dr. Lamaze, which was sort of in the news during my first pregnancy, I would no doubt, have had childbirth experiences common to the day. I had amazing births with some docs whose curiosity got the best of them, I guess, and I was allowed to pursue my labors freely…but I sure was shaved for the first two. It was those birth experiences way back then that led me, after retirement from my industry, to my life now as Lamaze educator, doula and lactation professional; the Lamaze Six Healthy Birth Practices are for me the basis and rationale for providing a continuum of care for the birthing women that I teach and support. And yes, the ill-treatment of women, and the condescending delivery of same makes us very, very angry.

Exactly. Words to live by, no?

It is true that women demanded drugs and twilight sleep — but it’s also true that doctors would go to women’s groups and pitch twilight sleep, or doctors would encourage women to go to women’s groups and pitch it as some great thing, so that more women would have hospital births and fewer women would stay home. It was part of the “demeaning home birth and midwives” campaign of the 20s.

What happened, though, is that women lost control of the process, when they went to the hospital, and while some may have liked a “painless childbirth” (or at least, being unable to remember the pain of birth), many others didn’t like being on the assembly line. It’s one thing to choose something; it’s another to have it forced on you because you have no other choice. It may be that originally, twilight sleep was a choice; but once it became standard in hospitals, just like other drugs and procedures even today, many women had no choice BUT to submit to it, even when they did not want it. My mom was given general anesthesia with all 4 of her births, all without consent, and with her last (me) she literally begged them not to knock her out because she was planning on getting her tubes tied, and she wanted to know what birth actually felt like. They still knocked her out. And gave her a pubic shave and an episiotomy. All without consent.

You are right, be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.