"I just kind of thought you were crazy." Epstein said. "I probably told you, 'Oh, cool,' but inside I was thinking, "That sounds terrible!" Lake had developed a fascination with midwifery after Milo's birth, and was reading up on natural delivery. She even considered becoming a midwife herself, until she realized how much schooling it would entail.
Lake said her parents also thought she was nuts for having her second son at home. Her mother had smoked throughout her pregnancies and been knocked out for her deliveries. Her father is a pharmacist. Lake said that she herself is no fan of physical discomfort. "Look, I'm not into hurting myself, and giving birth naturally is painful. But I feel like it's a connection that's really important."
Lake gave Epstein a couple of books ("Spiritual Midwifery" by Ina May Gaskin and "Birth as an American Rite of Passage" by Robbie Davis-Floyd) to persuade her to make a documentary.
"I couldn't believe it," said Epstein, confessing that she had thought of midwives as "crunchy, granola, brown rice people" -- here Lake helpfully interjected, "Birkenstocks!" -- "Yeah, Birks," continued Epstein. "But reading this book it was like, I get it! This is about everything! This is about gender, and oppression of women; this is about art vs. science. There are so many political issues wrapped up in this. I had been involved in women's issues, but didn't know there were any feminist politics in the birth world. Because you think of it just as a medical thing."
On top of the books, Epstein was persuaded to make the movie by watching Lake's home-birth footage. "I still remember the first time I watched it on that tiny LCD screen," said Epstein. "I had an immediate visceral reaction to it. I'd never seen anyone give birth like that. I'd only seen stuff you catch on TV: clinical, graphic." In Lake's movie, Epstein said, "she looked like such a goddess in the bathtub. When you watch the whole pushing stage" -- which is not in the movie, but which Lake said lasted 13 minutes -- "she looks so gorgeous and powerful and it was so sexual, and she's like 'Ooooh, aaaah.' And the baby came out and I was like, 'No wonder men are like tripped out by this. No wonder men are scared of women and try to contain this thing. Because that is a godly act I just saw!'"
According that godly act the respect it deserves is what Epstein and Lake are trying to do. They feel that American doctors cheat women of time -- the time to push a baby out naturally, or to stretch a vagina with oil so it doesn't rip or need to be cut, or to bond with their new babies -- instead electing to cut out infants efficiently, avoid lawsuits and make it home for dinner.
Lake kvelled about her home-birth experience, "We were skin to skin immediately; he breast-fed right away. My husband at the time was next to me. My son was at the park and he came home and met his brother. And after an hour and a half, my midwife, who had been by my side for the whole day, asked my permission to check the baby over. In the hospital, the baby is taken away immediately; the mother has to beg to see the baby. It was so great to have that power and that respect given to me."
Epstein agreed. "The hospitals are very blasé about it. They say the baby has to go to the nursery now, or the mom has to rest, or the baby has to go to NICU [neonatal intensive care unit]. And the baby doesn't have to go to the nursery."
Even more distressing, Epstein argued, is that in pathologizing birth, "the birth process has been manipulated to the point where now it's tipping into being more dangerous. I have so many friends with staph infections, MRSA [methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus] infections, yeast infections, infections from the catheter." Epstein was so convinced by making the documentary while she was coincidentally pregnant herself that the former skeptic decided to have a home birth herself.
Their evangelism for midwifery hits such a fever in "The Business of Being Born" that toward the end it appears to go too far, when French doctor Michel Odent discusses the oxytocin rush women get during the vaginal delivery, and how it leads to bonding between mother and baby. Monkeys who have cesarean sections, he claims, do not get this chemical crush and do not bond with their babies.
Theirs seems a perilously prescriptive attitude, dangerously close to the kind of close-mindedness Lake and Epstein feel the medical establishment shows toward midwifery. "It is a strong statement we're making at the end of the film," said Epstein. "You don't want to shame anybody's choice. But we also felt like the film would get really watered down if we just started to say 'everyone's choice is OK.'" And she stood by Odent's observation that mothers whose babes are not delivered naturally face a barrier to bonding, citing a conversation with one woman who had a C-section with her first child and a natural birth with her second. "She feels like there is always a wedge between her and her firstborn," said Epstein. "That there was a wound right from the beginning."
In the film, this harsh evaluative moment is leavened by the following footage of Epstein's planned home birth getting scarily scuttled when she goes into labor a month early. The fetus is in breech position, and Epstein is rushed to the hospital and delivers via cesarean.
"The truth is, I didn't see my son for 24 hours, and our bonding was delayed, but we did have bonding," said Epstein. "Human beings are going to care about their children and attach to them ..."
"And anyone who has a C-section loves their baby!" Lake interrupts.
But, continues Epstein, "having a cesarean is not an optimal experience and shouldn't be on the table unless it is absolutely necessary. I will tell you from personal experience that it is not a great way to become a mom: You're pumped up on morphine, you're totally out of it. You can't laugh, you can't sit up." Epstein's son is now 10 months old and thriving.
And Lake, who recently shed 25 pounds and is single again after a three-year relationship that followed the end of her marriage to Owen and Milo's father, Rob Sussman, says she has never been happier. Proud of her "reinvention" as executive producer of "The Business of Being Born," she's also still acting. Currently waiting to hear if her pilot "The Middle" will get picked up by ABC, Lake is also in an independent film, "Park," to be released later this year.
Meanwhile, she said, her sons are taking her new level of exposure in stride. Five-and-a-half-year-old Owen apparently asked before the Tribeca screening, "Mom, people don't see my private parts, do they?" but then fell asleep before his big entrance.
About the writer
Rebecca Traister is a staff writer for Salon Life.
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