Dear All Concerned,

This is a topic that interests and concerns me greatly.

I would argue that there are a number of reasons why knowledge of natural
childbirth should be an essential part of naturopathic education. One has
already been mentioned: the ability to treat woman and children at a higher
level. The other reason I can think of is that the birth experience itself is
perhaps the single most instructive example of the vis-in-action that we will
find in our medical experience. There are many things that we can learn from the
birth process that are highly applicable to every other patient and disease
process that we find.

These lessons include the observation that the fewer interventions in the birth
(ie. the vis, life process) the better the outcome. Birth, though still
considered a "normal" process, is considered within the conventional medical
world to be similar to a disease. We have to "intervene" in order to assure a
healthy outcome in a large number of cases. Birth and fever and inflammation are
really no different then in that sense. They are both natural life processes
that the conventional medical world believes they need to intervene in in order
to "ensure" a healthy outcome. But what we find, unequivocally, is that this
very idea is not true. What we find is that the more intervention in birth, the
worse the outcome, the more sequelae arise. If we actually studied it, we would
find the same thing to be true with fever and inflammation. There are a small
number of births that do require intervention (this number has been established
at about 1% by the data from high quality midwives). The same number is probably
true of inflammation and fever, infection per se.

What we learn from the birth process is to gain a truer sense and respect for
the extraordinary intelligence of the human body. I truly don't think most
people have any concept of this extraordinary intelligence who have not had the
experience of birth. One example that came up recently in a birth is that a
woman having a second child was experiencing a prolonged labor. Whereas their
first child had been born in a relatively short time everyone was expecting a
shorter labor the second time around, which is usually the case, but this one
was being prolonged far beyond even the first child's time frame. What was
happening inside the woman's body is that the umbilical cord was wrapped around
the baby's neck. The baby was not found to be under distress from its heartbeat.
But the slowness of the labor actually functioned to allow the baby to emerge
without pressure that might strangulate her. If the midwive had intervened or
told the woman to push, or if the woman had been given an epidural and hormones
to quicken the labor, the baby might have had serious harm from the umbilical
cord. instead the child was born in non-distress despite the chord problem.

To understand birth is to be face to face with nature's "laws"--they aren't
really laws I think but whatever. The difficult task we have is to learn to
trust the vis medicatrix, but also to learn to perceive it in a way that also
notifies us to the 1% of cases that require intervention. Birth is a good crash
course in these lessons, perhaps the best crash course available. Attending
births with experienced practitioners can teach us far more than any other
"acute" illness" because we have the ability to observe all of the stages in a
great detai.

I would guess that the threat of cutting the midwifery/OB programs at our
colleges has less to do with the desires of our elders and more to do with the
paranoia of our society and the irrational and life-hating orientation of the
"authorities" that result in high insurance costs, etc.

I think that the young people in our profession need to fight hard to reclaim
this portion of our profession. to refuse to let it go and to strengthen the
dialogue between midwifery and naturopathy. Naturopaths have the ability to be
amazing midwives and birth facilitators due to our expertise in effective
overall health optimization and tools for acute interventions that are work with
the vis rather than against it.

I would love to hear more ideas,

Luke Gonzales, NCNM