It has taken me so long to write about this but I guess it is better late than never…

On the 6th it was the “Orgasmic Birth” viewing here in Montreal. It was amazing!

The people, the atmosphere and of course the film…

I left home at about 2:45 with two of the local moms whom I had invited and we went out to eat before heading to the show… after eating and getting an ice cream we did one more errand and then headed to Vanier College where the film was being presented… We got there early and found a place to sit and by the time that film started the place was full… pregnant women, mothers, a few babies, doulas, midwives, midwife students, birth activists, dads and even a few doctors… the energy in the room was amazing.
While we were waiting, a woman sat down next to me… she was an older woman and we started talking and I asked her if she was in the birthing community, she said she wasn’t but that she had done her PhD in Birth many years ago and then talked about her birthing experiences, she had wanted natural births with her first daughter nearly 50 years ago she had been put into twilight sleep.. by her third child she was able to get the birth she wanted… she had taught in Vancouver and then retired back in Montreal and has not been part of the birthing scene in many years but had seen an editorial in the Montreal Gazette and wanted to check it out… The conversation we had was one that I will not soon forget.

The movie started, a few glitches of wrong subtitles and then started again… and about 1/3 of the way through there was a scene of a vacuum extraction and a c-section and the lights went up, a woman in the audience had fainted. I have to admit, seeing it that close up, on that big on screen was pretty pretty hard….

The movie started up again and when it was done it was time for the discussion panel. On the panel was Lysiane Gregoire, the president of the Groupe MAMAN,  Nicole Pino, a mom that had an orgasmic birth, Debra Pascali-Bonaro, the filmmaker, Celine Lemay, a midwife from Quebec (the one that had come here after Khéna was born and whom I had called a few weeks ago when I was bleeding) Betty Anne Davis, the co-autor of the homebirth study and midwife in Ottawa and Jack Newman, Breastfeeding Guru and pediatrician in Toronto.

the questions for the panel started out slowly but picked up soon after and the responses from the panel were amazing… Some were about the lack of midwife care in quebec, some were more technical questions or in need of opinion….

like a mom who was scheduled for a C-section for a breech baby seen on an ultrasound at 20 weeks!!! which in response one of the panelist explained that the recomendations are changing with respect to breech births because of the fact the problems that may occur in breech birth disspear by the age of two but that the rise of c-sections mean that there are more maternal deaths….  the problem now is that doctors need to change thier practices….

or a question about IV fluids in labour and how there is no standard and women are given Litres of fluid and how it effects birth weight and weight loss in babies (losing more than 10% of their weight after birth) because of excess water and then the breastfeeding relationship being threatened with supplements etc…

The questions and the discussion just kept on going until we were literally being told to leave by the campus security…

If you have the chance to get your hands on the movie, do it… it is really a great movie, well made and beautiful… and what is amazing about it is that it is being shown more and more to the birth “professionals” who have never seen a normal birth and for many it is changing their views… I ordered a copy and I can’t wait to share it also…