Digital Filmmaking

A Little More History on the Making of BIRTH

February 24, 2009 February 24, 2009 As I mentioned in an earlier BLOG, through the years, I have worked as a childbirth educator, a writer, and most recently a documentary filmmaker. My reason to make my documentary, BIRTH, is because I want to reach more people faster than is possible through print journalism. I want to educate, inform and empower women and men, the young and the old, that childbirth is a natural event.  Unfortunately, in the United States, childbirth is a big business for profit filled with unnecessary medical intervention, high-tech machines and drugs, at the expense of mothers and their babies. My motivation to become a childbirth advocate, writer and ultimately a documentary filmmaker, started with my first birth experience. When I read a book by Marsden Wagner, M.D., a natural childbirth advocate, a scientist, and former Director of Women's and Children's Health at the World Health Organization, it motivated me not to wait a minute longer to make my documentary about childbirth. In Dr. Wagner's, Born In The USA: How A Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed To Put Women and Children First, he shares that the state of obstetrical care is in crisis. My documentary is 30 minutes long and explores the benefits of natural childbirth and also the dangers mothers and babies face in today's high-tech and drug-filled maternity care environment. Most of the mothers in the documentary were given drugs and had medical interventions during the birth of their first babies, and subsequently birthed their babies naturally. In addition, childbirth experts also give valuable information and enlightening insights about childbirth.