Traditionally, birth has been a very private affair in which only the most intimate of a woman’s relations would attend the laboring woman. Grandmothers, aunts and wise women of the village whom the woman most trusted were the ones to be called. In today’s society, women have been taught to place their trust in the medical model of childbirth and in medical professionals rather than in persons with whom they are most familiar. They are taught to accept the place of birth that the medical professional chooses (because it is the medical professional’s “safe place”?). For many women this is a difficult and sometimes impossible transition, one which so impacts the sense of the familiar that patterns of labor are changed and the sensation of birth pain intensified.

From Not Among Strangers by Valerie El Halta, CPM. This article first appeared inMidwifery Today Issue 50, Summer 1999

Found this little piece and it made alot of sense ...Still thinking about it but thought i stick it up while i gather my thoughts..;)