Childbirth In Your Life and Around the World

 Personal birthing experience. 

The birth of my first child is a memory to live by. It all began on the morning of August 12, 1994. A day etched into my mind. My husband was thousands of miles away, and I was all by myself. The morning was bright and beautiful; I woke up at about 6 a.m to get ready for work. As I stood up from the bed, I begin to feel some sharp pain around my waist. I thought to myself, it is nothing. As soon as I stepped into the bathroom, “the water broke.” I didn’t know what to do. I called out to my friend, who I was sharing the apartment. She was not married and never had a baby. She, too, was confused. In the confusion that ensued, she remembered that the guy who rented who owns the house lives a block from us. She ran to the house and called his wife. She came and put me in the car and took me to the hospital. Luckily, the hospital was a stone throw from the apartment. The doctor, who happens to be a family friend, met us by the door and took over. Before I could get on the delivery bed, the baby was already pushing hard to get out. My doctor being a lively character, jokingly screamed, your baby is about to fall out! and quickly said, don’t worry, he is in good hands. Just a little push and out he comes. Then I blotted out Miracle!. To this day, he is called Miracle.

In comparison to my birth, I had the privilege of having my kids in a controlled environment. I had all my three children in the hospital because I live in the city. Unlike my mom, who lives in the village. All her children were delivered at home with the help of the traditional birth attendants. The memory and the emotions I displayed in August remain fresh until this day. All of the things were going through my mind as relates to the well being of the child. The other two were not as dramatic as the first child. Some of the things that I said that day as become a joke thrown around in the house till now.

The majority of women in the United States give birth in hospitals. 98.4 percent of births in the United States takes place in a hospital. This is not surprising considering the advancement of medicine in the western world. At the same time, I am not surprised to learn that most births outside the United States are outside controlled settings. In developing countries, most births are “home birth.” Most women tend to stick with traditions of child delivery.

Maternal depression is deemed a risk to children’s socioemotional and cognitive development (Bernard-Bonnin, 2004). Women of childbearing age with postpartum depression experience high levels of social morbidity and depressive symptoms that are often unrecognized and untreated (Bernard-Bonnin, 2004). Mothers predisposed to depression are fragile during the first months postpartum. 

The impact on the child of maternal postpartum depression is not confined to infancy but can also be seen in toddlerhood, preschool age, and school age.  

One of such consequences is “Behavioral Development.” Several studies show that school-age children of depressed mothers exhibit diminished adaptive functioning, such as internalizing and externalizing problems.

Another consequence of maternal depression is “Cognitive development.” The large sample studies on maternal postpartum depression, according to Bernard-Bonnin, (2004), all agreed that maternal postpartum depression would harm a child’s cognitive development.

Maternal postpartum depression also negatively impacts a child’s “academic development.” It will not be farfetched to believe an association between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children and maternal mental health.

How a child is born can affect child development. Studies have shown that stress hormones that help babies adapt to living outside are released during birth. How one is born can affect the number of stress hormones released at the time of delivery.

 Vaginal delivery has been shown to have the highest presence of birth signaling hormones. A negative birth experience affects not only the mothers’ health but that of the babies too. A negative birth experience leads to “lower quality of life, lower self-rated health, persistent memory of pain, and the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or its symptoms” (Bernard-Bonnin, 2004). 

 A child’s future wellbeing, future educational attainment, prospective mental health, and future happiness is tied to the quality of the bond forged between the child and the primary caregivers in the hours, days, months, and years after birth. 

Women Delivery in Ghana

The majority of Ghanaian women deliver at home with a traditional birth attendant and are referred to the hospital in complicated labor cases. Although a traditional birth attendant attends most deliveries, most women prefer to deliver with a health professional. Obstacles to receiving professional health care include “high costs, inadequate transportation, long distances to health care facilities, and poor road conditions” (Adatara et al., 2020). Some women are ashamed to go to a hospital for lack of the right clothes, preferring to have their babies at home where their poverty is concealed(Adatara et al., 2020).

Since men make the most decision in Ghanaian society, in labor and delivery, decisions are made by husbands and heads of the households in partnership with the birth attendant and sometimes a fortune-teller (Adatara et al., 2019). During labor, the husband will usually decide where to deliver. A woman in labor is deemed unfit to think intelligibly due to the pain, although the household head will have the final say (Adatara et al., 2019). Oftentimes, pregnant women, who lack the means to get to the hospital, do make decisions on where to deliver .without the consent of their husbands (Adatara et al., 2020).

                                          References

Adatara, P., Strumpher, J., & Ricks, E. (2019).

Cultural beliefs and practices of women influencing home births in rural 

     Northern Ghana. (2019). Retrieved from 

     https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6556529/

Adatara, P., Strumpher, J., & Ricks, E. (2020, August 28). Exploring the 

     reasons why women prefer to give birth at home in rural northern

     Ghana: a qualitative study. Retrieved from    

     https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/

     10.1186/s12884-020-03198-y

Bernard-Bonnin, A.C. (2004). Maternal depression and child development.

     Paediatrics & Child Health, 9(8), 575–583. 

    https://doi.org/10.1093/pch/9.8.575