• Write about a personal birthing experience. It can be your own birth, your child’s birth, or one you took part in. What do you remember about the event? Why did you choose this example? What are your thoughts regarding birth and its impact on child development?

I have not given birth. I do not know much about my own birth, except that I was HUGE and my mother gave birth to me vaginally. I have a very close friend that gave birth two years ago, and I would like to share some of her story. She worked throughout her entire pregnancy. We worked together at a KinderCare Learning Center in Missouri, and I was the first person other than her husband to know she was pregnant. She kept it a secret from her family and our employers for several months. She worked through several illnesses, specifically ear infections that she was prone to. The day her water broke was the first day she called out of work because something just did not feel right to her. She was taking a nap and the sound of her water breaking is what woke her. She called her husband to come home and take her to the hospital. Once they were there, it was only a few hours of labor before her daughter was born. She did receive an epidural. She want home the next day, and I visited her that afternoon. Within that first week, she knew something was still wrong. A week after giving birth, she drove herself to the emergency room with a horrible headache that she had had most of that week. She was in pain and miserable, called a friend to watch her week-old baby, and drove to the hospital. Apparently, in the event of getting the epidural, the nurses had messed up. She was given pain medicine and when the time came for all the medical bills, she was not surprised to see the hospital had provided many of their services with no charge due to the mistake.

I chose this story specifically from when I researched other countries' and cultures' ways of giving birth.

• Choose a region of the world or a country, other than the U.S., and find out how births happen there. Write about what you learned, and the differences and similarities with your experience (in the personal example you provided). What additional insights, if any, about the impact of the birthing experience on development, did you gain from this comparison?

In Japan, most women go through childbirth with no painkillers. This is rooted in Buddhist tradition that said labor pains are a test for mothers with what is to come in motherhood. Fathers are not allowed to be in the delivery room unless they have taken a prenatal class, as well. What I really found interesting is that women usually stay in the hospital for five days with a vaginal birth, or ten or more days with a C-section. Then, the family lives with the mother's parents for about a month, and the mother stays in bed with the baby for 21 days. If my friend had stayed in the hospital for at least five days, they would have caught on to the problem before she had to go to the ER. I think the mother-baby bonding time after birth is very important, even if research is showing it is beneficial, but not necessarily imperative to a healthy development. Development does not start at birth, it starts during pregnancy. I read about several different countries' traditions with birth, with and without doctors or midwives, and I think culture and tradition plays a huge role in delivery. As we have read this week too, I think development has to be defined by having history and culture in mind.


Schalken, L. (n.d.). Birth Customs Around the World. Retrieved January 7, 2012 from: http://www.parents.com/pregnancy/giving-birth/vaginal/birth-customs-around-the-world/