Convert or Die!!!

Another observation on the Terri Irwin interview: The segment showed two snipets on the births of the Irwin's two children. During the first birth Dad delivered the baby, mom appeared upright on a normal bed. In the shot of the second birth, Dad was still delivering, but they were drapped, masked, artificially lit, stirruped, and a doctor (I suppose) was helping Steve catch the baby (he didn't seem to need any help with the first one). It made me wonder if they had their first baby in Australia and their second in the US, or perhaps a birth center, then a hospital. Anyway, I would have been deeply disappointed with that second birth after the first one was so untampered with.
I thought of this later yesterday when I was having a conversation with another business owner on my block. I stopped in to commiserate because we have so much in common: both nurses, both business owners, both pregnant and due soon. We were both moaning about the state of our accounts receivable, when the topic turned to our pregnancies. She asked where I was delivering (always a loaded question), and I told her at home. Of course she began her tirade about how she MUST have her epidural. I began my equally emphatic tirade about my preference for control and how easier it is to bounce back after a drug free delivery. Now I sit here kicking myself- I should have asked her for her views on how labor and delivery styles impact breastfeeding. She owns a breastfeeding store for god's sake, surely she's thought about the impact of birth practices. She is also a neonatal nurse, surely she's seen the fallout to babies of bad birth practices. After all these years I'm still shocked that nurses look at these things as NORMAL and even worse than that, they see them as benevolent. They really believe they are giving the best care possible to their patients. When I think about how many have never even SEEN a normal birth, it blows my mind, since they attend births for a living. How will my former compatriots view my book? I'll probably be branded a heritic, and burned in effigy. Or perhaps they won't be surprised at all, after all I've been preaching the same sermon for 20 years now. All I'm saying is, nurses are the hardest converts.