Coming to DVD and VOD today, Tuesday, July 21: THE MAMA SHERPAS
Brigid Maher’s look at modern midwifery across America debuted as part of a benefit event in Los Angeles this past May. After a limited theatrical release, Bond/360 now brings the film to DVD and to VOD platforms including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Instant Video, and VUDU.
Maher’s film has two interrelated concerns: to highlight the work of nurse midwives and to showcase how they can help reverse the worrisome trend toward unnecessary Cesarean births in the United States. As established within the film, Maher came to this topic from her own personal experience, having delivered her first child by C-section but unwilling in her second pregnancy to put her body through the pain of recovery from another Cesarean while trying to care for a newborn and a four-year-old. In the jargon of midwifery (which the film sometimes takes for granted, assuming it’s preaching to the converted), her goal was a VBAC, vaginal birth after Cesarean. Her research into modern midwifery practices led to a successful birth, and opened Maher’s eyes to the prevalence of nurse midwives, midwives who work within the hospital system, and thus able to draw upon not only traditional midwifery practice but, where necessary, modern obstetrics. As Maher profiles various types of approaches taken by a range of nurse widwives, and introduces audiences to expectant families, she reveals the troubling statistics about C-sections, which speaks to the pathologization of pregnancy, as well as to simple impatience and lack of comprehensive training of such eventualities as vaginal breech births, one of which is shown successfully on camera here. While Maher’s conventional film tends much more to the informational than to the artful – and is saddled with a truly unappealing and muddled title which conjures up images of an ethnographic study of Tibetan mountain climbing families – it accomplishes its educational objectives, reframing the viewer’s understanding of natural approaches to childbirth.
what (not) to doc 