Most of the mainstream medical community, especially in Montana, is hostile to empowered birth, because empowered birth means less money. The practitioners themselves are also in competition with each other and there is no love lost between doctors and midwives, between midwives themselves, and even suppossedly supportive professions/professionals/organizations like childbirth educators, doulas, etc. It’s all about the money – making it, keeping it, and making as much of it as possible while assuring that they CYA (because in the end it’s all about them and not about you). It’s almost like a game to see who can successfully squeeze as much money out of you as possible. Why? Because they know you believe them. Therefore, you are not confident enough, despite having educated yourself as much as you could, to take full responsibility for your own baby and your own birth.

If you are the type of woman who truly wants ANY power over her birth, you can try, by your own experience, to go to the people and places mentioned in the preceding paragraph, and learn, as I have, over the past 18 years, the very same thing.