‘Bones’ Is Back and Advocating for Home Birth

by Ali Berman April 3, 2012
Categories: Healthy Living, Lifestyle
Tags: emily deschanel.

Everyone’s favorite vegetarian scientist is back! Last night the spring premiere of fan favorite show “Bones” didn’t disappoint. (Beware: This post contains spoilers, but only about the birthing choices.)

Temperance Brennan, the rational scientist with a heart of gold, had her baby. While that’s great, we’re more interested in “how” she had her baby. In typical “Bones” fashion Brennan and Booth didn’t see eye to eye on how the baby should be born. Booth believes that a hospital is the safest place to have a child in case there are complications. Brennan wants to have a natural birth at home.

When Booth tries to convince her of the safety benefits while on a tour of the hospital, Brennan says, “On the contrary, hospitals are breeding grounds for antibiotic resistant super germs leading to high incidents of e. coli and staphylococcus infections.”

Then, the scientist we all know and love breaks out the black light to show all the nasty human gunk on the walls and floors. She says, “Based on the spatter patterns of the viscosity, I see indications of blood, blood, cerebral spinal fluid, amnitotic fluid, blood, more blood…”

At that point, the others on the tour are horrified and jump ship. You’ll have to watch the episode to see how the rest of it goes down.

As for Emily Deschanel’s personal birthing experience, the actress opted to also take a natural route. She told Pregnancy Weekly, “We’ve been taking HypnoBirthing classes, and I plan to do that. David will be with me, and also a doula.”

She’s not alone. Other celebrity advocates of natural births include Mayim Bialik who wrote the book “Beyond the Sling” dealing with the topic, and Ricky Lake who created a documentary called “The Business of Being Born.”

And for those of us veggies who were annoyed when Phoebe from friends ate meat during her pregnancy, Bones stays true to her diet and looks disgusted when someone suggests she eats beef to satisfy any cravings.

Photo Credit: Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com

About Ali Berman

Ali Berman is a writer, teacher and activist. She works as a humane educator for HEART teaching kids about issues affecting people, animals and the environment. Ali is also a fiction writer. Her published work can be found on her website at aliberman.com. In early 2012 Ali co-founded flipmeover, a production company with the mission to use media to raise awareness of social issues.

View all posts by Ali Berman →

http://www.hippiespelunker.com lisamariemary

I love it! My husband was telling me about it last night – I’m gonna have to go watch it. I love the black light part – that’s awesome!!
Toopicky429

I love it! I was just commenting the other day that I would never have a water birth in a hospital. Just the idea of putting my laboring body in one of their tubs makes me cringe. I worked in a hospital for many years. I’ve seen how some poeple “clean”.
Guest

I understand why the actor wants this, but it’s completely out of character for Bones. She would look at the scientific evidence and conclude that the baby is significantly more likely to die at homebirth, as the actual data show.
- Laralee16
  
  There is no credible evidence showing increased risk to mother or child in a home birth setting. In fact it is safer in some ways.
- another guest
  
  i thought it was perfectly in character for her. birthing outside of a hospital (or more specifically, believing that a woman’s body needs no help to give birth) goes right along with her anthropological expertise. also, she states facts in her arguments. for a healthy woman and baby, birthing at home is equally as safe or safer than birthing in a hospital. there is a very popular “study” that has made the rounds suggesting home birth is dangerous in terms of infant mortality, but it has been debunked many times over due to cherry picking of data to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion.
- Srdvdsn
  
  Sorry, but that is completely false.
- Joaniesb
  
  The data that shows babies more likely to die at home is seriously flawed. It used babies of different ages and didn’t define the newborn age limit. ie: used 1 week, 28 days, and even longer if I am not mistaken. The entire study is seriously flawed but was jumped on like flies on …… by those who oppose home birth.
Guest

Anybody got sources for those claims? Here’s an article mentioning (and including a source) that babies are around 3x more likely to die at homebirth than with hospital care. I believe there have been many such analysis, generally showing the same thing.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-case-for-hospital-births/254304/?google_editors_picks=true
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1024339217 Amanda Martin

I love it! I had a successful homebirth, with a licensed midwife. My daughter is 2 now.
felisdarkmoon

This is one of my favorite shows, so I was disappointed when Brennan, say that she don’t love dogs, but they fixed this in next episodes.

About natural births I support informed mother choice! The law is not fair to not give me choice for the most special moment in my life, like is in my country.