I believe language affects thought which affects behavior, all of which return to affect each other. That's just what I think. Words matter. When a woman describes her birth experience, she is using words that have been used before, and often has placed them in the context of her society's accepted parameters. At the same time, she is deeply affected by what society offers to her in options of thin=king. In this society, at this time, the media have tremendous effect. The Media affects the language and images offered about birth. the languages and images affect thoughts that eventually perpetuate the societal perceptions.

In so doing, a woman is no longer able to distinguish what she experiences without the clouding of media perceptions of birth. They become her filters and transform the way she actually perceives her own child's birth, and control the language in which she describes her experience! The rhetoric we use to describe birth in hospitals has the power to change our understanding of our own bodies and frame how we perceive the experiences that may not ever be repeated. The tool of assisted births fully and totally removed the experience from the actual perceiver, even to the point of limiting the language used for the experience.