Perhaps you know Ricki Lake best for her popular talk show in the 90s, or more recently for her graceful stint on Dancing with the Stars. She’s been a successful on-screen
star for over 20 years now. But the project closest to Lake’s heart is intimately linked to her most important leading role—as mother
to her sons Milo, 14, and Owen, 10. In 2007—with inspiration
stemming from her own at-home birth with her second son—Lake teamed up with filmmaker Abby Epstein to create The Business of
Being Born, a documentary that takes a close look at childbirth in both
maternity wards and living rooms. The companion piece, More Business of
Being Born, will be available to audiences on November 8, and further details
birth options with true birth stories from celebrity moms like Alanis
Morissette and Cindy Crawford. To her credit, Lake strives to make the films informative without being preachy—options
are everything. And sharing that piece of advice has been a true labor of love.
For someone who might be unfamiliar with your first
film, what do you think are the highlights?
I think the most powerful thing about the first film is the images you get to
see of women giving birth on their own terms—to see women standing in a
hospital setting and catching her own baby. That it’s possible. [Then], of
course, me having a baby in water at home [is] not an image that people see
very often. And I think it’s important to balance out what people see today as normal
birth, in a hospital room, flat on their backs, usually with an IV and a fetal
monitor hooked up to them. That does happen, but other things are possible.
How did you start working with Abby Epstein on the series?
We met doing the Vagina Monologues Off-Broadway. She
directed me in the production—vaginas, how ironic! We became friends and years
later when I had this idea for the first film, we started working together. [When]
she signed on, [she] didn’t even know what a midwife was—but then two years
into making it, she got pregnant with her first kid. It was all kind of
serendipitous. Then after we made the first film, there were so many questions
left, so we felt like we could branch out and do an educational series.
What do you hope viewers take away from More Business of Being Born?
That women don’t fear birth, they sort of look
forward to it and are excited about the experience—that is what I think is possible here. If women
are having positive birth experiences, and they tell their daughters, and then
those daughters have great birth stories and they pass it down, I think it can
really have a great effect on our future generation.
What do your sons think about the films?
My little one, he just
turned 10, [was] the one born in the movie. He wrote to me on Mother’s Day a
few years ago, “Thank you Mommy for letting me be born in my bathtub and for
making me the star of a movie.” It was so funny.
You seem really passionate about your work. What has
brought you the most joy?
I tell people that the Business of Being Born will go down as
my most fulfilling project—probably ever. What’s
shocking to me is that it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Midwives or
doulas write us all the time and say their clients found them because they saw
this film. Every day people come up to me in tears, or they write these letters
about how the movie informed them, that they were able to have [a] certain
birth experience. It feeds my soul in a way I can’t articulate. It’s one thing
to promote a talk show for eleven years, but it’s another thing to make a movie
that came from my own idea, my own money and my own resources. It makes the
work I do so fulfilling. And the fact that it stems from my two children being
born? It gives me chills every time I think about it.
What’s the best advice you can give to expectant
moms?
I think that the mom and
the family-to-be have to do their due diligence and think for themselves. It’s
about making the best choice. If they do their homework and they know the pros
and cons of having this kind of birth in this place…they can speak out. They
have the right to have the birth that they want.
For more information, visit
thebusinessofbeingborn.com.
