Ricki Lake had a disappointing hospital birth with her first child, and that experience pushes her to team up with filmmaker Abby Epstein and question how American women give birth. Set largely in New York City, the film follows expectant couples choosing midwives and home births instead of standard hospital deliveries, and sets their stories against interviews with obstetricians, midwives, and researchers who lay out the country's rising cesarean rates and the routine use of interventions like Pitocin and epidurals. Historical footage traces how birth moved from home to hospital over the twentieth century, reshaping who controls the process and how it gets paid for. Midway through production, Epstein discovers she is pregnant, and complications with her own pregnancy put the film's argument to an unplanned real test. The throughline is a direct dispute between two models of childbirth: one treating labor as a normal bodily process, the other as a medical emergency waiting to happen, with hospital policy and insurance incentives shaping which view wins out in the delivery room.