It is assumed in the article that this is because…I’m not sure…maybe the dirty hippies all bail at the last minute.
My point (and I do have one!) is that I’m tired of people thinking having a baby is the same for everyone. Or saying they understand it’s different in that way…you know the way I mean…the way that says they’re saying they know it’s different but they still know the best answer.
I just don’t think there are second-time moms in ANY birthing classes. Once you’ve done it once you know what you did wrong and self-correct. (I would hope that’s how it works. Let me know if I’m wrong. Can you get a graduate degree in Lamaze?)
I have friends who had epidurals during pregnancy. Actually, everyone I know that has had a baby either had an epi or a c-section.
I am the only woman I know that had two pain-medication-free pitocin-induced births.
You know what? I’m proud of myself.
You know what else? I know I’m a little crazy and don’t think anyone else needs to make the same choice I did to be a great mom or have an awesome birth experience. Me thinking I rock has no bearing on how I feel about you and your life choices. Me having kick-ass self-esteem does not mean you can’t. It’s like some weird logic trap because someone thinks that we should all judge each other. (If you don’t think it’s a trap, why do they call drug-free birth “natural childbirth” – it implies that if you do it another way it’s unnatural. What a load of crap!)
Would I like to have a baby by going out into a forest preserve (the magic one with no bugs, thanks) and squat over a beautiful thatch of soft, long grass and have the baby by myself just like that and catch her on the way out and lay her gently down on the grass and thank the green mother or whatever other hippie deity I could think of for such a spiritual experience? HELL YES!
Will it ever happen that way? Not so much.
Mostly…to be brutally honest…I don’t get pain medication because I’m more scared of a needle in my spine than I am of feeling my hoo-hoo tear (which I didn’t feel with either birth, something about the pressure of the babies head.) My worst childbirth pain was the local anesthetic shot I was given for the stitches for the tear I never felt happen.
So get your drugs if you want them. Just do me a favor and laugh at my birth story if I’ve been awesome enough to listen to yours. Not because mine is better. It’s not. It’s just different, and fun, and involved the most awful, hateful nurse in the world.
The one who threatened to take me bodily from the bathroom back to the bed for fetal monitoring. I told her she could try, but I could still “kick her ass at 8″ (I was dialated to 8 at the time.)
Are you shocked she backed off? Yeah, neither am I.
I think the most important thing to remember when we go into a hospital to have a baby is that we still have our power. We have not given up, we have not given in. We are still the head-honcho in control.
You can always say, “No.”
Sometimes just knowing that makes everything easier and less stressful.
Do you have a fun story about your pregnancy or birth? I’d love to hear about it!
