The universe has a cheeky sense of humour. As I was reading back through my blog - which I have neglected for a little while - I came across my 'Round Two' post on whether or not to have another baby. Unbeknownst to me, when I posted that I was approximately two days pregnant - surprise! The morning sickness and distraction explains my lack of posting, but now heading into my 34th week of pregnancy my mind is starting to loop-de-loop on the old birthing roller coaster again.
My birthing experience was ok, but never fear, I won't go into stories and tales here. Having been through it once though I now have a level of expectation around what I might encounter. I've tested my pain threshold and I know that if I have a bunch of synthetic contraction inducing hormones charging through my system I need pain relief to help me through it. I do wish that I had been worded up a little more that induction doesn't really give your body time to adjust to the pain. I am in awe at women who have been induced and can birth their child without any pain relief. I suspect they also take their casseroles out of the oven without potholders and stub out their husbands cigarettes on their thigh.
I also have quite a few friends who have either just given birth or will be in the next six months, which has provided birthing stories of cars breaking down in peak hour traffic in mad dashes to the hospital and many discussions around the ideal birth experience. I feel lucky to have people in my life who are open minded and can embrace all the different possibilities that bringing bub into the world can create.
Sadly, I still feel as though this isn't always the case for the wider community.
It's an indirect impression I get, through comments in the media, people's posts on Facebook and the comments you hear women make when discussing another woman's birth experience.
I think I'm sensitive to it, because my reality somewhat contradicts what I like to think my philosophies are. I like to think that I am a woman of the earth, a woman who recognises the natural process that pregnancy and birth is, and who is capable of bringing her baby into the world on the grass by a babbling brook chewing on a sprig of lavender. (That's probably going a tad far but you get what I mean.)
When people ask me what I am doing for the birth - home or hospital, drugs or no drugs - I find myself prefacing my answer with things like, "Because I have these clotting disorders, I'm considered high risk, so I have to go hospital." That is 100% true, I don't really have a choice in it, but my answer could have easily been, "Hospital birth for me".
Something in me needs to defend my choice to give birth in the mainstream hospital environment.
It makes me wonder how many other women feel like that? Women who feel like they are letting their fellow sisters down by saying, "I don't feel confident enough to do this in my home, or in a birthing centre, and I'd like to have the medical help there for me if I need it."
I really admire women like Chrissie Swan who openly discusses her choice to have elective ceasarian births. Let's be clear here, her abdomen is being cut open to bring her baby into the world, she's not delicately sneezing the baby out of her nostril. This isn't the "easy" option. But by being open about her decisions she is making things a little bit easier for the women who also have c-sections but felt the Judge Judy eyes of the 'natural' birthing crew.
And let's not forget the home birthers - they cop a whole other wrath of disapproving tisk tisks. Endangering their baby, putting stress on the hospital system with emergency admissions, being a crazy hippie...when in reality most give birth with no fuss, no issue and a healthy bublette.
It seems that if it's not what you're doing, then it's the wrong thing to do.
It's the same for pain relief. I've received many a text message or read a status update on Facebook announcing the happy arrival of a beautiful little human into the world coupled with the proud exclamation that mum went completely without drugs. It is a freaking awesome achievement and I am always so impressed with these women and the control they have over their bodies and minds. You deserve to be celebrated girlfriend - you just brought a real, live person into the world!!
There is occasion though where the comment is laced with a sense of judgement that belittles the women who haven't charged through the baby birthing tough mudder and come through the other side with mud on their face but no pharmaceuticals in their blood.
For some women it just hurts too much. It's as simple as that.
A midwife once said to me, "It perplexes me these women who are so against pain relief. I've never seen someone who had to have their appendix out saying 'No thanks, I'd rather not have any anaesthetic - just cut me open and get it out.' - Medicine has advanced like everything else, why not utilise it!" Of course I understand that having an organ cut out is very different to delivering a child, and many women are simply being protective of their baby's wellbeing by not wanting substances charging through their system as they enter the world. It is however interesting food for thought.
In all of this I just keep coming back to the same thought - Why does it matter what anyone else does?
Well, it doesn't, or it doesn't have to. But I think the key to this is being able to understand and support the decisions made by others, even if they are so diametrically opposed to your own. To trust yourself to choose what is going to be the best decision for YOU and YOUR BABY.
For me making the decision to have an epidural was absolutely without a doubt the right decision for us. It was only after I had made the decision that I realised how much pressure and judgment I was placing on myself. Somewhere deep down I had the belief that I wasn't a good mother to my unborn child if I needed drugs to get through the birth. I believed that I would be letting my partner down because I wasn't the strong warrior woman that I wanted him to see me being. I would be selling out on my sisterhood and everything that I believed. And I know deep down that there's a bunch of women out there who would read that and still believe all those things to be true.
In my reality my body was struggling to cope with the instantaneous surge of hormones running through me and as a result was shutting up shop. After the epidural I dilated 6cm in a wonderfully short amount of time because my body had released the intense shock response it was in and had allowed itself to relax. As a result mini muffin arrived in the world without stress and I was able to enjoy the experience.
That was my journey, and I still think it would be so great to experience that spontaneous birth where you feel subtle contractions start and have to call your husband home from work. Where you get to the point when you scream for pain relief and the midwife laughs and says, "I don't think so kiddo, too late, you're about to have this baby". Maybe that's why I still buffer my answers with explanations of clots and inductions.
As always, all it ever comes down to is a healthy mum and healthy bub.
So I guess I'm just hoping we can all share the birth love and celebrate each other for whatever choices we make.
And I'm going to be open about my choices:
I'm having a hospital birth.
There's a good chance I'll have an epidural.
I hope I can give birth naturally but if there's any issues of safety for me and bub I'm comfortable with having a c-section.
I will live vicariously through my drug free, spontaneously birthing friends. (Especially the ones down by the stream with the lavender)
Don't worry though, I'll still be the lady on the post-natal ward with the essential oils wafting out of her room and the crystals hanging from the IV stand.
You can take the girl out of her hippie wonderland but you can't take the hippie wonderland out of the girl.
(Gorgeous pic from kindnessgirl.com)
