People, don't discourage her!

I have a friend from a previous duty station, who's due to have her second baby this fall. She was discussing filling out her birth plan just yesterday. I remarked that I have such a hard time with those, because I just like to take things as they come, and that my midwife totally wouldn't let me get out of filling one out the last time, despite my best efforts. She said that she also had a hard time filling it out, but after all that happened with her first birth, she wanted to make sure that she wasn't subjected to the full cart of interventions again, and being that she's doing another hospital birth (WHY????) she needs to get that on paper in a big way. I couldn't agree more.

She also mentioned that she's thinking of going without an epidural because the epidural really messed her up last time. I told her how awesome natural birth is, and told her to go for it! Then a few other people all chimed in and said how there's no way she should attempt this thing without an epidural, and telling their own birth horror stories. These things are real pet peeves of mine.

First of all, the mainstream medical professionals have been so successful in convincing women that their bodies don't work, that I know only ONE mom anywhere near my age who's never been induced and never had a c-section (and it's me). To hear most moms talk about their birth experiences, they'll tell you how they just COULDN'T get past a certain point, or just COULDN'T get the baby out, or COULDN'T handle the labor on their own without narcotic pain relief. This is all BS, and the reason people believe it is because it is the line of shit they have been sold by the mainstream medical profession. I'd expect it from doctors. I mean, they get paid for doing all those interventions. If I'd gone to hospital for my second birth, and all the doctor had to do in the end was put on a catcher's mit and wait a minute, that would have been one pissed off doctor, because it would have been the cheapest birth they'd managed all year. No, the thing I really don't like is that women are so duped that they spread this line of shit among each other. Instead of encouraging a friend who wants to do things the way nature intended, and has absolutely no reason why she couldn't do just that, they tell her that her body doesn't work, that she'll need an epidural, that there's no way she can go without it. What a crap thing to do to a friend!

What's more, I hate hearing about people's supposed "47 hour labors". Everyone seems to count labor from the first twinge these days. Hell, if I did that, I was in labor with Orren for a week. I walked around dilated to 3-4 cm for most of the week prior to him being born, and was up all night with painful contractions (hence the dilation) for at least three nights prior to him actually being born. That was NOT real labor, though. It was real labor when it didn't ease up drastically when the sun came up, rather picked up even more, and then I had a baby a few hours later. I have absolutely no idea how long labor was with Orren. I know I was at the birth center for about an hour and a half before he was born, and I know I contracted all night. I know that I felt him engage about 18 hours before he was born. I really have no idea how long his labor was. You know what else? I don't care how long it was. All I know is that I got through it at home, in the middle of the night, alone while my family slept, and that's exactly the way it needed to be right at that moment. I don't understand the obsession with length of labor. It's like a way to scare people or something, yet another way to spread the word, "Hey women! Our bodies don't work!" It really irks me.

What's more, I can't stand people who try to project their own foibles onto others who are not at risk for that kind of thing happening. One girl who was SO adamant about the long drawn out labor, and the need for pain medication, is super morbidly obese. OF COURSE she was incapable of giving birth normally! Her body is compromised by hundreds of extra pounds of fat! You cannot project your experience with THAT onto somebody who is at a very normal weight, has no health problems, and had a successful (if pitocin-augmented, and epidural-affected) birth the first time around. The reason I weighed in on this friend's birth questions and plans is because I see many similarities between our situations, and hey, whenever anyone says they want to go drug-free, I always make sure to encourage that and tell them they can do it! I know from personal experience that you won't hear much in the way of positive things from others if your plan is to do things naturally, so I try to give encouragement and be a little different from the rest of the world when it comes to that. I also hate the assumption that anyone who went natural must have had an easy labor that was 5 minutes from first twinge to pushing. That's entirely untrue, and any midwife will tell you so. I labored all night and most of the morning with Orren, and didn't have, nor want, a single drop of pain medication. If you honestly believe you can do it, and that you WILL do it, it's really not that bad. In order to get to that place, though, you have to get to the point of really believing in yourself, and it's really hard for that to happen if you're getting told at every turn that you can't do it.

I guess it just reminds me of when we were planning Orren's birth, and people who assumed we were doing a hospital birth would make the usual joking remarks about, "Make sure you get the epidural early!" and things like that, to which Thak and I would always reply, "No epidural here." People would always scoff, and say, "We'll see about that..." and when we'd tell them that there really would not be an epidural, because it's not an option at the birth center, they would tell us we were crazy. It really irked me, because it's like, why does the entire world think I can't do it? If Thak had not believed in me as wholeheartedly as he did, I don't know if I would have believed in myself enough to make it through that. Everybody needs others to believe in them, especially for such an important undertaking. I was lucky to have that. I had Thak, and various others, who never doubted me for a minute. I had midwives who told me that Orren was the perfect size for me to deliver, that my small size is not indicative of my potential to successfully have a normal birth, even with a very large baby, who told me he would just FALL out when it was time because I know what I'm doing, and was made for this. Most people don't have that, and I think that's a big reason why they don't think they can do it, and spread the word to anyone who wants to try. Nobody's ever told them they can. That's a little sad, really. We have a whole generation of moms who don't believe in themselves, and knock each other down all the time. I can only hope this trend is short-lived, and that our daughters are able to break the cycle.