Most of you know that I had a C-section in January (10 months ago exactly!) after
two days of labor. The first day, it was nothing worse than an achy flu. Second day, I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. Throbbing, gut-wrenching, nauseating, incessant pain. It's the closest thing to death I have experienced, which is a fucking terrifying realization when you still have the baby inside you. They don't really tell you that part in the classes.
If I stayed still, it was awful. If I moved, it got worse. I couldn't talk. I could hardly keep my head up. If Ian and my mom and the birth assistants were rubbing me and encouraging me with kinds words to ease the pain, I don't remember it. I was too overwhelmed being stuck in the middle of what they were trying to help me get through. And stuck I was. Well, stuck Julian was. He was head down, facing the front. (They are supposed to be facing your back.) Stubborn as all hell to descend any further.
After 14+ hours of the worst of it, the pain suddenly stopped. Not when good old Dr. Monk, my OB who has 14 kids (I found this out on the Cesarean table) pulled Julian out, but about 30 minutes before, when I rolled on my side and they stuck the epidural needle in my back. It seeped over me. A physical numbness that allowed me to mentally focus on the child I was birthing. That was the "transformative personal experience" author Kathryn J. Alexander writes about. I think Alexander too quickly dismisses personal transformative powers the act of birthing on mothers has. But on the other hand, the natural childbirth movement goes too far the other way. Its teachers and advocates often deny, if implicitly, that mothers can give birth in a medicalized environment and experience anything as powerful as doing it drug-free.
Childbirth professionals with a nature-worshipping bias against medical pain relief seem to suggest that only self- indulgent, entitled control freaks — void of spirituality, feminist enlightenment and the ability to bond with their young — would want a pain-free birth. ... Since when did childbirth become about having a transformative personal experience rather than about getting a healthy baby and not dying (or wishing you were dead) in the process?
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Moreover, telling pregnant women they should attempt to deal with their pain as an exercise in "plumbing the depths of their inner resources," rather than honoring their choice to give birth on their own terms, without pain, is in itself disempowering.
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For me, giving birth was the fulfillment of a lifelong wish to have a baby, not a means of self-actualization.
Whoa, right in the face of all things Mothering, a magazine I subscribe to. But I really feel connected with a lot of what she's saying. I respect all mothers' choices, and I'm not against natural childbirth, nor the amazing moms I know who were lucky enough to experience it. But degrading medical birth experiences as less than natural ones is really ridiculous. This article made me realize how backward I had it before I had Julian. I loathed Cesarean sections and the doctors who performed them. I judged women who planned pain management, i.e. epidurals. I thought natural childbirth was the only authentic way to have a kid. ("It's what my body was created to do," I told so many of you.)
It's just not true. Attempting a natural birth is awesome and I would do it again, but you're no pity case if you don't even try. A healthy baby is a healthy baby. A frazzled new mom is a frazzled new mom. Don't make one feel worse because modern medicine gave her a little help.
Being a parent is what's really empowering.
p.s. The New Yorker tackled this in an article from 2006, which I read when I was pregnant. 'The Score; How childbirth went industrial'.
Photo by gabi_menashe on flickr
