Unnatural Births

My round, pregnant belly seemed to be an open invitation to other women to tell their 'birth stories'. More often than not, the stories of their child's birth sounded more like surgery than a blessed event. I would always walk away from those conversations feeling deflated, wondering if that could "happen to me". I heard one or two stories of natural births -- but they were usually in the case of the woman not getting to the hospital in time to have her epidural. One woman actually gave birth in the car as they pulled up the doors of the Emergency Room. Without fail, when I would say I wanted to give birth without any medication, I got a response like, "Good luck!" or "You are either brave or stupid!" or "Oh, honey, you will be asking for drugs before it's over!" I came to realize how many women have little or no faith in their own bodies. I began to wonder how many women were cheating themselves out of an empowering, life-changing experience. Worse than that, how many doctors and nurses were willing to steal that experience away from uninformed and unprepared mothers? I doubt that such thoughts ever enter the minds of most ObGyn's.

I was fortunate enough to have attended wonderfully informative and empowering childbirth preparation classes taught using the Bradley Method of Husband Coached Childbirth. I highly reccommend these classes, especially for first-time-mothers. My teacher was a welcome and essential woman in attendance at the birth of my daughter. Without the enlightening information I received during these classes about my body, pregnancy, and childbirth, I never would have had such a positive birth experience. I would have, like many other women in the Western World, gone through my pregnancy unaware, uninformed and unprepared for the changes about to take place within my body. I would have missed the wonderful opportunity to use my mind and to allow my body to work in the miraculous way it was designed to give birth. I quickly discovered that knowledge wipes away fear. It is something I tell every pregnant woman I meet -- learn about your body, learn to trust the way you are made -- you have nothing to fear.

Maybe it is a residual symptom of the generations before us who were inducted into the world of medical birth thinking they needed to be saved (delivered) by their doctors. These women experienced surgery, rather than birth. My own mother did not give birth to me nor my sister. We were cut from her belly while she slept. My father used to tell us as children, "I saw you first! I loved you first!" each night when he put us to bed. Until now, I had no idea the true meaning of that and what that meant for my mother: she did NOT see us first -- she was unconscious. Even today, many women schedule C-Sections because they don't believe their own bodies are capable of giving birth. Their friends, husbands, doctors have no encouraging words for them. They allow the fear of pain and discomfort to control them.

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