I attended the local ICAN chapter last evening. I met several new women, and also met up with other women I've already known. It was quite an interesting evening! Most of the time, I found myself listening to what the women had to share. At several points, I was so angry at what they had gone through. My sympathy/empathy levels went up several more notches last evening.
Hearing the women share their birth stories - and subsequent provider-fear based recommendations for future births - made me realize just how much this entire country sees birth as a fear-based event. Birth should not equal fear!
Birth should be:
- empowering
- life-changing (in a positive way)
- life-affirming
- beautiful
- amazing
- wonderful
- uplifting
(Feel free to add your own positive words to describe birth!)
14 comments:
I have a hard time wrapping my head around your post. Birth, for me, was the most painful, horrific and frightening experience of my entire life. I never, ever want to experience it again. The fact that my beautiful and perfect son's arrival was so awful for me makes me feel so sad. I even went through that "blocked traumatic memory" thing where I would sit holding my week-old baby and I had no idea how he got there, one night I was pregnant and the next I was holding a baby and what happened in between? I don't know....
I had to visit the Mom/baby floor of my hospital (not even the same one I delivered at!) and just seeing the beds and the clear plastic bassinets and the smell and the hospital baby blankets was enough to send me back to my office in tears.
I struggle with this. Particularly because I'm feeling moved on a spiritual level that another baby wants to come to us. Entertaining thoughts of another pregnancy and delivery is like planning a bloody war for me.
I'm so sorry to hear that your birth was such a difficult experience for you.
You will note, however, that I said birth "should be", not that birth "is" or "always is".
So many different things come in to play into how we experience birth.
Thank you for attending an ICAN meeting! I wish more people knew and understood the experiences women face, and the battles they wage during their pregnancy, birth, and postpartum period. As an ICAN Chapter Leader, I appreciate you listening to the voices of moms!
a beautiful connecting, bonding event between a woman and a man and a baby.
spiritual (in whatever way you ascribe to that word)
fulfilling
exciting
meaningful, life-fulfilling
I agree not all birth are always that way...my daughter's wasn't positive, but armed with knowledge the next one will be.
As father sitting on the sidelines during this amazing time, I can only say that our favorite births were definitely influenced by those that surrounded us, from the docs to the nurses to the extenders. Empathy and kind words and reassurances went very very far...
Jim
I absolutely can't wait until we have an ICAN chapter here. It often brings tears to my eyes when I hear women discuss their births as something they wish they could forget or block out or..... you've heard it. I often hope our view of birth has changed some once my own daughters begin having their children. I imagine a world where..
To Andrea: I'm so sorry to hear about your traumatic experience. I've had a couple of births like those, too. Can I suggest this website? http://www.solaceformothers.org/ It's a very helpful resource for healing, venting, getting support and encouragement, and telling your story in a safe forum. I wish you healing and peace. God bless you!
Andrea, it certainly sounds like you might have developed some PTSD from your experience. I can relate to that; I had this as well after my first birth. Many hugs to you. I'm so sorry it was traumatic for you.
I think it's incredibly important to know that you CAN free yourself from the worst of the PTSD and go on to have more babies without it having to be as traumatic. But a lot of processing ahead of time is very very helpful.
Some women find help with EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), www.emdria.org. If your experience is so intrusive on your thoughts that you have a hard time even considering thinking about it, you might want to start with EMDR. It can help you disperse some of the emotional charge around your traumatic memories so you can begin to deal with them again more calmly, and find a different path in the future.
Other groups that might be helpful include solaceformothers.org, www.tab.org.nz, www.ptsdafterchildbirth.org, and www.birthstars.org.
There are also groups that focus on interactive support for PTSD after birth, including a webinar from consciouswoman.org, a yahoogroup on ptsd after childbirth, and a mothering.com community. And of course, many women find tremendous healing via counseling with a truly birth-friendly therapist.
I wondered whether I could possibly face more children after my first. It really was that bad. Yet working through my trauma helped me go on to have three more children as well.
You deserve healing from the past. You deserve better births in the future. It can be very scary to work towards these, but "the only way out is through." You have to go INTO the grief in order to start healing it, but in the end, the pain will be so much better than if you just avoided it.
I hope you will reach out and find the help you need. You are not alone in that journey....there are others out there that have been there too and will help. Hang in there. You can get through this.
You omit the two most important criteria for what birth should be: it should result in a healthy baby, and a healthy mother.
All the other things you mention are nice, but not essential, and certainly no woman goes into labor without a thought as to the end product, but is totally absorbed in the "experience" of being empowered [I haven't a clue what that word means], or thinks that a labor which is "life-affirming", "beautiful", "amazing", etc. but results in a dead or damaged baby is superior to a difficult, often painful labor with a live, healthy child at the end.
Try telling a woman who was raped by a close relative and who has no visible means of support [and who would have had an abortion if she could have afforded it] how wonderful and uplifting she should consider her birth "experience".
I experienced this. I wrote out my first birth story and my third. I have yet to write the second... but the difference between my first two births (humiliating, traumatizing, depressing vs. amazing, empowering and surreal) are incredible.
It wasn't until I achieved that birth that i realized how birth SHOULD be.
I thought the VBAC story on the ICAN blog was great. However, I am AMA now (will be 43), so I do not want to even try one more time.
My son was a C-section with cord around his neck and left arm. I am so happy he made it, but it was traumatic.
I don't think I could be so lucky another time.
My 4th birth was all of those things, an amazing & positive birth & it was a C section. My 2 planned homebirths were not any of those adjectives. You never know what life has in store for us!
Man, a couple months ago I would have agreed with this unreservedly. Then, actually because I saw it linked here, I spent some time at "My OB Says What?" where for many people the need for "empowerment" has completely eclipsed the need for safety for Moms and babies. People encourage one another to refuse GBS prophylaxis (unnatural! medicalization of birth!), Vitamin K shots, and erythromycin eye drops (because they know their partners would NEVER stray.)
I think it's fine to be empowered and to regard birth as natural as long as you keep in mind that without the support of medical science, it's an very dangerous "natural" process that kills millions of mother and babies in the third world every year.
All this should go without saying (just as minimizing medical interventions and encouraging a positive, life-affirming experience of birth ought to go without saying) but, sadly, for some people it still needs to be said.
Well, hell. The reason most women are at least slightly afraid of labor and birth is appropriate: a, it hurts like hell----and don't give me "tightenings, pressure waves, etc." It hurts. Admit that and then say you are willing to deal with it, fine, but it hurts. Why do you think they invented anesthesia?
And B: it is scary. You can die. Your baby can die. Either of you can be in severe danger. For the majority of existence of the human race, women made their shrouds along their baby clothes. Hospitals and interventions make it safer, but nothing comes guaranteed and the idiot NCB crowd lives for fearmongering.
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