Labor on

A puzzle swirling in my head, well not all the time, but in a now on, now off mode, was precipitated while surfing my new Verizon FIOS cable service. I am a sucker for TLC-like channels and food p**n and house p**n like Food TV and HGTV. After making sure FIOS was giving me my daily dose of fat chefs, home designers with six figure budgets to decorate a backyard and fashion stylists who did unbelievable makeovers on pretty but dorky women and I turned to their other offerings. And guess what? They had another TLC-like channel. Forgot what the name is. But when I surfed, there was a show like the baby story and bringing home baby. This one was about delivering the baby. The mother-to-be was in the LDR and discussing her birth plan on the camera. She wanted to go “natural”. OK. But what amazed me was her ferocity about it. No epidural. No c-section. No intervention. I have met plenty of people like that. She is not alone. In birthing classes, at work on the parenting message board I am a part of. They are everywhere and they are growing fast.

Women who want to have babies at home, who forgo an OB-GYN for a midwife. Are these women forgetting that the leading cause of deaths in women until the turn of last century was, take a guess, childbirth? What gives? What drives them to make these stupid choices? Is it the implicit promise that if something goes horribly wrong while giving birth, they can dial 911 and get proper medical care? There are several issues than stump me and I am going to discuss them in a systematic fashion one by one. Starting from what I feel is the craziest.

Giving Birth At Home
This trend is growing. These women want to give birth in their own beds. Many times supervised only by their husbands. Or perhaps a doula, not even a trained midwife. This is insane. Things can and have been known to go wrong at the last minute. What then? Do these women stick to their principles and go all natural then? No matter what? Of course not. I am sure they are too chicken to deal with the baby trying to push his/her elbow through their cervix and call 911 putting undue stress on the emergency response system and the baby. Will they go to a remote area where there is no emergency response whatsoever and let nature take over? I don’t think so. I think it’s a sham. All that go-back-to-your-roots, lets be organic earth mothers. Yeah, right.

No intervention: No c-section, no vacuum pump, no episiotomies
When I was about 30 weeks pregnant, my OB-GYN waned to discuss my birthing plan. I had read about birthing plans and not just single paged ones but 4-6 paged long ones detailing how every step of labor and delivery must be handled. I had no birthing plan. I just wanted my baby and me to be healthy and safe. I told so to my OB-GYN and asked her if women actually put their labor and delivery plans to paper in such detail. Her answer amazed me. Most of them do, she said. Now I don’t know if this is a trend triggered by momzillas reading too many mommy-to-be books. It very well might be. She said there are a few who want to stick to it no matter what and it took a LOT of her time and energy in convincing them to go for a c-section or a vacuum pump or whatever because the baby was in distress. I trusted my doctor. Not my mother, not my husband. For my delivery I trusted my doctor. If she wanted to do an episiotomy, she would not really need my permission.

No Pain Management
This one really, really stumps me. Why do women hesitate to get an epidural? I don’t think it’s just because it’s risky to the baby, which it is NOT. They are safe. Many, many studies show that and epidurals have been around for half a century now. I think women feel guilty and selfish taking something to alleviate their labor pain. Contractions are natural, yes, but not all things natural are necessarily good. What’s wrong with alleviating pain? Epidurals were not common when my mother gave birth more than a quarter of a century ago in India. But she knew about them then. But it was assumed a woman had to suffer to give birth to her child. WHY? Why should we suffer when there is a remedy?

A long time ago, in the 1940’s when epidurals were introduced in the USA, doctors told women that labor pain what the price every woman paid for the sins of Eve. Really? Now that puts a whole new spin on no-epidural, doesn’t it? We have sinned by carrying a child? And now must atone by undergoing labor? This doesn’t even merit a response from me. BigGeek assumed I would be taking an epidural. I had told my mother I would get an epidural. She told me the contractions are not that bad and you don’t remember them. She said to wait and see if I really needed one. My contractions were very bearable and I took it at the last chance offered. Because yes, despite all opinions on the issue I felt selfish. BigGeek wanted me to get out of pain. And I am glad I took the epidural. It did not prolong my labor or delivery. Chip was out in less than thirty minutes. And yes, I still remember how the contractions felt. You don’t forget them.

So. It’s out of my system now. This post had been welling up inside for a long time and I just did a core-dump.