If you know me know, if you've heard me
ramble excitedly about how positive and empowering my experience was
in giving birth to my son, you might find this next statement
surprising.
The idea of having a baby used to scare
me.
And not just the part about raising the
baby either. Nope, the idea of growing said baby in my belly was
pretty scary too. What if I screwed it up somehow? And actually
giving birth? Completely terrifying.
For many years, I told people I didn't
want kids. At the time, I actually believed it, hiding fervently
behind my rebellious teen bravado. Who wants kids? I want to stay
young forever!
And for awhile, after admitting that
raising children wouldn't necessarily be all bad, I would say that I
wanted to adopt someday. There are so many unwanted children in the
world; why have my own when I could love one of them?
And then I got married. And while we
didn't actively discuss having children for the first few years of
our relationship, the topic inevitably came up. And guess what? He
wanted kids of his own. And guess what else? Somehow, the idea of
having babies, my own babies, with this man, the love of my live, was
acceptable.
That doesn't mean it wasn't scary. The
worst part was the idea of labor and childbirth. And having grown up
with glossy media images of women screaming in pain, endless
complications, and “typical” hospital births effectively managed
by detached unfeeling doctors, the fact that I was scared isn't
really surprising.
In all honesty, I didn't really allow
myself to think about it much until I was actually pregnant myself.
I quit taking my birth control pills at the end of 2010 and, not
surprisingly, I discovered I was pregnant in the summer of 2011. As
the reality set in, my mind wanted to panic, but I wouldn't let it.
Pregnancy itself, I could handle. I've never smoked cigarettes, I
immediately stopped my sporadic alcohol consumption, and I was
already the picture of health due to a whole-foods (and vegetarian)
diet and love of personal fitness.
And labor and birth? The first step in
overcoming an irrational fear like mine was education. So I started
reading.
And you know what? The more I read,
the more comfortable I got with the idea. I read about pain, about
natural (non-drug) methods of handling it, of the effects of an
epidural on both mama and baby. I read about my options of where to
birth: hospital, home, birth center. I read about differences in
care between midwives and OBGYNs. I read about potential
complications. I read about the “cascade” of interventions so
commonly experienced in hospital settings. I read about prenatal
nutrition and the benefits of continued exercise. I read about
delayed cord clamping versus cord blood banking. I read about the
potential risks of ultrasounds that nobody tells you about, and I
read that even the American Congress of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists only recommends them if medically indicated, and not as
a routine procedure. I read about gestational diabetes. I read
about circumcision. I read about being Rh negative and the use of
Rhogam. I read about all of this and much, much, much more.
And honestly, all of the reading I did
was much more educational than the birth class I took, the one that
was offered for free on the military base at Great Lakes. In that
class, D and I were the only couple that had hired a midwife, the
only couple that didn't plan on birthing in a hospital. I think one
other woman said she didn't want pain medication (I think there were
six or seven other couples taking the class with us), and one said
she'd “see how long she could handle it.” One was planning a
c-section (for a good reason; I think she had placenta previa). We
were the only vegetarians, the only ones who knew what a doula was,
the only ones who knew the names of the most commonly-used drugs for
induction, the only ones who knew that a cesarean section
necessitated cutting through seven layers of tissue, the only ones
who knew that getting an epidural required getting a catheter too. I
think we were the only ones made uncomfortable by the idea of
continuous fetal monitoring requiring an electrode screwed into the
scalp of my baby. We were definitely the only ones who realized that
the care of a midwife is actually substantially less expensive than
the traditional hospital birth route; the teacher was rather
condescending when she implied that we hadn't thought through the
financial ramifications of our decision, and D and I definitely did
not appreciate that.
And in the end, here is what I
realized.
Labor and birth are different for every
woman. They are not something to be feared.
Be comfortable in your environment. If
you are scared or uncomfortable, if you can't relax, your body will
know it and labor will likely take longer.
You will feel contractions. They will
likely be uncomfortable at the least, painful at the worst.
Remember, though, that unless your contractions are artificially
augmented with Pitocin or another induction drug, these contractions
are caused by your body. They have a purpose, and you can handle
them. Your body won't throw anything at you that you aren't capable
of handling.
Your cervix will efface (thin out) and
dilate (open up). This may take hours or it may take days. It will
take however long your body needs it to take.
Your body will tell you when to push.
When you feel that urge, follow it. Don't try to hold back, and
likewise don't try to push if your body isn't telling you to.
Don't over-think the process of birth.
Let the rational part of your mind step back. Your body knows what
it's doing; let it happen!
Above all, believe in your own ability
to birth. Your body was made to do this! Birth is normal. Birth is
natural.
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