It’s all very clever and all to come up with anti c-section slogans (like “the uneccesarean”) but unfortunately I think it demonizes the women who elect to have them and the doctors that perform them. Why do we care so much about what a woman does with her own body? I know, I know, there’s a baby involved. But why do we seek to control, even as we are “trying to help”? I am with you’all- I agree that c-sections are performed too often and that it can make the birth experience traumatic and full of regrets for the mom. But one of the side effects of anti-c-section-ism is that the mother who had one now has regrets because supposedly she wasn’t supposed to get one! Or all the backlash against epidurals and pain medications during labor. Why do we have to make it out that the woman was weak to have accepted the offer of pain meds, or even worse, if she asked for them!
We MUST learn to respect the laboring woman, both during labor, and for the entire lifetime afterwards! Labor isn’t a one time thing, oh 24 hours and it’s over. Labor is just the climax, then there’s the afterwards, the afterbirth, the PARENTING the child for the rest of its life, the new roles to adjust to, the physical healing. Once you have a baby you are never the same again as you were before you got pregnant. You start to feel like yourself again at some point, but it’s a new you, a new and improved you! I don’t care if you never felt a single contraction, etc. you GAVE BIRTH, regardless of how. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you didn’t. Heck I had a vaginal birth but I still feel regret because I read all these natural childbirth stories, and I think to myself, I was weak, I shouldn’t have asked for pain medication, I shouldn’t have let them “sleep me,” etc. BUT the reality is that everything happened the way it was supposed to. And I did a great job. I had a herniated disc at the time, I was in excrutiating pain 24 hours a day for 3 months before I gave birth. I couldn’t walk around during labor. I couldn’t even sit up or squat. I basically ended up in the traditional position, legs up on a bar, on my back, etc. I literally couldn’t stand up. And I had back labor. And I pushed for 1 minute shy of 3 hours. And I had Pitocin towards the end of the birth. Pretty much all the things I didn’t want to happen, happened. I mean WTF- there are many many of us who have health problems, etc. that prevent us from having “natural childbirth,” from breastfeeding, etc. I’m sick of the judgement. It needs to end because it’s getting us nowhere. All it's doing is alienating us from each other at a time when we need each other the most.
We MUST learn to respect the laboring woman, both during labor, and for the entire lifetime afterwards! Labor isn’t a one time thing, oh 24 hours and it’s over. Labor is just the climax, then there’s the afterwards, the afterbirth, the PARENTING the child for the rest of its life, the new roles to adjust to, the physical healing. Once you have a baby you are never the same again as you were before you got pregnant. You start to feel like yourself again at some point, but it’s a new you, a new and improved you! I don’t care if you never felt a single contraction, etc. you GAVE BIRTH, regardless of how. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you didn’t. Heck I had a vaginal birth but I still feel regret because I read all these natural childbirth stories, and I think to myself, I was weak, I shouldn’t have asked for pain medication, I shouldn’t have let them “sleep me,” etc. BUT the reality is that everything happened the way it was supposed to. And I did a great job. I had a herniated disc at the time, I was in excrutiating pain 24 hours a day for 3 months before I gave birth. I couldn’t walk around during labor. I couldn’t even sit up or squat. I basically ended up in the traditional position, legs up on a bar, on my back, etc. I literally couldn’t stand up. And I had back labor. And I pushed for 1 minute shy of 3 hours. And I had Pitocin towards the end of the birth. Pretty much all the things I didn’t want to happen, happened. I mean WTF- there are many many of us who have health problems, etc. that prevent us from having “natural childbirth,” from breastfeeding, etc. I’m sick of the judgement. It needs to end because it’s getting us nowhere. All it's doing is alienating us from each other at a time when we need each other the most.
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