Warning: STOP! Before you go any further, this blog is about giving birth. If you don't want to think about that, don't read this.
I've done a lot of worrying and stressing and ranting about being pregnant and the future birth. I will admit, sometimes I am a glass is half empty person, especially when I am uncomfortable or scared. For instance, if you ever read the blog entries on my scoli page you will see this pattern. Before surgery I was scared and mad and felt cheated out of this life that I thought I should be living. Then it happened, I had the surgery and all of a sudden this wave of clarity and relief came over me and I was suddenly this strong person that was determined and focused.
SO... birth, what a scary thing for someone who has never given it before. It has been particularly hard to get excited about it with all these strange little issues I have had going on with my back and monitoring our son to make sure he is not going to walk down his mother's scoli or camptodactyly path. ( see bottom of post for campto explanation) Lately though I am finding a new sense of peace with all of it the more that I educate myself. I can not have an epidural because my spine is fused so I am going to have to do this all natural or I am going to have a C-section under general anesthesia, in other words, I will be out and will not remember any of it. These are my only two options. At first I thought, "Well shit! Knock me out lets make this as pain free as possible." Then I started watching all these documentaries and doing research on pain management and the drugs they can give women in labor and then it dawned on me... my body was meant for this and a c section is not the easy way out and even if it were it's also not the right choice unless we need some type of intervention. I found this documentary called, "The Business of Being Born" that I am now obsessed with. If you get the chance to watch this, you can watch it on Netflix or here: http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/watch-now/, do it. Educate yourself.
I never realized how maternity care and labor and delivery had become this traumatic experience for American women. We have so much media and doctors that are completely disconnected from this entire process. For instance, they ask interns in this film how often they learn about or see a natural birth and all of them said rarely or never. Women have been doing this for how many years and yet it seems like we no longer know how to do it the normal way. It is all so commercialized now. Hospitals are looking to fill beds and then empty them so they can be filled again. This is how they make money. This thing called designer birth has become so acceptable. Women can schedule their child's birth and then they make you believe that you have a certain amount of time to get this done. For example:
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| (Thank you http://www.growingslower.com/ for this infographic) |
So anyways, after doing all this research I have come to this conclusion that the last thing I want is a C-section and the last thing I want is to be induced. I am going to try my very hardest not to ask for pain killers and hopefully if I do my husband will remind me of this but the more I think it through I feel like a natural birth is going to be the best option for my son and I. Also, there is this one thing that I have been really tossing back and forth because it makes absolutely no sense to me. Why is it that throughout pregnancy they restrict you from taking and doing all these things and then you get to the very end and they give you all these options for pain killers? It doesn't make any sense to me that they are ok with loading you up with a cocktail of drugs then but you better not take that allergy pill the day before. What?!
Maybe some of my granola is left over from my teenage days. I went through this whole hippie phase in my teenage years where I wore tie dye, bell bottoms, and my grandmother's mushroom cuff bracelet. I listened to Jimi and CCR, and basically any music I could get my paws on that came out of the Vietnam Era. I dreamed about what Woodstock or riding on Further must have been like. Seriously, if I could find them I would post pictures of what my room looked like. I had a disco ball, and peace frog posters, blow up furniture and more freaking black lights and door beads then I knew what to do with. When I first started looking into natural birth and delivering with a midwife the first thing that would flash through my mind when I thought of that was my 13 year old self in purple lens glasses and braids. But really... the farther you get into it you realize that it's really not a hippie thing, it's more of a woman thing. An empowering woman thing that should be embraced instead of feared. I hope other first time mothers will start to look into this and educate themselves on these things.
( Remind me of how I feel right now when I actually get there. Just kidding. Kind of.)
(For all those wondering camptodactyly is another birth defect I was born with. Basically I can not straighten my fingers because there is skin that did not stretch allowing me too. Imagine a baby keeping their hands clenched in a fist while they are in the womb and their hands developing in that position. It's very creepy sounding but I have developed ways to live with it. I type at 77 words per minute using my one good hand, my right hand, and my index finger on my left hand.)
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