WARNING: This post may be offensive to some.
I do not want to give birth in a hospital. I do not want the lights. I do not want the doctors and nurses. I do not want the strange surroundings. And I most definitely do not want a bunch of strangers trying to tell me that I need to be pumped full of all kinds of things in order to have a baby. Now stop, take a breath, relax and stop planning all the comments you might be wanting to make about how naive I am and how I should be so thankful for the fact that I have access to the healthcare I do. I am thankful. I often think about how grateful I am to live in a country where I know that I will have care I need if I get sick. I sometimes wonder how people manage without the care we have and I have a deep respect for doctors and what they do for us. But here's the kicker, giving birth is not an illness. It is not a disease and often times it is not even an emergency. Yes I know that sometimes things change or don't go the right way. I myself am a C-section baby and I am so glad the surgeon was able to get me and my siblings out because we wouldn't have made it out if it weren't for them. HOWEVER, my birth was an anomaly. Why then is the percentage of babies born by c-section in the range of 30% in Canada now? Why is it continuing to climb? I don't claim to be an expert on these things but something about that seems wrong to me. A process that was once a natural part of a woman's life has been transformed into an experience that is feared from a young age. You see it everywhere. Movies, TV, even stories shared by woman. Its the typical scene, a woman's water breaks and suddenly she is rushed to the hospital put in a wheel chair and the next thing you see is her lying on her back screaming while countless medical professionals run in yelling instructions and telling her to push while her legs are strapped up in stirrups. Eventually a when the baby does finally make its way out its umbilical cord is cut before has the chance to adjust and it is whisked away to be examined. Now lets just take a second here and think about any other natural bodily process from sex to going to the bathroom. Lets just say for example that you really have to go #2 (please forgive the crassness, but I am making a point. You don't have to read it if it offends.). So say you really have to go to the bathroom and you head to the toilet and all the sudden there are a bunch of people standing around you saying "poooop!!! come on you can do it!!! Just one more and it will be out!". I don't know about you, but I would be done for. Heck I can't even pee in a public washroom if I think a stranger is in earshot! So you are sitting there, trying to perform for all these people and the more you try the more tired you get and you start to feel discouraged and so they tell you that something isn't going right and that they need to intervene. You start to feel like its your fault for not being good at pooping when its something you should be able to do so you get even more stressed and eventually you are so tired and so disheartened that when a doctor tells you that they are going to have to cut the poop out you agree because you don't feel like there is any other way. Well no freaking kidding. While I KNOW that birth and taking a poo are hardly comparable in their magnitude they are both personal experiences that open you up to being vulnerable and generally are more easily accomplished without major stessors. Again sex, like birth, is something that usually takes a degree of calm and peace to be enjoyed and completed. Too much pressure can really set things back, especially for women. You read about it, they talk about it on talk shows and some of you have probably experienced that for the most part woman (and men) get more pleasure from sex when they are in a relaxed state of mind and able to focus on the task at hand. So why then is birth treated so differently? Because its more messy? It happens less often? Perhaps. Perhaps it is the realm of unknown that seems frightening (I mean, especially for first timers, its not like labour is something you really get to practice), but maybe it doesn't have to be so bad. What if more woman had this experience, even if they are in a hospital, what if more woman took control and just did what their body told them instead of being pressured and pushed to perform? What if they were given a safe, quiet environment? What if they were given the choice of having those only they feel safest with nearest them unless absolutely necessary? What if they were encouraged to relax and do what felt right for their bodies even if that meant dancing, squatting, being in water or something else? I know for me when I feel lower back pain sometimes just relaxing and swaying my hips, squatting a bit or taking a bath relieves it. So what about the same idea for birth? See, I am not even talking about extreme things here like being in a field or having incense and chanting. All I am saying is that maybe this fear of birth and this image we have has actually made it a lot scarier and a lot more difficult than it needs to be. Maybe the reason SO many births turn into emergencies is because instead of allowing ourselves to gently and knowingly respond to what out body is telling us it needs we are letting someone who cannot be inside our heads decide what is the best thing for us to make us most comfortable. We are being asked to preform one of our most personal life experiences for an audience that is not only unfamiliar, but even frightening. To me that seems like a recipe for disaster.
Now some comics I found. These are for those of us that are of the visual persuasion :p
