My Really Painful Childbirth Story You Don't Want to Hear
Several women I know are about to pop first babies. So I'm doing the lip-zip—keeping mum about the day I became a mum. To me, there's no birth story worth hearing when yours is about to unfold. Bad stories are obviously off-putting; good ones can intimidate. So if you're a soon-to-be first mom, stop reading. My story might be good or bad (in either case, it's all bad for you).
In this excellent piece on labor pain, the author mentions how baby delivery professionals always tell preggie ladies, "Childbirth is different for everyone." Sadly, I didn't get that impression. Many of my friends seemed to give birth to bars of soap, in terms of difficulty. I also had this pre-labor dream in which, after a twinge of discomfort, I shot the baby into the arms of an admiring nurse, who said: "Wow! It slipped out like a sardine!" (Yes, it was a very weird dream.)
With my pals popping them without drugs and my easy-labor dreams, it's no wonder I thought I'd arise and walk home with my sardine within 12 hours. But when my day came, I went from the natural birth wing of NYC's St. Lukes-Roosevelt, with its back-massaging, candle-lighting, golden-boat visualizing, doula-like nurses, to the Failure to Progress category (much pain, no gain)...into a broken elevator, to be taken down a floor...and several notches lower in self-confidence, to where the brusque nurses and Pitocin reside...and eventually into C-section land, with its crucifix-like bed and flock of residents begging to make the cut.
Like many striving New Yorkers, I took an intense birth class that lasted forever and involved much dissing of epidurals while sharing babaganoush and mini-pitas with other overly-informed-but-trying-to-get-in-touch-with-our-instincts urbanites.
I'm glad I tried natural birth. But sometimes I wonder whether I missed out. On a nice big, fat, early epi.
As I wrote about in First Feeding today, to the freebirthers, natural childbirth just isn't natural enough.
And yes, the epidural made my pre-c-section labor a lot more pleasant.
Yeah, much to my surprise, I'm one of those annoying b*****s who had a sardine birth, sans drugs. So I can't vouch personally for the epi, but I talked to a lot of women who can. My mom for one, who had her first three kids naturally for all of the granola drug-averse reasons...and then thoroughly enjoyed doping herself and the bambinos for her last two births.
you know what is the most natural thing in the world? DYING DURING CHILDBIRTH. Used to happen all the time, before modern medicine. So fine, take a natural childbirth class, have your cankles massaged by a doula and listen to enya, but do it in a hospital (like crabmom did!) so when the s%$t hits the fan, you and baby will be OK. There's a birth plan for you - 1. Healthy mommy 2. Healthy baby 3. +/- Drugs, epidural, etc...
well put, cherbear. I recently talked to a friend who, like me, had been swayed by the natural childbirth thing for babe #1 but for number 2 went straight to epi-land and found it fabbbbbulous. I guess it really does depend. But I do thing epis are demonized a tad by the granola birth classes all we urbanites flock to.