My 20-month old son is a boy's boy: he is incredibly physical, likes balls, trucks, and trains, and probably runs faster than me already. Yet I still carry around anger and regret about the way he began his life, which, I know, seems pointless and self-destructive. So much of the frustration I was feeling when writing the last two posts was a product of two things: my sister-in-law's horrendous, 20-day hospital stay, induction, and seemingly-inevitable c-section, and my reading of Marie Mongan's book, HypnoBirthing.
I feel like every day I hear stories of women who are forced into unnecessarily unnatural birthing situations and subsequent c-sections. My sister-in-law had some complications, but for some crazy reason, her doctors tried to induce her at 37 weeks. Can anyone expect Pitocin to be successful at 37 weeks? A few days after starting with Cervidil, then Pitocin, then lots of really unbearable labor, they decided on a c-section. At that point, she was physically exhausted. What a way to begin motherhood!
At the same time as my sister-in-law was enduring her drugged recovery from surgery, I was reading HypnoBirthing, the primary text on a natural child-birth method based on a no-fear approach to labor. The idea that giving birth is an inherent biological process that women's bodies are designed for just seems stunning. I feel like women grow up expecting labor to be this scary, agonizing, super-long process that just has to be endured, and this idea is reinforced by almost any birthing scene in any tv show or movie. The HypnoBirthing method provides women with vocabulary that undoes the damaging ideas we've absorbed throughout our female lives, and it prepares them to relax enough to give birth the way our bodies are intended to.
This may all sound pie-in-the-sky, but if it helps me have a VBAC by empowering me enough to allow my body to do its thing, then sign me up. I'm pretty sure my body wasn't designed specifically to complete an olympic-length triathlon, but I managed that successfully. Why shouldn't I be able to do something women have been doing since the beginning of time?
So this time around, I'm working with a group of midwives instead of a practice of surgeons (OB-Gyns). I'm drinking red raspberry leaf tea twice a day. I'm trying really hard to eat way more protein and vegetables at every meal than I'm used to. And I'm signing up for HypnoBirthing classes that are more than an hour drive away from home during the busiest month of the second semester.
And if any of that doesn't work, I might be inspired to follow in this woman's footsteps: "Mom defies doctor, has baby her own way."
1 comment:
You are SO awesome Emily. I too held some regret over Riley's birth-30 hours of epidural, pitocin (she was lauded for being able to stand so much of it) and finally birth. She had difficulty latching on which they now think was from being numb. However, like Buzz, she is a wonderful, happy, incredibly intelligent child. We can do what's best for them all around and hope for the most positive outcome. Too bad we don't live closer-we seem like we are on the same page with this stuff!
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