I had a quick conversation with a colleague today in which I was trying to explain my current angle on birth. I was trying to be brief so as to not sound too crazy--she's not a mom yet, so I didn't want to freak her out and didn't think excessive detail would be relevant. Trying to sum up all these feelings in brief is impossible, and so it got me thinking about a simpler way to put it.
What I came up with was a list of interventions.
When I gave birth the Buzz, I was 28 years old, physically fit, and had no health conditions. My OB told me that I was well-made for natural birthing. I supposed nature intended women in their twenties to give birth, right?
So here's what I got, in chronological order:
- membrane stripping
- external fetal monitoring (baby always sounded perfect)
- induction with Pitocin
- more external fetal monitoring
- membrane rupturing
- an epidural due to the Pitocin
- internal fetal monitoring (yes, that's when they screw an electrode into the baby's head while it's still in the womb)
- Cesarean section
I can blame no one but myself for letting all of that happen. What's crazy is that I had read several books about how to avoid interventions in pursuit of a natural childbirth, yet I still felt powerless in the doctor's office and the hospital.
What's also crazy is that I was a healthy 28-year-old woman whose body was perfectly capable of birthing that baby without a single one of those interventions. Crazy with a capital C.
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