(no subject)
May. 11th, 2006 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valancystirlingI'm so into this book The Mask of Motherhood. I've only had a few minutes here and there to read it, so it might take me forever to finish, but I'm liking it.
I was just reading about pregnancy, and how insane it is that the modern woman, more educated than previous generations, has all this information at her fingertips, and most of it is intentionally misleading.
I remember in the throes of labor, commenting on Ina May's "rushes" and various other prominent childbirth "educators" with all their "manageable pain" bullshit. BULLSHIT.
What bothers me the most is that these lies fuck you up DURING labor. What I NOW know was normal excruciating pain, at the time I was terrified that I was dying because it was NOT supposed to hurt like this. All the books, the midwives, the other women, the videos, all of it. They never gave a hint. Especially the more earthy crunchy the source, the more full of bullshit it was. They find the most serene woman, who's probably high or dead, and film her moaning quietly in a tub, and then voila, there's a baby and all is happy and joy sweeps across the land. And I'm highly gratified after the fact, to know that it wasn't just me. Up till right now today, honestly, I've been afraid to talk to other women--especially pregnant women--about my labor and birth. Because I was so convinced that mine was atypically horrible and I didn't want to scare them. Now I am utterly convinced that my experience was normal. It was prolonged, no doubt, by the position of Topie's head through most of it, but that was about all that wasn't strictly typical.
Well let me tell you right now. I'm not going to participate in this "mask of motherhood" thing, and i will be totally straight with you. None of this stems from my dissatisfaction with my midwife's actions, or bitterness about any of that. When I think of my "horrible labor" I don't think of the pain, the suffering, the NORMAL part of it. I think of the stupid midwife and her stupid assistant, and the way they treated me.
So let me just be honest and straight about it right here and now, with no mistake.
Having a baby hurts like nothing you will ever be able to fathom in this life or the next. While there ARE some women who have different experiences and for whatever reason get out relatively easy, for most of us, you will pray for death before it's over. You will think you're dying. You will be confused and panicked. You will wonder if you can possibly go on. You will be sure that you can't. You will beg for drugs, unconsciousness, and you won't care. You will feel like the core of your body is being ripped in half, in the most brutal and inhumane way imaginable. you will feel attacked by your own body. You will not think once about the baby. You will forget everything except the pain.
ETA Or maybe you won't. I think it's important to understand that no matter how proficient you are with the various strategies and breathing and techniques, that there's still a good chance you're going to hurt like hell. ETA
All this coming from someone who spent 10 months reading every book and website about childbirth and labor. I read the full range. The books written by male OB/GYNs, the mellowest hippie midwives, and everything in between. I read books on homebirth, and hypnobirth, and painfree birth, and medicated birth, and every type of labor "management". I took prenatal yoga and birthing workshops. I watched all the videos. I was entirely sold on all of it. I honestly believed that if you weren't afraid or anxious, that your body was never meant to hurt during labor. That you could relax and breathe and let it go and all that, and you would doze off between contractions and your body would do all the work and you just had to sit back and experience the ride.
Even worse, when some woman would tell me that it DOES hurt like hell, I would smile to myself rather smugly, and pity her, that she had clearly not read the right books, and probably didn't know how to relax enough. Poor, poor, misinformed thing she must be!
I don't feel any bitterness or regret or anything bad about all the pain. Now. But at the time I felt so shocked, stunned, horrified, and betrayed that I had been lied to by EVERYONE. Doctors, midwives, women, men, everyone. I think now, that my one real regret was buying into all the crap and having to go through those few hours of complete shock and panic that something had gone horribly, terrifyingly wrong, because it just should not hurt like that. If I had been told the truth, I would have gone into it expecting the worse and could have been spared that indescribably horrible panic, that I was going to die.
In my case, something WAS wrong, and that was that Topie's head was in a terrible position. And probably if we hadn't taken care of that, things might have gone very badly. But even after her head was in the right position, it was still hours, and it was still almost unbearable. I think it was even worse AFTER her head was positioned.
So that's what I feel like I need to say. Not to instill fear in anyone, because labor and childbirth are no place for fear. I do strongly encourage pregnant women to read books on relaxation, because without that I would have been lost. No, breathing and relaxing isn't going to take all the pain away. Get it out of your head right now. But it will help you get through it without feeling broken after. No point in clenching all your muscles and fighting your uterus the whole way, and prolonging the whole thing, and then feeling like you were run over by a truck the next day. So yes, by all means SERIOUSLY learn to relax. Practice relaxing. But don't think that by reading "the right books" you are going to sneak under the radar and have a pain-free experience. Most likely, you won't. And while I enjoyed reading all the birth-under-the-tree-in-the-woods-with-primal-screams and all that fun stuff, don't build your hopes around it.
I hope this won't all be dismissed because it was written by someone who is bitter about her midwife's participation in the labor and birth. I'm talking strictly about the physical aspects of it. I don't want to further the cause of disservice to women by lying or telling half-truths. This is the truth.
I was just reading about pregnancy, and how insane it is that the modern woman, more educated than previous generations, has all this information at her fingertips, and most of it is intentionally misleading.
I remember in the throes of labor, commenting on Ina May's "rushes" and various other prominent childbirth "educators" with all their "manageable pain" bullshit. BULLSHIT.
What bothers me the most is that these lies fuck you up DURING labor. What I NOW know was normal excruciating pain, at the time I was terrified that I was dying because it was NOT supposed to hurt like this. All the books, the midwives, the other women, the videos, all of it. They never gave a hint. Especially the more earthy crunchy the source, the more full of bullshit it was. They find the most serene woman, who's probably high or dead, and film her moaning quietly in a tub, and then voila, there's a baby and all is happy and joy sweeps across the land. And I'm highly gratified after the fact, to know that it wasn't just me. Up till right now today, honestly, I've been afraid to talk to other women--especially pregnant women--about my labor and birth. Because I was so convinced that mine was atypically horrible and I didn't want to scare them. Now I am utterly convinced that my experience was normal. It was prolonged, no doubt, by the position of Topie's head through most of it, but that was about all that wasn't strictly typical.
Well let me tell you right now. I'm not going to participate in this "mask of motherhood" thing, and i will be totally straight with you. None of this stems from my dissatisfaction with my midwife's actions, or bitterness about any of that. When I think of my "horrible labor" I don't think of the pain, the suffering, the NORMAL part of it. I think of the stupid midwife and her stupid assistant, and the way they treated me.
So let me just be honest and straight about it right here and now, with no mistake.
Having a baby hurts like nothing you will ever be able to fathom in this life or the next. While there ARE some women who have different experiences and for whatever reason get out relatively easy, for most of us, you will pray for death before it's over. You will think you're dying. You will be confused and panicked. You will wonder if you can possibly go on. You will be sure that you can't. You will beg for drugs, unconsciousness, and you won't care. You will feel like the core of your body is being ripped in half, in the most brutal and inhumane way imaginable. you will feel attacked by your own body. You will not think once about the baby. You will forget everything except the pain.
ETA Or maybe you won't. I think it's important to understand that no matter how proficient you are with the various strategies and breathing and techniques, that there's still a good chance you're going to hurt like hell. ETA
All this coming from someone who spent 10 months reading every book and website about childbirth and labor. I read the full range. The books written by male OB/GYNs, the mellowest hippie midwives, and everything in between. I read books on homebirth, and hypnobirth, and painfree birth, and medicated birth, and every type of labor "management". I took prenatal yoga and birthing workshops. I watched all the videos. I was entirely sold on all of it. I honestly believed that if you weren't afraid or anxious, that your body was never meant to hurt during labor. That you could relax and breathe and let it go and all that, and you would doze off between contractions and your body would do all the work and you just had to sit back and experience the ride.
Even worse, when some woman would tell me that it DOES hurt like hell, I would smile to myself rather smugly, and pity her, that she had clearly not read the right books, and probably didn't know how to relax enough. Poor, poor, misinformed thing she must be!
I don't feel any bitterness or regret or anything bad about all the pain. Now. But at the time I felt so shocked, stunned, horrified, and betrayed that I had been lied to by EVERYONE. Doctors, midwives, women, men, everyone. I think now, that my one real regret was buying into all the crap and having to go through those few hours of complete shock and panic that something had gone horribly, terrifyingly wrong, because it just should not hurt like that. If I had been told the truth, I would have gone into it expecting the worse and could have been spared that indescribably horrible panic, that I was going to die.
In my case, something WAS wrong, and that was that Topie's head was in a terrible position. And probably if we hadn't taken care of that, things might have gone very badly. But even after her head was in the right position, it was still hours, and it was still almost unbearable. I think it was even worse AFTER her head was positioned.
So that's what I feel like I need to say. Not to instill fear in anyone, because labor and childbirth are no place for fear. I do strongly encourage pregnant women to read books on relaxation, because without that I would have been lost. No, breathing and relaxing isn't going to take all the pain away. Get it out of your head right now. But it will help you get through it without feeling broken after. No point in clenching all your muscles and fighting your uterus the whole way, and prolonging the whole thing, and then feeling like you were run over by a truck the next day. So yes, by all means SERIOUSLY learn to relax. Practice relaxing. But don't think that by reading "the right books" you are going to sneak under the radar and have a pain-free experience. Most likely, you won't. And while I enjoyed reading all the birth-under-the-tree-in-the-woods-with-primal-screams and all that fun stuff, don't build your hopes around it.
I hope this won't all be dismissed because it was written by someone who is bitter about her midwife's participation in the labor and birth. I'm talking strictly about the physical aspects of it. I don't want to further the cause of disservice to women by lying or telling half-truths. This is the truth.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 02:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 03:03 am (UTC)The pain was definately bad, but, and I hesitate to say this, it was manageable. That's not to say that I didn't cry and scream and say "oh god I can't do it. There's no way I can go on", but I got through it. The worst parts weren't so much the contractions, as the back pain, nausea, and sheer exhustion. If those could have been eliminated, maybe it would have been a breeze like those women who dance around "lalala" and out pops baby. Or maybe those were good distractions from the true pain of the contractions. Who knows?
I don't feel as angry about being lied to. But, I don't think I did as much prep as you did. I mean, I've done a ton of reading, but it was as much for my interest in birth in general as it was for myself, you know? And I guess I just took most of it as simple suggestions more than telling it as it is. Everyone finds their own way, you know?
I can say there are things I was dissappointed in, for sure. I never felt, at the time at least, that I zoned out into the "laborland" they talk about in some books. Also, the tub was no help. No sudden, "epidural-like" quality. Sitting on the toilet was no help, either. And I pushed laying flat on my back, curled up in a ball, pulling on my legs. The most dissappointing (and painful) part of all. That part is certainly not a lie - pushing that way *hurts*.
I didn't feel panic or shock by the pain, though. I knew it would hurt. Interestingly, enough, however, it wasn't as bad as my round ligament pains. Those were so excrusiatingly horrible sometimes that I simply could not breathe. At least I kept breathing this time.
I might just be forgetting the worst things, though. Because most of my memories are of bouncing on the balls of my feet in a squatting position blowing "horse lips" over and over. And that made it manageable.
I don't know if that answers your questions.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 03:21 am (UTC)For me, it was definitely all-out suffering. I'm not sure how to define "manageable" because as long as you don't die, you managed. I remember thinking how unbearable it was at the time, but I never passed out or really screamed.
I just hate that so many things are presented as total fact, universally, and that you can ever truly be prepared for it.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 03:27 am (UTC)I think the only thing that is fact about it is that it's a very individual experience. No two women, bodies, babies, set of conditions, etc are the same. Next time we do it, we'll be just as unprepared as this last time.
Something about it was so intense and, I don't know, important feeling (?), that sometimes I wake up and think "I want to go into labor today".
But I think I'm completely insane on that.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 03:34 am (UTC)I almost feel excited when I think of doing it again. Like, how will it be next time?? I can't wait.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 07:31 pm (UTC)And that's what I'm using. That's what I'm using for now. Towards the end it's just going to be me blacking out and chanting "I wanna die" in slurred death-speech, but. I'm doing my best and taking everything I read with a grain of salt.
Rushes indeed.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 07:48 pm (UTC)I'm glad that you have reasonable expectations.
But I have to say, for as bad as it was, I feel like it was my first meaningful sacrifice as a mother, just going through all that pain. I feel like I earned Topaz, if that makes any sense.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 07:51 pm (UTC)And I totally agree about the majority of crunchy resources deluding people about pain management. It's surprising.
On what Julie looked like when giving birth, by Jake
Date: 2006-05-12 02:41 am (UTC)Re: On what Julie looked like when giving birth, by Jake
Date: 2006-05-12 03:06 am (UTC)I wish now that I had video of the labor and birth, because I want to know how what was in my head compares to what everyone else saw.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 03:16 am (UTC)It's good that you tell people like it is.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 05:58 am (UTC)because if i had expected a painless birth i would have thought i was dying, too.
with zachery i went into labor with all these thoughts about going against the grain and doing it naturally because i was stubbon, i was a bad ass, and the thought of an epidural scared me. soooo many women during my pregnancy had told me that the contractions hurt more than pushing, so when my contractions felt like milk menstrual cramps i thought it was smooth sailing. then i hit transition. then i couldn't push due to a swollen cervix once i was complete. and then when i was finally able to push i was so exhausted, but determined, and oh holy did it hurt! it didn't occur to me until later that every woman that said her contractions hurt more probably had an epidural as soon as she could...so of course pushing hardly hurt (if she could even feel it) and i have always had a higher threshold for pain so while i didn't think my contractions were majorly painful until i was 8cm, i could see how other people might have.
with avery, it was something else. i had been in labor for days, maybe even weeks. the contractions never once got bad until again, i was in transition. i suffered for about an hour with contractions coming every 3-4 minutes before john called the midwife. 20 minutes later she was at our house and i was 8-9cm. the pool helped immensely but my back hurt, i think, more than anything else and i couldn't find a comfortable position. pushing didn't feel good - i envisioned a pretty effortless birth like those women that would hold their breath under water or close thier eyes without making a sound until the baby's head emerged...yeah, it's nothing like that and i've always been honest with people. to hell with the mask or the bullshit lies.
it hurt, though this time around, it wasn't defiance or bullheadness that made me go all natural, it was a true belief that a woman can do this. women have been doing this forever. but it does hurt, and i think that the school of thought that tries to promote completely pain-free childbirth can be just as damaging as those that promote fear and intervention.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 03:11 pm (UTC)I do wonder exactly to what extent my preconceived notions affected my experience. It will be interesting to compare next time.
So how did you do it with Zachary? Did you get an epidural? I have to admit, there's a part of me that is very curious about trying one, especially when Jake's mom describes her first (natural) delivery, as compared with the second (with the epidural).
i think that the school of thought that tries to promote completely pain-free childbirth can be just as damaging as those that promote fear and intervention
I completely agree with that. I think that is the biggest scam ever.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 05:38 pm (UTC)both of my births were unmedicated but zachery was born in a hospital.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-12 02:35 pm (UTC)