Dance Class/Playground Moms Vent - GoGoGadget UCers!!

[lizzie]

God bless them, I wish they would *just stop talking about birth* PLEASE. They haven't had good experiences. They don't want to hear about my *amazing* experiences or happier options. They say things (OUT LOUD!! ) about how "no woman should have to go through a 33 hour labor in this day and age"... So what should we have to go through? C/s?? Pitocin drips? Forceps/Vac deliveries? And "you're even smaller than me, so they'll probably induce you by 37 weeks if your baby is anywhere near ready" cause Lord knows none of us can give birth to a full term baby vaginally!! (tell that to my m/w that birthed her 12 pound son at home) Haven't studies shown that on average we're bigger now than the women who lived 100-200 years ago? Is it just our pelvises that have mysteriously shrunk?

It goes without saying that I'm off my rocker. Homebirth is bad enough, but Am I kidding? Nuts? Certifiable? How can I even consider the possibility of giving birth with only my dh and toddlers on hand to assist? And what about the mess? What about... Everything that could possibly go wrong?

I'm so close to throwing birth practices in with religion and politics... Those of us who are confident in our beliefs are confident in our beliefs, those who aren't... just waste your time with negative, argumentative, inflammatory nonsense that they've "heard/read/saw/know" but can't prove and don't want to hear the truth about. Unless I have a previously established relationship with a pg woman, I just drift casually away anymore. I'm not even pg, and it's just so upsetting to hear women who have so little faith in their bodies and babies pontificate about the genius of their OB's and chosen hospital maternity unit.

I forget you mamas here are the few and far between, so far between the 'normal' moms out there. I mean, for crying out loud! I'm only a half hour north of Boulder, CO!! :LOL Guess that's one long half hour if you're a pg woman.

No one else understands.. except of course for the cbirth mamas, and they already heard my ranting about my cousin and sil, thought I'd spare some of them this round!

lizzie

[MamaGaia]

Oh,I so hear you.


One day, I had family gathered at my house and all the women sat around discussing my insanity at homebirthing (they don't know it'll be a UC...they just assume there will be a midwife.) . They were all saying how much better hospital births were,blah blah blah. My one aunt says,"Who cleans up after a homebirth?" My mother pipes in,"Well, not ME,that's for sure.How disgusting!" Mind you...my mother has been a nurse for 30 years. And the products of your grandchild's afterbirth is disgusting? Ah..I love my mom...lol

I just sat there and kind of was in between wanting to laugh at them and wanting to be furious with them. It amazes me first how uninformed they are and it amazes me even more that they discuss all of this out loud in front of me like I don't exist! They were actually "betting" how long I would go without going to the hospital to have drugs or whatever.

And they will all wonder afterwards why none of them were invited to the actual birth, I'm sure.


The negativity and fear among women is both alarming and frustrating to me. I'm also saddened at how out of touch women seem to be with themselves

[cottonwood]

I used to run screaming too. :LOL But the way I look at it is that they're scared of birth, misinformed, in denial, and disconnected from their animal natures and probably their spirits to a certain extent. I can't help but feel sorry for them (though I'm sure they'd be offended to know that) and I guess that makes it easier for me to hear them.

But also, something has changed in me... I don't know if it's because I've talked about it often enough now, or if it's because I have a core base of people who support me and so I feel secure about it... but I kind of have fun with it now. If someone said to me, ""no woman should have to go through a 33 hour labor in this day and age"... I would say, "my third labor was 32 hours long and it was so great!" Now to me, that's fun. But maybe it's just because I enjoy watching the discombobulation in their eyes as they try to wrap their minds around it. :LOL And inevitably, if I manage to stay relaxed and positive about it, they come around with questions, and that's fun too. Or, they try to defend themselves against what they perceive as an attack on everything they believe, by acting like they don't believe me or I'm an alien being or whatever. And that's really okay too. I don't have to be friends with everybody. And besides, it's really about them anyway, not me.

I'd keep trying to find a group of people that have similar philosophies to yours. I found a great group of women by putting out feelers for unschooling families in the area (starting with homeschooling groups.) I don't think any of them would consider unassisted birth, but they are not shocked by the idea, and they are hip to the kinds of birth and parenting issues that come up here at MDC. When we first moved here it seemed like all I could find were these really mainstream groups, and yeah, it was discouraging and felt isolating. You've just got to keep digging. There are people like us everywhere.

[7kiddosmom]

I get frustrated with women who think that their doctor's SAVED them and their babies. I just want to scream, "THEY CAUSED the problem!!!" I have learned just to keep my mouth shut and just shake my head.

When we were planning our UC my SIL could not believe that I would TRUST *gasp* my husband to deliever the baby. I told her that out of every person in this world there was only one that would be willing to give his life for mine and my child's and that certainly was not a dr. that was my dh. How could I not trust him? In the end we had a great UC and a healthy 13 lb baby boy. (guess my pelvis hasn't been subject to evolution).

That same SIL had a hospital birth in Nov. "I almost had to have a c section, I couldn't push my 7 lb, 3rd baby out." "I didn't want the epidural, but had it because I was going to have to get one anyway when they tied my tubes" Her baby was not in a very good position and that is why the pushing was hard. She couldn't move around to get him in a good position because of the epidural. But her dr. "let" her try a little longer and she was able to get him out. I get so frustrated with women!!!! AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH

Kasey

[mehndi mama]

I'm with you, Linda - I tend to have fun with it now. Before I had a UC or two (or even a homebirth, for that matter), it was a lot easier for people to get the upper hand in a condecending conversation about my birth choices. I simply didn't have the PERSONAL experience to back up what I was saying, which is definitely irksome! But by sticking to my guns, I gained that experience, and now I'm able to counter just about anything thrown at me. Sometimes it's just by the mere fact that I've had twice as many babies as the questioner that they decide I must know what I'm doing.....but I love it when people are astonished enough to ask questions, just because they've never heard of anyone doing things the way we do!

I tell you, it's more than hillarious to have some woman come up to me and start banging on about all this stuff about birth, or babies, or feeding, or sleeping arrangements, or whatever......and then when I say something about "Well, we've done it this way for our last 4, can't see why I'd change now", their eyes nearly bug out of their heads. Once they realize that I'm a bona-fide married mother of 5, and not a pregnant teen with no experience (I look quite young still), they either clam up totally, or start asking questions. And when I'm able to answer the questions in an offhand, "no big deal" kind of way, they seem to be more at ease with the idea of an unassisted birth.

[lizzie]

Oh thanks for letting me 'rant-n-run'.. I haven't been able to get back on line for a couple of days! But I really appreciate your comments... I'd usually throw out there that I plan on having my next baby at home, and they ask about whatever midwife, and I say, oh no, I'm just doing it myself, no doctor or midwife can get to me 'on time' in the hospital, so I doubt they'd make it to my house before the baby, so why bother? ....

The typical response is Oh NO.. You CANNOT do that without a midwife!! And of course the clean up is always one of the first points of debate. Unfortunately, (maybe you can tell by all my mile long posts!) restraint is not something I come by naturally. I do think part of it is that I haven't done it before. I have no question in mind as far as my ability to birth on my own, but since I haven't technically done it yet, I don't have the walk to back up my talk yet.

I have three gfs due in October. One of them just told me that the medical types just told her that if there is anything positive on the "triple screen", you have to have your pg very closely monitored because of the high rate of m/c and stillbirth with those positives, even if the ultrasound shows that everything is okay. .... And the stress all of that monitoring is going to put on you and the baby? Whose going to be monitoring that?! She even made the comment that she has no idea how her first one made it into the world alive, since she had a postive AFP test, and they didn't monitor her at all. Of course, she was perfectly healthy when she was born, very naturally and at top speeds. Of all my gfs, this one frustrates me the most. She has brilliant births, fast, 'easy', everything just flies by with her labors, but she won't even consider the possibility of having a baby at home. Thinks I'm nuts, and that I'm endangering my dc, especially when it comes up that I would still go natural/vaginal for a breech baby, by even considering a homebirth. And yet we're still friends? How do women do it? Anyway.. Thanks as always for your support and suggestions!


lizzie

[cottonwood]

"The typical response is Oh NO.. You CANNOT do that without a midwife!!"

Now what do you think they mean by this? Because obviously, technically you can...

"And of course the clean up is always one of the first points of debate."

Isn't that weird? It's almost like they're grasping at straws. I mean, of all the things to be worried about... !

[ChristaN]

Lizzie,

Where are you? I noticed that you said that you were 1/2 hour north of Boulder. We live btwn Loveland & Ft. Collins & I wouldn't tell you that you were nuts !

Both of my girls were born at the hospital w/ nurse midwives & the first one was a difficult experience that the medical professionals absolutely caused by intervening & messing the whole thing up. They "saved" us only b/c they nearly killed us! My younger dd's birth was much better & had no interventions -- w/ a different midwife. If we were having more, I would absolutely do it at home & it bugs me to no end how medical the whole birth process has become. We are few & far between in Colorado, it seems, but there are some non-interventionist moms around!

[lizzie]

Hi Christa!

Well I'm IN Loveland, so you couldn't be more than 5 minutes away! :LOL

I guess that half hour north of Boulder is all about how fast you go!

PM me, we'll have to get together and talk UC

You know BV, I think that's what just makes me shut down... what the *heck* do they mean, you cannot do that w/o a m/w?? I mean, either the baby is coming out, or your both going on to the hereafter, yk? I guess I should just respond in kind, and act shocked and amazed that they would even consider a hospital birth...

"You CANNOT do that in a hospital with an OB there!! : What if something goes wrong?!!"

:LOL :LOL

And the comments about trusting your dh... It seems like most women don't. Crazy generalization, but seriously, most of my friends can't imagine having their dh that intimately involved in the birthing process ( : ), nevermind their (usually) intimate involvement in the conceptions! Both births, even in the hospital, really strengthened the bond I have with my dh, and happily, he did witness the general pointlessness if the docs involved.

lizzie

[cottonwood]

I think some women don't get excited about the idea of having their husbands involved because birth in our culture is regarded as as embarassing clinical manipulation of the body. I mean, who would want their husband present at a gynecological exam, yk? And also because of the primal, "out of control" nature of birth. I know a woman who never lets her husband see her mom body naked or her face without makeup because she's afraid it would turn him off. And maybe that's true, sadly.

Also there is this cultural desire to paint men as inept regarding certain "women's" things -- childbirth, taking care of babies, buying and wrapping gifts :LOL -- is this a backlash against the patriarchy? For whatever reason, it's there. I think some women don't want their husbands involved in an intimate/emotional fashion because there is a spiritual/emotional disconnect and therefore they have no desire to share it with them. Maybe they even feel they need to protect it from them. Ironic then, of course, that it is usually a man between their legs delivering the baby. But maybe that's acceptable because 1) it's seen as necessary or 2) because it's clinical in nature.

Paradoxically, there is this cultural expectation that the husband should support the woman throughout the labor and/or witness the birth. This seems to be only a recent thing in the history of childbirth. On the one hand I can see the (good) reasons for it but on the other I have to wonder if too much isn't made of it. Marilyn Moran wrote about birth (rather than orgasm) as being the true culmination of the sexual act between man and woman. I admit I like the sound of that, but I don't think I really believe it. Yes, sex and birth are hormonally related acts. So are sex and breastfeeding, but no one tries to say that breastfeeding is essentially part of the sexual act. This is because while sex involves hormonal interation between man and woman, breastfeeding involves hormonal interaction between mother and baby. Well, so does birth. (Yes, I know about the prostaglandins in semen, I don't have an answer for that (yet ).)

In short, while I don't think that birth is inherently just "a woman thing", I don't feel that the presence of the baby's father is necessarily an integral part of the birth experience either.

Gee I kind of went off on a tangent there, didn't I?

[yvonnemlv]

Originally Posted by blueviolet

I think some women don't get excited about the idea of having their husbands involved because birth in our culture is regarded as as embarassing clinical manipulation of the body. I mean, who would want their husband present at a gynecological exam, yk?

I just wanted to agree with your pov on the paradox culture of birth. And as for who would want their husband present at a GYN exam -- ME! I will never go to one alone. *shudder* And of course the GYN has to be female.

[lizzie]

Originally Posted by blueviolet

In short, while I don't think that birth is inherently just "a woman thing", I don't feel that the presence of the baby's father is necessarily an integral part of the birth experience either.

Gee I kind of went off on a tangent there, didn't I?

Not too tangential... (or however you spell that, if it's even the right word!) since the topic is really just how the general public responds to birth.

I agree that the father isn't really that necessary for the birthing. I think especially if they have issues with being a part of it, they'd clearly be a hindrance to the whole process. FWIW, I think some men enjoy being rendered incompetent, if only in perception, by the prevailing attitudes toward them. Why be involved when you could in front of a tv somewhere with a beer your hand?

And so many dp's are actively and supportively involved now, and wouldn't want it any other way. I'm happy my dh is interested and genuinely wants to be a part of our children's births, but sometimes I wonder how it would be to do it alone, just me and the baby. He (my dh) certainly wasn't terribly keen on being at all involved in our first nursing experiences, to the detriment of my dd's time at the breast. But that's for another thread!

Of course, when you read anything historical about birth, it's only been in the last 100 or so years that men have been there when it happens, right? I think the clinical thing is definitely an issue. So many women seem to think anything connected with the physical reality of their sexuality is too "icky" to have to deal with, so they're happy to turn it all over to the men in white..coats. It's just sad.

lizzie

[Morgraine]

my favorite . .

my personal favorite is " oh are "they" going to let you do that" LOL I wonder who they think they is. In my mind I often think to myself "you" are part of "they" shake yourself out of it! But I just smile. With #1 I was , wow did you know how powerful and beautiful birth is! Let me tell you all about it. . . With #2 I am very protective of myself. I was 25 week before I told my family and work. My neighbours are just find out now! Due end of April.

I sometimes feel angry with women when I perceive that they are giving away their power and allowing themselves to be victimized. But then I realize how stupid that is . It is another divide within the ranks of womenhood. It is a very confusing issue. Cross-cultural anger? ? ? Very destructive and yet prevelant within suppressed cultures. What do you think.