What is giving birth about?
There is a little list of things that most people agree that MetaFilter does not do well. Circumcision and cat declawing are the top of the list; two decisions that people make for emotional and practical reasons that can end up with muddled thinking. Another discussion that could easily end up in a similar dead end is this anonymous AskMe where a pregnant mother’s plans for her baby’s delivery don’t go as planned:
I am 36 weeks pregnant with my first child and have just found out that I will need to have a scheduled cesarean in 2 weeks time for medical reasons. I need help to accept this.
I am having a very difficult time accepting that this is the way my baby will be born as my preference all along has been for a drug-free natural birth with as little intervention as possible. I felt confident that I would be able to manage the labor with minimal interventions and was adamant that I didn’t want epidural pain relief.
I now feel cheated of the opportunity to experience the sensation of my water breaking, contractions, pushing and the baby emerging. These are the things that made me excited about the imminent delivery and now that I won’t get to experience them I am not at all looking forward to the delivery.
I realize that any delivery comes with a degree of uncertainty and didn’t have a rigid ‘birthplan’ in place, but rather several preferences that I had discussed with my partner as my ideal.
I have talked to both my Obstetrician and therapist about how I am feeling and both advise that I need to accept the situation, but as yet neither have given me any practical advice on how to achieve this. How can I shift my focus from what I am missing out on so that I can start looking forward to this significant day?
She continues by admitting that she accepts that the health of the baby comes first, but continues to lament that she won’t get to have a natural birth. cookergirl tells the soon-to-be mother, “You’ll learn this every day as a parent: things with kids rarely go as we plan!” A lot of commenters echo this sentiment, one going as far to say “You will be a parent soon. Look forward to the day when you need to explain to your child that he/she can’t have what he/she wants every time. Sometimes things just don’t work out. Accept it.” infinitefloatingbrains adds, “Welcome to parenthood, where it isn’t about you anymore.”
As mean as those comments get, they pale against this doozy from majick:
“How can I shift my focus from what I am missing out on so that I can start looking forward to this significant day?”
By recognizing that your desire to experience these things is selfish and utterly and completely secondary to giving birth. I’m sure having a somehow more “pure” or “natural” fairytale birth experience would have been neat for you, and I’m sorry things aren’t going as planned, but like any part of your pregnancy it’s entirely a byproduct of the process of having a baby — it’s beside the point. Letting that selfishness go is going to be an important part of entering motherhood for you.
More to the point, it’s very likely you’re scheduled for cesarean for a damned good reason. That damned good reason is most likely related to the best outcome for your baby, which should be something to be proud of in and of itself. (#)
That brings us to this comment from DarlingBri:
“By recognizing that your desire to experience these things is selfish and utterly and completely secondary to giving birth.”
You know, I call epic screaming bullshit on that.
First of all, the desire to have children is selfish - nobody has a baby because they thing the world needs another human or because they know for sure the kid will be the next Mohandas Gandhi. So let’s just the archetype of selfless parenting out the window. People have children because it fulfils a personal need. The whole thing is selfish. And that is fine - it’s the way the world keeps ticking over.
Second of all, it is not all about the baby. While a healthy, happy baby is the outcome everybody wants, it’s not the only outcome of value. Women are not just delivery mechanisms for cute little humans; birth is an experience that is just as much the mother’s as it is the infants. It’s her body. It’s her work. It’s her experience. Her outcome has value, too.
If you’ve ever read birth stories from women who had un-medicated vaginal births - you know, the dream birth - the aftermath for many, many of these women goes far beyond “and we got a healthy happy baby.” Women often speak of feeling incredibly empowered, of gaining new respect and awe for for their own body’s abilities, and even of regaining ownership of and belonging in their bodies if they’ve been a victim of sexual abuse or assault in the past.
It’s a pretty big, primal experience and to know you will not even have the opportunity to try for a natural birth is devastating to a lot of women. Telling women that it’s “all about the baby” diminishes their role and the value of their own experiences and really trivialises birth. It is not, in a word, helpful.
I am genuinely glad that c-sections worked out so well for so many people speaking in this thread. I do not think that experience is, however, universal. I know plenty of women who continue to be filled with regret about a missed experience even as their healthy happy kids run around them. One can be delighted with the outcome and still mourn the process - that’s entirely OK.
Anonymous, I think one thing you can do is go back to basics and ask yourself “If I had known before we conceived that this child would be born via c-section, would I have gone ahead and gotten pregnant?” Somehow, I think re-framing this as a choice you would still have made for yourself might be helpful.
Also, you might find it helpful in regaining some sense of control to make a c-section birth plan. You can talk to your OB and still cover many of the important parts, like who will cut the cord, making sure there is skin to skin contact (with you, or if you’re under general, your partner), if you want specific music played, etc. It can still be an experience you design, even if it isn’t the experience you dreamed of.
The internet can usually be trusted on to tear things down, and to an extent that is what was needed here. I do kind of agree with commenters like Maias that a natural birth is “another expectation like simultaneous orgasm which is nice if it happens but does not mean ‘you’re doing it wrong.’ (#)” That doesn’t make DarlingBri’s comment here any less spot on.
It’s easy to be dismissive of women who want to turn childbirth into something other than just removing a baby from the womb (Patton Oswalt does a good job of that here), but that is a really narrow and utilitarian way to look at birth. If sex can be more than just fertilizing an embryo then it’s hard to say that childbirth shouldn’t be especially wonderful.
