There has been a lot of talk about childbirth in my in-box lately.
A reader, who signs her Motherlode comments "Jessa in Atlanta," raised the subject most recently, in an e-mail message that addressed what she calls her "mixed feelings about the ideal birth."
She had one, she said. At least she thought she had. "I did everything perfectly," she wrote. "Arrived at the hospital at 9 centimeters, checked in, avoided all interventions and pushed out a healthy 8 lb. baby with no medication, total labor and delivery time was about 8 hours, pushing was only 5 minutes." And yet, she continued, "even though I got exactly what I wanted, I have since felt very dubious about that birth." She had a different kind of birth experience with her first child, an "imperfect" birth, if you will, in that she used pain medication. "I actually have fonder memories of the epidural experience," she wrote, "it was so much more … dignified."
Her reason for writing was because "a friend just asked me to tell her which birth I would recommend, the epidural or the au natural." A drug-free birth, she said, "is wiser and safer … right? That was what made me want to do it." And yet. "I've proven that it can be done, but still, the pain was so awful that I really just can't recommend it," she wrote. "I would do it again if I had to, because of the benefits, but I can't tell another woman to try it."
Is she the only one with this ambivalence, she wondered?
Her e-mail message led me to revisit two thought-provoking discussions of childbirth that have appeared on the parenting blog Babble.com recently. They could not be more different.
Earlier this month, the site ran a series of five essays collectively titled "Not the Birth I Planned (and I Loved It)". There is one from a mom who "planned a natural … but I had to have my water broken and get pitocin," another who "planned a home birth … but had a C-section," and a third who "planned a hospital birth … but delivered at home." There's a woman who thought she would reject an epidural but asked for one, and her bookend, a woman who planned to ask for one, but never did.
So the moral of the story is any birth is a good birth if mother and baby are healthy, right? That's what I thought it should be. But a few weeks before this round-up, Babble also ran an essay by Denise Schipani, titled "Did I Really Need to Have a C-Section? The Problem With Doctors, not Moms, Picking the Birth Method."
The idea of childbirth as a sporting event with gold medals is apparently still alive and kicking, at least at Schipani's house.
I did not write about that essay when it first ran in May because it troubled me. It raises all the important questions about whether doctors are too quick to move to the operating room. But the underlying point is that she was deprived of a real birth, her idealized birth. There is a "right" way, she implies, and she did it wrong.
