Sunday, February 21, 2016

Why I Want to Have a Natural Childbirth

When I was little, I never questioned that I would go for a natural childbirth. My mom had done it with all of her children (except maybe the twins? I can’t remember if she had an epidural or not), and had gone through epidurals/C-sections with some stillbirths, and my memory is that she always spoke most negatively about those times. She didn’t like not feeling in control of her body; she didn’t like having a long, painful, slow recovery; and in all these cases, it seemed as if all decisions had been made by the doctors and she had had no say in the matter. She never held back in describing how painful her natural childbirths were, but she also talked very positively about how smooth and wonderful the recoveries were, in contrast to the times when she had a C-section or an epidural.

So it was natural for me, all the way, with my hypothetical six children, until I actually got married and began seriously reevaluating the size of the cervix and the size of a baby’s head. Then, for a while, I did a 180. Drugs. Definitely drugs. All the way. I would take an epidural, feel nothing, and sleep until it was time to push (for an hour or two) the baby out. Isn’t science the greatest?

This positive, cheery mindset lasted roughly up until the moment when we actually decided to start trying to get pregnant. By this point, a lot of my friends had gone through a lot of childbirth. Some had epidurals; some went all natural. Some went somewhere in between. No one’s story was the same. Every woman had a unique experience, and what surprised me the most was how every story had hallmarks of pain, fear, and uncertainty. There were still the seemingly perfect “I had an epidural and it was wonderful!” stories and the “I went all natural and it was the best experience of my life!” stories, but the ones that really made an impression on me were the hard-hitting, no punches pulled, “I had a BABY and it was crazy and insane and HARD HARD HARD and I didn’t know what I was doing but everything worked out and we’re both okay” stories. And these came from both epidural mamas and natural childbirthing mamas.

So now I was in a pickle. It seemed as though complications could still exist with epidurals. It even seemed like epidurals were more likely to create scenarios where perfectly healthy women with perfectly healthy babies ended up getting C-sections, as if it were a simple procedure and not major surgery that is difficult to recover from.

I was gradually starting to come back to the natural birth method. Why? First, epidurals and hospital births in general are expensive—much more so than giving birth at a birth center or doing a home birth. Second, the best childbirth stories I heard—the ones that came closest to my best-case scenario vision of low pain, swift recovery, and positive experience—were, without exception, natural childbirths. Surprisingly (to me, anyway), they often came from women who were quick to confess that they were not super tough and had a healthy fear of/respect for pain, and would not tough out circumstances that warranted medical intervention. Third, everything about the hospital scenario repelled me. My mom has spoken often about her disgust with having to be monitored constantly and ordered around by the nurses and doctors into certain positions that worsened the pain. Looking back, it seems she got to enjoy the worst of both worlds—an unfriendly, restrictive hospital environment that prevented her from moving, relaxing, and taking charge of her body during a critical time, without drugs or pain relief or even the necessity of having to be there because the baby was in critical condition (we were all fine at birth). Having relatives for doctors has taught me they are just regular people who make mistakes, like everyone else, and that I usually know my own body’s needs better than anyone else. The best doctors will try not to stand in the way of your body fixing itself, but will defer to the wisdom and natural processes of the body. This has always just made sense to me. I wanted to feel safe, empowered, and in control as much as possible of what was happening to me during childbirth. I wanted to be able to try natural pain relief methods for as long as possible and to move, eat, moan, and be in communication with my body’s needs directly rather than rely blindly on the suggestion of nurses and doctors. I also wanted to be mostly left alone, with people I loved and trusted and who wouldn’t make me feel pressured to cater to their needs or their schedule. And the more I read and researched natural childbirthing methods and stories, the more I resonated with women who felt the exact same way. In fact, natural childbirth seemed not only the most natural way, but the optimal way to give birth in any circumstance. I went from fearing it to thinking duh, of course, why isn’t this what every pregnant woman hopes and wishes for? Fourth, I’ll just add that having a water birth has always sounded wonderful to me. My whole life I have been drawn to water. It rejuvenates, comforts, and heals me in a way I don’t fully comprehend. It’s always been a form of physical, mental, and spiritual therapy for me.     


Now, all that being said, I am not anti-epidural or anti-C-section or anti-doctors. Of course there are circumstances in which hospital births are beneficial and necessary for the health of the baby and the mother. If circumstances arise in my pregnancy that necessitate our having to give birth in a hospital or via C-section, I will be disappointed but I will be grateful for that option. I don’t judge any woman for her choice in how to have a baby—that decision is between a woman and her body. I don’t believe in one right way to give birth for every mother. I can only say what I believe right now for me.