Childbirth Musings

I am expecting again. Babe #9 will arrive sometime in late March or early April, God willing.

I've been contemplating the birth culture in our country. I've thought about this a lot in the past too. There is so much fear surrounding birth, so much reliance on "science". Instead of embracing birth as a wonderful transition to motherhood and trusting that God created our bodies with the capacity to birth our babies, there is fear and an unwillingness to birth as nature intended.

In most cultures, even in our own before the advent of the male obstetrician, birth is women's domain. Women help each other through this journey to motherhood. When a woman is in labor her mother, her sisters, her cousins, or friends come and stay with her. Perhaps they take care of the older children or cook. They encourage her and comfort her through labor. I wish we had that.

There has been a move toward that. In most places you can hire a doula. This isn't exactly what I would hope for though. Hiring someone to help you seems... wrong somehow. This is something we should do for each other as women. Not because we are getting some financial gain from it but just because we share this thing, this amazing, hard, rewarding, thing called birth. I wish to see women coming together to support each other during pregnancy, birth, and those difficult early weeks. I'm just as guilty as the next woman of neglecting that duty to my fellows. Caught up in my own concerns and unsure of what is the right thing to do.

There are big hurdles in getting to what I think is the right place in birth. Hospitals have policies about how many people can be with the laboring woman during labor and birth. Most women have too much fear surrounding birth to even contemplate a homebirth. Those of us who do homebirth are somewhat isolated. There is also the fact that most women work and can't take off for three days to sit with their friend and comfort her during labor. Or if they do stay home they have kids that must be cared for.

I've had three wonderful homebirths and one pretty awesome hospital birth. I've not had the kind of atmosphere I think is ideal. I like having people around when I am in labor, but it freaks most people out. I have long labors I would hate to be, no I did hate being, isolated during labor. My husband is great and I am so thankful for him being with me for the births of our babies, but even that isn't what my picture of an ideal birth is. With my last two homebirths I had some extra folks around, but they were there mainly to help with the other kids not to be my labor support. I've never had that wonderful feeling of being helped and comforted by those who understand what I'm going through. I want that for myself. I want to be that for someone else.

This isn't the post I set out to write, not exactly. In my mind I was much more eloquent. :) It turned out to be rather jumbled and pointless. Oh well.