More thoughts about midwives discouraging pain relief
From Navelgazing Midwife, commenting on the article Natural childbirth: whose birth plan is it anyway?:I think that many of us say we support women’s choices, but when it comes down to it, do we really?
When we’re at a baby shower, do we listen to another woman’s birth story, picking it apart in our heads (hopefully, only there!), tsk tsk tsking her choices and wishing for her the “empowering” birth we had?
When someone tells us they are having a scheduled cesarean, are we careful in how we want to make sure they know about the VBAC option without judging her choice as it stands today?..
When women have cesareans, no matter how they walked there, to me, it is such an enormous gesture of love towards the child… it is the demonstration of just how far a mother will go to save her child, that she will be cut open to allow him or her to come to life. I wish the women themselves could somehow set aside the horrible emotional pain, just for a moment, and see how amazing they were/are...
I now know, though, that not everyone wants the same experiences as I do. For some, medicating is their choice for working through those painful times, for not feeling as if they embarrassed themselves. I feel that as long as they aren’t medicating their entire lives, maybe it isn’t so bad to allow others to get through isolated incidents numbed… in the psyche or in the body. If it brings them through to a place of joy in the end, who am I to say one way is better than another?
I’m not ready yet for the next tattoo session – and if (through some miracle) I were to have another baby, I know I would have to dig deep again to birth in awareness and completely sober. It will be the same with the next tattoo.
But, I can do it. It’s what I choose to do. Not better, nor worse… just my own way.
Labels: philosophy
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