I have been trying to compose a post for the past couple of days to our local listserv. A mom emailed the listserv requesting people's thoughts on vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) v.s. a repeat cesarean and the dialogue quickly turned towards horror stories of nuchal cords (actually a common event and studies have shown they do not increase neonatal mortality1) and babies who will never function due to a vaginal birth. Eager to encourage faith in normal birth, I have been carefully crafting a response between trying to keep my youngest from deleting the post, digging up a yard overgrown with weeds and unpacking after a vacation that was TOO LONG. Nearing the end of the email I wandered over to Stand and Deliver where I read about Dooce's unmedicated birth, part of which is reprinted below. THANK YOU Dooce for sharing!
Up until about the 30th week of my pregnancy I hadn't given labor much thought, only that I was going to ask for the epidural two days before contractions started. I'm not kidding, that was the extent of my birth plan. There was no need to experience any of the pain, I thought, especially since I had been through this before and I remember thinking that the pain was so awful that it was going to kill me. Give me the epidural and any other pain relief, maybe throw in a couple dozen shots of bourbon, oh and how about you just put me under general anesthesia and wake me up two days later. I'm not good with pain. I tend to complain and holler and call people regrettable things. It's like the Hulk, only he's on his period.
I was also under the impression, having never really researched the subject whatsoever, that any woman who would opt for a homebirth was not only COMPLETELY OUT OF HER MIND but also not interested in the safety of her unborn child. I mean, there's a reason that infant and maternal mortality rates are so much better than a hundred years ago, right? HOSPITALS. And MEDICINE. And smart people we call DOCTORS. Yes, women routinely used to go out into the field by themselves and give birth without any assistance, and many of them routinely did not return BECAUSE THEY DIED.
But then out of no where the publishers of Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein's book Your Best Birth sent me a copy, just like the publishers of many books send me copies of other books all the time. Internet, I have rooms full of books that publishers have sent me. ROOMS FULL. And I was just about to toss this onto the mountainous pile of ones I'd eventually drop off at Goodwill when, I don't know, I flipped through a few pages and gave a full minute to one or two paragraphs. And those two paragraphs happened to be ones that really pissed me off. So much so that I read them aloud to Jon and said something like GOD, THOSE HIPPIES! or I BET THEY SMELL LIKE PATCHOULI!
You know, something totally open-minded.
Those paragraphs pissed me off so badly, in fact, that the one part of me that resembles my father the most — no, not the pointy chin or the metabolism or the absolute inability to watch a movie where everything goes wrong and the protagonist just keeps getting pummeled by life and I'm all MAKE IT STOP and then I have get up and actually leave the theater, no, none of those things — my righteous indignation, it flared up so magnificently that I sat down to read the whole book, just so that I could be angry at it. WHO DOES SHIT LIKE THIS? Me and Michael Hamilton, that's who. Both he and I will go to our graves filled with an inordinate amount of unproductive anger, but a smile will mark our faces because we will feel sojustified. So RIGHT.
And then, oh God, the worst thing happened. And I didn't even see it coming, but I'm sitting there reading that book, gritting my teeth, shaking my head when all of a sudden it started to make sense. I started to see just how medicalized labor and birth have become in America AND THERE GOES MY WORLD VIEW.
I'm not going to get into the specifics and the really convincing and at times jaw-dropping statistics of it here, there are so many other places and people who can write about it better than I can, but I will say this: if you are pregnant or are planning to become pregnant, GO READ THAT BOOK. From now on when someone asks me what is the one piece of advice I would give to a pregnant woman, it will be: GO BUY A COPY OF THAT BOOK. Listen, I am not affiliated with that book in any way, I do not know Ricki Lake, she and I do not vacation in St. Tropez together (although if she'd like to come ride four-wheelers at my Mom's cabin in Duchesne, Utah, THE OFFER STANDS), I do not owe that publisher any favors. But IT CHANGED MY LIFE. I'm not even kidding, I'll say it again: IT CHANGED MY LIFE.
Like Rixa (Stand and Deliver) , I had never visited Dooce's site, but I will be back, I can't wait to read the rest of her story. "IT CHANGED MY LIFE." That is why I keep blogging (or trying to) when I don't have the time and why I will finish the email about birth that took too long to write and post it to my neighborhood listserv. Because if just one mom finds the courage to VBAC, it was worth the effort. Do not under-estimate the power of an unmedicated birth to rock your world. Maybe I will end my email by sending them to Dooce's site. Perhaps she will reach them in a way that I cannot.
1 See, for example, Lt Col G Singh, Maj K Sidhu, "Nuchal Cord: A Retrospective Analysis" http://medind.nic.in/maa/t08/i3/maat08i3p237.pdf
Dooce's story is awesome! I can't wait for the end.
Likewise, I can't wait to read your Listserve response. As the stories got worse and worse I kept thinking (as I reminded myself of all the research I've done and the reasons I've made the decisions I have for this pregnancy :), "Kat, where is your voice of reason?" I knew you were out of town, so didn't expect you to write, but only wished for your insight and for someone with your knowledge and experience to change the tone. As someone planning her first VBAC, I didn't feel I could comment based on experience, but I know so many of the comments and stories to be inflammatory and based on incorrect info that I just kept hoping someone would point that out.
Posted by: Megan Nelson | July 14, 2009 at 09:35 PM