Having Babies

My daughter-in-law Casey recently posted an article on Facebook “The Unnatural Mom” by Krista Infante, who reflects back on the birth of her son and the guilt and inadequacy she felt when the experience didn’t replicate the “birth plan” she formulated. It’s a common story, but one that needs to be repeated to remind mothers, and fathers, that every birth story is different and is only one chapter in the longer story of being a parent and loving a child.

As a member of second wave feminism my own opinions about childbirth were a reaction against its cooption by the male ob-gyn industry that developed post World War II, confining our mothers to hospital beds, replacing breasts with bottles, and raising the percentage of caesarian sections to levels beyond the need to save lives to the desire for “efficiency” and to insulate against lawsuits. We wanted to make the decisions about home versus hospital, midwife versus doctor, drugs versus no drugs, which were really options, not clear-cut choices, in a world of few certainties except the overriding need do whatever is necessary to have a healthy baby.

As pendulums often do, this one swung quite far in the so-called quest for a “natural” birth that over the years grew to include birth plans, birthing classes (which replaced Lamaze classes whose “hee-hee-hoos” breathing techniques proved to be largely useless, to which I will attest), bath tubs, birthing balls, doulas, and every conceivable consumer product the baby industrial complex could invent.

In recent years the Google and Yahoo post-feminists have declared war on “natural” and are rallying to swing the pendulum back to their version of the days of ob-gyn supremacy, C-sections, and formula, all with the goal of paying as little attention to that bothersome work of “producing” a baby so they can get back to the all important work of producing cell phones and surveillance.

So what’s a mom to do? I can only tell you that Casey, who fell into the “natural” category in preparing for baby Lucia, magnificently proved, over the course of four days, that we do whatever we have to do to safely birth a baby, and everything else flies out the window. After three days of labor at home, bad enough to deprive her (and Jakob and me, to a lesser extent), of sleep but not bad enough to enter the hospital, where the midwives waited, she was exhausted. Then, over the course of the next 24 hours, so many decisions had to be made during so many unexpected events that at one point I found myself saying (to myself), I can’t do this, I don’t think I can do this, and I wasn’t having the baby. But Casey focused and persevered as labor periodically stalled, as the epidural that was supposed to relieve the pain didn’t work, as her blood pressure rose and the baby’s heart rate dropped trying to get the epidural to work. When someone raised the option of a C-section, she announced to all of us that she did not want one, and despite the exhaustion and pain she would continue to labor. When the midwife finally said it was time to push, Casey did so for four hours with every ounce of strength she possessed, and finally, at the end of four days, there was little Lucia, who, as I said in my previous post “Waiting for Lucia”, will now consume our lives forever. You did good, Casey, and now you have a birth story that is all yours. Have fun telling it.