Natural Childbirth

Why I chose to give birth naturally.

I love to question things.  Analytical thinking comes naturally to me and there's nothing that sets my brain on fire more than wondering why things are the way they are and questioning them.  Not surprisingly, childbirth hasn't escaped my gaze.  I think modern medicine can be wonderful and I consider much of it to be knowledge allowed to us by a loving Heavenly Father.  But, in some cases I feel it's gone a bit too far and deserves to be questioned.  My experience giving birth to Vida served to secure my doubts about some of the practices we routinely engage in.  Vida came on her own, at the hand of a skilled nurse who took a few moments to help her come with as little tearing as possible.

I find it startling to look at how strange our view of childbirth has become.  The new norm is induction, labor augmentation, epidural, and episiotomy or cesarean.  It's so different than what women have experienced since the beginning of the world.  Labor began when baby and body were ready, a woman struggled through labor and gave birth.  I've noticed that in conversation "natural" can produce confusion because it's increasingly meaning "vaginal."  Giving birth vaginally is about as natural as it comes these days, forget about questioning interventions.  Women have been giving birth for thousands of years, very few of them having been offered any of the interventions we now consider normal.  After giving birth with epidural to Jaime, I felt cheated.  I yearned to understand what my women ancestors had gone through to bring children into the world.  It's something only women can understand, and I missed my chance.  With Vida, I was striving even harder to go through the whole process and not miss or mess with any of it.  I was taken aback when, at my 38 week appointment, they offered to strip my membranes and then offered to schedule an induction as soon as 39 weeks.  Why?  I didn't understand what all the rush was.  I declined both and said I'd like my body to do it's thing when it's ready.  The doctor seemed surprised.

Just after I gave birth to Vida, I was sure I couldn't do that again.  It was horrible.  I even wondered if I'd ever have another child.  I didn't feel proud of what I'd done.  Nobody I know would be proud of acting like a tortured animal in front of perfect strangers.  As time passed I gained perspective that I didn't have while it was happening.  Yes, it was horrible.  So horrible.  But the unbelievably horrible part was only 3 hours long.  Three hours of excruciating pain that produced one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen - a miracle of life that I get to hold in my arms and love forever.  Doing it naturally has given me a sense of accomplishment, allowed me to recover quickly and dare I say given me some perspective about life.  So many of the trials we go through are horrible at the time.  Unbearable.  Impossible.  But in the grand scheme of things, it won't last for long.