I had two natural hospital births. The first was empowering, a group of women cheering me on while I pushed. For the second, in the 10 whole minutes I was pushing, I was instructed to stop so they could get a read on his heart and prep the room. I can only imagine what fun we would have had if I’d been there longer.
For both, I thought I could run a marathon afterward, if I didn’t have to breastfeed immediately! I was strong and able.
But I’m one of the lucky ones. I was given a good birth legacy, a “Your body is capable. It can do this!” (Thanks, Mom.) Many are not so lucky. They are told that labor and delivery will be scary, painful, unmanageable without medications.
I think for most people birth is a nightmare
It hasn’t been what a baby would want.
In our births, is it only about us? When are we going to start asking, “What does baby want?”
In Zambia, the health workers are on strike. That’s not good for the people.
In response, journalist Chansa Kabwela sent two pictures of a woman giving breech birth to women’s rights groups, Zambia’s vice president, and health groups. They were graphic, so much so that Zambia’s The Post decided they were too obscene to publish.
But Kabwela was using these photos as an urgent message: End the strike! The woman had been turned away from two clinics where nurses were on strike, Her breech baby, seen in the photo, suffocated during childbirth. From the BBC:
The pictures are graphic. They show a woman in the process of giving birth to a baby in the breech position - when the baby’s legs come out first.
Its shoulders, legs and arms are visible, but the head has not yet been delivered.
This death apparently occurred outside the main hospital of the capital city, Lusaka. Doctors didn’t reach the laboring woman in time to save the baby.
When I was 15 weeks pregnant, I left his father, my fiancé, and spent most of my pregnancy preparing to be a single mother.
I also readied for a natural birth.
Though I was nervous about the impending step into parenthood, I had a midwife I adored and a host of incredibly supportive friends.
In honor of my Little L, I thought I’d share his birth story with you. I believe in natural birth. And in sharing our stories, hopefully we can empower other women to trust in their ability to bring babies into the world peacefully and without unnecessary interventions.
This post was originally posted at Nature’s Child, the site for sassy & sage natural parenting advice. And don’t forget to enter the Summer Essentials Contest while you’re there!
We all know someone who was thrilled when they learned they were pregnant. Yes, because they were bringing life into this world. But also because they could finally “eat for two” and let their diet go.
All of us with sense know that this is a pregnancy myth. You can’t actually eat for two and expect to lose the baby weight anytime in the next decade.
The eating “extra” may not be the best choice for every pregnant woman.
Pregnancy is not a time to eat twice as much, but twice as well.
Women who are already obese when they become pregnant may not need to gain “baby weight” as long as they and their care provider focus on a healthy diet.
Thomas Beatie was born a woman. “She” turned to “he” through sex-reassignment surgery and hormone treatment, but kept the uterus. Good thing for his family, too, as his wife Nancy was unable to give birth.
The family made news last year when they went on Oprah and in the LGBT magazine The Advocate to announce his pregnancy with the couple’s first child, a girl. They said they made the pregnancy public because,
Hiding a pregnant man is like hiding an 800-pound gorilla. Nancy and I wanted to tell our story from our own mouths before it got out.
Early morning on June 9, the family welcomed a baby boy through natural childbirth. His wife Nancy will breastfeed the child, as she did with their daughter. (Because natural birthing is so fabulous, even men want to do it!)
Today my baby boy turns 1. Of course, as his mama, I cannot believe he’s a year old. I still remember the gallons of Ben & Jerry’s that Daddy and I went through, the sciatica, the feet poking from the side of my belly, the worries of his pregnancy.
I’ve heard before that those who give birth naturally are just trying to make women feel more pain, when in reality we can all have painless births with the help of medicine. We don’t “have” to suffer. Really, the people who spout this nonsense are about as logical as Limbaugh.
I’ve had two quick natural labors with healthy little guys. The two pregnancies were so vastly different, however, that I’m lucky to have squeaked out Baby E without medical “help”.
Until my first daughter Carly was born by an ER-style emergency c-section, I had never been to the hospital except for the couple of times with minor injuries as a small child. The experience was so extraordinarily shocking to my system that it catapulted me into a determination that my next delivery would be VERY different. The birth of Carly, was traumatizing on so many levels. That I was only 21 and relatively immature and inexperienced probably didn’t help. I had wanted her very much and did everything to prepare, but like most of the cliches you hear about becoming a mother for the first time - nothing could have prepared me, especially for the frightening, dangerous, surgical birth.
After going through a rough post-partum depression, my reaction was to get pregnant again pretty quickly and immerse myself in research so that I could be more empowered the next time. I had been shocked into a state of alertness about my body and had a strong intuitive knowledge my next baby and I didn’t need to go through this same situation again.
I had done my homework and knew that what happened with Carly and I was unusual and not likely to repeat itself. I also learned everything I could about VBACs (Vaginal Birth After Cesereans). If my doctor had done a good job of patching me back together, and I believe that she had, my uterus and I stood a good chance of having the strength to give birth naturally.
Ina May Gaskin is the most famous midwife in the United States. As one of of the founding members of the intentional community the Farm, Ina May and the Farm Midwives have thirty years of statistics that demonstrate the safety and benefits of natural childbirth. For example, only 1.4% of births attended by the Farm Midwives have required a Cesarean section compared to the national average of about 25%. Ina May has long been respected for advocating women’s rights, as well as changing people’s perceptions about natural childbirth. Instead of an agonizing ordeal, Ina May believes that childbirth can be an orgasmic experience.
When I first became pregnant 16 years ago, a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage, I read Ina May’s first book Spiritual Midwifery. Not only was this book full of information on natural pregnancy and childbirth, but it was packed with images and stories of labor, in which the parents saw psychedelic colors and experienced orgasms. I thought that these hippies had done too many drugs and were just having flashbacks, but by the time I read her second book Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth before the birth of my second child, I decided to try out some of the visualizations described in the birth stories.
