Competitive Childbirth
When Emily was very small I was at a Mothers and Babies group with her and the conversation turned to childbirth.
How I Suffered But Was Determined on Natural Childbirth So Wouldn’t Have Any Pain Relief, was the general swing of some of it.
How I Gave Birth At Home and Wouldn’t Have Gone to Hospital No Matter What, Because I Wanted To Be Near My Other Children, was some of the rest of it.
Now don’t get me wrong – hospitals can be such bloody terrible places to give birth – I know, believe me - and all that putting your legs in stirrups and talking to you as though you were three and not believing a word you said really, really stinks.
So I was all ready to agree with all this, up to a point, and the point was what happened to me with Emily. And finally somebody asked me.
“Well,” I explained, “I have a condition called incompetent cervix, which means that as soon as the baby gets to a certain size the waters break and the baby is born far too early, and my first baby died because of this. So with Emily they sewed my cervix shut with a thing called a Shirodkar suture, and that meant that she wasn’t born until about thirty-six weeks – just a month early. But she was breech, and I don’t feel proper labour pains because of my slightly deformed womb, and this was why nobody believed me when I said I was in labour with my first baby. So I had to have an emergency Caesarean for both those reasons and because they had to get her out quickly they gave me a general anaesthetic.”
A chilly disapproval swept the room.
“So what would have happened if you hadn’t had the Caesarean?”
“I expect we would both have died.”
“Oh.” The general feeling seemed to me to be that this might have been preferable, that we had somehow Let the Side Down.
“And did you breast-feed?”
“No, I wanted to but I never produced any milk: they said that sometimes happens with premature babies.”
“Oh. Couldn’t you have persevered a little longer?”
“Well, I could have, but meanwhile my baby would have starved to death.”
Silence. I left soon after, and never went back.
The thing about natural childbirth, it seems to me, is that that’s great if it’s safe for both mother and baby. And there has, of course, been a tendency towards too much medical intervention and far too little of allowing the mother to use her instincts.
But mothers should back each other up. Surely the first thing should be that the mother and child should be alive? Hospital staff should treat the expectant mother with kindness and total respect, and medical intervention should be kept to a minimum – but with close monitoring of the mother to see if any is needed.
The trouble is that, in nature, “natural” so often equals “dead”.
How I Suffered But Was Determined on Natural Childbirth So Wouldn’t Have Any Pain Relief, was the general swing of some of it.
How I Gave Birth At Home and Wouldn’t Have Gone to Hospital No Matter What, Because I Wanted To Be Near My Other Children, was some of the rest of it.
Now don’t get me wrong – hospitals can be such bloody terrible places to give birth – I know, believe me - and all that putting your legs in stirrups and talking to you as though you were three and not believing a word you said really, really stinks.
So I was all ready to agree with all this, up to a point, and the point was what happened to me with Emily. And finally somebody asked me.
“Well,” I explained, “I have a condition called incompetent cervix, which means that as soon as the baby gets to a certain size the waters break and the baby is born far too early, and my first baby died because of this. So with Emily they sewed my cervix shut with a thing called a Shirodkar suture, and that meant that she wasn’t born until about thirty-six weeks – just a month early. But she was breech, and I don’t feel proper labour pains because of my slightly deformed womb, and this was why nobody believed me when I said I was in labour with my first baby. So I had to have an emergency Caesarean for both those reasons and because they had to get her out quickly they gave me a general anaesthetic.”
A chilly disapproval swept the room.
“So what would have happened if you hadn’t had the Caesarean?”
“I expect we would both have died.”
“Oh.” The general feeling seemed to me to be that this might have been preferable, that we had somehow Let the Side Down.
“And did you breast-feed?”
“No, I wanted to but I never produced any milk: they said that sometimes happens with premature babies.”
“Oh. Couldn’t you have persevered a little longer?”
“Well, I could have, but meanwhile my baby would have starved to death.”
Silence. I left soon after, and never went back.
The thing about natural childbirth, it seems to me, is that that’s great if it’s safe for both mother and baby. And there has, of course, been a tendency towards too much medical intervention and far too little of allowing the mother to use her instincts.
But mothers should back each other up. Surely the first thing should be that the mother and child should be alive? Hospital staff should treat the expectant mother with kindness and total respect, and medical intervention should be kept to a minimum – but with close monitoring of the mother to see if any is needed.
The trouble is that, in nature, “natural” so often equals “dead”.
posted by Daphne at 7:41 pm
3 Comments:
http://ailbhe.livejournal.com/198208.html
Relevant, I feel.
Ah, good to see that a Points System for Competitive Parenting is already in place. Perhaps it should continue throughout childhood with 5 points for every music exam passed, 1 point for every portion of broccoli eaten, 10 points for every one of those Christmas round robin letters saying how little Helena is now Head Girl and Captain of Everything. It could continue indefinitely through life ("dear James is doing SO well in the City") and eventually you could trade in your points for a higher pension. I expect Gordon Brown's already thought of it.
Oooh. Incentive for middle-class women to stay home and hothouse their kids. Just what I need. I bet he *has* thought of it.
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