“Some women just weren’t meant to give birth vaginally.”
“My body just doesn’t work right.”
“Oh, well I just don’t dilate [past x centimeters].”
“Thank goodness I was at the hospital…I wasn’t able to have my baby naturally.”
These are just a small sample of things I’ve heard over the years. Each of them kinda make me throw up in my mouth a little. Women carry these things as badges. All women carry their birth experiences as badges. And why shouldn’t we?
But what no one stops to tell these women is this:
Yes, they were.
Yes, it does.
Yes, you can.
Yes, you could.
I was talking to a new friend and colleague yesterday on the phone and she brought up the phrase that the first intervention in birth is walking out your front door to the hospital. I think Mardsen Wagner said that. He’s almost right. Right enough that it will allow me to branch off here on a semi-rant. Whenever I talk to women about their births, which is constantly if you couldn’t guess. I hear the phrases like I quoted to begin with. I never criticize, there isn’t any place for that. But I do ask questions. What was your labor like? Did you go into labor on your own? (Almost ALWAYS this is a no.) Why did they induce you? Had you dilated before the induction?
Women are being lied to. They are being told that their babies NEED to come out NOW. They are being told their bodies are too small to birth their babies, their bodies quit working properly past a certain point in pregnancy, their babies are going to die, almost ANYTHING to get that baby out. And, because we trust the medical profession like we trust God in this country we allow them to induce. We believe them when they say the baby has to come out. We don’t question. And if we do, we only do it once because our questions are inevitably met with “Well I’m the doctor and I want to do what is best for your baby. You do want a healthy baby don’t you?”
Here is what I would like to know. How do you know you can’t? If no body ever gave you the chance to dilate, how do you know you can’t.
Be patient. It’s your baby’s job to start labor. S/he has the wisdom of knowing when to come out, and s/he has the powerful job of sending out the hormones that start all of the other hormones flowing in labor. And if you never went into labor or couldn’t dilate past a certain point, take a look at what happened in the beginning hours of your birth. Were you induced? Did they give you pitocin, break your water? Did THEY cause your labor to break down?
It’s time to start telling women birth was stolen from them rather then painting the robbers as saviors. I refuse to participate any longer.
