I woke up the other morning thinking about an experience I had last summer. I was following a mommy blogger who was preparing to have her first baby. She was talking about her 36-37 week prenatal visit. She was hoping that the baby would stay breech so that she could schedule a c-section and be done with it. Her whole post mad me feel sad.
She had started blogging, as many women do, around her wedding. She had countless posts with paragraph after paragraph about the intricate details of which flower for which bridal party member and why. She talked for hours about the flavors of the cakes. And let’s not forget the wedding dress – that needed the be exactly what she wanted. It had to be perfect.
To be fair this mom was an event planner. This was what she did for a living. She took one day and turned it into something really special for her clients. She said that a marriage should start out on a perfect note, that it set the stage for the marriage.
So when I heard her talking about how birth was only a day and that it didn’t really matter, I knew she was wrong. And more than that, her own statements about marriage, when applied to her thoughts about birth were incongruent. How could she say that how you gave birth didn’t matter? That it didn’t deserve the same amount of planning that her wedding did. All she wanted to do was to get it over with…
My heart broke for her. She is certainly entitled to her opinion and I said nothing to her. But what I wanted to say was that you could get an amazing sense of empowerment through birth. That giving birth to your baby was every bit as important and empowering as stepping into the limelight in a beautiful dress as you walked down the aisle towards your husband-to-be. And please note, I’m not saying that you can only achieve this through one type of birth, because that’s not what I believe.
So, if in her world, a marriage that was not carefully planned could start your marriage out on the wrong foot – why couldn’t a birth that wasn’t prepared for also cause similar issues?
In the end her baby turned, much to her dismay. She decided to “try” a vaginal birth via scheduled induction. She had an early epidural and what sounds like (via Twitter) a violent instrumental delivery. She had a really rough recovery and gave up breastfeeding early so that she could rest and heal. She intends to breastfeed her next baby after her scheduled c-section with baby number two. I can’t help but thinking if a bit of planning for her birth, like a childbirth class might have helped her a bit. I think it would have helped her achieve her breastfeeding goals at the least. Her birth certainly impacted her beginning into parenting.
So what I had wanted to say to her before her baby was born, but never posted, was that just because you elope and don’t plan for your wedding, doesn’t mean that your marriage is doomed. It means you missed out on a beautiful experience, the support, the thrill of planning and the joy of walking down the aisle…
Absolutely.
I often think this – so many women put so little effort in to planning the birth of the child they have created and grown in their womb yet some spend large amounts of time gathering the material things they will use with parenting and decorating a nursery. We often spend months and so much money on planning our weddings (the American avg is over $25,000), we take classes and work hard to get a drivers license, we spend years preparing and educating ourselves for a career yet so little time (and money – how often do I hear there is no money for a midwife, or no money for a doula or no money or time for classes) preparing and educating ourselves to bring a human life into the world in a way that is best for them (and us) and learning to be positive, educated parents. So many flying by the seat of their pants with the biggest responsibility of their lives.
Great post! I’ve thought about this particular analogy many, many times! So many women plan to the nth degree for their weddings, but they want to get birth “over with.” Nobody talks about their wedding that way. I certainly didn’t want my wedding to be “just one day in my life” and something to “get through.” I am grateful that both my wedding and my births were precious, sacred events shared with people I love. Granted, just as all weddings don’t always go off without a hitch, neither do all births. But that doesn’t stop women from shooting for positive, personalized, meaningful experiences with their weddings. Why should they desire less for birth?
beautiful post! for me at my wedding the only thing i really got hung up on was getting the perfect dress, when i got to my wedding i realized that it didn’t matter if i had been wearing a paper bag, all that mattered was that i was marrying the man i love. for birth in some ways i feel the same way, we try to insure that the details are smooth before hand but on the day, the most important thing is that your baby is healthy. i’m not saying that the details don’t matter in ether birth or a wedding but that spending the time and thinking about what is important, spending time to say that this is a big day and it gets due reverence is what is most important. i think that if women do that, the rest will fall into place. For me, it wasn’t the wedding dress so much as feeling beautiful on the day of my wedding and because i took the time to say this is a huge day, i am marrying the love of my life, and i want to feel beautiful while i do it, made it possible for me to see that the whole day was beautiful and i would have been beautiful in anything. I think the same goes for birth. If you spend time meditating on how to make your birth something beautiful for you it will be beautiful whether the details work out or not.