Labor Day Blog Carnival at Birth Activist

As Labor Day approaches I always stop to remember my daughter’s labor day weekend birth. While she was born the day before Labor Day, I still associate Labor Day with the day(s) I labored and gave birth. I started labor on that Friday.  I remember distinctly finally admitting that I was in labor as I was getting a pedicure.  Despite it being my eighth baby, I was a bit frightened and excited.  Baby number seven had been a quick, three hour labor.  What would this labor hold?  While Baby Ocho didn’t come quickly, she came beautifully.  Share a birth story, a birth tip, or just reminisce about birth for this easy going blog carnival about labor day(s).

The rules are simple:

• Write a post featuring your thoughts on giving birth, labor and the like
• Send us a link to your post at birthactivist@gmail.com by September 3
• The blog carnival will run on September 6, 2010 (Labor Day)
• We’ll send you a link to include in your post!

Accepting the Unexpected

I prepared for my first birth (and am preparing for my second) with the help of Hypnobirthing, the Mongan Method.  Part of the practice “regimen” is listening to a 25-minute track of Marie Mongan reading birth affirmations–positive statements about birth–over and over again.  The idea of affirmations is that the more you hear something, the more you tend to believe it and the less resistance you have to its message.  Pregnant women are exposed to a plethora of negative messages about what their births will be like, and the positive affirmation track is there to counter that.

I suppose every woman has a few affirmations that speak to her more than the others.  For me, the crux of the collection was this:

I am prepared to calmly meet whatever turn my birthing may take.

I didn’t have a lot of expectations for my birth.  I wasn’t expecting it to be short or easy.  I kept an open mind about Mongan’s claim about birth not needing to be painful, and knew that I would deal with the birth beautifully whether it was painful or not.  But I really, really, really wanted my homebirth.  I was terrified of needing a hospital transfer.  I was terrified of needing a C-section.  I was terrified of letting go of my dream.

I am prepared to calmly meet whatever turn my birthing may take.

I just  couldn’t hear it enough.

But a few weeks before my birth, I came across a very unusual birth story.  It goes as follows.

Sivan was pregnant with her fourth child and preparing for a homebirth.  She was diagnosed with gestational diabetes in the middle of her pregnancy, but she did not let that worry her.  Her 39-week ultrasound estimated the baby’s size at an impressive 4.4 kg (9.7 lbs).  This did not bother her either; she knew how notorious ultrasounds are for being inaccurate.

But her midwife was concerned.  She took a good look at all the factors involved, and told her that with all the data she had, she did not feel safe accepting this birth at home, and with great sympathy told her that in her professional opinion, a C-section would be the safest course for this particular baby.

Sivan was shocked.  She trusted her midwife and knew that she would never recommend a planned C-section without a really good reason, but she couldn’t grasp the idea that her midwife would tell her such a thing.  What about the inaccuracy of ultrasounds?  What about the inaccuracy of the glucose tolerance test?  What about the idea that women’s bodies have been doing this for millenia and know how to birth big babies too?

Eventually she began to accept that her midwife was not just being over-cautious.  In the case of gestational diabetes, it is the shoulders of the baby that put on a lot of weight, and the risk of true shoulder dystocia in this case was too high to ignore.  She did not want to put her baby at risk.

But a C-section?  After all her hopes for a perfect homebirth?

Sivan described going to the beach and watching the waves and wanting to just give birth there, alone, trusting her body to do what it knew how to do, proving to everyone how wrong they were.  She cried for the loss of her dream birth, feeling helpless, hopeless and disempowered.

As she sat there, she got a call from her midwife.  “Just wanted to check in on you.  I know you will be okay.  You’re not the type of person who gets stuck in the past, I got that feeling from you long ago.  Just remember one thing: at the surgery, despite all the disappointment, you are still going to meet your baby.  Remember?  It’s a celebration!  Go in celebration!”

From that moment, something changed.

Sivan went home and informed the hospital that she would not be coming that day, but on Sunday.  And that her surgery would not be on Sunday, but on Tuesday.  Why?  Because that’s what she wanted.  She was taking this birth into her hands.  Who said a C-section couldn’t be an active birth?!

She and her husband arrived at the hospital like a pair of celebrities arriving for their premiere, all dressed up and full of joy.  They asked every staff member for his or her name and chatted with them.  Sivan insisted on sitting, not lying down, on the bed as she was wheeled into the OR.  As the surgeon prepared for the incision, she asked him to tell her exactly what he was doing.  She described the moments of joy as her son was born, and when he was brought to her from across the curtain and put next to her cheek; how she wriggled her arm out of the restraint and stroked him.  Her husband waited with the baby carrier, took the baby and never left his side as the operation was completed.  Sivan insisted on giving the surgeon a hug before she was wheeled to recovery.  Determined to recover and see her baby, as soon as she felt some sensation in her legs she tried to move them, and she expressed some colostrum to prepare her breasts for nursing.  She refused morphium for the pain and had them give her Ibuprofin instead.  The staff was in shock at her quick recovery and determination to function.  When her beautiful, 9.8-pound boy was finally brought to her, she didn’t wait even one minute before attaching him to her breast.  “Don’t you want to wait until we reach the ward?”  The orderly asked in amazement.  No.  Not a chance.

She turned one of the worst nightmares of any homebirther into a positive, happy experience.  A celebration.  After all, a birth is a birth.

I am prepared to calmly meet whatever turn my birthing may take.

After I read that story, something changed in me as well.  I realized that the lack of control I had over my birth did not mean I was helpless.  There is always a choice, and the choice is in your response to the situation you are in.  You can choose to see a C-section as a failure, a nightmare.  Or you can choose to see it as a birth; not what you wanted, not ideal, but a birth nonetheless.

Suddenly, I was able to let go.

And my birth was amazing.

Wedding Analogy

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…

What we tell our daughters

What We Tell Our Daughters

by Atara Pardini

When I was young I remember swearing that I would never have kids and if I ever did I would NOT want an epidural. No, no, not that! That was too…awake! What I would want was a full knock out. Put a mask over my head, let me drift off to sleep, and then BOOM! When I wake up, there would be baby in hand!

Stories about how baby came out horrified me. I have no idea what my birth story was. My mother didn’t tell stories so much as a series of victimhood. She tore “front to back” with my brother. I was ENORMOUS (a whopping 7 pounds 10 ounces!). Then there was the fact that we not only had the audacity of making her boobs smaller, but they lost their perkiness as well! In fact breastfeeding itself was excruciating as soon as we made the mistake of growing teeth, and that mean, mean doctor who told her she had to keep breastfeeding because we were allergic to milk.

All together, motherhood didn’t look like the plan to me! My mother was not unloving, she was just a victim, and our infant selves were the perpetrators. I’m not saying that birth cannot be painful. I’m not saying breastfeeding cannot be difficult. But what to we teach ourselves much less our children by playing up the pain in expense of all that we gain? My mother didn’t look at birth as a gift through which she could empower herself but as a necessary evil of procreation. Breastfeeding was not a bonding experience but a burden. Through her victimhood she gartered attention and sympathy. The problem is that by finding solace in this role she lost out on a lot of the beauty and transformative power of birth and babyhood. And by loosing this she taught me only fear and distrust.

How many other women perpetuate that picture? When my husband and I first told my mother in law that we were planning to give birth at home she asked me, “ Do you have a high pain tolerance?” “No.” I responded. “Then you won’t be able to do it!” she told me. She said that with her first child she planed to give birth “naturally”. The pain, she told me, was too much, and so she took the epidural. With my husband, her second and last child, she didn’t wait but had the epi delivered ASAP, and boy was she happy for it!

I should explain that I am willful. I should explain that when someone tells me that I can’t do something my toes curl up under me and all my middle fingers, toes, and even my nose tries to shout out a good…well… “I’m not going to take the crap!” I am also an exception. I am also a survivor who did a lot a LOT of soul searching before I got pregnant. I learned that what people say sometimes are their issues, not mine, and that the attitude we take towards things changes our experience of them. Of course if you go into labor thinking “this is going to hurt like hell!” it’s going to hurt like hell. If you go into labor thinking “I can’t do it!” well… it’s not going to be easy, that’s for sure. And, if you tell your daughter that it’s the most painful thing in the world, they won’t be able to do without painkillers, and it’ll wreck their body and depress them. I can tell you, they’ll have to work like hell to find their way to the wonderful birth experience they deserve.

Birth is not easy. Baby doesn’t usually slip out like a little jelly role, latch onto the boob, and happily make cooing noises while they poo flowers and sunshine once a day. Pain is a part of life, it can be beautiful, it can clear your vision and help you see what’s really amazing in life. My two children’s births were the most transformative moments of my life. And, yes they hurt. But that’s not what I most remember about them. I remember how my little shack-studio-rinky-dink home felt like a mansion the moment my son was born. I remember that my daughter’s birth was so powerful it felt like my feat were on fire and I was going to blast out the rooftop. I remember that she was born eyes open looking out at the world for full minute before coming the rest of the way out. I remember feeling like if I could go through those two beautiful births, I could do anything, and I that I was, am, the most powerful person I will ever meet! And that is what birth is to me. That is what women like my mother, like my mother in law, like every woman who has ever told another women that it was “too painful” or “too much” have missed out on. This is the story I plan on telling my daughter, my son, and every other person who will ever ask me what birth is like. Birth is one of the most beautiful, most empowering, life changing moments of a persons life.

Conversations from the Waiting Room

I’m actually sitting in a labor and delivery waiting room right now. Oh my, what an intense situation. Heree are sime snippets of conversations going on around me:

Dad and grandpa: “Why can’t she hurry up? We’ve been here for an hour and a half! Have that baby already… Where’re the nurse.”

Two grandmas, one comes flying in holding a cell hone saying, “Theres a baby!” “I don’t want to hear it! She didn’t want me in there so I don’t even want to know…” “Oh I don’t even have a picture. I didn’t see anything. I just heard baby sounds. It’s got to mean its okay, right?”

What’s your best waiting room story?

Mother of Many: The Film

This was a very interesting animated film about the life of a hospital based midwife.  It’s in a film contest.  I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

How does birth influence how you mother?

One of my midwives used to always say that women parented how they gave birth.  I don’t remember when she first said it, in fact, it was a casual remark that I heard her make many times before I ever asked her about it.  In asking her to describe what she meant, she told me that she always kept in mind that how she treated a laboring and birthing woman would impact how that woman mothered her own child.  That if, as a midwife, she was kind and nurturing, allowing the mother to make her own decisions, she felt that the woman would have a strong but gentle spirit as a mother.

I was already a mother before I found midwifery care.

My first born

My daughter wasn’t very old, and looking back, neither was I.  But I felt like I was a “good” mother.  I didn’t think that my negative birth experience really played into my experience as a mother.  Looking back, I know that I was wrong.  How many hours did I spend crying?  Feeling angry? All over the birth experience. The treatment I received as well as my child.

For even though my experience was negative, it had a huge impact.  I was fierce and protective of my child, not perfectly, but well enough.  It also led me to seek out different options, ones that were better for me and my family.

After my first midwifery birth, a gentle, loving experience, I was able to take what I learned from that experience and become a gentler mother.  So in looking back at what the midwife said, it was true but not in the ways that I originally thought or experienced.

Mamapoekie from Authentic Parenting also felt like a vastly different birth experience than she expected led her towards a path of good mothering, one of listening to her baby and following her instincts.

Molly from Talk Birth shares her experiences in birth and grief in looking back and seeing through the eyes of birth how mothering effects not only ourselves as mothers but as women.  She argues that while birth is truly important, postpartum wins the prize for shaping us as mothers.

Live Birth Fall Out

Lynsee, 23, is a teacher from Minneapolis.? She wanted to show her birth live on the internet as a teaching tool.? About 3,000 people viewed the birth as it happened.? We saw her walk around, eating in labor, in the shower, in the water birth tub and with an epidural.? People cheered her on via twitter.? There were discussions of what we would have done should we have been in the room, just like Monday morning quarterbacking in real time.? We even joked that a live feed the other direction would have been nice so we could help Lynsee.? We all wanted to scream, “You’re doing great!” at our computers.

There was a lot of postbirth discussion that the comments made as people tweeted about the birth were seen as criticizing.What do you think?? Jill at The Unnecesarean has some good discussion going on.

(And can I just say thanks for rounding out our week on birth stories?? The timing of your birth was great.)

Live Birth NOW

We’re watching at:

http://twincities.momslikeme.com/members/JournalActions.aspx?g=916351&m=8373439

We’re also twittering it at : #livebirth

I’m: RobinPregnancy

Join us!

Robin

Isn’t that what’s most important?

FutureMama is a newly expectant mom I’ve been watching on Twitter. ?She also blogs for Conceive Magazine. ?So she and I got into a discussion over how to best keep your options open for birth. ?She’s visited the hospitals and birth center in her area and now that she is pregnant, she’s chosen one. ?Her big fear is that she’s going to have so many preferences for her labor that she sets herself up for failure if she doesn’t achieve them:

I hope if I don’t put that pressure on myself to have a “perfect labor” I’ll just be happy to have my baby in my arms once and for all… Regardless of how it gets its big self out of my womb. Sure, I won’t go in begging for an epidural… (Or maybe I will). Either way, I just need to get from point A to point B. (A being enormously pregnant and B being a mom with a healthy new baby in my arms.)

Isn’t that what’s most important?

To prepare she’s been reading birth stories and watching birth TV. ?That’s when I got involved and explained I didn’t think that these were realistic shows. ?So she’s got a call out for good birth stories to show her the true spirit of labor and she’s also welcoming comments on her blog about her thoughts above. ?(You can read an expanded versions here.)

A few months ago another blogger said that she didn’t care what her birth looked like, that it didn’t matter unless she had a healthy baby. ?She had a rough postpartum but I’m not sure she every really put the two thoughts together, being busy with a newborn will do that to you. ?What struck me was that she was an event planner. ?Her words were something like “The birth doesn’t have to be pretty to be a good parent.”

Well, flip that around. ?If that statement is true, does the wedding have to be pretty to have a good marriage? ?I mean a bit of rain on your wedding day and we don’t feel like you’re doomed.

Don’t you make plans for your wedding? ?Seriously, you buy a dress, you match all the colors, you set out a menu. ?Can’t that be likened to a birth plan?

Well your big day arrives and you roll out of bed having not slept very well, not to mention that your stomach is rumbling from something you ate at the rehearsal dinner. ?Everyone is dragging there feet and running a bit late. ?This is causing you more than a tad bit of anxiety, after all, it’s your wedding day and you want it to be perfect!

At the wedding you realize that they’ve sent the wrong flowers for the pews and that the ushers have no boutonnieres. ?Big breath in, blow it away. You’re in control, it’s okay.

It’s almost show time! ?You go to change when you realize that your wedding dress is not quite right. ?You put it on and it fits perfectly, but it’s not your dress. ?You look great. It’s tailored like it was meant for you, but it’s not your dress. ?But the show must go on!

Down the aisle you go. ?Your music is perfect and you’re starting to relax. ?At the end of the long aisle, you see your man standing there looking handsome. ?You can’t help but smile. ?This is what you’ve been waiting for since the day he proposed. As you reach the final spot, you look up only to find out that your officiant is not the one you’ve been with for years at your place of worship, but some new guy filling in for him because your guy had to go to some other function at the last minute…

The analogies can go on and on. ?The difference is in our society, we’d be much more sympathetic to a bride that didn’t get her wedding plan the way she wanted it to play out than we are of a mother who didn’t get the birth she wanted. ?While no one can plan for labor or birth, you can have preferences. ?Preferences are a great way to be open about what you want with those you expect to participate, like your midwife or doctor, your partner, and those caring for you. It doesn’t mean you get what you want exactly, but it does enable you to work towards that and feel confident in the choices that you do make, even when they weren’t originally your first choice.

So if you wouldn’t tolerate a wedding planner who told you that it was her way or the highway, why would you accept that from anyone involved in your birth?