birth activist

Are you a mother who has heard this before?
I have heard it said many times, to laboring women that I was supporting as a doula.

Wouldn't you like to know who started it? Exactly who was it that thought this would be a cute thing to say to women? And more importantly, why do people continue to diminish a laboring woman's efforts in this way?

Usually, if someone is going to say it, it's when a woman is struggling with her decision to use medication in labor. Maybe she is considering an epidural and the nurse is trying to validate her feelings. Or maybe the nurse is already preparing for the mother to receive the medication and she chimes. "You know, you're not going to get a medal for this!"

So here is the mother, working really hard in labor, and in walks a relative stranger, just waiting for the moment to use her line. Just waiting to tell this mother that her efforts are not worthwhile and will not be acknowledged.

I have never heard anyone say this to the mothers who choose medication in advance, or to those who are already feeling the anesthesia.

I wish that the people who use this line would listen to what they're saying. It's dis-respect-ful to not acknowledge the challenging work that women do in labor. We should be supportive, rather than dis-courage-ing mothers whose goal is to have as few interventions as possible. And if they are choosing medication, we can be supportive of the work that they have done so far.

Not only that, these hardened nurses are mistaken about the medals. Mothers do receive a medal when they give birth! It weighs about 7 or 8 pounds and wants to be fed.