We live in a society that embraces the wedding planning process. We have books, websites, TV shows and even movies dedicated to wedding planning. Months, sometimes years of crazed wedding planning that includes planning details from where the wedding will be held to what color napkins our utensils will rest on. This is what’s expected of us as women. What if women spent as
much time planning their birth, as they did their weddings? Why have we accepted that planning our births is out of our control and jurisdiction? Why have we given so much control over our bodies to our doctors and hospitals? Our society embraces the privilege of being the bride who deserves her perfect wedding, but we have long since forgotten the majesty of the pregnant mother and our duty as humans to protect her. It used to be birth didn’t involve planning. Like animals, we would carry our children growing inside of us then when labor came we would find a safe place and a strong woman to help us birth our babies. Experienced mothers helping mothers birth their children in ways that have worked for centuries. That is no longer our reality. The sad truth is that we must now plan and prepare in order to protect our birth experience because birth is no longer regarded as a natural process. We don’t birth our babies, we show up at hospitals to undergo a medical procedure to remove our babies. We are asked to wear gowns, take medications, tools are used, rules are put in place, monitoring happens. It’s a procedure. How did humanity survive without all of this intervention? This is important time to thank God for medicine. Birth can be dangerous and we should be grateful that medicine exists to protect us when birth becomes legitimately dangerous. While medicine is important, its place in birth should be remembered. Birth is not an illness or a syndrome; it’s as natural as going to the bathroom. The only place for medicine is when things go wrong. The problem is that doctors are trained to find problems and fix them and they have created a need for medicine in the birth experience that doesn’t truly exist. They impose time limits and then tell us our bodies aren’t working when we don’t follow their timeline. They tell us how we what position to push in, and then tell us our babies don’t fit or our pelvis is “too small”. They give us medicine to speed up labor. They give us medicine that slows down labor and makes us numb so we can’t push. They hook us up to IVs that keep us sedentary. They make us birth in a place surrounded by sick people. They tell us what we can and can’t eat, and when we can do so. They take our blood. They cut us open. Why are we the only animal so dependent on all of these medical procedures during birth? Why does the US lead in cesarean rates, mortality rates and intervention rates but outspend so many other civilized countries in our maternity care? Are US women less effective at having babies or have we over-medicalizing and over-complicating a completely normal, biological process? So many sweet women are having babies without any pride in their birth experience. So yes, we NEED to plan. We must! Our bodies, our babies and our future babies all depend on it. A pregnant woman has so much more power and control over her birth than we are led to believe. We have been brainwashed to consider birth this terrifying, painful experience that requires a medical intervention. It is not the truth. Yes it hurts, but that is natural. We won’t die from it. In fact, the more we leave it alone, work through it and conquer it – the faster we recover. By planning our birth, we take the power back from the doctors and leave our births feeling connected to our bodies and our babies, regardless of the outcome. When your birth plan includes many small goals, it becomes next to impossible to fail. Some things can go wrong, or not follow the plan but you leave yourself so much room for things to go right. We owe it to ourselves to take this role seriously and to know our own bodies better than the doctors. We were made for birthing babies. |
AuthorMother of 4 biological kids and 1 bonus kid. I've lost a baby due to ectopic pregnancy before my last pregnancy. I married and divorced young before meeting my soul mate, Cameron. I work in corporate America by day, and run a house full of people by night. I like lists, music, birth stories and helping women create the experiences behind their birth stories. Archives
March 2015
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