So I've been very busy the past few weekends with Childbirth Education classes to become a Childbirth Educator (a weird necessity that wouldn't have existed in a gatherer-hunter tribe, where you would learn everything you needed to know about giving birth from your mother and grandmothers, sisters and aunties...) anyway, I'm beginning to think the whole "birth culture" and "birth businesses," are pretty sick really; profiting from childbirth is just another annoying capitalist scheme, if you ask me. The most annoying new "profession" in this whole scheme is the birth doula; which really, is a hired friend who goes to the birth with you! If I need a friend that badly, that I have to pay some stranger I don't know to go to my birth with me, well, then I've got issues so huge I probably shouldn't be having a baby. That being said, our world is so messed up that, yes, there are instances where you need a "hired friend" and since I've been a doula at births, I understand what some of those instances would be.
But Childbirth Ed is another really annoying thing to me at the moment; because it makes me very frustrated that we don't live in a world where the most scared event of a young woman's life, the beautiful transition from girlhood to motherhood, isn't accompanied by wise advice from her mother, grandmothers and other older, trusted ladies in her community; instead, she has to pay some professional to teach her about and how to give birth...yuck! Isn't that disgusting when you think about it that way? Also, as of late, I've come to the conclusion that all classes, education and knowledge should be free...it seems stupid to pay someone to impart wisdom or knowledge when I know in my soul that there is an elder out there for every single subject I want to learn about who would willingly teach me for free...and probably a little work-trade. And by elder, I mean someone who has more knowledge of a certain subject I want to know about; they could be older or younger then me, with long, witchy grey hair or not, a man or a woman (you have to be open-minded when looking for your elders...)
Speaking of elders, I just watched a great movie with an ideal elder in it; one of those old, stereotypical wise Native Americans you see in films so often; only this old guy did an excellent job not being just another Wise Indian Stereotype...(although I do think it was the same actor that was in Free Willy, and he was pretty much that stereotype in that movie as well,) anyway, the movie is called Dreamkeeper and is really, really excellent. I hesitated to watch it, because it had a picture of a dragon on the front flying out of a campfire so I assumed it would be some weird, trippy, psychedelic-type movie or something, but it was nothing like that. It was a series of Native American legends I guess you'd call them, acted out with awesome CG animation and all that modern stuff that you don't get listening with your tribe to stories around a campfire! Anyway, my favorite stories in the movie involved Coyote The Trickster and his friend the Spider. The guy who played Coyote slunk around just the way you might imagine The Trickster doing; he had a perfect Coyote voice too; a sly, up-to-no-good tone. My favorite line in the movie is when Coyote and Spider (double-trouble, as the elder telling the story calls them,) approach Grandfather Stone in the desert to ask for a favor. Coyote, in his wheezy, tickstery voice, says "have mercy on us Grandfather, for if we do not live, who will do the things we should not to show the people what not to do?" I loved it. Interestingly enough, another woman in my childbirth ed class called me The Trickster this weekend, although I can't remember the context.
Anyway, see Dreamkeeper and stay away from people who want your money to be your "professional" friend.
Love ya,
Carrot
I completely agree that today's society has an awful relationship between children and parents. I blame the Industrial Revolution, which started a flurry of new inventions so different generations can no longer bond over similarities since they're so different. Then, since we already know that our parents know nothing about technology today, we assume they know very little about everything else, too--even childbirth. Childbirth is very scientific, we think to ourselves, so we need to hire updated professionals who know everything about the science.
However, I think that having specialists teach about childbirth is not necessarily horrible but rather sensible. Since technology has pushed so many people out of humdrum jobs, we have to find other ways to work. We pay people to make themselves available to teach us what we don't know. Yes, we could find an elder willing to offer knowledge for free, but finding that elder is hard work; some people would rather save themselves the time of searching and simply pay for someone they already know and trust. Specializing in a study is proved economically to be beneficial; I'm taking Microeconomics this semester and we learned on day one that specialization and trade increases quantity supplied and decreases opportunity cost. Doulas and childbirth teachers would not exist if they were not needed; since they're needed, though, and they exist, people use them. The horrible part is that they're needed, not that they exist.
I appreciate your thought. When I was pregnant I was reading "The Lady of Avalon" one book in my favorite series by Marion Zimmer Bradly. (The series is centered around King Arthurian legend, but from the perspective of the women surrounding it.)
In all of the books in the series, there are births and deaths. The main characters are priestesses who are trained in childbirth, much in the fashion you describe. There is a sacred house just for childbirth. The priestesses also use herbs as medicine when needed. I really did think it would have been wonderful to have a baby in that kind of environment. Daughters delivered their own younger sisters, mothers delivered their granddaughters. Truly beautiful. Sadly though, many births ended with death, either of the mother, child, or both.
When I had my daughter, I had taken all of the classes offered by the hospital. I didn't want to have an epidural, because I was scared about not feeling my body. They talked in the classes about having a "birth plan" with my doctor, and gave us forms. I took it to my doctor, I said, "Can we work on my birth plan?" He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "I don't want to have an epidural." He smiled and said, "If your baby is under six pounds you might be okay without it." I said, "Can't I just use the pain medication until I'm fully dilated?" He said, "Sure, if you want."
Sidenote: For anyone not medically informed on this, it is controversial to give a laboring mother narcotics because of the fact that it does cross the placenta, and there is a possibility the baby could be born with respiratory depression. However, the baby's heart rates is monitored throughout labor, and even if the baby was born with such a problem, Narcan is available and reverses the effects of narcotics. It really is mostly a concern in the last hour or two before birth anyway. In my case, I was in labor for 24 hours.
So when I went to the hospital, I told my nurse I didn't want an epidural. She gave me some Nubain, which was great, it took the edge off the pain just enough, but I could still feel what was going on with my body. About 6 hours later, it was getting hard again, and I asked my nurse for some more pain medication, she said "Oh, we only give it once, you can't have it again!" So much for my birth plan. So I asked for a big ball to sit on, was practicing my breathing, etc. Then my water broke. I was not expecting the waterfall that occured. My body started involluntarily shaking all over, I was not really screaming, but more like howling. The pain overwhelmed all of my senses. It felt like an earthquake in my body that was going to cause the entire infrastructure to implode. My husband looked at me. His face was white, and he was shaking too. I managed to whimper, "I think I need an epidural."
The anesthesiologist came in, gave me the epidural, and took all the pain away. After the epidural, I had to stay in bed (since the epidural completely numbs from the waist down.) So I laid there for another 12 hours, just watching my contractions on the monitor, not feeling anything. When it came time to push, I had a difficult time because I couldn't feel how hard I was pushing. It was exhausting, my mouth was terribly dry from all the panting. I couldn't feel what was going on, but I felt the exhaustion in my body. Finally, the nurse whispered in my ear "Push, make this the last one," So I pushed as hard as I could, and the baby popped out. The doctor's head was turned, because as I found out later, she was preparing to do an episiotomy. I guess the nurse didn't know that. The doctor caught the baby, handed her to the nurse, and then her eyes got huge. Next thing I know, she has her entire arm up in me and is pushing down as hard as she can on my belly. I was hemmorhaging. I wasn't totally aware of what was going on, I was elated to see my baby, I was crying and laughing intermittently.
The nurse brought my family in, I was trying to talk to them. The doctor pushed me down and said "Lay down, don't talk, you don't have the energy, you are bleeding." She made everyone leave. she had to manually massage my uterus for 2 hours. They gave me a plasma infusion, along with a whole lot of pitocin. Those two factors made my legs swell up like tree trunks for 3 weeks, which made it very difficult even to walk at home. This was especially annoying because I was trying to care for a new baby.
In addition to the hemhorrage, I also sustained a 3rd degree laceration that went into two different directions. That means that I tore all the way through the muscle from my vagina to my anus. That little complication also made the first three weeks at home incredibly difficult. That pain wasn't quite as bad as the labor pain I was experiencing when I broke down and asked for that epidural, but it lasted a few weeks.
In addition to my complications, my baby suffered meconium aspiration. The doctor was prepared for that because the meconium is visible in the fluid. She was prepared to suction her nose before her first breath to prevent that, but because the nurse wasn't in sync with the doctor, the baby shot out when she wasn't expecting it, and did aspirate. For that reason my baby had to spend her first three days in the NICU. She didn't have the energy to eat, so they put a feeding tube down her nose. Other than my first look at her when she was born, I didn't get to see her for 24 hours because of my condition.
I was also so ready to breastfeed before the delivery, but because of my weakened state and the fact that she wouldn't even take a bottle for 3 days, that was another compromise. I managed to pump enough to give her half the milk she needed for the first three months of her life, but then I stopped because it was interfering with my bonding with her. Being a new mother and not being able to breastfeed really did make me feel like a failure of a mother from the very beginning.
Had I not had that epidural I would have been aware of my body, and I wouldn't have pushed with the kind of force that I did. I wouldn't have torn like that, and the baby wouldn't have aspirated.
I tell this story because two thoughts went through my mind many times. One was regarding the unnecessary complications actually imposed on me by modern medicine. The other thought "What did women who couldn't breastfeed before there was formula do?" I know that some could hire a wetnurse, but what if they couldn't afford it? Not only that, but what did women do when things went wrong during delivery. Sadly, births ending in death were much more common.
I am grateful that my baby and I are fully recovered and healthy and happy now. We worked hard to get here.
"Consistency is not a human trait" - Maude, from Harold and Maude
I'm really glad you and your baby are ok too! Sounds like you had some complications that where hard; luckily women and their babies are strong and generally get through these trials.
A couple things stuck out to me in that story. The first was the nurse who told you to push really hard at the end to make "that the last push." I'm picturing the scene in my minds' eye and my guess is that she did know the doctor was about to do an episotomy; I've seen this type of scenario over and over again, because of the power-over, power-under dichotomy in hospitals (the nurses feel less respected then they should be, therefore they sometimes try to make things happen while the doctors' back is turned,) and because nurses typically do understand labor and delivery better then doctors do, because in reality, they are the ones who do the majority of the "labor sitting," and have been with the clients all night and know what is going on with them, verses the doctor who comes in at the last minute to catch the baby, well, because of these factors and more, nurses often try to get babies out before doctors have time to do things like cut an episotomy or call the anesthesiologist in for an epidural, or, in one birth I was at, the nurses where determined to bring the baby down far enough so that a C-section would be impossible; usually, all of this is done to save both mother and babe from unnecessary interventions, and is, in my option, heroic on the part of the nurse.
The second thing which really caught my eye was the two hours of uterine massage done by the doctor to end the hemorrhage. I've never heard of a doctor who did uterine massage for that long; did they give you pictocin more then once during that time period? Did they give other drugs like methergine?
Also, bravo for being wise enough to see the link between the intervention of the epidural and how your birth was changed because of it (I think a lot of women miss the connection between loss of body sensation and knowing how/when to push and how hard, and of course, the ability to squat or be in some other position to help the baby come out perhaps without tearing or needing an episotomy.) Bravo too for being smart enough to know when the pain was too much for you and understanding that an epidural was the smartest choice to make in your particular birth. Sounds like you know your body really well, and know what you need and when you need it.
Babies did die more in the past, as did mamas...but luckily today we midwives carry oxygen, pictocin, methergine, sutures and many other tools to make birth safer...(doctors won't usually admit this, but in most states midwives have as good if not better rates of safe birth and good outcomes...better outcomes because our rates of C-section and many other complications are usually much, much lower then hospital rates, even when our transports are factored in.) My gynecology teacher recently had a really rare complication that when she transfered her client, she actually did have the doctor admit that if the client had been in the hospital she probably would have died, rather then at home, because nurses come in and out of the room, whereas Ellie the midwife stayed with the lady the entire time and saw that something unusual was happening.
Evidence shows that midwives are the safest way to have babies these days...so I guess those birth professionals are worth their weight in gold....and true, we do have a culture where birth professionals are necessary, though in my utopia birth professionals would be every woman.
Love ya,
Carrot