Oh yeah, I see this turning out well. NOT.
SUMMERTOWN, Tenn — Despite living on a commune in rural Tennessee, Ina May Gaskin has had the kind of career success most people only dream about. A midwife who never formally studied nursing, Gaskin has helped to bring home birth and lay midwifery back from the brink of extinction in the U.S. An obstetrical maneuver she learned from the indigenous Mayans of Guatemala has made it into scientific journals and medical textbooks, and her insistence on the rights of a birthing mother empowered a generation of women to demand changes from doctors and hospitals. With a lifetime of accomplishment, the 67-year-old Gaskin has earned the right to slow down. But that is the farthest thing from her mind.
“At the time we began, I couldn’t have dreamed that in 25 years’ time women would be actively seeking Caesareans,” she said.
Gaskin largely blames the nation’s rising maternal death rate on the increase in Caesarean section births and the drugs sometimes used to induce labor.
The National Center for Health Statistics reported last month that the maternal death rate for 2005 has risen to about 15 women per 100,000 live births, more than double the 1998 rate of 7.
At least part of that increase is due to better reporting, but researchers say Caesareans also may be a factor.
Promoting natural birth
Gaskin passionately believes natural childbirth is the answer. The number of women giving birth with a midwife has doubled over the last decade and accounts for about 8 percent of births today — the vast majority in hospitals. Still, she says it’s a challenge to promote natural birth to a generation that favors comfort and convenience.
Promoting home births is an even tougher sell. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has continuously warned against home births as too risky.
In 1975, Gaskin published “Spiritual Midwifery,” which included birth stories and a primer on delivering babies. Her book has sold around 750,000 copies, has been translated into four languages and has inspired a generation of women to become midwives.
Part of Gaskin’s success has been that she combines an analytical mind with an instinctual understanding of birth.
She promoted the idea that a woman’s state of mind will influence how easy her birth is and encouraged unorthodox ways to improve the woman’s experience, like encouraging her to make out with her husband during labor. (emphasis mine)
Is this woman serious? She wants husbands to make out with their wives while in labor? This is supposed to be a good thing? X-Rated natural childbirth?
Let me tell you about natural childbirth.
My oldest son was born in 1985. For all you younguns out there this was the time of all that Doctor Brazelton nonsense on how to raise your child, that in my wife’s and my opinion anyway, did more damage to children than any other child psychology voodoo ever invented.
But that is not what I am here to talk about.
What I want to talk about is this nonsense called “natural childbirth” which, when my son was born, was the “in” thing. Every expert recommended it. Every mother raved about it. They all said, “Oh, you’ll love it. It puts you so much more in touch with yourself and your baby if you don’t use pain medication, and it is such a wonderful bonding experience to have your husband at your side sharing in that peaceful moment.”
Bullshit.
First of all, let me say that both loving wife and I were very into it. We went to the birthing classes, we read all the books, and we listened to all the instructors tell us how great it would be. We were sold on it. Converts.
But like Scientologist zombies we had absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into.
Sure, everything was great at the classes. They taught me how to coach loving wife. To give encouragement, fetch her ice, read to her, and to otherwise help her take her mind off the absolutely searing pain she was going to go through without any pain medication to help.
Of course, they didn’t tell her that she would be in that much pain. No, they told her it would be a liberating experience. That the pain wasn’t that bad and that it would be quickly forgotten as she saw our baby being delivered.
Ha.
Here’s how it went for me and loving wife.
First of all she goes into labor and I drive her the 30-something miles to the hospital hitting every bump on the way naturally (this has nothing to do with natural childbirth by the way - it’s just something that every wife says every husband did on the way to the hospital - he could be driving on perfectly-smooth glass and she would still say he hit every bump).
When we arrive things go well and we settle into the birthing room, which was basically a single hospital room dressed-up to look homey with curtains, plants, and a nice non-hospital-looking bed. They hook her up to all the monitoring equipment and after a bit ask her if she wants any pain medication. “No,” she answers, “We want the wonderfully liberating and emotionally bonding experience of natural childbirth.”
I swear I saw the nurses roll their eyes.
So no pain medication it is and she proceeds to lay there in labor for a few hours, moaning and groaning with the pain, while I naively try to help her by talking soothingly to her, giving her plenty of ice, and doing all the stuff they taught me to do. Then at one point, I pull out a deck of cards and ask her - as I was told to do - if she wanted to play a game.
“NO,” she screamed at me. “I don’t want to play a stupid card game. I am having a baby for Christ’s sake. Are you an idiot? It’s your damn fault this happened anyway.”
Oh yeah, I am an idiot.
An idiot for ever believing this natural childbirth crap in the first place. And an idiot for not leaving for work when I called my office and the guys - all older than me - told me that I should just come in because there wasn’t anything I could do there.
Except get yelled at evidently.
Now, before you women jump all over me, I am not complaining about loving wife’s less than loving attitude towards me when I offered to play strip poker with her. (Hey, if making out with her is a good idea, strip poker was absolute genius.)
No, she had a valid point.
What I am complaining about was that she had been put in that position in the first place.
These morons who sold her, and me through her, on natural childbirth were to blame.
Pain is good? Pain makes you bond with your baby and husband? Pain is liberating?
What color is the sky on the planet these people live on?
No, pain is not good. Pain is not liberating. Pain is just fricken painful.
So my advice to any woman who is even remotely considering natural childbirth is that they wake up and smell the epidural.
Because that is what makes a wonderful childbirthing experience.
Just ask loving wife.
She had one when our last son was born (the middle one was an emergency cesarean), and the experience was as good as birthing a baby gets I imagine. She was awake and in good spirits. I was there and in good spirits. There was no yelling or screaming or throwing cups of ice at me.
There was only a lot of emotional bonding and the liberating experience of almost painlessly pushing-out a healthy baby boy.
So I respectfully say to Ida May Gaskin - keep your ”squat in a field and drop a baby” natural childbirth theory to yourself. At least if you want the husbands to be there. Because there was a reason Indian women walked off by themselves to have babies in the olden days.
It was because they didn’t want their idiotic husbands asking them to play cards, let alone trying to slip them some tongue.
*Retitled because I like this one better.
