January 20, 2005 3:04 PM
Ouch.
Woman Gives Birth to Giant Baby (click for hyperlink)
Okay, so it was a Caeserean delivery, but still. Ouch.
Samantha was born in 1969. True to my counterculture inclinations, I'd found an obscure book on Lamaze and decided I would have natural childbirth and nurse. No one was having natural childbirth or nursing in those days -- at least not in Washington, D.C.
I'd go in for every checkup and tell my doctor what I expected. Yet on Sam's birth day at George Washington University Hospital, I ended up shaved and coated with iodine, flat on my back on a gurney with my wrists strapped down (!) and my feet in stirrups. They barely tolerated the presence of Samantha's dad and like everyone else in the room, he had to wear all the surgical gear so only his eyes were showing.
The only thing natural was that I did it without medication. Ouch.
Then, they refused to let her nurse or bond, whisking away my perfectly healthy baby for the mandatory 12 hours observation in an isolette. i was not allowed to get out of bed even to go to the bathroom for 12 hours. My hubby had to leave when visiting hours were over at 8, and I lay there all night long, wired from adrenaline (I don't know about everyone else, but I am so wide awake after the birth while the daddy falls asleep like he's done some Herculean job!), begging to see my baby.
Sounds barbaric, doesn't it? But that's how it was thirtysome years ago for healthy moms and babies. I note it here for historical purposes, kind of like Jewish people remember the Holocaust. Maybe that sounds over the top, but it was a crime the way the medical profession treated women and pregnancy -- like some kind of disease they had to control and manage.
Some very positive things came out of the feminist movement that even the most conservative women need to acknowledge. That's definitely one place where we've come a long way, babies.
By 1975, when I was pregnant with Jasmine Moondance (I planned them to be six years apart, trying to head off sibling rivalry - ha!), we were living in San Francisco and there was no way I'd go anywhere near a hospital. We had a home birth complete with hippie midwife and doctor -- plus Samantha collecting admission fees from her friends on the front steps of our little Victorian rowhouse (which she had to return because we didn't let them in).
Eight years later, Tripp and I were living with the girls in Marin (north of San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge) when our life took an unexpected turn. Birth control just wasn't working for us, and after two "unplanned" pregnancies, we decided we might as well surrender -- producing seven children in the next ten years.
They were all born at Marin General in a natural and comfortable setting. But the irony was that by then I had become very rigid myself, always refusing anesthetics. And each time I approached labor with more dread. You know how each delivery is usually easier? Well that's true up to a certain point. But for "grand multiparas" -- as they call women with more than five deliveries -- the womb becomes less efficient and predictable. Ouch.
I was old enough to be a grandma (which was not at all unusual in Marin). And I kept hearing all these younger moms talking about epidurals. So when I went into the hospital in labor with my Number Nine, Madeleine, I went for it. And what a wonderful experience that was! Why didn't I try that sooner?
So what's my point? I guess just some historical context. I guess just a reminder of another thing we mommies can be grateful for today.
Posted in Feminism, Mothering | Permalink
Comments
Phew--I'm glad you're not anti-epidural, because I was...until I went into labor! I only wish I had opted for sooner in the process. Live and learn.
Posted by: Marla | January 24, 2005 1:54 PM
Yes! I live and breathe among all these natural childbirth, homebirth, no epidurals, herbal remedy only, homeschooling mothers of many children, and I don't say much about my eight hospital births with epidural unless someone asks. Then I say, "Epidurals are God's gift to women."
Posted by: Sherry | January 27, 2005 12:14 AM
