Birthing – and living – without fear
Dec. 15th, 2007 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamagotchaI wrote a response to one of the comments from this post, but it was too long. Since it includes some further ruminations along the lines that I was writing about, I'm posting it here as an entry.
(The commenter is a mother who had two surgical deliveries, and explains her circumstances and views in some detail):
You are right. I cannot say "I don't mean you" or your birth because I wasn't there (I did read your birth and breastfeeding stories, but they went down within days of me reading them, because I went back to read them again and they were gone. This was before I started reading your journal, though, and we never had a dialog about them).
Those 30 births I mentioned? They were mostly in-hospital doula births... plenty of things happened at them that I did not choose for my own births, that I needed to support (and loudly... try getting an epidural done quickly in a non-emergency situation). I had to learn how to help parents make really hard decisions in the heat and pain of labor – you go as simple as possible: lay out the paths they may choose from, including doing nothing, with ALL the pros/cons/potential complications or side effects/level of commitment (can we stop doing xx once we start it if we don't like it or it's not working?), answer questions to the best of my knowledge, then accept their decision and do my best to effectively implement it quickly.
The very first birth I attended as a doula was a VBAC. I was left alone in the room with the mom as the new baby was whisked away... Apgar of 0. You know what that means. I started my birth support career having to answer that mom: "What happened? What's wrong?" That baby was resuscitated after 20 minutes, and it took another few years to finally confirm that no lasting damage had occurred. It was one of the scariest events of my life. But that mom and dad never said "I wish we'd done a VBAC" or "I shouldn't have had a midwife" or "We should have induced" (baby was over 2 weeks late). They took full responsibility for their decisions and choices. They truly inspired me, both as a parent and as an advocate. They knew that there just aren't any guarantees... where there is birth, there is potentially death, a horrible and painful truth.
This event definitely helped me move towards a better understanding of personal accountability. A few years later, supporting one of my oldest and dearest friends through the stillbirth of her first child (an attempted homebirth), and then the birth of her next baby, illustrated the other side of the coin... what happens when there isn't a miraculous recovery. She never, ever blamed her midwife or herself, even though there was evidence that, in hindsight, they might have been able to diagnose her baby's problem and deliver her alive surgically (although she possibly would have been profoundly damaged... she had a velamentous insertion of the umbilical cord and had probably been significantly compromised during the entire pregnancy).
I'm so sorry you had such an terrible experience, and I can't magically say if any decision at any point could have changed the outcome... there's still always a chance of an injured, even dead, baby or mother, even with surgery... something that our culture firmly denies.
I'm going to go out on a limb here... and if I piss you off again, I'll edit this part out if you want me to. I think that maybe you might still be wrestling with this birth experience, that you might be feeling anger or pain, blame or frustration at the midwife or yourself or homebirth advocates or God or some other thing.
Finding a way to forgive who or what you are angry at might help you find peace with this awful experience. I know, I know, MUCH easier said than done! As parents, as fallible humans, we have to know... deep down, believe with all our hearts... accept as truth that we did the absolute best we could with whatever information and resources we had in our possession during whatever situation we were in.
When we can refocus our eyes to see from that point of view (a place that is NOT popular in American culture today, I'd like to mention), it brings a sense of confidence, peace, and hope... instead of fear, worry and doubt, the things that fuel so many aspects of our lives. Lawsuits, lack of tolerance for those who don't share our beliefs, second guessing, reliance on drugs, disconnect from our bodies... it's not only the in the arena of birth that we see the fallout of our fear. And, as you point out, romanticizing birth (or anything) is a Pollyanna error, even when well-intentioned. Willfully ignoring potential consequences, positive OR negative, of our choices can cause just as much harm as fearing them.
(I have such a hard time with this myself. I'm still angry at my mother for doing things I think she should have known better than to do. I keep working on forgiving her, on believing that she was doing the best she could with what she knew and what resources she had. Making my heart believe what my head says... not so easy.)
I want to increase those resources for parents. The choices of the consumers influence the actions of the providers. That's why I want to support the consumers... I know that many people aren't even aware of their choices, much less research them (if I had a penny for every parent I talked to, as a homeschooling advocate, who said "What? I can just take him out of school? And nobody will arrest me? It's legal? I can DO that?").
So yes, I do want to point at the actions of care providers. And I think that educating and supporting parents will be the best way to change those actions. Doing that with compassion, wisdom, loving kindness, intelligence and, eventually, positive results... well, it's clear that this is where I could use some improvement.
(The commenter is a mother who had two surgical deliveries, and explains her circumstances and views in some detail):
You are right. I cannot say "I don't mean you" or your birth because I wasn't there (I did read your birth and breastfeeding stories, but they went down within days of me reading them, because I went back to read them again and they were gone. This was before I started reading your journal, though, and we never had a dialog about them).
Those 30 births I mentioned? They were mostly in-hospital doula births... plenty of things happened at them that I did not choose for my own births, that I needed to support (and loudly... try getting an epidural done quickly in a non-emergency situation). I had to learn how to help parents make really hard decisions in the heat and pain of labor – you go as simple as possible: lay out the paths they may choose from, including doing nothing, with ALL the pros/cons/potential complications or side effects/level of commitment (can we stop doing xx once we start it if we don't like it or it's not working?), answer questions to the best of my knowledge, then accept their decision and do my best to effectively implement it quickly.
The very first birth I attended as a doula was a VBAC. I was left alone in the room with the mom as the new baby was whisked away... Apgar of 0. You know what that means. I started my birth support career having to answer that mom: "What happened? What's wrong?" That baby was resuscitated after 20 minutes, and it took another few years to finally confirm that no lasting damage had occurred. It was one of the scariest events of my life. But that mom and dad never said "I wish we'd done a VBAC" or "I shouldn't have had a midwife" or "We should have induced" (baby was over 2 weeks late). They took full responsibility for their decisions and choices. They truly inspired me, both as a parent and as an advocate. They knew that there just aren't any guarantees... where there is birth, there is potentially death, a horrible and painful truth.
This event definitely helped me move towards a better understanding of personal accountability. A few years later, supporting one of my oldest and dearest friends through the stillbirth of her first child (an attempted homebirth), and then the birth of her next baby, illustrated the other side of the coin... what happens when there isn't a miraculous recovery. She never, ever blamed her midwife or herself, even though there was evidence that, in hindsight, they might have been able to diagnose her baby's problem and deliver her alive surgically (although she possibly would have been profoundly damaged... she had a velamentous insertion of the umbilical cord and had probably been significantly compromised during the entire pregnancy).
I'm so sorry you had such an terrible experience, and I can't magically say if any decision at any point could have changed the outcome... there's still always a chance of an injured, even dead, baby or mother, even with surgery... something that our culture firmly denies.
I'm going to go out on a limb here... and if I piss you off again, I'll edit this part out if you want me to. I think that maybe you might still be wrestling with this birth experience, that you might be feeling anger or pain, blame or frustration at the midwife or yourself or homebirth advocates or God or some other thing.
Finding a way to forgive who or what you are angry at might help you find peace with this awful experience. I know, I know, MUCH easier said than done! As parents, as fallible humans, we have to know... deep down, believe with all our hearts... accept as truth that we did the absolute best we could with whatever information and resources we had in our possession during whatever situation we were in.
When we can refocus our eyes to see from that point of view (a place that is NOT popular in American culture today, I'd like to mention), it brings a sense of confidence, peace, and hope... instead of fear, worry and doubt, the things that fuel so many aspects of our lives. Lawsuits, lack of tolerance for those who don't share our beliefs, second guessing, reliance on drugs, disconnect from our bodies... it's not only the in the arena of birth that we see the fallout of our fear. And, as you point out, romanticizing birth (or anything) is a Pollyanna error, even when well-intentioned. Willfully ignoring potential consequences, positive OR negative, of our choices can cause just as much harm as fearing them.
(I have such a hard time with this myself. I'm still angry at my mother for doing things I think she should have known better than to do. I keep working on forgiving her, on believing that she was doing the best she could with what she knew and what resources she had. Making my heart believe what my head says... not so easy.)
I want to increase those resources for parents. The choices of the consumers influence the actions of the providers. That's why I want to support the consumers... I know that many people aren't even aware of their choices, much less research them (if I had a penny for every parent I talked to, as a homeschooling advocate, who said "What? I can just take him out of school? And nobody will arrest me? It's legal? I can DO that?").
So yes, I do want to point at the actions of care providers. And I think that educating and supporting parents will be the best way to change those actions. Doing that with compassion, wisdom, loving kindness, intelligence and, eventually, positive results... well, it's clear that this is where I could use some improvement.