Why I Don’t Want To Talk About The Pains Of Natural Birth
I have heard and overheard stories of natural birth – painful, very painful, very very painful – it kept freaking me out until I heard another story of a relatively painless natural delivery that was even epidural-free – and then stories of natural deliveries that were so quick that the doctor pretty much yelled at the new mother and her mother for not coming to the hospital any sooner than that. Woah! I could never draw a conclusion as to what the experience was like eventually.
What if men were made to bear children? What if women were spared this aspect of life – because we already bear the brunt on many fronts. To this once a friend even narrated a silly folklore that would challenge the geneticists from like Gregor Mendel to naturalists like Charles Darwin – that indeed God had created man to bear children, but they lacked the strength, so God changed his mind. Interesting. If not true, it, at least, serves as a good anecdote of women as the source of strength and tremendous power to withstand the excruciating pain in delivering children. And may be narrating the story to an expectant mother will make her feel ‘entitled’ to go through the pain and take it for granted that it will be bearable. It might be a good story to ‘program’ her into thinking that she will be okay through it all.
And then I heard bizarre theories – and this one coming from an American doctor – that pregnant women in the west eat so many pizzas during pregnancy that make their babies heavier as well. That would mean the size of the baby is proportionate to the number of pizzas! So when the time comes to deliver, they have the doctor panic-stricken and perspire more than the woman in labor. Might sound like a joke, but I still wonder whether there is a difference between pushing out a 2.5 kilos baby and a 3 kilos baby. Do the tiny milligrams count towards alleviating any pain at all?
Or is it the size of the vagina?
Or is a great mental strength?
Or is there a greater expectation of pain, but the real thing just fades out before the expected pain?
Or as another myth would have it, would the rounder belly make an easier way out for childbearing? I won’t get what it meant for men in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to mate with women with rounder bellies. They lived on the myth that women with a bigger pelvic girdle would have an easier childbearing. If it weren’t atrociously ridiculous, then women might get over the skinny image business of the current times. Media would promote plus sized women. Plus size outfits would be the order of the day. And women would want to put on weight to have dozens of children.
But it doesn’t work that way. The truth is that you give up in the labor room. The truth is that there are a lot of tales that are created to make women feel ’empowered’ at childbearing. The truth is that everyone will have to go through the pain albeit at different intensities.
We need to remember that each woman is different; each woman has different threshold level, and each woman has a different attitude. There is no standard measure to differentiate one’s motherhood from that of other’s.
It won’t matter how thin or fat you were. What might matter though is how flexible you were before and during pregnancy. You will take hours to recuperate. Welcoming your baby will not be like what’s portrayed in commercials. You will hold the baby, sure, but won’t have the strength to feel the gush of love. You will focus on gathering yourself back together before you can pour out your affections on the little bundle of joy.
The ordeal will be there. But at the end of it all, there will be a bond for a lifetime to last. You will suddenly realize that you couldn’t have been happier without that tiny baby in your life. And suddenly all the pain would vanish. As time passes by, you will also forget the pain that nearly killed you. You will be laden with the bounty of affections and sweetness that your child would bring in.
I consider it worth telling the women out there – that natural birthing is no joke. If you have experienced it too, be blunt about it – simply out of the sheer duty towards other sisters. And if we still choose natural birthing, we deserve salutations!
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