A Statue Turned its Head

Having a baby is quite the scary thing.

Of course there is all the pressure and responsibility of bringing a new life into the world. Will I be a good mother, will I raise my child to be a good person, will he/she be healthy, will my baby do well in school and go to college…

Right now, though, I'm talking about the more immediate fear of actually having the baby. This kid is going to be coming out of me in just over two months. The thought is rather daunting.

Right now, I can sort of understand the allure of being one of those women who buys a copy of What to Expect When You are Expecting and just accepts whatever it and her doctor tell her. It would be nice to truly believe that doctors always, always know best (never mind how frequently they disagree with each other), and that every intervention that is ordered for you is absolutely needed, and that you really would have torn much worse if you hadn't had that episiotomy.

Once you start to read up on it on your own and talk to different people, you start to get ideas about what things are really necessary and when interventions are a good idea (of course nature and the human body are both fallible on occasion and interventions do save lives) and just what exactly might work best for you knowing how you deal with stress and pain. Then, in addition to the normal worries about pain and what if something goes wrong, you acquire the additional stress of wondering if you are going to have to fight with doctors and nurses to be allowed to make some of your own choices, if they will even listen to you at all, and will you end up another "failed to progress" c-section because you didn't have any real support and your doctor got impatient…

I've known how I wanted to have my baby – for the choices that we humans can make, anyway – for a long time now. I think that I was about twenty or so when I first really started thinking about having a baby. I don't mean that I was thinking about having one right then – I knew that I wasn't anywhere near ready – but that I was hit by the realization that since I did want kids someday, that I would be having a baby someday. I wanted to know what to expect.

I don't remember for sure, since it was so long ago, but it might have started with an article in the health section of the local paper. I know that there was an article, and basically what it's contents were, I just can't remember if that was the start of things, or if it just furthered them along. The article was about the use of pain medication in childbirth and contained many quotes from a local midwife talking about how worrisome the routine use of epidurals was and about the problems that could be caused by them. This sparked several letters to the editor complaining that the article was biased and that there was nothing wrong with pain medication and that women didn't have to be martyrs in this day and age.

It hit me then that this was a choice that I'd have to make someday. I wondered if I was strong enough to make it through without pain medication, and I doubted my abilities, but then I didn't really have any idea what to expect from having a baby besides a lot of pain. I wanted to know more, so I went looking for it.

I started by reading about a zillion birth stories to get a better idea of all the things that a woman could go through. I found childbirth.org which has birth stories grouped randomly in groups of five rather than by category, so I read about all different types of birth. I read about normal hospital births, births with complications, pre-term babies, induced babies, natural births in hospitals, home births, planned unassisted births (the thought of which freaks me out) and unplanned ones, water births, lotus births (which are really icky, in my opinion), births using all sorts of pain medications, and pretty much any other sort of birth.

From there I followed links and did searches and learned more about the risks of various drugs used in labor and the statistics showing the safety of home births and about the water birth movement and so much more…

I still didn't know if I was tough enough to not ask for pain medication should it be available, but I decided that I wanted to give it a shot. I also knew that a birth center birth attended by a midwife sounded a lot better to me than either the home birth or a hospital birth.

Despite my intentions to do my best to have a natural childbirth, I'm still afraid that when faced with how much it actually hurts I'll turn out to be one of those women who begs for an epidural the instant I walk through the hospital doors.

M, on the other hand, is determined that I won't have one. He knows that it is my choice in the end, but something about the epidural just really freaks him out. He has no objection at all to my using gas, no strong objection to my using morphine though he hopes I will be able to make it without it, but the mention of an epidural makes him turn green.

I think part of it is just the idea of a needle being stuck into my spine. An even larger part of it though was the warnings from the nurse teaching our prenatal classes that epidural drugs do cross the placenta and can cause the baby to be born sleepy and have problems with breastfeeding. He doesn't like the higher risk for a c-section or longer labor or possible complications for me, but the thought of our baby being born all drugged up really freaks him out. Of course, I pointed out that morphine can have some of the same effects, but he fired back that at least they can do something about that. The nurse told us that they won't give morphine late in labor so it should be cleared from the baby's system by the birth, but if things go faster than expected and the baby is born showing the effects of the morphine they have other drugs they can give it to reverse the effects. She made no mention of anything that can reverse the effects of the epidural drugs.

Personally, the idea that you have to give the baby drugs just after birth to reverse the effects of drugs from before the birth just seems wrong. I really hope to make do without either.

So pretty much I had it all planned out. So long as things went well and I was low risk, I wanted a midwife and a birth center. I wanted to do my best to manage without pain medication, and I wanted to be supported in that, but if I did wimp out and ask for something to help then I wouldn't feel terrible about myself or anything. I wanted the option of soaking in a warm tub or standing in the shower or using a birth ball or anything else that might ease the pain naturally and help me deal with it. I also wanted support in breastfeeding and not to have my baby taken from me.

I'd read so many stories of horror stories about hospital births and terrible hospital policies that the idea of a hospital birth really scared me. I read stories of women being hounded by nurses and doctors to accept pain medication when they didn't want it. I read of women being given pitocen because they weren't dilating at exactly one centimeter an hour and then ending up with an epidural and a c-section as a result. I read of routine episiotomies and IVs and women not being allowed to eat or drink anything but ice chips. I read of women having their healthy babies taken from them right after the birth and then left in the nursery despite the women's requests to see them. I read of babies being fed formula despite the mother's intention to breastfeed. The most recent story I read was Aimee's, but I'd read many, many similar ones before them.

I didn't want any of that for me.

Remembering an episode of Maternity Ward I watched on TLC a while ago…

This woman was lying on her side in a flat hospital bed that had the guard rails on the sides up. She clutched at the bars on one side during her contractions. I can't remember if she was there alone or if she had a husband or boyfriend or someone standing in the corner doing nothing, but in either case she really was by herself.

This young doctor came in and stood by the bed as she writhed in agony in the midst of a contraction. He just stood there by the side of the bed asking "Why are you so afraid of the epidural? It's only going to get worse from here. If you'd just tell me what scares you so much about it, then maybe I could help you overcome those fears and things would be better for you."

All the time he was talking, she was in so much pain from the current contraction that she couldn't answer him, but he just wouldn't shut up.

Later, they had a bit with him standing outside her room talking to the camera about how much she really needed the epidural because she was so out of control, and if she was this out of control now, just imagine what a mess she would be as things moved along.

I haven't been able to bring myself to watch Maternity Ward since.

I just keep remembering the way her hands clutched at the cold metal for comfort as she was talked to like she was an idiot for trying to have a baby without getting an epidural.

I can't imagine that she looks back at the experience as anything but a nightmare. That's not how it is supposed to be.

I was still living in Portland and nowhere near having a baby when I made most of these choices. There were birth centers in Portland, and while I didn't know if my current insurance would cover them, it didn't really matter to me since I knew that other companies would and who knew who I would be insured with when the time came.

Living in Prince George BC, there were no birth centers, but there were midwives who were covered by provincial insurance and could attend hospital births. I figured I could at least have that part of my plan if I had a kid there, but I didn't plan to do so anyway. I figured that by the time we were ready to have kids, we'd most likely have moved back to Portland, or maybe we'd be in the Vancouver BC area.

Then I got pregnant right around the same time as we made the decisions that lead to us moving to Alberta. I got here with hopes that since Edmonton is a large city it might have a birth center, but it turns out that midwives are not even covered by provincial insurance here. The scary hospital was the only option for me.

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