Giving Birth is Heroic
From Birth With Confidence Blog (http://birthwithconfidence.blogs.lamaze.org/?p=106)
Recently I had the pleasure of being a doula for a woman who had a very strong desire for a natural birth, free of routine interventions. As luck would have it, she ended up with a long, tough labor. She perservered through many hours. It took every ounce of patience, strength and creativity she had, and slowly but surely she progressed. After a particularly tough contraction, her kind and well-intentioned nurse came up close to her and said gently, “Why don’t you consider some pain medication? Times have changed. There is no reason for labor to hurt anymore. We don’t need any heroes here.”
I don’t know why that comment got to me like it did: We don’t need any heroes here.” For me that statment more than any other I can think of sums up the difference between those of us who believe that there is power in birth, and those who don’t.
Maybe we do need heroes here. Giving birth is heroic. Having life pass through you is heroic. Becoming a mother is heroic. That woman was birthing a baby under difficult circumstances. Intuitively moaning and moving and rocking and working that baby from her womb into her arms. What she was doing was nothing less than heroic. And I wanted her to feel like a hero.
What is it about our culture that wants to take that away? That not only doesn’t value the process of working through a tough labor, but in many ways demeans it? When did we as a culture decide that birth should be easy? Decide that it doesn’t matter how we birth? That if we get an outcome of “healthy mother and healthy baby” — that’s quite enough, thank you very much.
Giving birth is meant to be overwhelming, and I mean that in a most positive way. The physical and emotional upheaval of labor are a normal and necessary part of nature’s grand design. Challenges of all kinds — physical, emotional, and spiritual — help us to discover that we have within ourselves the wisdom and the capability to deal with whatever trials come our way. Giving birth is supposed to shake us right down to our roots and leave us in awe of the power of the experience – and of the power in ourselves for getting through it. Useful qualities for a new mother.
As much as we might want to rescue women from the pain and upheaval of labor, we can’t. And in fact, we shouldn’t. ”Times have changed” the nurse said. “There is no reason for labor to hurt anymore.” I’ve given a lot of thought since then, and I’m now convinced. That nurse was wrong.
