Was it just me?

I came across this in my Facebook feed this morning and promptly felt like poopoo:

Do you see all of those moments of instant connection there? Ya, that wasn’t me.

If there had been a camera in my (first) birthing room, it would not have recorded me getting all gooey eyed like these lucky ladies.  It would have caught me staring blankly at Little Man and it may have even picked up a single, barely audible word:

“Huh.”

Yup, that was my first reaction to my son.

Oh don’t get me wrong, he was a very wanted baby and everything.  We had both spent hours on the couch feeling (and trying to film) his kicks through my belly.  And I secretly didn’t hate the 13 ultrasounds our OBs put us through because I loved to watch him on the screen when we went.  I loved this kid.  But in the very first second after they put him on my chest and I looked at him it hit me: I actually had no clue who he was.  He was a stranger.

You see, when you’re bonding with your baby in utero, what you’re bonding with is a collection of limbs that poke out at you from within your own body.  You’re aware that they belong to someone else, but they’re still inside your body.  They’re yours in a way.  Then you push this little person into the world and suddenly he is exactly that – a whole other person.  You’ve never seen his face, or the shape of his toes.  You don’t know what colour his eyes really are or whether he’s got his dad’s chin.  He’s a totally new entity.  How do you love someone you don’t know?

And all of this is not to say that I didn’t bond with Little Man.  There was definitely bonding.  If not instantaneously, then at least by the time we put him to the breast.  That part was a no-brainer… literally.  It’s some sort of hybrid between a chemical reaction and an unconditioned reflex.  But it wasn’t love, per se, and it didn’t make me all sloppy.  That came later, slowly.  As I got to know him, memorized his voice and breathed him in, I fell totally in love… finally.

So was it just me?  Am I the only one who didn’t have that “Wow” feeling at the first moment?

 

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Patching together a perfect birth

Welcome to the June 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Embracing Your Birth Experience

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written about at least one part of their birth experience that they can hold up and cherish.

***

My wish for both of my births was an unmedicated homebirth after spontaneous onset of labour.  The birth I envisioned in my head didn’t include wires, tubes or beeping of any kind.  In fact, my fantasy birth may not even have been a ‘home’ birth, so much as ‘backyard’ birth.  In other words what I wanted was completely and utterly primal, unencumbered and NATURAL.  That was categorically not what I got.

Both of my births were in the hospital, both included continuous monitoring, IVs and artificial membrane rupture.  I had an induction, pitocin and an epidural.  And in the course of two births, I was required to give 8 people entry visas to my ladyland, and viewing privileges to 14 others.

To say that none of that had featured in the scene I had created in my head – you know, the one in which I quietly pushed my darling babies onto a carpet of bluebells (daisies would be too banal, of course) next to an English cottage while my husband stroked my hair and our midwives brewed a pot of tea inside the house – is putting it mildly.  (The fact that we do not live in either a cottage or in England spells out just how ambitious ludicrous my birth goal really was.)  But I realized after my daughter was born that if you look closely, most of the elements I most desired were there in at least one of the births.

With our son we missed out on the happy, safe, empowering pregnancy that we ultimately had with our midwives the second time around, but after much (MUCH) discussion with our OBs, I did manage stave off induction and feel the excitement of going into labour on my own.  That turned out to be lucky because the next time around I would need to be induced on very short notice when my blood pressure shot up at the end of my pregnancy.

With both babies I got to spend my early labour at home which, although devoid of flowery meadows, did give me the sense of privacy, freedom and agency I so deeply desired.

For Little Man’s birth, going to the hospital was the undoing of whatever remained of the plan.  Hours in triage and a staff that believed I should adjust my behaviour to serve the limitations of the monitor meant I had no capacity to labour effectively.  Augmentation, more augmentation and drugs followed.  But with Lady Fair, I got those missing pieces back.  Our midwives protected our space and fiddled constantly with the machine while I moved freely, doing the work I needed to do.  Her birth didn’t start the way I wanted it to, but at least I got to progress on my own, feel my labour get more intense and feel her move through my body into the world.

So while neither birth was singly perfect, between the two of them, I can run down the natural birth checklist and tick off most of the boxes.

Having the perfect birth is a pretty narrow target to hit.  It becomes even harder when you see perfection as having to be linear – perfect from start to finish.  When I knew my second birth wasn’t going to start the way I wanted it to, after my first had ended so far off course, I felt as if my goals and hopes for birth had gone totally out the window.  But it turns out, that if you look at it moment by moment, you can fit the pieces together into a really great birth.  It might be a bit of a patchwork perfection, but it’s perfection nonetheless.

***

Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be live and updated by afternoon June 12 with all the carnival links.)

• I Had A C-Section. So What! — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama rewrites her birth story now that she has worked through the feelings of inadequacy and disappointment of not having the “perfect” birth.
• The Perfect Birth — Kellie at Our Mindful Life reflects on how a birth can be far from what we imagined, but still perfect.
• Own Your Birth: My Hope For All Expectant Moms — Andrea at Tales of Goodness shares how she owned her birth spiritually (while navigating it physically) in order to have a joyous experience.
• Carnival of Natural Parenting: My Birth Experience — It wasn’t what Lily at Witch Mom wanted, but it was everything she needed.
• The Painless Natural Homebirth of BabyE — Shannon at GrowingSlower wants women considering natural birth to know painless births are possible.
• Reflections on Jemma’s Birth … 20 Months Later — It took a second pregnancy for That Mama Gretchen to fully embrace her first birth experience.
• Loving My Unnatural Birth Experience — Erika at Cinco de Mommy cherishes her very first birth experience, in all its unnatural glory!
• Be Careful What you Wish for in Birth — Amber at Strocel.com had two births, and it was the one that went to plan that she struggled with embracing.
• Redeeming an unexpected hospital transfer — Lauren at Hobo Mama looks back at her first, interrupted home-turned-hospital birth, and finds the beauty in what happened.
• All of it — Laura from Pug in the Kitchen had to learn to embrace the whole experience of birth even though it meant being naked . . . with an audience.
• Birthing Dreams & Realities — Momma Jorje never had a “dream birth,” but she wouldn’t change a thing about her births.
• Memories of Birth: Calm Amidst the Storm — While neither of her children’s births had been quite what she expected, Cynthia at The Hippie Housewife cherishes one moment in particular from each of her birth experiences.
• Embracing Our Birth Stories — Luschka from Diary of a First Child shares a sensitive post on her recent birth which both did and didn’t go ‘to plan’, and writes about the journey of coming to terms with the good and the bad.
• Two Beautiful Births — Sheila at A Gift Universe remembers how her mother brought out the beauty in each of her children’s births, and tries to do the same with her sons’ birth stories.
• Embracing My Supernatural ChildBirth Experiences… — Jenny at I’m a full-time mummy shares her fond memories on both her supernatural childbirth experiences
• Embracing the Hospital Birth Experience — Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction believes that sometimes a medicated, induced hospital birth is the right choice for a natural parent.
• Carnival: Embracing Your Birth Experience — Stephanie at The Other Baby Blog embraces the birth experience from a paleobiologist’s point of view and takes a look at how humans defy their anatomy.
• Reflections on My First Birth and Preparing for a Second — Abbie at Farmer’s Daughter shares the strength she didn’t realize she had until she gave birth to her son.
• becoming a mama – embracing my birth experience — Meegs at A New Day remembers the birth of her daughter Gwenivere, and the empowered feeling it left her with.
• What About Us? A Poem About Birth — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment shares a poem she wrote about healing from an unexpected and emotionally painful birth experience.
• Be a Man: One Father’s View of Birth — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children shares her husband’s advice to other fathers and partners.
• A Birth Monologue — Kat at MomeeeZen shares a monologue she wrote during the process of healing from her birth experiences.
• Forgiveness: My Birth Journey — Leah at The Crunchy Farm Baby discusses what happens when her planned homebirth doesn’t end up the way she wanted, and explains her journey of forgiving herself for losing that “perfect” birth.
• Patching together a perfect birth — KrissyFair at Think Mama, Think learned that sometimes a perfect birth happens in pieces.
• Celebrating and Sharing the Possibilities of Perfect Birth — Terri from Child of the Nature Isle joyfully shares details of her perfect births and wishes to inspire a more positive cultural expectation about birth.
• Instinct – Embracing Your Birth Experience — Laura at Laura’s Blog reflects on instinctual moments during and after the births of her two daughters.
• I was Foolish Then — ANonyMous at Radical Ramblings describes how foolish lack of preparation for childbirth led to a feeling of powerlessness and fear, but that in the end she had her baby in her arms, and that’s one thing she can celebrate.
• Sometimes no plan is the best plan — Tat at Mum in search contemplates that maybe she doesn’t need a birth plan for her upcoming birth.
• Disturbing the peace — Kenna at Million Tiny Things thought she would be a calm, quiet baby-haver. Ha!
• Accepting the Unexpected During Birth — Emily at S.A.H.M i AM imagined herself laboring on a birthing ball but she never imagined where she’d really be most comfortable when the time came…
• Sacred This Time, Too — Kimber at The Single Crunch learned enough to know that the way she birthed wasn’t they way she wanted to; but she also knew to enjoy it for what it was.
• The Birth Partner: A Great Natural Labor Companion — Justine at The Lone Home Ranger thinks that the secret to her pleasant natural labors was having a great support system.
• the Best Thing About My Labor Experience — Crunchy Con Mommy realizes that amidst all the things that seemed to go wrong with her labor, the love and support of her husband was the one thing she could always count on!
• Your Birth Was My Favorite — Dulce de leche describes some of the highlights from each of her four births and explains why despite the differences, they are all her favorites.
• Birth Story: Part One – Moon on a Stick! — Gentle Mama Moon tells the first part of her birth story to share some of the delight of labouring at home.
• Embracing My Birth Experience by Sharing My Birth Story — Dionna at Code Name: Mama made peace with her first birth by sharing the story with her son.
• Focusing on the Beauty of Birth — Julia at A Little Bit of All of It shares the beautiful aspects of her birth center water birth.
• A Joyful Induced Delivery — Amy Willa: Me, Mothering, and Making it All Work notes the meditations and perspective that helped her achieve an unmedicated birth despite being induced for medical reasons.
• Finding Joy in an Imperfect Childbirth Experience — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now tells what she learned from her two very different childbirth experiences.
• What’s to like about a c-section? — Jessica at Crunchy-Chewy Mama is glad she her second child at home, but she also cherishes much about the c-section she had four years earlier.
• What Story Will I Tell? — Rachael at The Variegated Life realizes that the way she tells the story of her second child’s birth matters — and could be exhilarating.
• I Quietly Put My Hopes to Rest E — Erica at ChildOrganics shares her emotional ups and downs with the highly intervened birth of her special needs daughter, Bella.
• Tale of Six Births — Jessica at Instead of Institutions appreciates that unique challenges and joys of each of her births.
• Labouring naturally: nature’s gift — Caroline at stoneageparent describes the most beautiful, spiritual aspect of the labour of her son, the first stages along a bumpy road to giving birth.
• All The Woman I Am. — Lindsay at This Woman’s Work shares a poem about letting go and surrendering during the thralls of labor.
• A twin birth story: embracing the unexpected — Megan at The Boho Mama shares her twin birth experience and how she found the silver lining when faced with preterm labor, premature birth, and a two-week NICU stay.
• Giving Birth With Eminem — Kerry at City Kids Homeschooling shares how fiery rap music contributed to an empowered homebirth with her third baby.
• Two Different Births — Cassie at There’s a Pickle in My Life shares how she learned from her first birth experience and how to trust yourself and your body.
• Embracing Our Potential: Birth as a Metaphor — Sheila from A Living Family guest posts at Natural Parents Network and expresses how birth has served as a metaphor to help her through other experiences in life.
• Little Sister’s Birth Story: Our VBAC Adventure — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama describes the recent birth story of her baby girl, her pride in an epidural-free VBAC, and how her story isn’t exactly the birth experience she had planned for.
• A Journey in Birth Confidence — Shannon at The Artful Mama shares her experiences with labor during both of her sons’ births.

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Our Future Thinking Mama!

After 40 weeks and 5 days (or 39 weeks and 3 days, depending on who you believe) we welcomed our new baby girl on Friday, March 9.  Herein to be dubbed Lady Fair, our little one weighed 8lbs 1oz and was immediately adored by Little Man.

I’ll get out a real birth story soon(ish), but in the mean time, here’s a sneak peak:

Little Man wasn't fazed by his sister's reaction to him!

Someday they'll design a sexier hospital gown...

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Ready or not, here we go… again!

Can you guess what we’re going at again?  Uhuh, it’s baby #2 time for us!

So if you’ve been wondering at my absence the last few months, this is why.  In all honesty, I’ve been too tired to even think in full sentences, let alone type them out with commas and everything!  The tiredness has precipitated some changes around here that I will talk about another day.  I’ve also been somewhat queasy this time around – something I didn’t have last time.

Contrary to what my catchy title might suggest, we are indeed ready.  Baby #2, tentatively nicknamed The Sequel, was deliberately conceived and obviously, we’re pretty stoked.  He/she will be joining us some time around the middle of March, making our child spacing just shy of 2 years.

We were very lucky with this little one.  When I found out I didn’t get accepted to midwifery this year, I was bummed but simultaneously a little relieved.  For that plan to have worked, we would have been trying to conceive on a really tight timeline, so I could deliver at the start of summer holidays. I was quite stressed about it because I wasn’t sure of fertility status, having only had a couple of periods since Little Man.  And frankly, I had forgotten how tiring it is to be pregnant – way more tiring than having the infant here.  Re-entering the education system (after a 5-year absence) at the very beginning of my pregnancy while chasing a toddler…  Yikes.  So, we went on to plan B and so far I’m glad we did.

Oh ya, and the equally exciting news – we’re having midwives this time around!!

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Actually, I did mind whose hand was in my vagina

Since the time to try for baby number two is upon us, memories of baby number one’s first 40-odd weeks on earth keep barging into my head.  We began our pregnancy, luckily enough, with a midwife.  But I knew it was iffy whether we’d be able to stay there since I’ve had mildly high blood pressure for all of my adult life and indeed, by week 13 we were transferred from our lovely midwives to an OB at a Calgary hospital.

When we arrived at the OB’s office for our very first meeting with her, we were immediately presented with a sheet of paper that described what I dubbed the Traveling Circus of maternity “care.”  It informed us that call shifts at the hospital were shared equally by no fewer than 13 obstetricians.  It also said that not only would the OB ‘in charge’ of me not come to the birth if it happened to fall in the 92% of those shifts which were not hers, but she likely would never be directly informed that it had taken place.  I would simply not show up for the next scheduled prenatal appointment and she would glean the truth from my absence.  How’s that for customer service?

You can imagine that shifting gears so quickly from the hope of a solid relationship with a pair of personable midwives to this complete anonymity had me reeling.  When I expressed that dismay to anyone (and especially to women who had given birth already), I got the most baffling, shocking, offensive response:

“It doesn’t matter.  When it’s happening, you won’t really care who the doctor is anyway.”

Huh?

How could I possibly NOT care that there is a stranger elbow-deep in my pelvis?

As the title suggests yes, when it was finally happening, I DID care whose hands were in my vagina.

It’s not that I was so upset that I stopped pushing, or tried to hold my breath and stomp my feet until my real doctor came.  I didn’t enjoy my baby any less in the moments afterward because he was tugged from my vagina by a stranger.  And it’s certainly not like my regular OB was a dear friend whose presence would have been meaningful to me.  I don’t feel like I was violated in any way either.  I did, after  all seek assistance from the hospital for the birth and the doctors were good at their jobs and behaved professionally.

It’s just that… I cared.  It’s my vagina, after all.  Up until that day I had control over who could access it.  I had always been able to choose my sexual partners and my doctors and give express permission to them before they did anything to any part of my body.  Now suddenly, the doctor I had given permission to was nowhere to be found and I had no choice.  It felt undignified.  It felt cold.  It felt as though they’d forgotten that this birth is very deeply personal to me, that it involved parts of my body that I usually keep private and to which I attach very strong emotions.  To me it wasn’t just another Wednesday night at the office, but it was to them, and they made that abundantly clear on that piece of paper at the first appointment.

And I still care about it, by the way.  I could be sitting in a restaurant next to the resident who stuck a good portion of her arm into me in order to flip the baby and I would have no clue.  Nor would she for that matter, and that grates on me.  That day (I laboured at the hospital for a grand total of 25 hours) I had 6 nurses, 2 students, 3 residents, 4 obstetricians and 1 anesthetist – that I can remember.  And out of those 15 people, 4 gave me pelvic exams.  That may be what’s entailed in treatment, but it certainly doesn’t consitute “care”.  And I guess that’s the bottom line for me.

This time, even if we can’t have a midwife, we’ll be looking for a small practice of doctors who make an effort to provide continuity and, above all, care to their patients.  My vagina will not be hosting any more traveling circuses.

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My knowledge is my own, and it’s real

Since writing my post the other day about trusting myself I’ve been thinking a lot about confidence as a mother, but also as an intelligent adult who is also a mother.

When I was pregnant we often experienced a difference of opinion and philosophy with our doctors.  Whenever I was recapping for family or friends, a recurring theme appeared in their reactions if I implied that I didn’t agree with the doctor.  How many times did someone say to  me “You know, doctors do know what they’re talking about, they did go to school after all.”  It seems benign enough at face value.  I mean, fair enough, they did go to school, they do have knowledge.  But the implication is actually quite insidious: because the doctor knows something, I must therefore know nothing.

What's wrong with this graph?

I really started wondering why knowledge is assumed to fluctuate; to increase or diminish based on factors outside of ourselves, based on the intellect of the person you’re speaking to, for instance. Or based on the novelty of the situation you’re in.

Motherhood seems to be an excellent case study for this kind of thinking.  How often do we hear mothers termed as ‘new mothers’ or ‘first-time mothers’?  I even mentioned it in my previous post – in fact, I qualified myself that way.  This seems to be just as insidious as the previous statement.  Sure, it’s true my body had never built a human being from scratch before and I’ve never raised that particular human being before.  But does that mean I have no experience?  I do, after all, have three decades of accumulated knowledge about a lot of things to work from.  Was that all for naught? Does all of that suddenly vanish into thin air when I enter motherhood?

If (when, fingers crossed) I have a second baby, that baby will be unique.  It won’t be the same experience all over again.  I’ll be a new mother to that baby, but no one will call me a new mother.  They’ll assume I know what I’m doing because I have a couple of years of experience with my first child.  I will, of course, have experience with my first child but do I really think that will trump all of the other experience and knowledge I have independent of the first child?

And how often do we hear mothers talk about all of the things they’ll do differently with their second baby because ‘now they know’?  I find that so belittling.  But what is even worse is that those mothers are complicit in their own belittlement.  They bought into that idea that no matter how smart they were as an individual before their babies were born, they then became blank slates.  So rather than figuring the journey out for themselves, using their own intellect and transferable skills, they did what others told them to do (whether that be mom or doctors or books).  Now they realize with baby #2 that there is a different, better (for them) approach to take.  Maybe if they had trusted themselves more, counted their knowledge as real and valuable, they would have been able to find that better (for them) approach the first time around.

But let’s get back to those doctors for a minute, because that was a real sticking point for so many people in my own situation.  My doctors were very good at their trade, there’s no doubt about that.  But guess what?  I’m a trained molecular biologist.  I did cutting edge research at some of the foremost labs in my field IN THE WORLD.  I breeze through science journals like a lawyer through a contract.  So when the topic is the biology of my own body, I may not be an obstetrician, but I’m certainly no dummy.  Yet I was told to dismiss myself, to discount what I knew in the face of what someone else knew.

I wasn’t about to belittle myself that way.  I claimed my own knowledge for, well, for my own.  It’s great that my doctors also had a lot of knowledge but I took the attitude that mine was cumulative to theirs, not inversely proportional to it.

Ironically, my doctors took that seriously.  They even wrote in my chart that I intended to be a midwife so when new residents were handling my appointments, they mentioned it.  One told me it was always nice to work with patients who are ‘in the business’.  At our last visit, at 40 week +5 days, our main doctor told me that anyone else in my situation would have been induced already.  She hadn’t pushed it earlier only because she was confident in my understanding and my ability to gauge if my health changed.

The lesson?  I was right to value myself.  My knowledge depends only on me and it is very real.  My baby and I were healthier and happier for it.  And I should try to remind myself, and all of the other mamas, of that more often.

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Promises for all of the years still ahead

My Little Man is a whole year old today.  I’m still trying to figure out how it managed to happen so quickly. I just hope it’s been a good year for him, that I’ve done my job well and that he’s happy here with us.  As I write this he’s making mud pies in the front garden, singing to himself and licking dirt off of the artichoke heart he’s been clasping for an hour.  I can’t help but think that he is happy.  But really, all it’s taken until now is a lot of love, and a lot of ‘boobie action’ as we call it.  The hardest parts have yet to come.  So today, I’d like to lay out a little game plan for those hard parts, in the form of a few promises to my beautiful little man.

Little Man, 12-ish minutes old

• I promise to make mistakes.  I might as well just put this one up front and centre, because there’s no avoiding it.  I will screw up.  Repeatedly.  Sometimes in a big way.  I’m sorry about that.  BUT:
• I promise that thoughtlessness will not be one of my mistakes.  Just because babies don’t come with an instruction manual, doesn’t mean that our choices don’t matter.  I will always put my best effort into considering how I parent you and if the choices that I make turn out to be the wrong ones, I hope you will know I believed them to be best when I made them.
• The mistakes I make will be my own.  I promise not to repeat something I know to be wrong simply because someone else did or does it.  The cycles break here and the status quo stays at the door.
• I promise to respect you.  You are your own person, even though you’re still a small one.  Your body is your own even though I have to pinch hit for all of the things it hasn’t learned to do yet.  Your needs are legitimate, even though you can’t put them in a sentence yet.  I will protect that autonomy until you can exert it yourself and I will still respect it once you can.
• I promise not to hold you back.  I want you to become the most you possibly can be, and if you surpass me in any way (or every way) I’ll know I did my job well.
• I promise to be the best example I can.  It’s not always easy to live your values, but for your sake I will do the best I possibly can.  I want you to see that you can make your dreams come true.  You can be two (or more!) things at once.  You can make a difference in the world.  You can find someone to love, and you can love them for the rest of your life.  You can.

I love you Little Man.  xxoo

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On to Plan B then

Well, you’ve probably noticed I’ve been MIA the last few weeks.  I’ve been in limbo waiting for the next several years of my life to be decided and I was too frazzled about it to put two sentences together.  But now the wait is over.  I applied to the midwifery program here in Toronto.  I beat out 230-ish candidates to make the short list, but I didn’t make it past the short list to be one of the 30 accepted this year.

The news was crappy on so many levels.  Firstly because in my heart I want to be a midwife more than anything else.  I’m meant to be a midwife and I would be a damn good one.  It’s also crappy because the whole family has already invested a lot in this, even though I didn’t get in.  We spent a couple of years putting away the tuition money I’ll need and then we moved the whole family here from Calgary, primarily (though not solely) for this.  On a more selfish level, the news was disappointing because, honestly, I’m done with being at home.  I wanted a new direction and a purpose other than my, admittedly gorgeous, baby.  I know raising him is a very important job, but I need a bit more on my plate and another facet for my identity.

At the same time though, the news was oddly relieving.  The holding pattern I was in, waiting to hear and not wanting to commit my time or resources starting other projects, was agonizing.  And if I’m being honest, I was nervous about what it would mean to start this year.  To make it work for our family, we would be on a tight timeline.  We want a second baby so if I had been accepted, it would mean getting pregnant just as I started school.  I was an excellent student but I’m long out of practice, so the thought of adding pregnancy fatigue into that mix was scary.  Even scarier was the possibility that we wouldn’t just get pregnant on the first try like we did last time.  What if I couldn’t time the baby for the start of summer holidays?  Would I be able to cope with having a baby mid-term instead?

So what now then?  On to Plan B.  We still want that second baby, and now our timeline is a bit more relaxed.  The earlier I have it, the easier it will be to transition when I get in to school next year.  Yes, I said when.  Plan B means reapplying.  I know I can make the short list and next time I’ll have an edge for the interviews.  Besides, the universe wants me to be a midwife.  But in case of the unthinkable, I also need a way to make a living in the future.  So, I’m starting training in all things birth and baby, starting with a birth doula workshop next month.

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Why I get prickly about bad birth portrayals

Even though I was determined that my TV drama roster was full, I caved and started watching Off the Map.  And I admit it – I like it.  That is, with the exception of the third episode and its totally botched, overly dramatized, hellishly inaccurate portrayal of birth.

It went something like this: woman in labour, goes to the jungle-clinic where they slap an EFM on her and require an ultrasound to determine the baby’s presentation.  The EFM – as EFMs tend to do – goes ‘beep’.  That single beep is enough to indicate to the wonderful American (male) doctor that the baby is in imminent danger and an emergency C-section is the only answer.  Never mind that they can barely create a sterile field, or that none of the doctors has been identified as a qualified anesthetist, cutting the mom’s abdomen open on the patio of a jungle hut is deemed (within 3 seconds of that single beep) to be the ONLY way to proceed.  On they charge and baby comes out, hooray, a medical miracle!

But come on, this is a show where they gave a guy an IV of coconut milk when they ran out of blood.  It’s not supposed to be realistic, it’s supposed to be dramatic and entertaining, right?

I get that.  I really do.  But here’s my beef with birth à la Hollywood – not only is birth the only health topic portrayed on TV that a viewer is likely to experience first hand, just about EVERY viewer is guaranteed to experience it.  And, as sad as it is, a lot of people take in this message and never question it.  So when they (or their partner) are in labour (albeit, presumably not in the jungle) and that EFM goes beep, and the doctor says it has to be a C-section, that seems totally reasonable to them.  Even for those of us who do question and search before our babies are born, it’s difficult to forget the scenarios we’re so familiar with and accept something we’ve never seen – rarely even heard of – as possible for us.

It doesn’t matter that they gave the guy the coconut transfusion because no one will ever be in a situation where they have to choose coconut milk or death.  Just like it doesn’t matter that Grey’s Anatomy once showed Izzy cracking open a guy’s skull on the side of the freeway with a drill she grabbed from the back of a pick-up.  None of the crazy, “you’ll never guess what they did” scenarios about anything else matter because it’s all so far removed from the realm of possibility that no one will be hurt by seeing those scenarios.  Birth is different.

There are a myriad of reasons why the C-section rates in North America are astronomically high, but patient perception that major surgery is a normal and safe way to have a baby is one of the biggies.  Women have lost confidence in our ability to give birth; to do the most important thing that our bodies are designed to do; the one thing that men can not do.  We’ve come to believe that we’re in mortal peril from the moment the contractions start, until the moment that the heroic (and usually male) doctor rescues us.

If we want to take birth back, we have to start with our birth stories.  We have to stop showing birth as a catastrophe and show it as an achievement – a female achievement – and we have to stop making men the heroes of our stories.

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