Hippies

Last night I was having a really hard time getting to sleep (the tall glass of iced tea I had mid-day may be the culprit – forgive me; it was so cold, and so good).  I was probably up until about 6, and then was woken up around 9 by my phone repeatedly dinging, because one of our 90+ years-old original swing dancers was not doing well last night, so I posted a video I’d made of him ten years ago on Facebook and a lot of people were responding. 

So to quell my boredom I dug deep into the WTE chat boards.  My March 2012 boards have been a bore lately due to silly high school-like drama (must be all the young gals on there – or at least I hope so; I’d hate to think someone my age would engage in that silliness) so I went to the “birthing options” section.  And of course there was post after post about epidurals vs. natural, all of which I read with much interest (many of which I’d read before, actually).  And as always I found an interesting pattern.  The VAST majority of women, especially those who have done both natural and epidural, and those who work in the health care industry, say go for the epidural.  Now this could just be how the WTE demographic skews; I’m sure if I read a Portland only board of young crunchy granola types the opinions would be quite different.  But time after time people who have been there advise me that the epidural is THE BEST THING EVER.  While on the out of town gig this weekend our trumpet player told me that while he doesn’t want to impose on me, he’ll just tell me his wife’s story, which is one natural and one epidural, in which the natural birth was an absolute nightmare of pain and screaming and dying on the table repeatedly, and the second with an epidural was pleasant and calm and even enjoyable.  And I have heard this story over and over again from friends with two kids and also anecdotal online stories.  So it really makes me wonder…why all this judgment and harsh opinions about medical intervention?  I mean, why do people against medical intervention get all worked up about it?

I’ve had a few friends who opted for scheduled C-sections.  At the time I admit I did judge them, thinking they were harming their babies for their own comfort or they were “copping out” somehow.  But now that I’m pregnant I kind of get it.  While this option isn’t for me, I could see how this would be appealing on various levels – for someone like me it would be ideal because all of the things I’m worrying about right now, like what to do with the dog when I go into labor, will my sister make it from NY in time, when to stop scheduling singing gigs, etc, would magically disappear.  Still I don’t believe in submitting oneself to major elective surgery, and am afraid of the recovery time, and on many levels do believe vaginal birth is somehow “better”.  But I’ll tell you that these women had perfectly healthy, thriving babies who had no trouble breastfeeding or bonding.  So really…what’s the big deal?

I personally have never felt nature knows best.  In case you haven’t noticed, nature is a brutal, ugly place, full of insects and animals eating each other and destroying each other’s young and habitats.  Like it or not species went extinct long before we and our factories arrived.  Some atheist types like me like to make nature their new God – but for me this God is no better than the punishing, irrational Judeo-Christian God who inflicts cancer and genocide on entire peoples and yet demands to be worshiped.  And part of that nature is how human women give birth – which as a friend and I discussed the other day, is infinitely more painful and fraught with danger than most animal species.  In my entirely uneducated opinion, I think evolution screwed up when it designed our current bodies to birth babies.  Yes, our bodies do some amazing things while in childbirth, and I’m sure right now I can’t see just how much we as women are capable of.  But really – 36 hours of gut wrenching pain?  Tearing?  Risk of death for both of us?  Little girls barely twelve years old getting pregnant where educated, home-owning, financially secure women of 35 can’t?  Is that really necessary?  I think not.  And that’s where modern medicine comes in.

Now you have to remember that my opinions are tinged by having been deprived of all medical care until about 35.  So I’m still in that honeymoon period with medicine where pain management and doctors are miracles.  I also haven’t had bad experiences with doctors – I’m scared of them, sure, but I haven’t had a lifetime to rack up bad and good experiences like most people.  Even at nearly 40 I can’t believe I can just take a pill and make a headache go away.  I often forget and suffer for hours only to remind myself, “oh yeah, there’s a pill for that!”  I had a lifetime of unaided headaches, menstrual cramps, flus and colds (thank God nothing worse, really!).  Does this mean my immune system kicks ass?  Probably.  Does this also mean I walked on eggshells all my life because I was afraid to get sick or break a bone because I knew deep down I’d just have to suffer with it because that’s what my religion demanded?  Absolutely.  So does this mean I have an amazing tolerance for pain?  Maybe, maybe not.  I guess I could cobble up a tolerance for pain that you can’t do anything about.  But the thing that makes me think is – we developed pain meds for laboring women for a reason, and they work, and rarely have side effects or have a negative effect on the baby.  So…why the hell not use them?

I waver back and forth constantly about the natural vs. epidural issue and still have not found my peace with it.  But it does bother me that the only reason I would consider natural is because I feel (because people, and various documentaries, have led me to feel) that using an epidural makes me a weak person, that I need to “tough it out” and be a real woman.  I mean, the odds of ill effects from it are so minimal that they’re not even worth considering – healthy, happy babies are born EVERY DAY from epidurals, never mind that one nightmare story of the woman who was permanently paralyzed or the baby that never recovered, etc.  To me pregnancy in its entirety is far more dangerous for babies than epidurals are.  Would I go natural just to “prove something” to myself, or my friends?  That, to me, doesn’t seem like a good enough reason. 

Here’s what I want for my birth experience, whatever it ends up being.  I want to be present.  I want a healthy baby.  I want to not be so overcome by pain and misery and exhaustion that I can’t be in the moment.  I want to want to do this one more time until my family is complete.  I am afraid a long, painful natural birth may deprive me of these things. 

But in the end I’ll just have to see how it goes.  Naturally I will experience a great deal of pain before an epidural can even be administered, so it’s not like any experience will be pain-free.  Or I may miss the timing of it and not be able to get one, or I may (best case scenario) realize it’s not as bad as all that and I can forego all drugs.  But more and more lately I’ve been asking…why is it a good thing to forego drugs…?  Why is this a goal to be met?  Am I just being railroaded by a bunch of hippies?