Birthing: The Final Frontier

In t-12 weeks, give or take a few days (take, I hope) I am set to expel another baby.

Everyday women birth babes, and so you would think that this must not be a daunting task.

I assure you.  It is.

Just because women are pushing out 7,8,9, my God, sometimes larger babies, does NOT mean that any individual experience is ordinary.  There truly is nothing like bringing a life into the world.  Unfortunately, the coming into the world part is the last stretch of an often long, painful and arduous process.  Called, appropriately, labour.

This is already a fear of mine, which will be my greatest challenge in the coming weeks.  Believing that my body was meant to give birth.  Trusting that without medicine, and with a group of people who also believe in me, that I can endure the labour process.

Who the hell have I become.

I am not normally this kind of person.  I take tylenol in expectation of a headache and have a medicine cabinet that could provide backup for Shoppers, if the need ever arose.

Truly, I do not like to be in pain and definitely do not see any problem using modern medicine to ease my ailing body.  I do, however, have a belief that having a baby is not a condition to be treated with "pain management".

The more I learn about midwifery, the more I believe in a more natural way of birthing.  Are hospitals necessary to have babies?  Absolutely not.  Why and how did we ever conclude that hospitals (full of germs, infections and diseases) would be the best place for women to give birth?

Medicating every pain (which, I also believe that the expectation that birth will hurt actually makes birth MORE painful for many women) is not the way a birth experience was meant to be.

And so, about 12 weeks from now I will likely blog about my birth experience.

If I end up in the hospital with an IV, an induction and an epidural, you may put your hands on your hips, lean forward and say, "I told you it couldn't be done."

But I hope that's not the case.

Lucina Centre - Birthing Centre and Midwifery Care

www.lucinacentre.ca